Rift Read Online Free Page B

crouched around Hesta, who lay on the ground.
    “What happened?” Nerys asked.
    “Caught in a snare,” Thallia said, inspecting the wound as Hesta whimpered deep in her throat.
    Eiko stood up. “Who’s this?” she said, knowing full well who stood beside Nerys.
    “My daughter.”
    “We said no children.”
    “You have no children.”
    Eiko spat. “No kids to slow us.”
    “She can run faster than you, and she’s a better hunter.” Eiko looked to Thallia, but Thallia’s attention was on their fallen comrade, whose foot was shattered by a metal trap, the sort that could cripple an orthong or a caribou. Hesta was unlucky this night. Nerys crouched down to put a hand on the woman’s shoulder.
    “Kill me,” Hesta whispered.
    Nerys looked up into Thallia’s grim face. The wind rustled the overhead branches. Nerys tuned it out and listened for sounds of pursuit.
    “Let’s go!” Eiko urged.
    “
You
want to carry Hesta?” Thallia asked, mocking and deep.
    Eiko turned and stalked off, taking up a position at the head of the path.
    When the men found Hesta, they would take outtheir anger on her. They were deserters, traitors to their human kin. They had gone over to the enemy, the despoilers of Lithia, the orthong predators. It was said human women lusted after the monsters and bore their unspeakable young. Scab-lovers, they were. In the folded ridges of the orthong faces, one could find only eyes. Some said a nose. But no mouths. Tales of the orthong invaders were told around campfires to frighten children. And tales of the fates of collaborators were also told—to frighten the women.
    Hesta was frightened now. “Please,” she whispered. “Make it fast. Don’t ask me again!” She began a soft sobbing.
    Thallia looked to Nerys and Nerys nodded briefly. Then Thallia bent down, kissed Hesta on the forehead, and rose. It was clear. Nerys must earn a place for Anar.
    “Take Anar up the path,” Nerys said.
    “Take her yourself,” Thallia said, and strode off.
    “Follow her,” Nerys told her daughter, who obeyed, disappearing into the shadows.
    Turning back to Hesta, Nerys said, “We will all join you, Hesta, in the days and years to come. Until then.”
    “Do it!” Hesta cried. She closed her eyes.
    Nerys used her knife, one deep swipe across the throat. A gush of blood warmed her knife hand. With her clean hand, she held Hesta’s, waiting with her as she bled into the grass, thinking how badly their journey had begun. Finally she rose to her feet and ran up the path after the others. They needed to put many miles between themselves and their pursuers now, or they would come to envy Hesta’s fate.
3
    Mitya huddled next to the soaring, translucent wall of the dome, trying to look inconspicuous. Beside him, one of the segmented, carbon-matrix poles soaredaloft, forming the skeleton of their refuge. Outside the dome, a toxic white fog pressed in, as it had since their arrival. So far, besides this whiteout, his main impression of Lithia was its smell: the rotten-egg stench of sulfur.
    Now that the dome was erected, crew were hauling supply cartons, setting up data stations and air and water filtration systems. They’d partitioned off a clean room, a smaller section of the dome where the quantum processors were housed and where crew assembled the geo cannon for launching the nanotech probe.
    Gudrun and Theo passed by carrying a pallet loaded with supplies. In a clatter, a pouch of tools fell onto the hardened resin floor. Mitya jumped up to retrieve it as Gudrun and Theo stood holding the pallet. Stuffing the tools back in the pouch, he carefully returned it to its place.
    Gudrun sniffed. “Don’t work up a sweat,” she said as they trudged on with their burden. Gudrun didn’t like him. She’d been among the most vocal in claiming that Mitya snuck onboard the shuttle, stealing Karl Hoeg’s place. So that instead of a man who rightfully belonged on the expedition, they’d got a skinny