the cartridges from it. He held it up in the dying light and the hazy rainfall. “Feels strange,” he said, rolling it between his fingers. “Unbalanced. Heavy at the back. Too light at the front.”
“Probably why only of them hit their mark.” Terror took the unfired round from Grim and examined it. He concurred with Grim’s analysis. It was imbalanced.
“We might have a problem with your girl,” Grim remarked as Terror handed back the round. “Under all that grime, she’s a beauty. She gets cleaned up and those men in the rescue party get a good look at her?” Grim shook his head. “We may have to fight our way out at sunrise.”
Terror’s eye twitched. Grim wasn’t wrong about the probability of the men wanting Maisie. “She’s the mission. Whatever the cost, we have to get her back to the Valiant.”
Grim pocketed the magazine and searched another pocket. “Then what’s the plan once we get her on the ship?” He moved to another lump of flesh and a torn uniform to search for intel. “You and I both know how this goes once she’s in custody. Savage isn’t going to care that she saved your life. She’s a Splinter. You know what that means.”
“Let me worry about that.” Terror didn’t want to drag Grim into what was likely to be a career-ending move. He had come after Maisie knowing that repaying his debt to her would require hard decisions, but they were his decisions to make. If he had to go on the run with her, Terror needed to know men like Grim and Pierce and Torment remained behind to step up and fill his void.
Not wasting anymore of the remaining daylight, Terror moved from body to body, scanning whatever was left of each man’s fingerprints and face. It would be nice to cross some more names off their known Splinter database. They would need to send a mop-up crew to the ledge where the ambush had occurred to recover more evidence.
If the Splinters don’t come back first...
Rustling footsteps caught his attention, and he glanced over his shoulder to see one of Euphamie’s brothers helping Maisie to the top of the ravine. Cotton. That was his name. He had a mop of pale hair and an easy boyish grin. When he started to sign to Maisie, Terror felt his gut clench in the ugliest way. The flare of jealousy shamed him, and he silently chastised himself for his weakness.
“Y’all ready?” Euphamie walked out of the trees and stopped near her brother and Maisie. “Your general went ahead on the MTV with my brothers and your wounded man. They’ll reach the compound and Joonie’s infirmary soon. She’ll be able to patch him up and keep him alive until you can get him back to your ship.”
“She’s a doctor?” Terror asked, surprised that a woman on this planet had that sort of education.
“She’s a surgeon, actually. She was a colony girl,” Euphamie explained, signing as she spoke so Maisie would be able to follow the conversation. “She came here to offer medical care and vaccines, met Clem and never left. She’s got a small clinic in our compound. Another doctor came to join her and some nurses, too. One of the nurses is married to our brother Otis.”
Cotton silently signed something to Maisie that made her laugh. The sound was so pure and unadulterated, and he felt something flutter to life in his chest. His mouth twitched with amusement, and he wondered when he had last laughed like that. Just as quickly, that warm feeling went cold as he realized it was this other man, a stranger, who had made her laugh.
“We should go,” Euphamie said and flicked on a flashlight. “With the cloud cover and no moonlight, it’s going to be dark as fuck out here soon.”
She wasn’t wrong. He waited for Grim to join Maisie and the two siblings on their trek to the vehicles waiting for them. Following close behind, he remained alert, listening through the constant drip and spatter of rain for any strange noises. The likelihood of a second wave of Splinter forces or their government goons descending on the mountain were high.
When he reached the idling vehicles, there was only one space left in the vehicle driven by Cotton, and it was right beside Maisie in the rear seat. He hopped in and let out a relieved sigh to finally be off his aching feet. His socks were soaking wet, and he expected to find blisters