Polaris Rising (Consortium Rebellion, #1)(21)

“We’ll climb here,” Loch said.

I looked at the wall of the canyon he was studying. It wasn’t vertical, but it was steep and rocky. The canyon floor had been climbing for an hour, so the rim of the canyon was only about fifty meters up.

It was going to be a brutal fifty meters.

I followed Loch with single-minded determination. I stared at his feet, willing my own to step in the same places, climb over the same rocks. I didn’t look up; I didn’t want to know how far we still had to go.

Loch pulled me up over a large rock. I tried to keep climbing, but he clamped an arm around my waist. “Stop,” he whispered. “We’re nearly at the top.”

His arm was so warm. I turned and huddled into his chest, uncaring that I was snuggling a criminal. He was a warm criminal and that was all that mattered right now.

“Shit,” he said. “When did you stop shivering?”

I shrugged. I didn’t realize that I’d stopped. My whole focus had been on putting one foot in front of the other. “I told you I had two hours. It’s been two hours. I wasn’t lying. How are you so warm?”

He didn’t answer. Instead, he said, “The city is surrounded by a fence, but not a good one. Stay here, I’ll find a way through.”

I shook my head. “If I stop moving, I’ll die. If you want me to find my own way through, I will, but I can’t stay here.”

“Can you run?”

“If I have to and not for very long.”

He pushed me away from his chest. Frigid air stole the little warmth I’d collected until I felt colder than before. “Stay here for two minutes while I do an initial recon.”

“You literally have two minutes, then I’m heading for the city with or without you,” I said. “Your time starts now.” I started counting in my head. It kept me focused. My thoughts were slowing. I’d pushed myself too far and now I was dangerously close to making a fatal mistake.

Loch stepped a meter up the canyon then froze. He didn’t even seem to be breathing. He held statue-still for thirty seconds then slowly sank down.

“There’s a hidden door. Just saw a kid sneak out and head for the canyon farther down. I don’t think he saw me, but we need to move. I didn’t see any guards. We’ll run for the fence.”

I stomped my feet and promised myself the largest cup of real hot chocolate I could find. It would be an extravagant expense on a planet this isolated but worth every penny if I survived long enough to claim it.

“Okay, let’s do this,” I said.

Loch grabbed my wrist and pulled me up the final rise of the canyon. The fence was only about twenty-five meters away, but nothing gave us any cover. It looked like a hodgepodge of whatever the citizens had leftover rather than a true fence. Old doors and windows, pieces of plastech, and scraps of wire were all held together by welds, ropes, and prayers.

We pounded across the open space. It took all of my concentration to run. Twice I stumbled, and Loch’s grip on my wrist was the only thing that kept me upright. Exhaustion clawed at me with soft, sweet fingers.

We reached the fence and Loch dropped my wrist. His hand left a band of heat on my flesh. I wanted nothing more than to curl up next to him and leech away his warmth. I shook off the images of our naked limbs entwined and followed him down the fence line.

The door was only visible once you were standing right in front of it. A bit of rope worked as a pull and two pieces of barbed wire tied around a fence post were the hinges. This section of fence was on rocky ground, so no footprints gave away the location.

Loch opened the door, peeked through, then reached back to pull me through with him. It was immediately clear that this was not the best part of town. Trash littered the street and the plastech houses were dark and shuttered.

Cheap and easy to build, plastech houses were the first buildings to go up on any new planet. It seemed the local residents then decided to take matters into their own hands, adding levels with mud bricks and closing off alleyways with the same.

It was either very early or very late because the streets were empty. Or this section of the city had been abandoned. While that would help us hide, mercs generally didn’t cede sections of the city without a reason.

Loch led us through the streets like he knew where we were going. I did my best to keep up, but the world was hazy around the edges by the time he stopped in front of a decrepit building. He paused at the door, then swung it inward and stepped inside.

The inside wasn’t any warmer than the outside, but at least the walls blocked the cutting wind.

“Stay here,” he said.

I blinked and he was gone. How long had I been standing here? I forced myself to walk around when I wanted nothing more than to curl into a ball and sleep. In the faint light that filtered through the filthy windows, I saw that the front rooms of the house were mostly empty. A few pieces of broken furniture proved that someone had once lived here, but they seemed to be long gone.

“Come on,” Loch said. “I found a room with a heater.”

I followed him deeper into the house. It was dark enough that I couldn’t see what I was stepping on. He stepped into a dimly lit bedroom, complete with a tiny bed and thin bare mattress. It looked a lot like the bed in the cell on the Mayport. True to his word, the heater in the wall was struggling to warm the room. The overhead light panel produced enough light to see by, but it must have been set to its lowest setting.