“We need to go find him,” Thalia told Danielle, the other pair vanishing from her consideration. Thalia regained some composure as she looked at her friend’s face.

“I’m sorry,” Danielle said, “but we’re still taking stock. People who were isolated are still drifting in; he may well too. Sending more people out before we have headcounts is borrowing trouble when we already have a surplus.”

“He’s my son! If it were Humphrey still missing, would you be sending people out?”

“Humphrey is still missing,” Danielle said, her face as hard as granite.

“Oh,” Thalia said helplessly, after a lengthy pause.

“Did Cassandra come through alright?”

“She’s taking a headcount of the family, right now.”

“I’m glad. I need your best right now, Thalia. Or at least your good enough, which is still better than most people’s best.”

Thalia nodded.

“Good. Now let’s start getting things under control.”

Humphrey eventually turned up, accompanied by the brother-sister pairing of Rick and Phoebe Geller. The survivors of Rick’s team were with them, having lost two of their number. Henry Geller, their flame-wielding damage dealer, had died. Their big front-liner, Jonah, had held back the enemy to let the others escape, his ultimate fate unknown.

Emir and his people finally arrived. They were too late to intervene in the battle, but were a boost to the makeshift camp’s crippled morale. Once word passed that a gold-ranker had arrived to assist, hope was resparked in hearts full of fear. He alone was enough to prevent a repeat of the battle they had just escaped, and there were more silver-rankers on the way.

Emir met with Danielle, getting a rundown of events. There were still people unaccounted for, but the tracking stones in Emir’s possession allowed them to sort the missing from the dead. They organised teams to retrieve the living, with every recovery team having a silver-ranker for safety.

With the initial organisation done, Emir sought out Rufus, Gary watching over him. Rufus’s blank eyes took a moment to register Emir’s presence.

“I failed her,” Rufus said, his voice barely audible.

“No,” Emir said softly, moving to place a hand on his shoulder. “She died as well as any of us could ask. Comrades behind her, enemies in front of her and friends beside her.”

111. Strange Star

111

Strange Star

Most of the ill-fated expedition was extracted back through the aperture that had been their entry point. On the other side was a recovery camp, ready and waiting. Only silver rankers and bronze-rankers stayed in the astral space, and not all of them.