He held her eyes for a moment more, and then pulled out of her grip and turned away. His door was blocked and bent inward by broken trees. He crawled into the rear hold, kicked out the hatch window, and left her. He could feel her danger like a live coal in his chest, but he made himself be an officer now. He made himself leave her behind.

E’Var’s groundcar was smoking and empty. The passenger’s door hung open. The pilot’s was torn entirely away. Tagen reached into the crumpled interior and took the keys from the ignition, not to prevent the use of the car (which even Tagen could see had passed into the realm of the non-functional), but only to silence the tortured engines. He heard nothing, but E’Var’s trail was evident and bloodied.

Tagen drew his gun and started running.

*

Raven would not wake up. Her face was half-painted with blood from a wound in her scalp. Right before his eyes, her throat was purpling in a wide bar the very image of the groundcar’s harness. Her right leg had been pinned when the front hull buckled inward in the crash. It was bleeding heavily and was probably broken. He hadn’t had time to check for injuries beyond these obvious ones. He’d torn the shirt from her body to wrap her leg in and that was all.

He’d been lucky by comparison. His left leg had been knocked a damned good one when the console erupted. It ached relentlessly, but it wasn’t broken. His chest was scored by the same harness-mark as Raven’s, only in reverse angle, and it burned with every breath, hinting at a cracked rib or two, but more likely it was only bruised. Nothing seriously wrong, in other words, just wrong enough to keep him from running to his ship.

Kane had no intention of running anyway, even if he’d sprung from the crashed groundcar utterly unmarked. The Jotan he’d glimpsed in the car just before the impact had been the same one from the fair and he’d been the only Jotan in the car. The Fleet had sent just one officer to bring Kane down and now he was here, on foot and fresh from a collision. It was time to settle this.

Kane laid in a trail from the wreckage of his groundcar. He didn’t run far, but he did run clumsy, favoring his good leg much more than it deserved and counting on Raven’s extra weight in his arms to throw his tracks even more off-kilter. The blood from her injuries added an extra dimension to the lie, but it was a cold comfort with her lying so limp, so silent.

He took his time circling out after he reached the end of his false trail, even with time at such a high premium, making the best of his considerable skill at leaving no mark as he came around and back toward the site of the Fleet-fucker’s car. When it was in view (and on all four round feet, how in the fuck did he manage that?) Kane knelt and lay Raven out. She looked impossibly small and fragile against the dry earth, and the sight put the heat in him for killing. He hunkered over her, his claws combing at her hair. One of her alluring white stripes had been turned into a matted spike, and he rubbed at it futilely, trying to work up the nerve to leave her. If only she would open her eyes!

But she didn’t, and a smashing sound from the groundcar told him the officer was on the move. Kane had to act.

He unslung his pack and set it at Raven’s side, twining the strap through her slack hand and trusting her to know by seeing it that he was coming back for her and she should not move. He bent low, growling in her ear, hoping that some subconscious part of her would hear and know him. But that was all. And then he left her.

Kane got low and watched the lawman run toward the smoke of the crashed groundcar. He ran fast and fairly steady, too, and that was bad. Kane was all too aware of the hurts inside him. This had better not come to a hand-fight.

He waited only long enough for the officer to get out of sight, and then he was moving, still low, with the human gun in one hand and the other in claws. He circled the groundcar (noting with the cold half of his mind that it appeared to be working pretty well, even if it was hung up. He could move it when this was done, assuming Raven was in any condition to drive, and if she wasn’t, well, maybe it was time he learned for himself), watching the human within struggle with her harness. She was flushed, her face pinched with an expression that was one part fear to nine parts pure exasperation. Pinned in, somehow. Completely helpless.

Kane eased the safety off of his gun and got in close on the blind side of the car. He could hear her now, swearing softly and continuously under her breath, punctuating her words periodically with grunts of effort: “…let go of me, you—ungh!—goddamn thing. Stupid seatbelt bitey-thingy, the only fucking thing that’s—aagh!—damaged and it would be you, you piece of shit! If I have to write to the Ford company and tell them aliens got off the planet with a keg of human hypothalamuses—urrgh!—because their fucking seatbelt clicker locks up on impact, I will! Arrgh! Goddammit!” She banged her little fist on the guidance wheel just as Kane hooked his hand into the door handle, and then covered her face in defeat. “God, I could use a hand here,” she muttered.

Kane ripped the door open and had the gun pressed to the thin skin just below her eye before she could do more than just twitch.

“Very funny, God,” she said, her lips barely moving.

Kane cut the strap of her frozen harness with one pass of his claws, seized her by the throat, and pulled her from the car.

*

The trail vanished after a hundred paces. Just vanished, right before the rotting husk of a fallen tree. Tagen continued on another step, his eyes sweeping left and right as dread bloomed in him. He turned, forcing soldier’s stillness, and retreated along the line of E’Var’s flight, searching for the place his prisoner had split off after backtracking. He was aware of every tree, every thicket, every shadowed place where a Jotan might be sighting on him.

His plasma gun was a comforting weight in his hand, his thumb at home beside the kill-switch. “Surrender yourself,” he called in Jotan. The hot, dry air swallowed his words, giving him the surreal impression that they had not carried at all. “Kanetus E’Var, you can be arrested or killed! Choose!”

No answer, not that Tagen expected anything (unless, of course, it was the expectation of human gunfire splitting him open). Tagen eased out from the false trail, scanning for further signs. “I have you, prisoner! Surrender! You have no hope of escape!”

“No?” a voice called in N’Glish. “Then maybe I could interest you in a trade?”

Tagen dropped and spun, his gun hand aimed without thought or effort. His thumb was already on the kill-switch but he did not fire. If he had, he would have killed E’Var instantly, for he was sighted right at the slaver’s heart.

And at Daria’s wide, terrified eyes. E’Var held her before him, his hand clamped over her mouth and a human’s gun cocked at her temple.

“I realize I can’t help but offer you a clear shot to my head,” E’Var said from somewhere in the world. He was speaking Jotan again, clearly and quietly, so that the words registered without requiring any of Tagen’s concentration. “But these human guns are no toys. If my hand should twitch just a little, your fuck-mate’s brains are going to be spattered over every tree in arm’s reach.”

Tagen could not answer. Daria’s eyes transfixed him. There was no pleading in them, none. It was the look of a woman who sees her destiny and knows she will not escape it. Fears it, perhaps, but does not intend to fight it.

‘What have I done to you?’ he thought faintly. ‘I am sorry, Daria. I am so very sorry.’

“What is that, a plasma gun?” E’Var asked.