CHAPTER TEN

Corinne’s heart pounded as she scaled the makeshift ladder fashioned from a chair hastily thrown atop a desk she and Cote had scavenged from a small office just off the corridor. They had encountered a dogleg in the passageway, nothing more than a five-meter jog to the right under normal conditions, But in this terrible world of sideways gravity, it was a brutal climb.

“Can you make it?” asked Cote. He sat on the deck next to Tomas, breathing hard. Watching her.

“Please do not question my abilities or my determination, Star Colonel,” said Corinne, her voice light. “You are in no condition to fight a Trial of Grievance.”

A tired laugh issued from Cote. “My apologies, Star Captain. Will you grant me surkai?” he asked, naming the Clan rite of forgiveness.

“Aff,” she said. “Your punishment is that you must be silent and let me climb.”

“Bargained well,” said Cote.

“Shhhh,” said Corinne, turning to look back at him, a broad smile on her face.

Then she turned away from Cote and her face tightened with pain. She drew a deep breath and pushed off on her left foot, slipping her right knee up over the seat of the chair, trying to keep from putting any weight on her shattered right ankle. Even so, she felt it throbbing, a beacon of pulsing agony that just would not stop.

Her face was bathed in sweat, her hands slick with it, the sour smell of perspiration a cloud that wreathed her head. Balancing on the chair, she pulled her left knee up.

She bowed her head for a moment, her eyes screwed shut, her chest heaving, her breathing a harsh rasp echoing in the passageway.

I am Clan, she said to herself.

She raised her head, opened her eyes.

Corinne grabbed the back of the chair with her left hand, bracing herself.

True to his word, Cote said nothing.

She pushed her body up, so that she was standing on her left leg.

Despite the solemn promise she had made herself to hold her right leg steady, she felt a sharp spike of terrible pain tear through the ankle and she almost toppled right off her little makeshift tower.

She doubled over the chair’s back, breathing hard, sweat stinging her eyes, her left leg trembling with exertion, her right held away from the chair, but somehow still throbbing with pain.

She shook her head.

Then she looked up at the lip of the corridor, a good 175 centimeters away. It might as well have been a light year. She shifted her weight and felt the chair shudder beneath her, no chance that she would be able to stack a second chair on the first.

If only I had two good legs.

But she did not have two good legs. It was not the warrior’s way to whine about the desperation of her circumstances. It was the warrior’s way to overcome adversity.

Her ankle hurt so much. How much more would it really hurt if she put some weight on it?

Slowly, experimentally, she put her foot down, put the slightest weight on it. Brutal pain flared supernova bright in her ankle. She gasped and almost lost her balance, almost toppled right off the chair. She held the pain tight, like a person clutching a bar of soap in the bath.

Somehow, she did not fall.

Slowly, every so slowly, she crouched down, her eyes screwed shut. She did not need her eyes, she held the corridor in her mind.

The pain was a siren echoing in her skull. She ignored its shrill call.

For an instant she crouched. She drew a deep, desperate breath.

And then she jumped, hurling her body at the lip of the corridor.

Like an explosion of flame and gas pushing a rocket high into the sky, Corinne’s agony propelled her through empty space. She hit, the deck punching the air out of her lungs, and for a moment the world was gray and unsteady. For a moment, she just lay there letting the pain have its way.

And then she remembered who and what she was.

Hugging the bulkhead, she managed to haul herself up, perching on her left foot. Careful to keep her right foot from touching the deck.

What she saw broke her heart.

The passageway ahead was blocked. Impassable.

It was not just that debris filled the passage—it did—but the passage itself had caved in, the thick steel hull of the Overlord-C crushed beneath the weight of some terrible catastrophe.

They would not reach the Bear’s Den this way.

They had no choice but to go back.