Chapter 3
ZARA
Iwoke up to the taste of blood in my mouth and the sound of metal groaning. For a moment, I couldn’t remember where I was or what had happened. Then it all came flooding back—the storm, the crash, Torven.
“Captain Korvath?” I called, my voice coming out as a croak.
“Here.” His voice was strained, but he was alive. “Are you hurt?”
I took inventory of my body. Everything ached, and I was pretty sure I had a concussion, but nothing seemed to be broken. “I think I’m okay. You?”
“I’ll live.”
It was clear that the ship would not. The hull was largely crushed.
If the entire crew had been in here, at least half would be dead.
The seats that Cleo and I had been in were on the other side of the cabin, smashed up against the compacted wall.
I turned my head to look at Torven pushing a piece of debris off him and standing up.
My heart clenched. There was blood on his forehead, and his left arm was hanging at an odd angle.
“Your arm—”
“It’s fine.” He moved with a careful precision that meant he was hurt worse than he was letting on. “We need to assess the damage and figure out our next move.”
Of course. Even injured and stranded on an alien planet, his first instinct was to take charge and protect everyone else. It should have been annoying. Instead, I found it oddly comforting.
I managed to get out of my restraints and peered outside.
The viewport was made of some thick, clear alloy that was actually a metal, despite being transparent.
It was cracked, but not shattered, and that was a good thing because the wind outside blew with the force of a hurricane.
And this was inside the “quiet area” that both Torven and I had detected.
A tall metal structure soared to the left of us, but I couldn’t see much of it at the angle we were at.
It had to be the weather station. Odd, but it looked abandoned—overgrown, damaged, with no signs that anyone had been here in a long time.
The ship moaned as the wind pummeled it, but Torven stretched and rolled his shoulder, popping it back into place with a disgusting-sounding crunch.
All he did was wince and rub the joint a little with his opposite hand before jerking his head toward the back of the ship. “Let’s go check the damage.”
The cargo hold was a disaster. Most of the survival suits were destroyed.
All that remained were a few cracked helmets and one glove.
Equipment cases were scattered everywhere.
Some of them had split open and spilled their contents across the floor.
My carefully organized scientific instruments looked like they’d been hit by a tornado.
“Well,” I said, trying for humor even as my stomach dropped, “I guess we found out which three pieces of equipment were most important after all.”
Torven gave me a look that might have been amused. “Any of it salvageable?”
I knelt down and started sorting through the wreckage. Some of the equipment was clearly beyond repair, but a few of the more robust instruments had survived the crash. I gathered what I could carry into a functional pile.
“Some of it,” I said. “Enough to analyze atmospheric conditions and maybe get some basic weather predictions.”
“Good. We’re going to need all the help we can get.”
He was right. I looked around at what was left of the ship, taking in the buckled hull plates and the sparking control panels. This ship wasn’t taking anyone anywhere ever again.
“Captain,” I said quietly, “I’m sorry. This is my fault. If I’d been better at reading the atmospheric data—”
“Stop.” His voice was sharp enough to cut. “This isn’t your fault. We knew the risks when we decided to make this trip.”
“But—”
“But nothing.” He turned to face me fully, and I saw something fierce and protective in his expression.
“You did your job. You analyzed the data, you made predictions based on the information available, and you warned me about the storm. The fact that the storm turned out to be worse than anyone could have predicted doesn’t make you responsible for what happened. ”
I wanted to argue with him, to point out all the ways I could have done better, should have seen this coming. But he was right there, in my face, staring at me with those green, green eyes, and every coherent thought dropped straight out of my head. “Okay,” I said instead. “What do we do now?”
He moved to what was left of the communication console and tried a few switches. Nothing happened, except for some sparking and fresh plumes of acrid smoke.
“Communication is dead,” he said. “No way to call for rescue.”
“So we’re on our own.”
He sighed. “We’re on our own.”
I looked at my portable scanner, checking the readings. What I saw made my stomach sink.
“Captain, we can’t stay here. There must be multiple hull breaches we can’t see because the atmospheric toxicity is increasing inside the cabin. Whatever chemical reaction the storm triggered, it’s still happening. If we stay inside the ship, we’ll be dead within hours.”
He was quiet for a long moment, staring at the readings on my scanner. “How long would we have outside?”
“In this concentration? Maybe fifteen to twenty minutes, depending on how much we physically exert ourselves. It shouldn’t be too bad since the wind eases up near that tower, for some reason. If that weather station is intact, we can find safety there.”
He wiped blood from his brow and nodded. “If it’s intact, it should have environmental seals and air filtration.”
I bit my lip, running through the calculations in my head. “It’s our best chance.”
Torven looked around the wreckage of his ship one more time, and I saw something like grief cross his features. This ship had been his home, his livelihood, his responsibility. Now it was just twisted metal and broken dreams.
He picked up a battered helmet from the floor and brushed it off. “Then we’d better get moving.”
We gathered supplies for the brief journey—water, food, the salvageable equipment, and anything else that might help us survive—because we had no idea if we’d be able to return to the wrecked ship later.
I found myself stealing glances at Torven.
He was methodical about everything, checking each item carefully.
He favored his injured arm, but didn’t complain.
He’d saved my life. When my escape pod failed, when the ship was falling apart around us, he found a way to crash-land and save us both. He could have given up and let the storm do its work on the ship.
Instead, he flew this ship unrelentingly to the very end. He’d promised to get me to safety. Me—a human who overpacked and talked too much—and he did.
The realization that I cared about his survival at least as much as my own should have been terrifying. Instead, as I shouldered my pack and prepared to follow him out into a toxic storm, all I could think was that there was nowhere else I’d rather be than right beside him.
Even if we were probably both going to die.
He handed me a helmet. “Ready?” he asked, putting another on his head.
I looked at him—this gruff, competent, protective Destran who I knew didn’t like me at all—and nodded.
“Ready.”
As we prepared to leave the wreckage behind and venture into the poisoned air of an alien world, I couldn’t shake the feeling that everything had changed between us during that crash. Whatever happened next, we weren’t just a captain and passenger anymore.
We were partners. In survival, if nothing else.