Freedom Star

Chapter 9

It had only been a couple of weeks since they'd attacked the transport, but already the scars in the ground of the valley were filling in, their outlines softening, slimeweed taking root. The pieces of twisted metal scattered about were rusting and sinking down into the mud. Jon doubted there would be anything at all to show what had happened there within another couple of months.

He didn't linger in the clearing. With Ellia close behind, he plunged into the jungle at just about the same point he had emerged from it after the explosion had claimed the transport. "How do you find your way through this?" Ellia asked him, as he pushed steadily through the vines and undergrowth.

"Little things," Jon grunted, clambering over a fallen log. He helped Ellia over it. "Things that don't change, like this log. You build a mental trail in your head and follow it, and augment it with what you can see of the sun or the stars."

"Not much," Ellia grumbled, squinting up at the gray sky, from which rain still fell steadily.

"Anyway, all I need at this point is a general direction," Jon said. "When we climb out of the valley on this side I'll be able to see landmarks."

Half an hour later, they did climb out of the valley. Jon stood on the ridge and gazed down at the green carpet of treetops stretching away into the gray mist. "What landmarks?" asked Ellia.

Jon didn't say anything. It wasn't that he didn't trust Ellia after all they'd been through, it was just that he didn't know how to explain to her the kind of landmarks he was looking for, because they weren't landmarks at all in the usual sense-just the way the land rose and fell under its skin of forest, slight rises and dips too insignificant to be called hills and valleys, but enough for him to find his way to the place where they had hidden themselves after fleeing Carlson's camp. "Got them," he said at last, after carefully studying the panorama before them. "This way."

"Whatever you say." Ellia followed him down the slippery slope at a much slower pace than he would have liked, her boots making heavy going of patches of mud he passed over easily on bare feet. But he said nothing. Her point about the soldiers had been a good one. She'd have a hard time passing as one of Carlson's best without regulation footwear, however foolish that regulation footwear was in this climate and terrain. No wonder the Soldiers weren't able to find the others, he thought. Those kids could run circles around them-and probably have.

By the end of the day they were only two-thirds as far along the trail as Jon had anticipated. He helped Ellia build a shelter, then offered to take the first watch. "Get out of the rain for a while," he said. "Though I don't suppose there's much point suggesting you 'dry off.'"

"Not much," Ellia agreed wearily. She crawled into the lean-to, lay down on the sodden pile of leaves inside, and appeared to fall instantly to sleep.

Jon prowled around outside as darkness deepened over the jungle, and the rain just kept coming. Maybe it was its constant patter on the trees, maybe he'd lost some of his jungle skills in his time away, but he had no warning at all before something very, very hard smashed against the back of his skull and sent him sprawling face-first into the muck. Dazed and half-blinded by the pain and the mud in his eyes, Jon rolled over and tried to focus on the indistinct shape looming over him. "Who-"

"I told you not to come back," a voice whispered viciously. "I wanted to kill you on sight but Kira made me promise to bring you to camp alive. She wants a trial."

"Since when have you ever listened to what Kira says, Dar?" Jon said wearily. He sat up and put his hands to his throbbing head. The rain-soaked jungle seemed to spin slowly around him.

"She's got more supporters among the others than I do," Dar growled. "But not for long. Not when they see who you've brought to spy on us!"

"Ellia?" Jon shook his head, then wished she hadn't. "She's no spy, Dar. She helped me escape. She's a Revolutionary."