Maren drew in a pained gasp. Her ribs ached, and fire ran up her left arm from where she’d landed on it. The door was close, though, just a dozen paces to her right. She grabbed Suriya, who seemed to be unconscious—please, please don’t let her be dead—and threw the woman over her shoulder before hauling them both up.

The lower gravity was her saving grace, but it still took all of her effort to stand with Suriya on her back. Maren stumbled towards the door to the hangar, panting into her headset, “Maren and Suriya entering airlock, Saul to follow.”

“Roger. Two minutes,” Gin squeaked.

Even with its bright lights, the airlock seemed shadowy compared to the oversaturated outside world. Maren let out her breath in a heave as she crossed the threshold and dropped Suriya onto the floor, then she turned back to the entrance, expecting to see Saul just behind her.

He wasn’t. He was on the dirt, just past where they’d dropped off the roof, struggling with four of the monsters. The gun lay out of his reach, but he still had the knife, and he was slashing at the creatures that had him pinned.

“Saul?”

“Lock the door!”

“One minute,” Gin whispered.

Maren heard a crack, and Saul screamed. His leg, Maren thought with a rising wave of nausea as she saw one of the tendrils twisting his foot. They broke his leg.

She swore. There was no time. She grabbed at the equipment on the shelf, and her hand fixed on a grenade. She pulled the pin as she dashed out of the airlock and towards her defence technician.

“Fifty seconds.”

Twenty paces separated them, then fifteen. At ten paces, Maren threw the grenade towards the writhing mass of blackness.

The suits are built to withstand equipment explosions. That should be enough to keep him safe, right?

She was blown onto her back as the grenade exploded in a ball of red-and-black fire. Saul and his attackers disappeared from view, and when the fire cleared, Saul lay alone in a patch of smoking, tar-black lumps.

“Thirty seconds.”

The man’s off-white suit was blackened, and he wasn’t moving. Maren couldn’t remember ever running so fast. Her body ached, her heart felt about to burst, and she was drenched in sweat inside her suit. But when she skidded to her knees beside Saul and his helmet turned in her direction, she thought she might cry from relief.

“Get up.” She grabbed his arm and pulled. “We’ve got to get inside.”

“Damn you, Maren.” He rolled to his knees and hissed with pain. “I can’t stand.”

“Lean on me.”

She wrapped his arm over her suit’s shoulders and pulled him up with her. Adrenaline was lending her strength as she got them both to their feet, unsteady and stumbling.

“Ten seconds, Maren!”

Saul couldn’t put any weight on his broken leg and let it drag across the ground as Maren pulled him towards the hangar. She could hear his pained gasps and feel his arm shaking even through the suits, but he managed to match her speed. They were close.