Paul Collins - Earthborn The

"Sarah! He's dead!" Con coughed. "He got shot!"

Sarah froze midthrust. Con's blood-spattered eyes opened. She stupidly wiped her cuff across his gagging mouth. The blood came away, thick and oozing. "It's not mine," Con said hesitantly. "I don't think it is."

Suddenly on automatic, Sarah dragged him up from under the feral. They returned to where Sarah had done the unforgivable: dropped the laserlite and momentarily lost all reason.

Con cleaned the blood from his glasses and readjusted them. "Something's up," he said, once he could see.

Sarah held up her hand for silence.

Voices rose and fell, and for a moment Sarah was indecisive. A high-caliber weapon suddenly spoke and they ducked. But the retaliatory reply came nowhere near them.

"The ferals and jabbers are at it," Sarah guessed.

"Or Gillian?" Con put in.

"We're out of here," Sarah said, making up her mind. She sheathed her bloodied knife and swung the laserlite across her shoulder.

"What about Welkin?" Con pulled her back. "Is he dead?"

"He may as well be," she said tightly. "He's gone home. Forget about him. Colony philosophies too ingrained. We'll never integrate with them, Con. It was just a silly pipe dream. That's all."

"Why would he want to go back to that?" Con wondered, smarting from the illuminated skyline.

Sarah snorted. "Why would he stay for this?"

The glaring artificial Colony light now forced the terrain into stark contrasts. Welkin kept to the deep etched shadows but knew Colony's scanners would have detected him by now. Out in front of Colony lay an open expanse of land the width of a football field. He cautiously studied the desolation around him.

The elders had stripped bare a boundary so clean, so meticulously, that not an inch of Earth influence remained. He could have as easily been standing on the moon as here on Earth. It wouldn't be long before they cleared their backyard, too. Then undetected approach would be impossible.

Now Colony would extend its influence. Outward, more and more, until the skyworld spread out like suburbs from a city, sending down its roots to gain strength, slaughtering everything in its way.

A morbid fear raged through him. His vulnerability was eating away at him. If either the jabbers or the ferals found him, he would die. Sarah and Con wouldn't take him back, and right now he doubted that they had survived the ambush. Sarah had been hit! He had no option but to walk on—and take his chances of being shot during that long walk across open ground to Colony.

He had taken two steps when he heard muffled voices. Recent events had honed his instincts and he ducked for cover. The heads and shoulders of two troopers appeared above a wall. Polycarbonated face shields open, reinforced armored suits, and heavily armed. Brashly superior, they stormed across the rubble as though invincible. They negotiated the uneven ground as though traversing the smooth corridors of Colony. But that wasn't surprising, Welkin reminded himself. Rumor had it that combat personnel had been training since birth for planetfall. Then he heard Gillian's voice. Not screaming for help, not plaintive, but authoritative. "I'm moving, damn you."

Laughter. The trio appeared at the end of the destroyed wall. One of the troopers scuffed Gillian's head and she stumbled. The other caught her by the scruff of the neck and hoisted her upright.

"Lemme go!" Gillian spat.

Welkin held his breath. He could go in with the troopers. He'd be safe then. His mind made up, he took one step into the open, but what happened next changed his mind.

The troopers exchanged words and suddenly changed course. Thenone of them spun Gillian around and slammed her into a broken wall. She bounced back at him, but he blocked her with his elbow.

Gillian's head snapped back and she sank to the ground.

Prickles of alarm tingled along Welkin's spine. Were they going to kill her? It made no sense to him.

He hobbled along the brick face to get a closer look. Shortly, he was crouched on the other side of the wall. His heart was pounding.

Don'tletthemdothis. . . don'tletthemdothis. . . don'tletthemdothis . . .

"Stay down, scum," one of the troopers warned. "You won't need to get up!"

His partner laughed.

Welkin peered above the uneven wall. The troopers had taken off their helmets. One was unbuckling his battery pak. He slung it carelessly over the wall so that it draped tantalizingly close to Welkin's alarmed face.

"Keep watch," one of them said.

"Just hurry up," the other replied.

Gillian whimpered then.

What were they doing? Welkin chanced a quick look.

All reason left him at the sight of the man lowering himself over Gillian's writhing body. Without clearly thinking, and against all his ingrained beliefs, he unholstered the trooper's hand laser and pointed it.

The shot at this short distance drilled a clean hole through the trooper's head. He slumped forward.

Gillian's eyes went wide and she pummeled her assailant. Sensing trouble, he turned and had time to utter a curt exclamation before Welkin pressed the firing stud again.

"Get him off me!" Gillian hissed. "Snap out of it, Welkin. They're dead. You did right!"

Welkin stood transfixed. He had committed the worst crime of any Skyborn. He had taken not only one life, but two. The horror of his action swept over him.

Gillian heaved, and the body rolled off her. Frantically, she unbuckled the other trooper's battery pak and utility harness. She thought about the armor, but no, too much to carry.

A noise to their right sent a cold chill through Welkin. Cruisers. Their high-pitched whine was audible even at this distance.

Gillian grabbed Welkin and dragged him to the nearest doorway. The dark swallowed them.

Sarah and Con reached Platform One without further incident. Sarah had never thought she would welcome the ferals' presence, but on this occasion they had saved their lives. Bruick had lain in wait for them. Unfortunately for him, the ferals had reached the conclusion that his gunfire had been directed at them. She and Con had escaped during the ensuing gun battle.

The rest of the gang seemed to have gone out foraging, which pleased Sarah. Although it surprised her that Gillian hadn't returned after her flanking engagement. She made a mental note to remind her of their strategy. Always return home after incidents involving Bruick. He was a vindictive adversary, a forgotten character trait that had almost cost them their lives.

She and Con snuggled up together for warmth and slept for several hours until some inner mechanism woke her from a deep sleep. She pricked her ears and padded quietly to the defunct elevator shaft.

Nothing but the faint thrumming of the taut elevator ropes. She cast about for intrusion. By design, this block had only two entrances and, therefore, two exits. The elevator shaft was a third option, open only in case of emergency.

Someone was climbing the stairs from the platform. "Con!" she whispered. She shook him awake, covering his mouth in case he spoke in alarm.

They acted in tandem, both skirting the room until they rested to either side of the fire door. Sarah figured there were two of them. Couldn't be her people. They stayed in safe houses if caught out in the night and returned at dawn, before things got hot out there.

Sarah held her knife out in front of her, ready to carve the first person through the door. Con would get the second. She nodded to him as the door swung open.

"Easy up in there!" Gillian called. "We're coming in!"

Sarah almost fainted with relief. "Where the hell have—" Welkin's presence could have decked her.

She covered her surpriseadmirably. "Colony didn't want you?"