Between

Chapter Nineteen

HMUC Sanctioned CO2 Conversion farm, "Scrub" #9, Mid-Eastern Coast of Corzibar

Silas Sacavage kicked an interior door of bunkhouse twenty-one closed, his temper getting the better of him. It was brief, and although he didn't often allow it to show, it had always been harder to control when he was alone.

Natalie Lennox was one bunkhouse ahead of him, and she, too, had reported finding nothing of interest. There was only one more building to search.

"Still nothing here, Sir."

The voice that crackled through the Captain's radio belonged to Ross Brown, second-to-last in the line of his crew who were searching the hundreds of Ill-Borns for number 1927-7. Angry, Silas kicked the door again, but took a moment to get his emotions in check before he responded to the call. It wouldn't do to have his team picking up on how frustrated he actually was by the way their recovery operation was going.

"How many more have you got coming through ensign?" he asked, beginning to pace.

"Midshipman Karper reports less than a dozen left up front, Sir. We're missing five from the list, including 1927. Midshipman Colemire reports all branded personnel are already aboard the carrier."

"Very well, son. Finish up there and get your asses onto that carrier. Don't let that son of a bitch move anywhere until Lennox and I get back to you."

Brown gave a short, "Aye, aye, Sir," before the line cut out and Silas turned back to the front door of the empty bunkhouse. As he did, through the tiny windows, he saw a sudden change in the lights bobbing gently on the darkened sloughs. They shifted from green to red at the same time a series of high-pitched wails pierced the thin wooden walls.

"What the...?"

Ripping open the front door and jogging a few steps onto the dilapidated porch, Silas saw through the shaded mask a series of spotlights trained on a Directorate soldier sprinting between the sloughs. A hundred or so feet away, Natalie Lennox, too, burst through her bunkhouse door and pointed her body at the sight unfolding before them.

It didn't make sense, Silas knew, unless the guard was chasing someone unseen. But then bullets began to fly, and the understanding that the tower guards were firing on one of their own sank in.

Something was up.

Before he could give the order, he saw Lennox tear into motion and sprint towards the fleeing soldier. Silas did the same, powering after her, his heart tirelessly pumping adrenaline through his veins at the same time his lungs seared with the exertion of his sprint.

"Shoot at them!" he cried into his mic on a direct channel to Lennox. "Shoot them so we don't look like we're part of the problem!"

Though Natalie didn't acknowledge him by radio, he saw her pull her weapon and fire a round carefully short of the racing soldier. He, too, tugged his gun from his belt and shot a bullet high over the soldier's head.

When they reached concrete, the soldier made a beeline for one of the man-gates and then ripped off the Directorate helmet.

It was a woman, and she skittered toward another gate at the same time one of the tower guards' bullets struck true.

The sickening crackle of splintering bones rocketed through the air as Silas and Natalie reached the collapsing figure. For a moment the young woman sat there on the concrete, looking shocked and dazed, and then all at once an anguished scream tore from her throat. She clutched at her leg, rocking back and forth in very evident pain. The action by itself wouldn't have been out of the ordinary if the woman's obviously stolen Directorate uniform wasn't soaking in what appeared to be bright, fluorescent blue. Faltering for a fraction of a second, Silas could only stare.

Natalie Lennox, however, appeared quite unfazed by the development as she launched at the woman and pinned her to the concrete.

"Get off me!" screeched the injured woman, flailing and kicking desperately with her good leg. "Get off!"

His senses returning to him, Silas shook his head and raised one hand to the nearby towers, who promptly ceased firing. He jogged to where Lennox held the woman, crouching down and ripping the long blonde hair away from her neck.

In the beam of the spotlights still trained upon the trio, Silas Sacavage felt his gut wrench.

Her tattoo.

1927-7.

They'd found her.

The woman made a sudden, renewed effort to break free, and much to his shock, Natalie Lennox was thrown nearly completely off of her and received a swift kick to the left side of her face. The impact was strong enough to splinter the glass front of the mask and send shards into her cheek and just under her eye. She cried out, staggering to her feet as Silas himself launched toward the rapidly rising Ill-Born woman and snatched her in a crushing sort of bear hug. He lifted her completely off of her feet, her good leg kicking while she used her destroyed ankle like a club. She continued to scream in a mixture of panic and apparent fury, but Silas dragged her backward to where Natalie seemed to have regained her bearings.

"Tranq her!" bellowed the Captain, and his third-in-command obliged him without question.

The woman struggled for another full minute after Lennox buried the dart in her neck, during which Silas genuinely thought they would need to hit her with another dose. Finally, though, the kicks stopped coming, and 1927-7 slipped into unconsciousness.

Silas dropped her to the ground and quickly bound her wrists behind her back.

"Lennox—get a tourniquet on that leg! I don't know what the hell she is, but we won't know anything if she's not alive to tell us."

Still appearing somewhat dazed from the struggle, Lennox nodded and knelt to tie a makeshift tourniquet around the injured woman's leg. It was still bleeding profusely—the blood still fluorescent blue—and Silas couldn't help but wonder if the woman Williams had sent them to find would even make it back to the ship alive.