Fully armored and armed, Mick crouched between two boulders, watching her sensor display for signs of life. Though she didn’t know if she could trust it or her vision. Being outside again made her uneasy, and she anticipated she would start seeing things that weren’t there soon.

The Viper was at her back, shields up and the two Ferango cannons on top ready to fire. Mick hoped their enemies wouldn’t realize how many repairs she and Woodruff had accomplished before the storm started. Maybe they would underestimate what it would take to finish off the ship.

The wind still blew, shrouding the horizon with orange dust and whipping sand and snow against her faceplate, but weak orange sunlight filtered through the clouds and the haze, promising they were at the tail end of the storm. An experienced pilot ought to be able to land in this.

Even as she had the thought, a blip showed up on her sensor display.

“Captain,” Safin said over the comm, his mouth full of something—coffee, perhaps. “Do you see that? A shuttle is heading down.”

“Thanks, I see it. Ariston?”

“I see it,” he said from behind a different boulder. “It looks like it’ll land on the far side of the ruins. If you think you can handle defending your ship, I’ll go after the shuttle. It will be shielded, so I’ll have to time my attack to get inside the hatch when it’s open for their men to go in.”

“Do you think they will split forces?” Mick figured he would be more likely to know what they would do than she. “Some going straight in while others come over to attack my ship? The comm message from the captain made it sound like no one was getting in until they defeated us.”

And found a ship full of artifacts. That would be a disappointing search for them, unless they considered Dev’s soil samples particularly enthralling. They had better not take her bag of coffee beans. She was running low. She’d tossed a big handful into her mouth before heading out here.

“I suspect the people from the first shuttle who came down without armor may be waiting over there for that shuttle, since I’m not reading them over here,” Ariston said.

“Could be, nobody’s over here. What if they knew we were listening and deliberately misled us, so we’d stay here to defend the Viper instead of ambushing them?”

“They shouldn’t know about the ambush.”

“They could guess. If they believe my ship is out of order and that we’re trapped down here…”

“I’ll head over to the shuttle now.”

Mick glimpsed the back of his patchwork armor as he left his cover and ran around boulders toward the ruins.

If they were expecting him, would he truly be able to take control of the shuttle by himself? Or would they be waiting, all the men who’d spent the night here and all the men who’d been sent down? They could be ready to blow him into smithereens right now. If that was the case, he might need an ally.

A couple of silent minutes passed, and Mick grew more convinced that nobody was coming to attack her ship. Even if a legion of men did, Safin and Dev could fire the cannons from inside, cannons that would do far more damage than her bolt bow. She might even hinder her people if she stayed out here to engage the enemy head on, as she’d planned to do. Her people would have to hold their fire out of fear of hitting her.

“Safin,” Mick said. “I’m going over to that shuttle in case Ariston needs help.”

“I haven’t observed that he ever needs help.” Safin must have seen some of Ariston’s fighting skills when he’d been defending the Viper the day before.

“That’s because you haven’t seen how poorly he plays Kapti.”

“I am on this channel,” Ariston pointed out dryly.

“I keep no secrets from my crew.”

She meant it as a joke, but sobered quickly when he replied, “Do they keep secrets from you?”

Mick still wasn’t certain if Dr. Lee or any of the others had known more about Umbra’s plans than she had.

“We’ll have to have a chat later and find out,” she said, running between the boulders in the direction he had gone.

“I want you to stay and defend that ship so everyone has the best chance of surviving for that chat,” Ariston said.

His way of saying that he didn’t want or think he needed her help? If he thought that, he was being cocky. The odds would be far better with two armored warriors assaulting that shuttle.

Not wanting to argue with him, Mick kept her mouth shut as she continued on. If the Viper was attacked while she was on her way through the ruins, she would turn around. This wasn’t such an epic journey that she couldn’t make it back in time to help.

As she entered the ruins, her sensors registering nothing but the lizard creatures under the rocks, she almost ran straight into a man in turd-brown armor crouching in a rubble-filled courtyard. He was setting something up, something that looked a lot like a grenade launcher on a portable tripod. The way it was pointed, it would fire over the ruins and toward her ship. Maybe landing right on her ship.

The shields could repel en-bolts for a long time, but grenades or other heavier ordnance? She didn’t know. And she wasn’t about to find out.

Mick slipped behind a rubble pile and lifted her bolt bow. The man hadn’t heard her approaching—maybe that wind was useful for something—and she got off a shot before he noticed her.

Of course, her en-bolt bounced off his shoulder armor without leaving a dent. She held her finger down on the trigger, hoping a sustained blast would burrow through, but he reacted instantly. Before he even saw her, he fired.

Crimson bolts slammed into the rock wall behind Mick, shattering ruins that had stood for thousands of years. His aim improved as he spotted her. Out of habit, she ducked for cover behind her rubble pile when his shots arrowed toward her face. Logically, she knew the helmet, and even the clear faceplate, could withstand some abuse, but her instincts overrode that logic.

Bolts blew into her rock pile, hurling broken pieces of wall into the air. One landed on her helmet with a disturbing bang.

She crawled to the other side of the pile, leaned out, and fired. Again, her aim was solid, striking him on the chest piece this time, but he stood there and accepted it. Apparently, his instincts knew the armor would protect him. Once again, he aimed at her face.

Growling, she ducked low. She needed to aim at something more vulnerable. He was laying down fire all over her rubble pile, blowing stones to dust. Soon, she would be left out in the open unless—

“The grenade launcher,” she muttered.

“Captain?” Safin asked, monitoring the channel.

She didn’t explain. She leaned out from the other side of her pile and this time targeted the tripod and the launcher mounted on it. Had he loaded any ammunition yet? There was a box of shells or something similar near his feet. He kept firing and hadn’t moved away from the launcher.

Her en-bolts blew into the metal, tearing the launcher from the tripod. She didn’t get the spectacular explosion she’d hoped for. As he shot at her helmet again, she lowered her aim, firing at the box.

An en-bolt streaked into it, and it blew up magnificently, a fiery yellow ball of flames filling half the courtyard and fully encompassing the man. A shockwave rolled away from the explosion, heat and power pummeling her in the chest. Her armor protected her, but several alarms flashed down her faceplate, warning her about the extreme temperature change.

Not trusting that her enemy’s armor had failed, even when he’d been standing in the center of the explosion, Mick raced forward as soon as the flames died.

The man lay on his side, his armor charred and melted in spots. His boot twitched.

Mick pointed her bolt bow at him, figuring he was stunned and wouldn’t react to a sustained blast this time. But she hesitated to fire. If this were Earth, she wouldn’t shoot to kill someone, even someone who’d been trying to blow up her ship and the people in it. It would still be considered murder, still be against the law.

This wasn’t Earth, but she’d been making out with a law enforcer that morning, and this planet was under his jurisdiction. She’d noticed that he was trying not to kill anyone, choosing to subdue them instead.

But how the hell did one subdue someone protected by armor? It wasn’t as if she could bop him on the head, tie his belt around his wrists, and toss him in a closet.

His bolt bow lay several meters away, so she settled for grabbing it and ensuring the grenade launcher—what remained of it—was inoperable. He would probably wake up, but with his weapons gone, she hoped he would stay out of the rest of the battle.

She started after Ariston again, but paused. Could there be more men with more grenade launchers setting up to attack her ship? Maybe she should let Ariston handle the shuttle on his own—it was what he wanted, after all—and do a circuit to check for this guy’s buddies.

An ear-splitting scream of pain rose over the wind, echoing off the walls of the ruins.

Mick spun toward the noise. It had sounded like a man. It had sounded like Ariston.

Her legs took off running before she’d made a conscious decision to go check on him, to go help him. Maybe she had been wrong—it could have been another man, one of his enemies. Or it could have been her ears playing tricks on her, too, as with the wreck the day before.

Those thoughts didn’t keep her legs from churning. She raced through the maze and skidded down a broad street, the cobblestones slick with snow.

Light came from up ahead, rising up over the outer walls, brighter than the weak sun trying to pierce the cloudy, early morning sky. Though she wanted to charge straight for it, she made herself slow down before running from the ruins’ cover. If she followed the street, it would lead her straight out into the same area that the two wrecks occupied. The area where Dr. Garcia’s body doubtless still remained, forgotten and covered with snow.

If possible, she would come back for it and get it home to his family for a proper funeral. But not now. Now, she had to make sure Ariston wasn’t about to join Garcia in an unmarked grave.

Mick turned to run along the inside of the outer wall. She spotted a place that looked sturdy, hopped up, and grabbed the lip. She pulled herself up, her armor enhancing her strength so she could dangle there long enough to peek over the top to see what was going on.

The two wrecks were still there, dark and neglected. The new shuttle was the source of the light, both from its running lamps and from an open hatch. An open hatch that four armored men were striding toward, with a fifth armored man between them, not walking. He was being dragged, his head down, his body limp, his weapons gone.

Mick stared, recognizing that patchwork armor.

Ariston.