“Okay.” Toby clicked the setting all the way over.
“Son, I—”
Toby triggered the tab. It made a small percussive thump.
Besen jerked. Her lips opened. She coughed. Toby lifted her to a sitting position and they all saw the indices stop rolling on her neck. She blinked furiously.
They looked at her speechlessly. She coughed again and said, “I… what…”
Toby embraced her and began crying.
Two quick IR pulses raked the air.
“Get her walking,” Shibo said.
Toby and Killeen helped Besen to her feet. She stared at them blankly.
—Shibo! Start falling back!—Jocelyn sent.
Shibo called, “Harper! Cover! Carmen—go!”
Toby massaged Besen’s neck. “Got to go now. Just a step, that’s all. Here, lean on me.”
Shibo said gently, “Toby, Besen—we have to go now.”
“What?” His head snapped up. “No, she—”
“Rest the flanks’re folded in,” Shibo said.
Killeen took Besen’s other shoulder. “Come on, we’ll get cut off.”
“Her pack,” Toby said.
“Leave it.”
“No, wait—” Toby reached into the pack. He fiddled with an unseen catch for a moment and then jerked something free. “I gave her this,” he said, holding up a chain with a small yellow pendant on it. “Don’t… don’t want damn Cybers get it.”
“Yes, take it.” Shibo looked at Killeen. “Cover.”
Killeen lay against the wall of the steep dry wash and fired a quick burst into the night. Shibo and Toby fell back with Besen. Killeen slid back down to Besen’s pack and found her weapon. He expended it noisily, throwing several high-energy pulses at every flickering target in his sensorium. Return fire chipped and burned the brow of the wash. He ducked under it and fled, running with a sudden fevered spike of fear. All the way to the riverside he was acutely aware of how big and tempting a target his back was.
He slid down the narrow sand embankment of the river and crashed into Jocelyn. An IR pulse whispered close by.
“How many more?” she gasped.
Three Bishops were manhandling a big mech part down the slope. Killeen looked around and saw Toby and Shibo getting Besen into an awkward assembly of mech sheet-metal that floated in the water.
“None,” he said, and started toward the water.
“Three’s the most for that. No room for you.”
“You sure?”
“Get down that way.”
“Look. I want—”
“Shut up and move.”
“I—” Killeen shut up.
“You’re the last, then. Help us with this.”
Jocelyn was crisp and efficient again. She worked well when following a plan. But there was more to being Cap’n than that.
Three large men rolled something forward on its edge. In the infrared it looked to Killeen like a big shell. He grabbed it and helped splash it into the shallows. The water was cuttingly cold at his ankles. He smelled the tint of Cybers nearby. Microwaves spat from the embankment above.
Big chunks of rock caught at his feet as he held on to the shell. It bucked and tossed in the frothing current.
“Get in,” Jocelyn said.
Killeen hesitated. Already the team was bringing down another piece of sheetmetal that some crafter had quickly bent into a crude cup shape. The metal had already lost most of its day heat and was so dim he could barely see it.
“How many to go?” he asked.
“Just us,” Jocelyn said.
“I’ll stay till—”
