Page 31 of Fifth (Intergalactic Warriors #5)

HANNAH STARED at the sky, watching light fade intodusk.

Sound folded into one violent command to move.

Fingers jammed into her shoulder, and the ground pitched under her bare feet as they shoved her toward the black mouth of the gate.

The halter and thin skirt they’d forced on her left her skin cold and exposed, every brush of night air an insult.

Smoke from oil-drum fires burned her nose. Men laughed. Coins clinked.

Locus stayed at her side, silent, the heat of his body an iron wall against the noise. His white hair caught the torchlight for a heartbeat, then the crowd swallowed the light again. Guards swung the welded gate wide. Beyond it, darkness breathed like a wild thing.

The hinges screamed. Hands shoved. She stumbled. Locus’s palm closed around her elbow. The strength in that grip was obscene and somehow exactly what kept her on herfeet.

They crossed the threshold. The gate slammed. The clang rang down her spine.A horn blew ahead. Long. Low. Answered by two short blasts to the right and another to theleft.

“Signals,” she whispered.

“Affirmative,” Locus said. His voice didn’t lift. “They are telling each other where we are.”

“So we make them wrong.”

“Affirmative.” He tilted his head, listening. “Stay in my shadow. Do not break from me unless I tell you.”

“I’m not going to argue. Believe me.”

“I do believe you.”

They moved.

The preserve wasn’t wilderness. It was a trap dressed in scrub and trees.

Ground shifted underfoot from hard-packed dirt to a ribbon of gravel, then to cracked clay that slid under her soles.

Old fence posts leaned like broken teeth.

The smells changed too. Smoke faded. Sap and rot took over, mixed with something metallic.

The night held itself still, as if waiting for the first scream.

An arrow hissed past her calf and buried in the dirt. The sound of it arriving came a blink after it landed. She jerked sideways into Locus’s chest. Another hiss. Another thud. Locus’s hand clamped her hip and spun her behindhim.

“Move,” he said.

They dove into brush. Branches slapped her shins. The skirt snagged on a thorn and tore up her thigh. She bit off a cry. Locus’s fingers slid down and freed the fabric in one swift tug. He didn’t slow. He pulled her with him, guiding her over roots she couldn’tsee.

Whistles cut the dark. One long. Two short. Another on their right, sharp and confident. The hunters weren’t guessing. They were bracketing, pinching them together.

Hannah kept her head down and counted breaths to keep from spinning apart. Four in. Four out. Her lungs burned anyway. The brush turned to scrub oak. The scrub opened to a shallow run of stones and dry leaves. Ahead, the ground dropped in a paleseam.

“Ditch,” she breathed.

Locus nodded. “Down. Quiet.”

They slid and dropped into the shallow ravine. The air was colder there. The dry bed ran like a dark vein to the right. Stones shifted loud under their feet, then settled. Hannah pressed into the dirt, grit sticking to sweat. Locus crouched and listened.

Boots hammered the ledge they’d left. Another pair hit a second later. Sounds played above them. Voices murmured. The chug of cheap beer and squeak of leather. The scrape of an arrow tugged across a quiver mouth.

She didn’t realize she’d reached for him until her fingers found his. His skin ran hot, almost feverish. He turned his hand and wrapped her fingers in his without lookingdown.

“On my count,” he said so quietly the words came like a thought. “We will move with the wind.”

“What wind?”

“It is coming.”

Air shifted a second later, cool against the sweat at her hairline. Leaves overhead rustled like paper. Torch smoke rolled a different way. The hunters on the ledge cursed as the smoke stung theireyes.

“Now,” Locus said.

They ran bent low, following the ditch. Aflashlight cut the ravine behind them and hit dust. Another arrow hissed into stone and ricocheted, singing like a snapped guitar string. The ravine sank, then rose. They climbed.

Locus dragged her the last foot and set her flat in the hollow beneath a fallen log, tucking her into the shadowed gap where trunk met ground so the hunter’s eyes slid past instead of down.

His hand covered the top of her head, keeping her down as a hunter stepped on the log and peered into the ditch.

Mud dripped off the man’s boot and hit the bridge of her nose.

The urge to sneeze clawed up her throat. She held it like fragile crystal.

The hunter moved on.

Locus wiped the mud from her face with the side of his thumb, careful enough to make her dizzy. His eyes weren’t soft. They were focused and hot, like coals under water.

“Breathe,” he said.

“I am,” she whispered. Then she actually did. “Mostly.”

His mouth twitched once. He scanned the dark. “They will try to push us toward a kill ground. We will go where they do not expect.”

“Which is?”

“Toward them.”

“That’s insane,” she protested.

“It is simple. And they will not expect it.”

Two torches bobbed close through the trees, coming fast. Athird moved left to cut them off.

Locus slid his arm around her waist and pulled her into the shadow line of a ragged stand of pines.

Sap clung to her forearms and stuck her hair to her neck.

He angled them between two trunks and pushed her down to her knees.

The ground was soft there, thick with years of needles.

The hunters trotted by on the other side, talking low.

One laughed and muttered a filthy wager about how long a girl lasted when fucking a dozen hunters.

Hannah’s hand closed on a fist-sized stone.

It bit into her palm. She pictured his teeth shattering.

The image steadied her more than it should’ve.

Locus let the three pass, then followed.

The first man didn’t know a hand was on his shoulder until Locus wrenched him backward.

The second reached for his pistol—Locus broke his wrist before the weapon cleared leather.

The third turned and saw Hannah instead of Locus and hesitated at the sight of bare legs and a halter, his training knocked sideways by a heartbeat of shock.

She threw the stone. It cracked into his cheekbone with a sound that turned her stomach.

He dropped his torch. Locus was on him a breath later.

“Eyes,” Locus said, calm as if he taught knot-tying. “If one of the hunters comes at you, strike for eyes. Or throat. Or knee.”

She nodded hard. “Okay.” Her voice shook and came back steady. “Okay.”

He pressed a knife into her hand from the first man’s belt. The handle was worn smooth with sweat. “Keep this.”

She closed her fingers around it. It was heavier than she expected. “Don’t take it back unless I’m dead.”

“I will not.”

“Good. Because I’m not dying here.”

“No,” he agreed. “You are not.”

They slipped on.

Torches multiplied behind them. Whistles cut and replied.

Metal clanked, not close, not far. Agenerator sputtered somewhere beyond the trees, then settled into a steady rattle.

She pictured the headman on a platform with a loudspeaker, calling play by play like this was a Saturday night game. Bile rose, but she kept moving.

The preserve shifted again. Trees thinned and a shallow meadow opened, weeds up to her knees, seed heads brush-soft against her thighs.

Out beyond, the broken spine of an old barn rose, roof gone, rafters black against the stars.

Fireflies winked once then went dark, as if even bugs knew better than to draw attention.

Locus knelt and flattened his palm to the ground. He was so still she could feel the quiet of his heartbeat. “Vibration,” he said. “Two trucks. Outside the fence. Men will use them along the perimeter. They will try to box us and light us as we near the gate.”

“Then we don’t go near the fence.”

“We will have to. But not yet.” He tipped his head to the barn. “We will cut through there.”

“That’s a choke point.”

“Affirmative. We will be the ones choking.”

It almost made her laugh. “Fine. Lead.”

The barn smelled of dust and old hay. Moonlight fell in pale ladders through holes in the rafters.

Arusted trough slouched in one corner. The left wall had been torn down to the studs.

Beyond it, the ground looked too smooth.

Locus raised two fingers. Warning. He pointed.

She followed his line and saw a shin-high wire stretched across the opening.

“Trip line,” she whispered.

“Affirmative. Connected to a noisemaker or a bell.”

“How do you know?”

He tipped his head toward a jumble of cans. “They used what they had.”

“Can we go over?”

“Affirmative. But not here.” He pointed where the wire sagged near a post. “There.”

They crossed low, every step placed with care.

Asoft scrape sounded from the loft. Hannah froze.

Locus’s head turned. Ahunter lay along a beam, bow drawn.

The man had patience. He’d been waiting for them to hit the wire and jerk in panic.

Locus scooped a nail from the dirt and flicked it up so fast she barely saw his hand move.

The nail struck the bow hand. The arrow thudded into a rotted board.

Locus leapt, caught a beam with one hand, rose like a machine.

The fight above was brief and ugly. The body hit the floor with a wet sound.

Locus dropped a breath later and pressed a second knife into herpalm.

“Two is better,” hesaid.

“I’m getting spoiled,” she said, hearing the edge of hysteria init.

“Not spoiled. Armed.” He pointed to the sag. “Step there.”

She did, lifting her knee high and planting her foot past the line. His hand cupped her hip and guided her through, the contact so intimate it made her teeth ache. She told herself he was just making sure she cleared it. Her body didn’t listen.