She set them down more carefully than he had, and then moved to the fire, which had caught nicely. It was colder here than in Nanganya, and the heat it was giving off was more than welcome.
The little pot they’d hung over the fire began to shake a bit as the water boiled, and she carefully lifted it away with another stick and set it down on a rock.
“Jah?” she asked.
“Please.” He was glad he’d taken the chance to go back into the hover for the emergency packs for the jah supplies alone, but the ground sheets, the warm sleeping bags, and the pot and meals meant they could survive out here a lot more comfortably than he’d initially thought.
While she made their drinks with a competence that indicated she was no stranger to the outdoors, he began to layout the ready-made meals they had, the water bottles with in-built purifiers, and the other equipment, so he could take stock.
Velda handed him a cup and stood close beside him, looking over their spoils.
“The hover takes a maximum of six people, and it looks like they’ve included supplies for six people for three days.” It wasn’t a massive amount, but it meant that if they were careful, they had nine days of supplies.
“Someone will come looking for us long before we run out,” Velda said. “And not all of them will be enemies.”
“That’s true, but how will we know one from the other?” he asked. “And if the observatory has been destroyed, and Ed and Wren are dead, then Defense will have a lot on their plate. We don’t even know if anyone knows we were shot down yet.”
“You want us to walk out on our own?” she asked, crouching down and studying the meals more closely.
“I think the less dependent we are on others, the safer we’ll be.” He knew full well the conspiracy couldn’t be that far reaching. The Verdant String had set itself up to be very corruption-resistant, but with a warship hunting them from the skies, all that was needed was for the wrong person to know where they were—or who had found them—and the innocent people coming to save them might also be in danger.
“You think that unless it was the enemy ship that was destroyed, and is providing such a gorgeous light show for us, they’ll circle back to take another shot at us, and whoever’s honestly looking for us might get caught in the crossfire?” She looked out from under the overhang at the now constant flare and glitter of falling stars in the night sky.
He shrugged, not surprised by how quickly she’d caught his train of thought. “All it would take is one person to let them know we’d been found. And we know there’s someone in either the Demeter or Nanganya Defense Office giving theminformation, or they wouldn’t have known we were on our way back to Demeter.”
“Yes.” She sounded very quiet all of a sudden.
Betrayal was a hard blow to take.
“Our comms units are off, and we’ll keep it that way unless we have no choice but to ask for help. We’ll make our own way back to Demeter, and get the lay of the land.” He was looking up as he spoke, and he realized he very badly wanted to use his comms unit to find out what was going on in nearspace.
“It makes sense.” Velda sounded like she wished it didn’t.
He crouched down beside her. “What do you want for dinner?”
She glanced at him, eyes steady, and then turned to the meals laid out in front of her.
He’d grouped them into roughly breakfast, lunch and dinner, and her hand hovered over the dinner pile, lightly touching the offerings until she made a choice and lifted out a meal.
“Have you had these before?” she asked.
He chuckled. “Yes.”
“Me, too. When I became Head of Defense, I insisted they work on improving the taste, and I see this is the new line.” She tapped the wrapping. “I’ve personally tried them all, and they are definitely better than the old ones.”
He hadn’t known that. He’d been steeling himself to swallow the meal down, but now he was interested in giving it a try. “So I know who to blame?” he teased, sending her a smile as he snagged a package.
She grinned back. “Even if I hadn’t had a hand in the new line, I’d be to blame. I’m in charge and that’s the deal.”
Ethan was still crouched next to her, and he forced himself to straighten up, suddenly flustered. “If you don’t mind heating the food, I’ll repack this.” He held out the meal he’d chosen.
She rose fluidly to her feet, took the package from him, and tilted her head. “Sure.”
He turned away from her, looking for where he’d put the two packs, and heard her walk back to the fire.
He needed to get himself together. They were going to be spending days and nights together, just the two of them.
The thought made him want to break out into a cold sweat.
