The Travels of Scout Shannon Books 1-3

Chapter 24

24

Scout jumped to her feet and ran to the doorway, the dogs charging after her, but there was nothing to be seen. No fleeing figure, no one lurking in the shadows. Had it really been an insect?

Just the thought made Scout’s flesh crawl. Was this place really filled with killer insects too tiny to be seen?

Shadow barked his shrill warning cry and Scout turned back to see Liv pulling herself half out of the hover chair. Her body was starting to spasm much as Viola’s had, but there was a fierceness to her eyes. She likely knew what was happening to her, what poisons Clementine had access to and their effects on the human body. She likely knew just how much time she had left, and despite her claim to be weary and ready to die, she was fighting for every last second of usable time.

She dumped the remains of her dinner on the chopping block and spread the tomato sauce smoothly across the surface. She dragged one shaking finger through the mess and Scout rushed to her side to see what she was writing.

NOT ALONE.

Liv flopped back into her chair, arms now nearly useless as the paralysis spread. Still she managed to grope for something hidden inside her chair. She brought her hand back out but the fist was clenched tight and Liv didn’t seem to be able to force it to relax. Her eyes held Scout’s, but if she was trying to impart some last meaning, Scout didn’t know what it could be.

Then she was gone.

Scout looked at the words in the drying tomato sauce. They weren’t alone. There was Clementine, but clearly that wasn’t what Liv had struggled to convey to her.

Clementine wasn’t alone.

Just how many child assassins trained in space was she trapped here with?

Scout looked at Liv’s clenched hand. Was she going to have to break her fingers to find what she had? Would it even be worth it? Scout folded her hands over Liv’s and found to her relief that she had relaxed in that last moment of life. The fingers parted easily and Scout felt two small disks fall into her palm.

She thrust them into a pocket, then reached into the chair to find the controls to send it out on its own into the common room with the other bodies. She made sure both dogs were with her, then she sealed the hatch.

They could shut off the power if they wanted to. Even the air. There would be enough in here to last her and the dogs a few more days.

Nothing was going to convince her she stood any sort of chance out there against an invisible stinging death.

Of course, she had no way of knowing those things weren’t inside the kitchen with her even now, but if they were, there was nothing she could do about it.

Unless Warrior had something that could detect them?

Scout reached into the pouch for the scratched but otherwise intact lens that had covered Warrior’s left eye. She brought it up to her face. It cut out the brightness of the overhead lights but nothing more. Did it need body modifications to work? Like the power source or whatever in Warrior’s back? She had been holding it a bit away from her face; she tried pressing it right up against her flesh.

It felt like it reached out for her and suctioned itself down over her eye, a startling sensation especially as it left her half blind. She fell back against the chopping block, fighting the urge to claw it back off her face.

Then it lit up, faint green lines outlining a space in front of her like a window. She waited for something more to happen, but that appeared to be it. She looked all around the room, hoping if there were any of the insects inside the lens would detect them. Nothing happened. She didn’t find that comforting.

Scout sat down on the floor, the two dogs once more snuggling in close to her. She found the belt pouch that contained the featureless tablet and set it on her left knee where her lensed left eye could easily focus on it.

There was a screen on it now, and a keyboard. Just like any other tablet. If she shut her right eye and only looked through the lens, it looked perfectly normal, not at all like the lens was superimposing an image on reality just for her. Weird.

The screen of the tablet had a message on it. She read DEAR GERTRUDE before looking away. That looked personal. Would Warrior want her seeing it? She had certainly never shared her name.

Scout set the tablet down and looked at the other gadgets one by one. Each had information superimposed by the lens, indicators or directions or, in the case of the gun, a number she guessed was the number of shots she had left to fire. Most of it was meaningless, except for the flare monitor. It had a feed coming from someplace, perhaps from one of the Space Farer satellites, measuring current activity outside. As deep into the red zone as ever. A second screen showed the activity down where Scout was. A few particles were getting through even all the dirt and rock and station hull, but not much. Not enough to worry about.

After she had worked her way all around the belt, she took another jolo out of the fridge and popped it open. Then she dug the disks out of her pocket to examine them more closely. They both had the Planet Dweller government logo embossed on one side. They were the sort of disks one used to store data, Scout knew, but she had no device she could use to read them. She picked up Warrior’s tablet again, but it had no input slots. She set it down and went back to turning the disks over and over between her fingers.

Government logo. Government property. Liv had been a spy; was this one last theft of intel destined for her Space Farer masters? But the disks were supposed to be able to hold massive amounts of data. Why would she need two?

Was one of them Ruth’s? She had said she had intel with her that she had been taking to the rebels. Had it fallen into Liv’s hands? Certainly no one else had gone looking for it in those chaotic hours after Ruth’s death. When Scout had gone with Warrior and Ottilie to find Ebba, Liv had been left alone with Clementine, her protégé. She must have gotten it then.

Was there some point when Clementine had stopped working with Liv? It was all so confusing, trying to figure out who was on whose side. Scout put both of the disks back in her pocket and zipped it closed. She had all the intel now. That was all that mattered.

She took another drink of jolo. Her mind was both wired from the caffeine and exhausted, but she didn’t dare sleep. If only she had searched Viola’s medical supplies; she probably had something to keep a person awake that wasn’t so teeth-grinding and heart-pounding as bottle after bottle of pure caffeine.

Scout rubbed at her forehead tiredly, felt the cold surface of the lens against the back of her hand and thought about taking it off again, but then reached for the tablet instead.

She carried Liv’s secrets and Ruth’s secrets, she might as well have Warrior’s secrets too. Or Gertrude’s.

Gertrude Bauer was a galactic marshal, that hadn’t been a lie. Somewhere out there closer to galactic central she had a partner, Liam McGillicuddy. It looked like every time Warrior had been tapping away at this tablet, she had been corresponding with Liam.

Gertrude was technically on vacation. Her superiors knew she was dealing with a family matter and had given her an open-ended leave. But Liam knew she was really chasing down a fugitive, a low-level con artist too insignificant for the marshal service to bother with.

But he had made the mistake of ripping off Gertrude’s grandma. Now Gertrude was going to make him pay.

She and Liam had a warm friendship, their messages back and forth full of references to things Scout didn’t understand like “that one time on Faver 4” or “just like Sonny Solu did back in the day.” She guessed they had been friends a long time.

The last five messages were all from Liam.

THOSE HICKS GIVING YOU HELL, GERT?

UPDATE, GERT?

GERT, WHERE YOU AT?

GERT?

And finally: GERT, I KNOW YOU DON’T WANT ME TO BRING THIS TO SALVO’S ATTENTION, BUT COME ON. YOU CAN’T GO RADIO SILENT THIS LONG. GET BACK TO ME OR I’M SUMMONING THE POSSE.

Scout bit her lip. Should she answer? Pretend to be Gertrude and respond so he wouldn’t panic? Tell him she was gone?

Ask him for help?

Scout touched the screen, opening a window for typing a response, but she still didn’t know what to say.

The caffeine was making her dizzy and her hands were shaking.

Warrior—Gertrude—had promised to take her off the planet. And Scout had seen that Liam already knew all about her. He knew Gertrude was planning to come back with a wide-eyed young thing in tow. Not how Scout would describe herself. Liam seemed convinced that Gertrude was joking. Not the sentimental type, his Gertrude. But if she spoke up, identified herself, explain what happened to Gertrude, would he see his friend’s last wish through?

Scout rubbed at her forehead again. Something tasted weird in her mouth. The last bottle of jolo must have been a bit off. It was older than she was, she was sure.

Then she glanced down at the dogs, one on each side of her, both completely motionless. How long had they been like that? So still.

Too still.

Scout reached out a hand but immediately realized that something was very wrong. She felt more lightheaded than ever, and not in a too-much-caffeine/too-little-food kind of way.

Too late she remembered what Viola had threatened. You want me to vent all the oxygen out of that room?

Shutting off the airflow wasn’t the worst Clementine could do. She could actually pull all the oxygen out of the air. And Scout wouldn’t notice until it was too late.

Scout pushed herself to her feet, vaguely hearing a crash as the tablet fell to the floor. Neither dog stirred, but she couldn’t bother with them now. She stumbled/crawled to the hatch. It had to be just the kitchen Clementine was venting. If it wasn’t, Scout was dead.

Scout’s fingers fumbled at the bolt. She had just gotten it drawn back when everything went black. Lights out again?

A burst of pain at the back of her head told her that she had fallen. Then she knew no more.