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Maxwell stepped forward on instinct. Every gun in the room raised, and Garrett quickly threw an arm out in front of him.
The leader lifted his hand and motioned for his men to stand down. He gave Maxwell a warning look. “You need your bag, doctor?”
Maxwell nodded sharply. “Yes.”
“Hold on.” The leader jerked his head toward the klah’eel woman on his right, and she moved toward the bags.
“Full disclosure, there’re extra guns in mine,” Garrett admitted as he watched the klah’eel unzip their bags.
The leader shook his head. “Of course there are.”
The klah’eel woman made short work of pulling out all of Garrett’s guns and then riffling through his bag and then Maxwell’s. Then she zipped Maxwell’s back up and stood with it. “It’s clean, sir.”
“Give it back to him then.” The leader jerked his head at Maxwell. “Let him get to work.”
Maxwell hurried forward, snatched the bag, and rushed past the leader toward Mila and her scared desperate eyes.
As he passed him, the leader pointed at Garrett. “And you’re going to tell me everything you know about these storms.”
“Yes, sir.”
Maxwell glanced back at Garrett to see him with his usual confident smile, and any worry that Maxwell might have had for him eased. Garrett could handle this. He’d handled a lot worse. And once someone let themselves be swayed by that handsome grin—as the leader clearly had—there was no going back. Maxwell would know.
“He got stabbed when the first storm hit.” Mila grabbed Maxwell’s wrist as soon as he got close and dragged him with her toward a door in the wall. “Well, actually I”—the woman curled her shoulders in on herself, and Maxwell could see tears filling her eyes as he rushed to keep up with her—“I stabbed him. I don’t know why. I was just so scared, and I…”
“It’s not your fault.” Maxwell covered her hand with his as they got to the door. “It’s not your fault at all. And if he’s still alive, there’s still time.”
The woman nodded and swallowed. “Thank you.”
It turned out that Mila’s husband was bad, but not as bad as Maxwell had feared based on her anxiety. His wound was an angry, swollen red, with pus encrusted around the edges, and he was running a fever, but it was nothing a few rounds of antibiotics wouldn’t fix. The woman had done a good job stuffing and binding the wound so that he didn’t bleed out, and he told her so. Maybe after a while, she and her husband would recover from the trauma.
Maybe after a while, they all would.
Once the others had seen how he handled Mila’s husband, they immediately dragged Maxwell around their little camp to see to everyone else with an injury or sickness. There were a few broken bones and a few more bad flesh wounds and a couple people with the flu that had been going around, but for the most part, it was a surprisingly healthy group considering what they’d been through.
Apparently, all the townspeople who could manage it had fled to the mines during or after the original fallout from the Barzen’s crash. The guards had, by all accounts, behaved admirably if with a typical Klah’Eel strict orderliness. They’d allowed everyone entry and shuttled them down to the way station, where they’d organized a strict camp with strict rules and rationing of food and medical supplies. No one new had arrived within a few days of the disaster, and this group had remained underground ever since, using the mine’s radio tower to try to contact the outside world.
Garrett stayed locked in conversation with the klah’eel leader—a Captain Urs—and whoever his second was and the de facto leader of the civilians, an older woman named Kira, while Maxwell rushed through the camp to see as many people as he could in the short time that they had. A two-hour timer ticked down in the back of his head. That elevator ride had been long, and going up wouldn’t be any faster. They either had to leave soon or they had to stay here. And if they stayed here, they wouldn’t be able to communicate with Joan, so they’d never know when their next opening was unless someone went to the surface.
And whoever went to the surface could never be sure until it was too late if a storm was blowing.
Which meant Maxwell—as the only torvar here from what he could tell—would have to volunteer and figure out how to explain to Garrett why it had to be him.
He glanced away from wrapping a bandage around an old man’s calf to look at Garrett and saw him with his arms crossed and a stubborn expression. Captain Urs had his arms crossed right back, but Kira was speaking quickly and waving emphatically between the civilians and Urs.
Finally, Garrett nodded sharply and came straight for Maxwell. As he met Maxwell’s eyes, he jerked his chin back toward the elevator. “Alright, we’re moving.”
“All of us?” Maxwell gave the man’s leg a gentle pat and then stood and helped him to his feet.
“Yeah.” Garrett reached out a hand to steady the old man, then smiled at him and passed him off to his waiting daughter, who took most of his weight, speaking kindly and urgently to them, “Go get everything you need and meet at the exit. We have less than an hour until the next storm hits.”
The young woman’s eyes widened. “And what happens then?”
“By then, we’ll all be on a ship headed to Carta.” Garrett nudged her shoulder back to the doors and rooms of the camp. “Go.” As soon as she and her father left, Garrett turned to Maxwell. “Can everyone walk?”
“Except for that old man. He’ll need help.” Maxwell wiped his hands with a sanitation wipe, then zipped his pack and threw it over his shoulder. “But they shouldn’t have much to grab. No one managed to run with much.”
With Urs and Kira striding around and barking orders and ushering people insistently toward the exit, it only took a quarter-hour before they were all walking down the tunnel together toward the elevator. They loaded up, and once Kira had done a final headcount, Garrett powered up the elevator, and they began to rise.
