Chapter 4

They did eventually get up to pitch the tent and cook dinner. Sol slept well and long for a man who'd recently encountered a bear, but in the morning as he drank his instant coffee he spent a while reconsidering his decision to keep going. Knowing of potential danger was different from actually facing down said danger.

The bear hadn't attacked them, though. It hadn't seemed aggressive at all—only curious. Even if they ran into it again, which seemed unlikely, it probably wouldn't bother them.

Unless it had gotten hungrier by then. Always a possibility.

He just couldn't convince himself that turning back was worth it. Better to roll the dice and keep going. He was hoping they'd find another drop, and then Loden might even smile when he told her the news. He wanted to be able to ease her worries, at least for a little while.

"Onward?" Remma asked him, sipping from his own cup.

"Onward," Sol agreed.

The wind blew through the trees as they walked, cold and biting. Sol turned the collar of his coat up around his ears and hunched his shoulders. He wasn't soft like Remma, but he couldn't say he enjoyed this weather, either.

He didn't hear anything as they went, and didn't see anything, either. There were no glints of metal through the trees and nothing of interest otherwise. The barrens were really living up to their name.

After a brief stop for lunch, they kept pushing forward along the same route. Sol constantly scanned the forest, searching both for drops and for danger, but he found nothing worth noting until, abruptly, he did.

He put his hand back to stop Remma. Wordlessly he extended his other arm in the direction of what he'd noticed: a low shape sprawled on the ground, just visible between the trees.

He gave Remma's shoulder a firm pat: Stay here. Moving as silently as he could, he crept forward to get a better look.

It was a person—a body, probably dead based on how much blood darkened the soil around it. Face-down, motionless. Sol crouched to check the pulse. Yeah. Definitely dead.

He went back to Remma. "It's a corpse," he said quietly.

Remma swore. "You think the bear got them?"

"Might have. Come with me, will you? Leave the sledge here. I need you keeping watch."

Remma followed him back to the body. Sol crouched again to turn the person over, which took more effort than he'd expected. It was like flipping a huge sack filled with flour, weighty and ungainly. He managed with a heave. The person—it was a man, judging from the beard and the size—was so soaked in blood it was hard at first to tell what had happened.

"A bear did that?" Remma asked, sounding unsure.

"No," Sol said. "No, it wasn't a bear." He reached out to pull the man's collar down, just to be sure.

No bear could do that. The man's throat had been slit, cleanly, neatly, from one point of his jaw to the other.

"Shit," Remma said.

The man was probably a scrapper from one of the moon's other colonies. He was dressed like a scrapper, in simple homespun clothes much like the ones Sol wore. And nobody lived here who wasn't a scrapper. But Sol didn't recognize him, although he knew a lot of the residents of other nearby colonies. And who would have killed him? The colonies didn't always get along, but there was rarely outright violence. Everyone was just trying to scrape by.

Sol sat back on his heels. He wasn't equipped to deal with this.

Who had been following them the other day? Not a bear, he was certain now. A person. This man? Or whatever—whoever—had killed him?

"What should we do," Remma said.

"I don't know. Bury him. And then get the hell out of here."

"You want to head back?"

"Yeah. If someone's out murdering in the barrens, I don't want us to be next." Bears were normal: expected. Murder wasn't. Sol straightened and wiped his hands on his pants. "Let's get out the shovel."

They took turns digging. Remma could move about twice the dirt Sol could in the same amount of time, so it didn't take long. Together they heaved the scrapper's corpse into the hole.

"Sorry you went that way," Sol said to the body, just to have something to say. Even an impromptu funeral deserved a little bit of ceremony. "We'll try to find out where you're from and let them know what happened to you."

Remma grunted and dumped in the first shovelful of dirt.

Once the man was safely in the ground, they didn't linger. Sol checked the compass for the most direct route back to the colony and they headed that way at the fastest pace they could manage. Forget trying to find good places to camp at night—Sol's priority was getting home as soon as possible. The less time they spent out in the barrens, the better.

They walked in silence until it was almost too dark to see, then set up camp by the light of their headlamps. Remma frowned as he worked, as if he disapproved of the stew he was rehydrating. Sol thought of saying something to reassure him, but any words he could manage would ring false. Remma understood the danger as well as Sol did.

Remma offered to sit up and keep watch, and Sol only argued a little. Even so, he barely slept that night. Every noise from the forest woke him from light, restless sleep. Every crackle of the fire had him leaving the tent just to check, ignoring the judgmental looks he got from Remma. Would the fire keep bears away or attract something worse? Sol couldn't say, and that kept him awake, too. At the first hint of morning light he rose with gritty eyes and began to pack the sledge.

Remma's face appeared at the tent flap. "Time to get going?"

"Yeah. The sooner the better."

"Let's have something to eat, at least. You don't want to walk all morning on an empty stomach." Remma gave him a look. "And some coffee. Did you sleep at all?"

"Did you?" Sol retorted. "I know you never do."

"That isn't true. I do sleep. But I only need an hour or two a night."

"Probably about how much I got last night. Fine, make me some coffee. It's going to be a long day."

The coffee and the cold air helped him feel slightly more alert as they set out, but he knew he wasn't at his best, and that was bad. He couldn't afford to be anything less than one hundred percent if they ran into trouble. Adrenaline could only get him so far.

He blamed his fatigue on how long it took him to notice the way Remma kept looking back over his shoulder, again and again. Every few minutes, as if he were hearing some repetitive sound.

"You hear something?" Sol asked belatedly.

"No. I don't know." Remma hesitated, then said, "It's probably nothing."

Sol stopped. "Okay, that's not reassuring. Remma?—"

"I don't know what it is. It doesn't sound close. That's all I can tell you. I don't think it's anything to worry about."

"Not yet," Sol said grimly. "I need you to let me know right away if it changes. Or if you hear something else."

"I will. Sorry."

"Let me decide what needs worrying about. You're just the hired muscle." Sol tried to say it lightly, hoping the joke would land, even though it wasn't really a joke.

Remma barked a laugh. "Just here to pull the sledge, huh. Okay, you got it, boss."

"You can call me that whenever you want," Sol said. "Seriously, though, Remma?—"

"I know. I get it. Let's just go."

They lapsed into silence again as they kept walking, at a pace fast enough to make Sol's calves ache. His urgency to get home was a frantic drumbeat in his chest. He couldn't wait to hear the colony doors sealing shut behind him. Nothing would ever sound so sweet again.

Remma looked back over his shoulder again.

"Remma, what," Sol said.

Remma's jaw shifted to the left. "Just jumpy, I guess."

Sol didn't buy that at all, but okay, sure. He'd never seen Remma jumpy, not even after the pinecat on their last trip out. Not even after the bear. Remma couldn't fight, but he was cool under pressure, for the most part; cooler than Sol would expect from a guy who didn't have a gun. Now he was startling at shadows. It didn't add up.

"Let's keep going," Remma said. "Come on. I just want to get back."

Well, so did Sol, but he didn't follow when Remma pulled the sledge forward. He turned in place, one hand on his rifle, scanning the woods, searching for whatever had Remma so on edge. He couldn't see anything, or hear anything, either, and not for the first time he was infuriated by the limitations of his human senses. Remma was hearing something that he couldn't, and Remma wouldn't fucking tell him what it was.

What was it that Remma didn't want him to know?

He jogged to catch up with Remma, who was really booking it. "What the fuck are you hearing? If you don't tell me?—"

"You'll what? What threat are you going to come up with?" Remma turned to scowl at him. "Will you please stop talking and hurry up? I'm trying to keep you safe."

Sol scoffed. "You? Have you gotten our jobs mixed up? Whatever you're not telling me, I need to know so I can keep us both out of trouble."

"Damn it, Sol!" Remma exploded. "You're the most stubborn person I've ever known, and I know all humans aren't like this. Don't blame me when everything goes to shit. I'm doing my best, and if you would just shut up and keep walking?—"

In the distance came a sudden loud crack, a noise enough like a gun firing to make Sol's blood run cold.

"Go," Remma said, and this time Sol didn't argue.

They ran as best they could, slowed by the sledge and the loose soil. Sol held his rifle close as he went, praying he wouldn't have to use it but aware he probably would. He'd never killed a person. He didn't particularly want to kill a person now, but better that than being killed himself, or having to watch Remma die.

Another crack. It sounded farther away, which meant they weren't being pursued. At least not yet. Sol put his head down and ran.

"High ground—there," Remma said, panting. He pointed to an outcrop rising above the trees ahead. "Should we?—"

"No," Sol said, forced to make a split-second decision, and hopefully not the wrong one. They were gaining distance on whatever it was. "Keep going. Run."

They ran. Sol's legs burned, and his lungs. The sledge bumped along behind them, careening into trees. Sol had no real ambitions in life, was content to scavenge and get drunk with his friends, but he wanted life, he wanted to live. He wanted to not die in this fucking forest. He was going to make sure they both lived.

Another crack, this time from ahead of them.

Sol stopped so fast he practically skidded. How?—

It didn't matter. There wasn't time to wonder.

"Back!" he said to Remma, already turning. "Back to the outcrop. Leave the fucking sledge," because Remma had no sense of when it was time to fight and when it was time to give up and get the hell out.

Sol ran as fast as he possibly could, legs and arms pumping, lungs straining near to bursting, heart knocking hard against his ribs. Up ahead the outcrop loomed. He put his head down and made straight for it, Remma right at his side, then pulling ahead with his longer legs.

At the base of the outcrop, Sol used his momentum to help with the initial scramble up the rock face. He pulled himself upward, fingers scrabbling for purchase, feet braced on any narrow ledge he could find. Up and up, with Remma below him, heavier and slower but still making good progress, following the route Sol was finding. If they got high enough, if Sol could only see what they were up against, maybe they would make it out of this alive.

The outcrop wasn't big. Sol reached the top before he expected to, and stumbled a bit as he hauled himself onto the jumbled pile of weathered rock that formed the summit. Chest heaving, he scanned the forest as Remma dragged himself over the top. There, moving toward them at a rapid clip, was a group of?—

Shit, were those Tozren?

A lot of them were carrying guns. At least half. One toward the rear looked like he was carrying a rocket launcher.

"Fuck," Remma muttered.

"You said it," Sol said grimly. "You know these guys?"

As he spoke, one of the Tozren pointed to the top of the outcrop with a shout Sol could hear but not understand. He didn't need a translation. It was pretty clear what the man was saying.

"Get down," he snapped at Remma, yanking at Remma's sleeve as they both dropped. A moment later the rock pile beside them exploded into a cloud of shards and dust. Sharp fragments hit the exposed skin of Sol's face and hands and burned as they bit into his skin. He wiped his face with his palm and it came away streaked with blood.

"Back, back," Sol said, already scrambling backward, tugging at Remma. They could go down the other side of the outcrop, find somewhere to take shelter, maybe even make it all the way to the ground and—run away from the crazy guys with rocket launchers?—

It sounded impossible even in his own head. He couldn't see a way out of this one.

But he had to try.

Down he went, scrambling without nearly enough caution. On a wide ledge he stopped and shuffled along to peer around the edge of the outcrop. If he could take out even one or two of the Tozren, they'd be in better shape. But they spotted him right away and raised their guns, and he had to duck back to safety. So much for that plan.

Remma had done the smart thing and kept going. Sol plunged downward after him, his bleeding hands scraping against the rock and bleeding more. It didn't matter until his grip started sliding, and then he had to stop and wipe his palms against his pants. Remma, with his tougher skin, went down and down, nearly to the ground now.

They couldn't outrun a bunch of Tozren. Well, maybe Remma could, but Sol knew he didn't have a chance. He didn't have a plan. Run as far as he could, and then they would catch him, or maybe just shoot him.

He hadn't expected everything would go to hell in quite this specific way.

He jumped down the final few feet and landed on the ground with a bone-jarring thud. Remma was waiting for him. Sol motioned to him urgently. They needed to go, go, not just stand here letting the Tozren get closer and closer.

But it was too late. The Tozren came at them around both sides of the outcrop, a pincer movement Sol probably should have anticipated. Guns raised, rocket launcher high, and there was nowhere for Sol and Remma to run.

The one with the rocket launcher grinned at them, then leaned over to spit on the ground. "Hello, Remmathulsen," he said.