Gregg Hurwitz - Minutes to Burn

"Fine."

"Well, you know what usually makes me feel better after a long day of unsuccessful larva hunting?" Justin asked, glancing over to see if he'd made Cameron smile. "A good hot shower and a back massage. But since I can't have either of those, I think I'll go take a dump."

Even Tank laughed a little as Justin disappeared through the flap.

"Good kid," Tank said. He shook his head, leaving sweat stains on his pad. He ran his fingers across his tender forehead, drawing away peels of skin. He looked at Cameron sheepishly. "Forgot sunblock," he said.

Cameron cringed. She unscrewed the cap from her canteen and took a healthy gulp of water. She'd need to get to the ocean soon to rinse off the grime. It clung to her like another layer of clothing.

Above the barrel of Tank's chest, the strong curve of his chin was bristled with whiskers. Cameron had always liked being in Tank's large, serene presence-maybe it was the constant current of unspoken affection he sent her way. She felt the need to say something to him, some-thing personal, but she didn't know what, so she was quiet.

Justin's voice from outside broke the silence. "Hey you guys! Check this out. Quick!"

They scrambled out of the tent and found Justin furiously buttoning up his pants. He started for the forest, gesturing them to follow. They passed through some recently cleared pasture, and soon the Scalesias were all around them. About fifteen yards in, he slowed, bending aside a leafy bush so that Cameron and Tank could see.

A larva, smaller than the others, with a light, almost yellow-green cuti-cle, had slid itself up a tree trunk, its prolegs grasping the moist bark. It worked its head back and forth, expelling a white sticky substance that looked like silk onto the trunk. It attached itself to the silk bedding and bent its head down to its bottom segment. It was weaving a cocoon around itself.

Cameron stepped forward, moving around Justin. "Incredible," she murmured.

They watched its graceful, repetitive movements with fascination. It had ensconced its lower half in silk when they heard approaching foot-steps behind them. Cameron turned as Szabla appeared in the foliage, Savage trailing her by a few steps.

"I was wondering where you-" Szabla froze, staring at the larva. Without hesitation, she crossed to it and kicked it from the tree, sending a scattering of moisture through the air. It squirmed on the ground awk-wardly, its lower body still encased in silk. Savage stepped forward and raised a foot to the tree trunk, resting an arm across his knee.

Reaching over without even looking, Szabla grabbed Savage's knife from his ankle sheath. She reached the larva in four strides and drove the blade into the top of its head. A gurgling noise issued from its gills. It flipped and twisted, arching like a Halloween cat, its true legs splayed out in front of it like wooden pegs. Green hemolymph bubbled from the slit. It shuddered twice through its entire body, contracted slowly into a ball, and stilled.

Szabla glared at Tank, Justin, and Cameron, running the knife across her thigh and back again. Cameron almost retched at the smudge it left on her cammies, full of virus. She felt Savage's eyes on her, reading her. "That's my tough little soldier," he said, his voice amused and disdainful all at once.

Szabla tossed the knife back to Savage, who caught it expertly by the handle. She picked up the larva, careful to keep her hands clear of the hemolymph. "What's wrong, Cam?" she snarled. "Forgot Floreana's lit-tle Sigourney Weaver trick already?"

She headed back in the direction of camp, knocking Cameron's shoulder hard as she passed her.

Moths floated on the outskirts of blossomed plants, fortuitously brushing against stamens and flower cups with their pollen-dusted proboscises. They scattered from Derek's footsteps as if in flight from a predator, zooming in paired figure eights. The larva felt leaden in Derek's arms, and it had grown more sluggish. It lazed across his straining forearms, head and posterior end dangling.

Eyes alert, back hunched, treading rotting fronds and beetle shells underfoot, Derek paused only to lap tears of rain from moist orchid blossoms. He found a brilliant white bud brimming with water and gen-tly plucked it from the bush. Raising the larva's head with a guiding touch beneath its chin, he placed the half-opened flower into its mouth.

Its mouth pulsed, sawing into the flower and moving it quickly down its throat. When it was done, it squirmed over itself, segments rotating, to look into his face.

Derek felt himself fill with something larger than himself, stirrings in the empty spaces of his heart. The vibration of his transmitter broke him from his thoughts. He'd reactivated his transmitter about twenty minutes ago, though he wasn't certain he wanted to speak to anyone yet. He thought for a few moments, then set the larva down, cleared his throat, and tilted his head to his shoulder. "Mitchell. Private. Obvi-ously."

The line hummed with silence.

"What?" he asked.

He realized he was surrounded by a tight ring of trees, and he began clearing the space within them of rocks and leaves, preparing a lay-up point. The exhaustion of the past week had overtaken him all at once, it seemed. Though he'd dozed a little last night, his head was still light with fatigue. He'd need to get some real sleep soon.

Cameron's voice filled the air around him, and he found its familiarity among the dirt and stones and trees soothing. "Derek," she said. "Cameron."

He took a moment to center himself, then spoke, impressed with the evenness of his voice. "Let me guess. You're huddled in my tent, proba-bly sitting on my Therm-a-Rest with the rest of my squad around you trying to see what you can squeeze out of me."

The grass was heavy with dew at the edge of the forest. Cameron stood in a tall patch that reached nearly to her knees, looking out at the ball of the sun. About fifty yards behind her, the others mustered in the shade of their tents, eating MREs. The fire had consumed most of the larva's body, leaving behind only a darkened husk.

"I'm sorry you think it's like that," she said, sounding more upset than she'd wanted to let on.

"Well, you'll have to excuse me. When your soldiers mutiny, it tends to make one a bit of a cynic."

She bit her lip to punish herself with the pain. "We're beyond that now." She almost called him "LT" but caught herself. "That thing is dan-gerous, and it's gonna metamorphose. We caught one weaving a cocoon earlier."

"What did you do to it?"

Cameron did not answer. His eyes closed and it felt so good that he almost dozed off right there on his feet. He swayed a touch, then forced his eyes open. The larva had inched its way around a tree trunk, its pro-legs clinging to the bark. "It's beautiful, Cam," he said. "We need to get it to safety."

"It's packing a deadly virus," she said, the words coming in a rush. "It needs to die." They both reeled a bit with the bluntness of her statement.

"I never would have guessed you'd betray me," he said slowly. "That you'd violate orders, violate my trust."

"It's about more than that," she said.

"Sounds like Savage got to you through osmosis," he said. "There are no rules anymore, huh?"

"New rules."

"Well, while you're enjoying your new rules, remember that you're all in violation of direct orders from a superior-orders that still stand. Whether you like them or not, my orders are my orders. I haven't cleared any of you to kill these animals. They need to be protected."

Cameron took a moment, trying to place her thoughts in words. "This isn't going to solve anything, you know. About what happened to you… your family."

His laugh was tight and nasty. "What the fuck do you know about my family?"