She took a long breath. “I’m not in the best of shape. Don’t get wrong, I can still fight, but I’m burned all over. The new costu did so good but it didn’t stop everything. If we’re going to fight these guys more often, I’m going to need better protection against heat and light.”
Marcus cut into the conversation. “ too. I nearly died a couple minutes ago.”
The volu of Jaclyn’s reply made the speakers crackle. “What? Nick, you need to watch him better.”
Cassie’s voice cut in. “But he’s not dead.”
Marcus’ sigh was audible through the helt’s internal speakers. “Don’t worry about it, Jacks. I’m fine. Better than you, I bet. Tikki reversed ti in her bubble. I’m right back to where I was before I got shot.”
Cassie let out a breath. “Whoa. That’s aweso.”
In a quieter voice than before, Jaclyn asked, “Do you think it would work on ?”
I looked over at Tikki. She didn’t look like she’d heard Jaclyn’s end of the conversation. Kee would have had a way to listen in.
“No,” I said, “it gets more taxing the longer it is from the event. She had Marcus in her ti distortion bubble practically the second after he got hurt.”
Jaclyn sighed. “That was too much to hope for. Then, I need you to understand. I’m not at my best. I’m going to do everything I can, but I don’t have much in the tank and almost every part of hurts.”
“It’s okay,” I told her. “We’ll figure things out. There aren’t many of them left anyway.”
Near in the cave, Marcus grinned. “That’s right. We’ve got so good news. Agent 957’s dead.”
“Well, that’s one less—“ Cassie began.
Talking over her, Jaclyn asked, “How did that happen?”
Marcus looked over at Tikki and then at . “I don’t know. I assud it was Nick, but…”
“It was Tikki.” I looked over at her and she nodded. “She aged him into dust.”
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Marcus looked over at and then at Tikki. “No kidding. Wow.”
Tikki held up her hands. “I didn’t know if you were alive or dead.”
“That’s more than you told us you could do back when we t.” He looked at her.
“I didn’t know. I’d never tried it.” She shrugged.
I knew she wasn’t going to tell him until she thought everything was over, but it still felt like she was ignoring everything that happened and everything that she’d said. I wasn’t going to say anything though. Tikki’s true nature would be a huge distraction for Marcus—even more so than it was for . Anyway, for the mont, she was all Tikki. Depending on how far into Tikki she was, she might not even know what I ant when I brought it up.
Deciding that dwelling on that couldn’t help, I brought up the most important topic of the mont. “We’ve got to figure out what’s next. The way I understood the plan was that the people we’re escorting are going to go et up at different rendezvous and we were supposed to do whatever it took to keep Four Hands, Kamia, Neves and Ascendancy forces away from them. The way I see it, at this point we probably have to go find Four Hands and the rest. Otherwise, they can hunt down the different groups whenever they want.”
Cassie grunted. “For a bunch of forr terrorists, you’d think they’d get a bunch of people together and give us so backup.”
Jaclyn responded before anyone else. “Oh co on, Cassie. You know they weren’t all terrorists. Plus, they’re middle-aged people with kids now. They were probably terrorists when they were our age.”
I thought back to the evacuation plans the colonists had shared with us. “After they scatter to their other hideouts, it looks like they’re supposed to see how many soldiers they can field for guerrilla warfare. If any co to help, they’ll probably co with Kals—which reminds . Have any of you seen her, Katuk, or Crawls-Through-Desert?”
Both Jaclyn and Cassie said, “No.”
“But you’re right,” Jaclyn said, “if we’re going to keep them off the colonists, we have to find Four Hands and the leadership imdiately. We don’t have ti to worry about where everyone else is. Without the leadership, the spacers will only worry about survival.”
“Okay,” I said. “What I’m seeing with the bots is that there are a bunch of them gathered behind a force field next to where we hit them with the herd of um… eleboars? Whatever. I don’t know if Four Hands is there, but going there might help us find him.”
“Right,” Cassie said, “they’ll call on him to deal with us.”
I thought about it. “That’s probably true.”
At that mont, a big glowing light appeared in the streams from the observation bots. I focused on that and saw that a glowing figure had appeared in the sky above the field between the colony and the caverns.
It didn’t take much to recognize the figure. It was a projection of Four Hands. Along with the visuals ca booming audio of Four Hands’ voice (or so I assud).
“Congratulations Xiniti, you’ve bested us. You’ve scattered the colonists so completely we’ll never find them all and only they know how to survive on this hellhole. We’d like to negotiate the terms of our surrender. Co to our camp and we’ll talk.”
On a gut level, I wanted to believe it could be that simple, but I didn’t.
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