A resistance warship flies into battle against the Conglomerate, a mecha-company conquering planets for minerals and slave labor. When the ship crashes above the plains, the five people on board battle for survival across their world, pursued by th...
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The hounds bay in the distance, gaining ground, the howls louder with each footfall the five Resistance members hobble onwards.
The Recruit is shuddering with fatigue and the rest of them aren't much better off, The General's injured form pressing down on them all. Everything about him is wet now, the movement of his body, the hack in his throat, the way his eyes loll aimlessly in their sockets. The marsh pulls at them, the mire of the ground dragging their progress backwards with grasping, muddy fingers.
"We need to either find concealment or disguise our trail," The Gunner warns the Pilot when they pause to collectively take their breath, the Pilot lying the General against a scrubby bush that drags at the edges of her clothes. "Conglomerate tracking hounds will eviscerate us if we keep wandering blindly."
Seeing the Recruit's wide eyes, the Pilot shoots the Gunner a reproachful look which the women returns with a baleful one of her own, daring her to baby the Recruit, especially given how they have all witnessed horrors today and are struggling for survival as war rages around them.
"I think disguising our trail unlikely," The Mechanics says, looking to the vermillion stains the General has left all around them. The Recruit is morbidly surprised the General still has any blood left to bleed. He looks so wan in the fading light as to be putrid with paleness.
The Pilot's eyes snap to him, the Mechanics ire at the General's press ever the igniting wick between them. "Concealment, then," she says icily, polar ice caps shifting in her words.
"You know that will not work," The Mechanic repostes, the challenging tone in his voice leaving them all tired at the pettiness that lurks behind his proposed nobility. "We have to keep moving, find a stream, get into the denser foliage of the forests. Conglomerate hounds are bred for tracking. With his blood all over us, any place we hide will be lit with beacons."
The Gunner has a considering look on her face as if she does not want to agree with the Mechanic but knows he speaks the truth. Clearly the Pilot knows that concealment will be a death sentence for them all, but does not want to condemn the General to death, her compassionate streak as bright as a viburta seam in the mountains. The Recruit does not know what to do, shivering in his wet boots with exhaustion a layer of fatigue coating his skin and sinking into his muscles.
The Pilot grits her teeth, running a hand through her lank hair, water and sweat making saltlocks on her head. "His life," The Mechanic says lowly, "weighed against yours."
The undercurrent of meaning in that one ultimatum is indecipherable to the Recruit and the Gunner but has the General wheezing sloppily behind them and the Pilot looking furiously at the Mechanic, hating him for guessing her secret, knowing it for an eventuality but hoping to maintain it nonetheless. "I do not barter my life for others," she hisses to the Mechanic. "We just have to think-,"
