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pull him out by his shoulders. He hoped they weren't doing lasting damage to the man with as rough as they had been forced to be with him.
    He planted his arms on the side of the river and lifted, pulling himself up and out. He paused on his hands and knees, a sudden feeling of nausea nearly overwhelming him. He was exhausted beyond any limits.
    He dry heaved then, coughing and sputtering. Diaz lowered the pilot gently to the ground, and then came to his side, rubbing his back as he continued to choke.  
    "It's okay, D," she said. "Relax. You'll be okay."
    Donovan nodded. He would. He had to. He coughed again, and then turned his head to the side, back toward the fallen mech. The front of it looked different now. The enclosure near the shoulders was open, revealing part of the internals. It was composed of wires and some kind of organic compound coated in a layer of gel that pulsed with light.  
    Someone was in the water, swimming toward them.
    "Diaz," Donovan said. He had two of the Dread rifles hanging from his body, and she took one and lifted it from him, aiming it at the approaching figure. "Don't shoot."
    She grunted in response. He wasn't sure if she was going to listen or not.  
    The figure was ten meters away when it stopped swimming and stood in the waist deep water.
    Donovan fell back onto his rear, the tension draining from him, the exhaustion making him dizzy.  
    "I don't know how you did it," he said, "but I'm glad you did."
    Ehri's face was covered in a layer of grime, her hair had been singed, her left arm was cut and bleeding, and she had another wound across her abdomen. Despite all of that, she was alive, her expression serious as she approached them.
    "I've bought us some time, Major," she said. "Let us not waste it."

  NINE

    Gabriel stood in front of the hatch leading down into logistics, staring at the cold metal. It was the only thing remaining between him and Lieutenant Daphne O'Dea. The only remaining barrier before he would have to be the one to deliver the bad news.
    "I'm sorry, Daphne," he whispered to himself. "Soon didn't make it back."
    He wasn't sure how she would react when he said it for real. She was a soldier, and she had fallen in love with the pilot and married him knowing that he would likely die somewhere near Earth. She might be coldly accepting of his fate. She might fall apart. He needed to be ready for either reaction. The silver lining was that there was a chance, a small chance, that Soon wasn't dead. He was landing the starfighter, not crashing it.
    He heard a noise behind him and glanced over his shoulder. A tech crossed the corridor behind him, pushing a heavy cart of tools. Two hours had passed since they had come out of slipspace, somehow still alive. Two hours since Reza had informed them that they were essentially trapped out in the middle of nowhere, right after they had kicked the hornet's nest and sent the Dread searching for them.
    It was a truth that didn't sit well with him, or with anyone on the bridge who knew about it. Calawan was only fifty light years from Earth, close enough that if the Dread wanted to find it, they would be able to find it. Nobody had any doubts about that. Meanwhile, the only chance they had of defending the settlement was resting in a makeshift laboratory near the hangar, waiting for Reza and Guy Larone to be able to take a break from calculating possible stream positions to take a look at it instead.  
    Meanwhile, the Magellan was almost twenty generations away from the planet, and away from Earth, unless those calculations bore quick fruit. Plus, with the damage to the fluid systems, the starship only had three months of potable water. It sounded like a lot, but Gabriel knew it wasn't.
    He put his hand to his chest, feeling his mother's cross beneath his shirt. He traced the lines of it, tentatively asking for strength. For all that had gone right in retrieving the weapon, so much had gone wrong immediately after.  
    He knew he