Tip looked sick, his sharp face lined, the long brown hair unkept. The glint was gone from his brown eyes, leaving them sunken and dull. Normally laughing and wry, Tip’s lips now looked white and thin. Even Tip’s once-healthy tan-brown skin had gone pale, slicked with sweat despite the cool night. His shirt was stained, and the left pantleg . . . God, what was wrong with his left leg? It looked huge.

“Tip! You all right?” she demanded, taking one of his limp hands. It felt fevered. Something smelled really bad. Like fermenting pus.

“Kylee?” Tip craned his head around where he hung in Flute’s clawed forefeet. “Leg. Really . . .” He made a face. “Hurt.”

“To the house,” Kylee ordered Flute. “Let’s get some light on it.”

But she could see. Tip had slit the left leg of his trousers to free the swollen and blackened skin beneath.

Her heart dropped at the sight. This looked about as bad as it could get.

“Got you, Tip. You made it. We’ll get you fixed.”

But how were she and Madison going to fix that mess?

Chapter 10

  10  

The way Kalico Aguila figured it, she was probably due for a reckoning, one way or another. She considered that as she watched Donovan fall away below her shuttle. The A-7 had been the Corporate Mine’s workhorse, hauling cargo up to L5 in orbit, transporting her personnel back and forth to PA, not to mention around the planet where her prospects were being evaluated for further development.

But the hours had piled up. Depending on how this coming meeting worked out, she was hoping to swap Turalon for an A-7 with fewer hours.

She glanced out the shuttle’s side window as they passed into the exosphere, and she could see Freelander, like an eerie white dot, where it followed its orbit around Donovan. She could have switched for another of Freelander’s mothballed shuttles, but as the PA bird—taken from there years ago—proved, there were constant problems. Kalico wasn’t sure if it was due to the fact that, like Freelander, the shuttle still had the taint of that other universe, or whether it was just that Freelander birds were almost a century and a half old. Things deteriorated. Even if they hadn’t been used.

In the pilot’s seat, Ensign Juri Makarov glanced at his instruments and turned her way. “Fifteen minutes to match with Vixen, ma’am. First Officer Vacquillas offers her compliments and wants you to know that you are expected.”

“Send my regards, Juri.”

Kalico stared out at Donovan’s subtle curve, at the glow that Capella’s rays gave to the atmosphere. They were coming up on the terminator where it cast the eastern ocean in shadow. The line had to be close to where the Maritime Unit lay submerged on its reef.