“Shit,” March growls, finally stumbling with some volition. He takes a little of his weight off us. “Where’s baby-Z?”

Mary forgive me. I think I killed him. Inexplicably that hurts worse than anything that’s happened so far. I feel the hot burn behind my eyes. Forget Farr, I’m the monster. But I wasn’t thinking of anything but seeing him die.

“No time for that, stay with us. We’re almost to the Folly. Just a little farther.”

We’re stumbling now, even with March half-conscious. Past the throne room, we can do this. We’re almost there. But neither I nor Loras is particularly strong. Loras is smart, and I’m fast, but that’s not helping us now. What I wouldn’t give for Doc’s burly back. He could probably heft March over his shoulder and go at a dead run. I hear booted feet behind us, and the Klaxons blaring remind me of Perlas Station.

Of course they do, this is a former Corp installation.

And they’re going into lockdown.

No. Oh no.

I start to run, seeing the doors in the room that used to be the docking authority closing slowly. We need more speed, and it’s all I can do not to shake free of them, sprint for all I’m worth. They’re dragging me down, and right now I don’t care whether they live or die. I’m not a fragging hero…I didn’t ask for this, dammit, I shouldn’t have to choose.

“Come on, you bastards.” I’m sobbing as I try to pull March along, and we make it, bent double, beneath the first set of doors.

But I don’t see how we can make the second set across the room. Still, I’m not giving up. I dig my fingers into his mangled forearm and rouse a scream of rage, of pain, but it doesn’t have the desired result. Instead of goading him to speed, his knees buckle, and we all go down just before the second door.

I slither beneath on my belly; there’s less than a meter of space now. In that moment I’m sure I’m the only one who’s going to make it back to the Folly, but then I see Loras shoving March toward me. There’s a terrible acceptance in his eyes as I reach for March and haul him forward.

“Thank you,” Loras whispers, as March’s boot clears the gap. “You gave me the power to choose.”

The door clangs shut.

I feel tears streaming down my face, hot as blood. Part of me wants to stand here screaming, shoot the door with my disruptor, but I don’t know what it does to metal, if anything, and I can’t bring myself to waste the chance he’s bought us. I refuse to listen to him die.

“Wake up!” I slap March as hard as I can, and he groans, trying to push upright. The bastard seems surprised when his left arm won’t hold his weight. “Get your ass up. I am not leaving you, not after all this. Come on.”

He doesn’t even seem to know who the hell I am, but I get him on his feet. Just this last corridor now, and I don’t know how the hell we’re going to get through the docking bay doors. I doubt they’ll open for us anymore, but—

There’s a smoking hole where the door used to be, Dina standing there with a smile. “You two done sight—oh shit, is March…” She trails off, because obviously he’s not, and the turrets in the docking bay are coming alive. “Where’s Loras?”

I just shake my head, and she gets under his right side. “Head down now, it’s going to be a shitty run.”

CHAPTER 35

March is never going to be able to fly.

Doc’s sedated him since the shock might kill him, and he’s tending to the arm as best he can, but we need a real medical facility for proper treatment. He’ll wrap it, get him started on a full series of preventives, and that’s about all we can do. Saul will need to keep an eye on him, though, so that just leaves Dina and me.

“All right,” she says grimly. “One of us needs to man the guns, the other needs to get us out of here. I’m usually in the pit, you ever pilot?”

“Hell no. But I’ve never been on guns before, either, so get back there. Cripple every ship in this docking bay, then blow the doors wide open. These aren’t the only ships on station, but maybe it’ll slow them down some.”

“Yes, boss.” She sprints for the gun pit, and the funny thing is, she didn’t sound mocking when she said it.

I get my ass to the cockpit, and as I strap into the pilot’s chair, I can’t help thinking how wrong it feels. I’ve never sat over here on the left side, but I think I remember enough of that last time with March. Maybe I can figure this out.

I tap a series of panels from memory and feel vaguely surprised as the Folly powers up. It’s not that I know what I’m doing, quite the contrary. I’m just seeing in my mind’s eye how March does this. So far so good, the panels and switches seem oddly familiar. I remember how I thought, I could almost fly this ship myself, during our last jump. I need to stop doing that, because such mental boasts have an uncomfortable way of coming back to bite me in the ass.

This must be vertical movement…so this one is horizontal.

As I skate my fingers across the second bar, the vessel jerks hard and slings sideways, careening us into the far wall. Shit, this thing is really sensitive. I try to turn it, and it spins back, and soon we’re just spinning wildly in the hangar, slamming into the ships Dina is supposed to be shooting. The Folly takes damage as we’re whirling; I hear the steady barrage of hits along the hull.

“Hold this thing steady, dammit. I got no shot,” she growls at me over the comm.

So I stop touching the controls for a minute, and I hear the roar of our turrets firing on the docked ships. Muted explosions tell me she’s getting the job done. Now I just need to turn so we can get out of here.

We spin three times before I finally steady the Folly long enough for Dina to blow the bay doors, then we’re out, although it’s not in a graceful swoop like March executes. Instead, I bang around the exit, wincing at the painful sound of metal scraping along metal, but then we depart Hon-Durren’s Kingdom. Finally.

With incalculable losses.

The comm crackles, and Dina’s voice comes across with a mocking lilt: “Jax, as a pilot, you’re a great jumper.”

“Yeah, yeah.” I flick the switch on her. “Computer, autopilot on, set course for Gehenna, maximum cruising speed.”

“Acknowledged,” the computer tells me cheerfully. “At our current speed, we will make port in approximately thirty-six standard hours.”

“Alert me if there’s any sign of pursuit or other problems,” I say tiredly, unbuckling from the pilot’s chair.

“Acknowledged.”

I hope I never have to do this again. March usually stays up here awhile to monitor our course, but I need to check on how he’s doing, talk to Doc, then get this blood off me. Rolling my shoulders, I head for medical. Not until this moment did I realize just how sore I am, but I feel like I’ve been beaten.

When I peek around the door frame, I see that Doc has sprayed March’s arm in some liquid skin to keep out bacteria. I’ve never seen anyone shot by a disruptor before. They never perfected molecular transportation, but naturally, the Corp capitalized on the failed prototypes, turning them into a weapon that turns flesh inside out. Whoever invented that weapon was a sick son of a bitch.

Of course, I’ve killed with it twice, so what does that make me?

“How’s he doing?”

Doc looks up from the life-sign readings with a creased brow. “He’s strong, sound constitution, so that’ll help. The fact that you got him back alive is pretty impressive.”

“It was Loras, not me. He deserves all the credit.” For a moment I think I might break down, tears simmering in my eyes. Sometimes you find your heroes in the unlikeliest places. Wish I’d known him better. Wish—

So many things.

Doc regards me as if he knows there’s something I’m not saying. “March is in a lot of pain, though. Kindest thing we can do is keep him sedated until we reach Gehenna. I have some contacts at a clinic near the starport. They’ll help us out without asking any inconvenient questions.”

That hurts, too. If I’d done something differently…After a moment, I lock everything down, push it back into the compartment where wounded Jax lives. I’m the pragmatic Jax. “You can keep him nourished and hydrated?”

Saul sighs. “That’s about all I can do with a wound like this, but yes, I can. What happened, Jax?”

I turn to see Dina standing in the doorway, waiting to hear the answer. Her eyes as she gazes down at March, so pale and still, almost like he’s already dead, well, it’s the look of someone who thought she’d lost everything, only to find more could still be taken from her. And I feel like I’m the harbinger of it all, although I didn’t even want to go up to the lab. That was all March. But it doesn’t seem to matter anymore. I was there, wasn’t I? And everything I touch goes bad—just like that dead Gunnar said.

Taking a deep breath, I tell them. I don’t spare a single detail, and I certainly don’t paint myself in a better light. It doesn’t matter if they hate me, couldn’t be worse than how I hate myself.

But when Dina says softly, “It wasn’t your fault, Jax,” I almost fall down.

In fact, I have to sit down on one of the stools up against the wall, regarding her with incredulity. “You can’t stand me. How can you say that?”

She shrugs. “Yes, you’re a bitch for even thinking about leaving March behind, but you didn’t, did you? It’s not your fault he got shot. And it’s not your fault that Farr was a crazy fuck. And it’s not your fault that March wanted to go see if anyone up there needed help. That’s just…March. And it definitely wasn’t your fault that Loras didn’t make it. He made a choice, Jax. And you gave him that power. I think when it came down to it, he wanted to die a free man, he wanted it to mean something.”

“You spoke to him about my shinai-solution, didn’t you?”

She nods. “It wouldn’t have worked. He was touched you cared enough to put that much thought into it, though. And when he decided to go after you two, Doc and I respected his choice.”

Even though we knew something could go wrong. Though I hear the unspoken words, they don’t help much.

“She’s right, you know.” Saul turns from his examination of March’s vital signs long enough to give me a solemn nod.

“And nobody who wasn’t there can say for sure whether they’d have been thinking about what was under Farr’s shirt,” Dina continues, like she’s determined to make me feel better. “If it was me, seeing my friend on the floor, I’d want the blood of the bastard who killed him, too.”

“It is a tragedy that we lost Loras and baby-Z,” Doc adds. “Fortunately, I have ten good DNA samples, so it’s not a complete loss as far as the project is concerned. I took them when I was sure he was strong enough to bear it, shortly before we reached Hon-Durren’s Kingdom.”

The project.

Sometimes I think Doc’s as crazy as Canton Farr. Maybe all scientists are. They don’t care who has to die for them to test a theory. They lose sight of the important things; they spend so much time looking at cells that they forget those units are the building blocks of sentient beings who have thoughts and hopes, dreams and feelings.