“No. I’m fine.” She smiled with an effort to emphasize that. “Just … uh … tests … to make sure I am. Fine. Healthy, I mean. They do checks occasionally.” Just for shits and giggles. “It’s nothing.”
Shut up!
Oh my god.
I’m not guilty … of anything.
I just have this guilt complex.
By the time she managed to corral her tongue both of them were looking a little alarmed.
Not reassured.
“God! I am starving! Do you suppose anything’s ready yet?” she babbled, pulling on Ryne to get him going toward the crowd.
A group of colonists were moving around the compound, setting up torches--which was the first that Belle noticed it was late afternoon and heading toward sunset.
She had to suppose they’d decided to conserve the batteries for the floodlights.
Maybe it was ‘mood’ light?
Or something someone thought up for their ‘primitive’ guests.
She bet there were alotof them that were going to be dismayed when they discovered these weren’t primitives.
And she knew, absolutely that they weren’t--now.
But what explained their situation?
That was when she remembered that Connor had told everyone the drones had found ruins of an ‘ancient civilization’.
Theircivilization.
They were survivors.
The question was did it have anything to do with the other ruins the drones had found that had been attributed to the colony of the Huntress?
* * * *
Everybodynoticed the damned monitor andeverybodyknew what it was for.
If they didn’t immediately spot it, someone else did, and then passed the word on.
Honest to god! Didn’t they have anything else to do for entertainment, Belle thought angrily, struggling to act nonchalant about it and completely unaware that everyone was staring at it like she had a snake around her wrist.
Maybe she should have just announced it on the com?
Or arrived wearing a placard with the announcement printed on it in six inch letters?
Connor either didn’t notice, or he hadn’t figured it out.
Or he was pretending he had no idea.
His expression was pretty stony--but then again, she arrived with Ryne and Torr and sat between them, trying to choke down the food without actually choking to death.
She was pretty sure Ryne and Torr heard enough of the whispers to figure it out pretty quickly, even though she managed a running monologue for a little while in a desperate effort to drown them out.
She couldn’t decide how they took it.
