Once more, Leanne found herself opening her eyes blearily, with her body aching. She lay completely still, trying to assess the situation. There was a warm hand on her shoulder, and the deafening noise around her seemed to have lessened somewhat.

“Leanne?” Resek’s voice was soft and controlled, and she risked opening her eyes. Resek glanced down at her before quickly turning his eyes to the room at large. Leanne winced as her neck muscles gave a painful twinge, but that didn’t stop her from continuing to look around. Commander Snu was dead on the floor, a neat hole through his head. All of the other soldiers were either dead or wounded; she couldn’t tell for sure from here.

“Are we ok?” For some reason Leanne felt whispering was the right thing to do.

“For now.” His voice was quiet. “I borrowed one of your grenades to blow up the entrances.”

Leanne grinned. “You’re welcome.”

Resek looked like he was fighting a smile. “Yes, very useful. For now, we are safe here. It'll take the other soldiers some time to dig their way through. If they’ve been trained properly, they won’t risk blasting another hole. Not when this whole structure is clearly unstable, and when there is no sign of life in here.”

“That’s why we’re whispering?”

Resek nodded. “If they know we are in here, they will undoubtedly speed up their attempts to get to us. We just need to wait quietly.”

Leanne knew there must be more to the plan. Just waiting and hoping for the best was not a battle strategy Resek had ever taught her. “You managed to get a message out?”

A ghost of a smile flickered across his face. “Our reinforcements should be here within the hour. You’ve been unconscious a while.”

Leanne bit back a groan. “I could probably do with less of that.”

“Well, perhaps if you had stayed with the soldiers like I had asked…”

She glanced up at him, but Resek didn’t seem mad. There was still that faint smile on his face.

“I told you that you shouldn’t leave me behind.”

“That you did. If you hadn’t just saved my life, you’d be getting a stern reprimand, you know.”

Chuckling under her breath, Leanne tried to sit up. Resek put an arm behind her back, letting her lean on him. Her ribs felt like they were on fire, and her ankle felt swollen and tender.

She jumped as something shifted on the other side of the room and held her breath until she was sure that they weren’t getting through. This just made her ribs hurt worse.

“As well as I can determine, you have badly bruised ribs and a broken ankle. You should try not to move. I lost my first aid kit on the way here. Once my men arrive, they’ll be able to fix you up. I told them to bring medical supplies.”

Leanne let her eyes rove over Resek, looking for any sign of injury. “You’re not hurt?”

“Only my pride. I may have to bribe you not to tell my men what happened.”

There was a twinkle in his eye that Leanne liked a lot. He was so seldom playful or teasing, a side effect of spending his entire life fighting a war, she guessed.

“If you want, I can tell them how I swooned in your arms.”

“What’s that going to cost me?”

“Tonight, I’ll show you.”

Resek’s eyes practically glowed, and Leanne could feel her breathing speeding up. This hurt her ribs, so she tried to think of other things. It was difficult with Resek so close to her.

With nothing to do but listen to the sounds of the Greli trying to get in to check on their Commander, nerves started bubbling up in Leanne.

She surreptitiously leaned closer to Resek, taking comfort in his presence. As he smiled down at her, she couldn’t help but feel a flush of desire, and would probably have jumped him if she hadn’t been aching everywhere. Being in this enclosed space with him was doing strange things to her head.

“What if our reinforcements don’t arrive in time?”

“See that door there? I’ll clear it with our last grenade and carry you out the back. You’d have to shoot as we ran, but we should be able to make it to the cover of the trees. From there, we can run until we meet up with my men. I’d rather not risk that unless we have to, though.”

It was a good plan, but carrying Leanne would put Resek in a very vulnerable position.

“What if you left me here? No, listen! I don’t mean abandon me, I mean hide me under some rubble or something, then come back for me? You’d have a much better chance that way.”

“That poses more risk to you. It is not acceptable. Besides, it won’t come to that. My men know that it is of utmost importance that they get to us quickly.”

Too tired to argue, Leanne just leaned her head back against his chest. She hoped he was right. Listening to the sounds of rubble shifting was still making her nervous, so she kept up the whispered conversation.

“Where to next? Back home?”

She only realized after the words slipped out of her mouth that she’d just referred to Resek’s house as home. Resek paused but didn’t comment on it.

“Yes, for now. I need to communicate with the iluni scientists. They have a station that monitors the state of the war. I need to know what the next step is.”

“I’m surprised you let them get away with not telling you every step years ahead of time.”

Resek grimaced. “Believe me, I’m not happy about it. They say they can’t, that everything is constantly changing. They’re right about that much. Still, I wish I could have more of the general outline. They have some long technical reason that I have trouble having patience with.”

Leanne giggled, having a sudden vision of Resek demanding to know the full plan. When Resek demanded, people obeyed. She’d not like to be one of those scientists.

“Ah, that’s our backup.”

The sound of screams and gunfire reverberated through the room. Leanne had never thought she’d be so grateful to hear men getting shot.

“Will they be ok?”

“There are enough in our party to overwhelm the remaining Greli forces here.” Resek sounded confident. “We merely need to wait.”

It turned out he was quite right. Perhaps half an hour passed before the sounds of combat went quiet. From there, it wasn’t long before the Wescra broke through the barrier. The Greli had done most of the work for them.

“Commander!”

It was clear that Resek’s men were relieved to see him and Leanne well.

“Leanne is injured,” He was back to being Commander Resek. “Tend to her now, while you explain to me which one of you allowed her to sneak off.”

“It’s not their fault.” Leanne began explaining, but Resek cut across her.

“Well? Which one of you?”

One of the soldiers in command under Resek stepped forward, trembling. “It was my fault, Commander. I was assigned to watch her, and she slipped away. We sent men searching for her, but we failed.”

The poor man looked like he was about to faint. Resek left him hanging, the silence getting more and more ominous with every passing second. Finally, he spoke.

“You are very lucky that Leanne’s timely arrival put her in a position to save my life and complete the mission. As it is, she is hurt. You will report to the healers’ quarters for vomit duty when we return.” Leanne remembered vomit duty. She'd gotten stuck with it a few times, and would gladly live an entire lifetime without ever emptying buckets of vomit ever again.

“Yes, Commander.” He backed away, seemingly glad not to be facing anything worse.

Leanne was soon surrounded by people and by the rare technology that was used to supplement more basic healing methods. Resek held nothing back for her, and soon she could both stand and breathe with minimal pain.

Resek lifted her, not giving her the chance to try walking. Surrounded by his men, Leanne leaned close and whispered in his ear. “Does this mean there won’t be any bribery? I can still tell them I swooned in your arms.”

His breath tickled her ear as he answered. “No need. Tonight, I will give you anything you want. You did save my life, after all.”

Despite how gently Resek carried her, Leanne’s ribs were soon aching again. As much as she wanted Resek, it may be a few days until she was up to collecting her reward. She spent the walk fantasizing about what she’d ask him to do to her and brushed off his questions about her flushed face.

The walk seemed five times as long on the way back, and Leanne wasn’t even walking. Eventually, despite the pain in her ribs, she managed to drift off. She woke briefly while they were setting up camp, but Resek merely tucked her in and told her to go back to sleep.

The last thing she remembered was him climbing into the cot with her and wrapping a protective arm around her as she slept.

The walk took a while, but once they got to an open area that was safe for flying, things went much quicker. Their Greli craft was still where they had left it, so Leanne and Resek could go ahead. Leanne was relieved to be home. That is, at Resek’s house. Which definitely wasn’t home. She’d been in pain and filled with adrenaline earlier, which was no doubt what led to the slip of using the word home referring to anything other than Earth. That was all it was, really.

Resek gave them both a few days to rest before they set out to meet the iluni scientists.

“Why can’t we just com them?”

“They don’t have coms.”

Leanne goggled at him. “They don’t have coms? They hold the key to this war, and they don’t have a way to contact anyone?”

“It’s too risky,” Resek explained. “As you said, they hold the key to this war. They’re in a highly secret location that only I know. Once my time is done, only the next Commander will know it. I will pass on the information he needs directly to him when the time comes. They’re difficult to get to, and it will involve quite a bit of climbing. That’s why we’ve been resting. We both need to be at full strength and health to make the journey.”

“Um, Resek, I’ve never been really good at climbing.”

“You’ll learn. You’re a good student.”

“Maybe, but I’d rather not test my skills with something that could have me falling off the edge of the mountain.”

“Do you think I’d let you fall?”

Leanne looked into his eyes and realized that no, of course he wouldn’t let her fall. “I trust you.”

“Good. Then we should get going. We can take a hover for most of it, though we’ll have to switch through a couple of them to ensure we can’t be tracked.”

The ride was depressing. They went a long way, which only served to show Wescran in all its war-torn horror. Some places looked comparatively untouched, but for the most part, Leanne couldn’t believe that people managed to scrape a living off blackened land and demolished buildings.

“It used to be beautiful here, you know.” Resek was watching Leanne take everything in. “Before the war, I mean. There were buildings as tall as trees, and the trees were pretty tall, not like these stunted things you’re seeing. We had parks and waterfalls, schools, hospitals, common areas. It was perfect.”

“How old were you when it started?”

“Five years old. I only have a few memories of what our world used to be like. Most of what I know comes from old pictures and records. Even if we do win, it’ll take generations to rebuild what is lost.”

He seemed lost in an introspective mood, and Leanne didn’t pull him out of it. She tried to imagine what he described, overlaying the reality with more pleasant images from his descriptions.

They changed hovers four times. When they finally reached the mountain where the iluni scientists were holed up, they’d been traveling for hours. Leanne was eager to stretch her legs.

“Why can’t we just fly to the top?” She looked around as Resek helped her out of the hover.

“See those spikes?”

Leanne had to squint to see what he was talking about. “They look almost exactly like trees.”

“They’re designed to. Unless you know what you’re looking for, they’re very tricky to spot. They give off a signal that scrambles the computers on hovers. Anyone flying too close would experience a technical malfunction. Protocol dictates that they turn back, then. If they don’t, if they’re adamant about getting to the mountain, the hover will crash.”

“Seems like a pretty safe location.”

“It has to be.”

Once they started climbing, Leanne didn’t have any breath for talking. She’d gotten a lot fitter in her time with Resek, but the climb was still taxing. Instead of ropes, Resek gave her a device to attach to her belt. He went first, pressing a small metal circle with a sucker on it to the rock every few feet.

“Here, watch.”

Leanne screamed as he let go of the mountain and fell back, even though they were low enough that it was only a fall of a few feet. Resek didn’t fall, though. He stopped just above the last sucker he’d put on, hovering as though held up by an invisible force.

Leanne took a deep breath of relief. “It’s like what mountaineers do back on Earth, just using whatever force field those things contain instead of ropes.”

Even though she knew she couldn’t fall, it was nerve-racking. Resek coached her through each step, showing her where to put her hands and feet, following exactly in his path. A couple of times, he had to lower down a rod to help her. When she put her hand on it, it stuck to her like glue until Resek had pulled her up through the difficult spot, then released her with a faint pop.

After a few hours of climbing, they finally got to a level spot. Even Resek was looking slightly tired by the workout. Leanne was ready to collapse.

He let her rest until she said she was ready, and they resumed the climb. Leanne thought that if anyone wanted to attack the iluni scientists, they could more easily bomb the whole planet than get up this stupid mountain. Resek didn’t seem to have too much difficulty with the climb, which annoyed her. Her fingers were aching from being pressed into tiny crevices in the rock.

“Nearly there. Come, I will pull you up the last bit.”

Leanne reached gratefully for the stick. She saw that Resek was bracing himself on another flat spot. He had little trouble with her weight, and once he had her up, Leanne would have jumped in glee had she not feared her legs would collapse. They were at the top. The climbing was done.

She expected Resek to look happy or relieved, but there was a sudden tension in his shoulders.

“Resek? What’s wrong?”

“Maybe nothing, but the beacon here has been disturbed. See this in the grass? It’s meant to be untouched. If one of the scientists passes it, it goes off, and they’re supposed to reset it. That way we can tell if any intruders have come. Of course, they may have forgotten.”

By the dark look on Resek’s face, Leanne somehow didn’t think they’d forgotten.

Resek set off, taking out his gun.

“Come. Stay behind me.”