Read Wounds, Book 1 for Free Online Page B

nothing. Of course, the sensors could’ve been damaged. On the other hand, they’d been good enough to read this planet. So a whole lot of nothing meant they’d ended up far, far away. That was pretty bad.
    So make a plan, you idiot. You’ll feel better if you’re doing something, if you’ve got a plan .
    It was a psychological game. She knew that. Helplessness made people panic. You panicked, you were as good as dead. So, okay, in the morning, she’d head toward that city; keep the sea on her right and the mountains behind her and go south until she found someone.
    “And what you got to think about now is what you’re going to eat and drink.” Her voice sounded weird and a little small because everything was so still. But talking to herself made her feel better. She dodged a tumble of boulders and angled in left toward the hollow she’d opted on for the night. “Because face it, sweetheart. You are going to be here for a nice, long time. You’re on your own and…” She looked up and froze.
    There were three of them: a woman and two men. They each had a rifle and their rifles were pointed straight at Lense.
    No one spoke for a very long moment. Then the woman—with dusky, plum-colored skin, no nose, only the right half of her jaw that made her face look dented, and a zigzag scar slicing along her collarbone from left to right—said, “You were saying? About being on your own.”

    “That’s your story?” Their leader, a lanky and well-muscled man with a square chin and brown hair that spilled in ringlets around massive shoulders, eyed her skeptically. He wore a coarse, beige linen shirt that was open to his throat, a pair of olive-drab trousers, and cracked black leather combat boots streaked with deep seams of red-ocher grit. A pistol was holstered high on his right hip. But, unlike the woman and the other man, this man was unmarked. No scars, no missing limbs. His only similarity to the other two was the color of his skin: a dusky purple like an underripe Damson plum but with more blue.
    Not Bolian, and Andorians are more sky-blue. This is something old; on the tip of my tongue, something about hemoglobin…
    “Why don’t I believe you?” he said.
    Lense gave a halfhearted shrug. “That’s not my problem.”
    “Oh, but I’m afraid it is.”
    “I told you,” said Lense. “I was with friends. We were on a hike. We got separated.”
    The man’s brown-black eyes slitted. Lense forced herself not to look away. Her stomach was turning somersaults, though. If she couldn’t convince these people that she was just some stupid hiker, there was no way out of this, and there sure as heck wasn’t going to be any cavalry charging over the hill to come to her rescue.
    She was in some sort of rebel camp: a warren of caves several hours north of where she’d been. The caves were a good ten degrees C cooler than outside, a welcome relief. The air smelled wet and there must be some sort of underground river or stream because Lense heard a faint but steady drip, like moisture pattering on rock. The place was well ventilated, too. Every now and again, a finger of cool air brushed along the nape of her neck and gave her goose bumps. Torches flared along the walls, releasing curling tendrils of sooty smoke that streaked the rocky walls charcoal black. Couldn’t keep the torches going if there was no way to replenish air.
    “So why didn’t they go looking for you?” the man asked.
    “I’m sure they did. If your people hadn’t interfered, they’d probably have found me by now.”
    The man grunted. “My people wouldn’t have come anywhere near if there’d been the slightest hint of a search party. But there wasn’t one, and I have to wonder about that. They’re your friends, so why didn’t they raise an alarm? Those woods ought to have been crawling with Kornaks. But you were alone. So these… friends of yours, they can’t be that fond of you now, can they? After all, what type of friend leaves