Page 58 of Reformation
A thousand miles above the surface of Olympus, Berengaria Alexander wrapped her shawl tighter around her shoulders and smiled. It wasn’t a nice smile. It wasn’t a very sane smile either. “At last."
Chapter thirty-three
Ten; Miles
It felt different than ze had expected, approaching the planet like this. Ten had done the same exposure and zero-g training that every cadet at the Academy did, and while careening through a planet’s atmosphere in an attempt to safely land a modified hoverbike on its surface was decidedlynotone of the training scenarios, it shouldn’t have made any difference. Ze’d been exposed to crashes, explosions, breakaways—every nasty thing the programmers could think of. Hell, Ten had been in severalactualshuttle crashes, so this really shouldn’t have fazed hir at all.
Which was why ze couldn’t understand why hir heart rate was spiking so abnormally, or why it felt like their oxygen supply had already run out even though ze knew, logically, that that was impossible.
“Everything looks good,” Cody said from in front of hir, his eyes glued to the instrument panel. Never mind that thebike was projecting data that could be read directly through their implants—Cody had never quite attached himself to doing things the easy way, like cadets who’d grown up with the technology. “We should start falling through the top layer of atmosphere in forty-five seconds.” Ten could hear the excitement in his voice. “Time to see how good our heat shielding really is!”
“It’s—it’s the b-best,” Ten replied, and why was ze stumbling over hir words? “Nat-naturally. I-I-I’m the one who … the one who des-designed it.”
“Ten?” Cody turned his head around to look at hir. “What’s wrong?”
Ten shook hir head. “Noth-nothing.”
“That doesn’t sound like nothing.”
“It’snothing!” Ten snapped, pleased at how anger kept hir words together better. “I’m perfectly fi-fi-fine!”
“Ten …”
“I don’tknow!” ze burst at him. “I don’t know what’s wro-wrong with m-m-me! I feel like I’m having a hear-heart-heart attack! I don’t even know wha-what that feels like, but it must be a lo-lo-lot like this!” Stars that had no place in the sky were swimming in front of hir eyes now, and Ten blinked rapidly, trying to clear them. Hallucinations? Ze couldn’t be having hallucinations, there was no reason for it!
“Ten.”
Hir eyelids were fluttering fast enough that they blurred the back of Cody’s head. The stars were getting thicker, like space itself had transformed mediums.
“Ten! Listen to me!”
“I-Iam!”
“You need to take some deep breaths before you pass out!”
“My brea-bre-buh—” Ze stopped talking to save hirself the embarrassment. Obviously, if ze couldn’t even get a word out, hir breathing wasn’t fine.
“Here.” Cody moved one of hir hands from around his waist up to his chest. His suit was too thick to feel anything through it, but a moment later, a reassuringthudpulsed through their combined grip. “You feel that? Breathe when you feel the beat.”
Ten would have argued, but ze didn’t have the air to spare for it. Ze pushed hir pride aside and tried to breathe along with the next slow thud. It was … harder than ze’d anticipated.
“Good,” Cody said encouragingly, and it shouldn’t have mattered, because being good at breathing was astupidthing to try and excel at, but the strange, crackling tension in Ten’s chest eased slightly. “Keep it up. Keep breathing with the beat.” The planet grew larger and larger, filling all of Ten’s view, looming immense and inescapable as the light surrounding their shields began to glow with heat.
“Breathe with the beat, Ten.” Cody squeezed hir hand. “You don’t have to watch,” he said gently, his voice as sweet as any touch he’d ever shared with hir. “Just close your eyes and feel. Feel the beat. Feel me. I’m here with you, always with you. We’re together.”
It might have been cowardly, and any other day, Ten might have scoffed and rolled hir eyes at what seemed like such condescending gentility, but not now. Now ze pressed hir head tight to Cody’s back, closed hir eyes against the brilliant fire surrounding them, and focused on the beat.
Ze didn’t need to look death in the eye when life itself was holding hir hand.
***
Miles swayed back and forth, like he was lying in a wave pool, like the kind he and Claudia had taken the girls to a while back. It had been nicer than he cared to admit out loud, the warm air contrasting perfectly with the cool water. He’d closed his eyes and floated for over an hour until his kids had pulled him into a water fight. It was like being back there, except he was cold. And dry. And—fuck.
He forced his eyes open and looked around the darkened interior of the pod. The emergency lights were on, and the locator beacon was beeping almost soundlessly—the speaker must have broken in the fall. His cadets were still, unmoving on the floor. Miles reached out to them, ignoring the sudden stabbing pain in his leg. He touched Grennson’s neck—there was a pulse, a strong one, but he had a bleeding head wound. Darrell’s heartbeat was thready, and from the odd way his tunic sat against his chest, Miles could guess why. Shattered ribs, in all likelihood. More than the simple Regen kit in the pod could handle, but he pulled it free and gave them each a shot anyway. Grennson’s wound stopped bleeding, and Darrell’s breathing eased some, so it clearly hadn’t hurt.
Cadets stabilized, now he needed to stabilize their craft. Miles tapped into the computer with his implant. [Current status?]
[Pod is 88.5% inoperable. The hull is cracked. The rate of leakage into the space between the outer and inner hull will force complete submersion in approximately five minutes.]
