Page 54 of Warrior’s Mate

She hated that answer because this time it was true. The civilian transport reached capacity. Its ramp began to close. More than two hundred Wasaytu evacuees still waited in dispersed holding zones. The patrol escort could take thirty. No one knew whether the support ship would make the basin. Maelis stared at the remaining names.

"We need another extraction."

Kaiven answered from somewhere amid the northern fighting. "There may not be one."

"Then we make one."

"With what ship?"

She had no answer. The civilian transport lifted. Its lights climbed through smoke, carrying six hundred people away from Wasaytu. The patrol escort remained on the ground, weapons tracking the northern road. Above them, the support vessel's signal vanished. Not weakened. Vanished. Kaiven came back to the relay after midnight, exhausted and carrying someone else's blood on his sleeve. Maelis met him at the door.

"Thirty-two more on the escort," she said. "It leaves in eight minutes."

"You're going with them."

The old command reflex was there, but it sounded different now—less like ownership than a conclusion based on the manifest.

"No," she said.

He closed his eyes.

"Maelis."

"There are two hundred people still here, and the support ship may be down somewhere west of us with another one hundred eighty-three."

"The escort has a seat for you."

"It has a seat for someone."

"You are the person coordinating every remaining civilian route."

"Exactly."

His eyes opened. For several seconds, fear and reason fought openly across his face. Then he asked the question.

"If you stay, what do you need from me?"

Maelis felt something inside her settle.

"Stay too."

His answer was immediate.

"Yes."

The patrol escort lifted without them. Thirty-two more people escaped. Maelis and Kaiven stood outside the western relay and watched its lights disappear into the cloud layer. Somewhere beyond those clouds, three vessels had become two, perhaps one. Communications across Farseek continued to fail. The Brigade was still fighting away from home. Sargan transports moved captives toward destinations no one here could see. And two hundred people still needed a road out. Kaiven's hand found hers. He did not pull her closer. He did not tell her everything would be fine.

He simply held on. Maelis held on too. Then the relay alarm began to sound.

Chapter 10 — Choice

The western relay alarm did not sound like the others.

The shelter alarms had been blunt, repetitive things designed to push frightened people toward doors. The agricultural Exchange used a rising three-note warning when machinery failed. Military alerts were sharper, stripped of anything that might be mistaken for background noise.

This alarm began low enough that Maelis felt it through the soles of her boots before she understood what she was hearing. Kaiven's head came up. His hand left hers at once, not because he had forgotten the moment between them but because both of them knew what the sound meant.

"Relay breach," he said.