If there was any doubt left after that, it was quickly dashed by one fateful encounter on the road to Cascadia.

One moment, Parvati and Nyoka and the captain had been marching along down the road, guns drawn but held loose by their sides, keeping to the edges in case they had to dive into some brush for cover. The sky had been clear and blue, the wind had been gentle in the foliage, and Parvati almost could have called it a beautiful day.

The next moment, they'd turned a corner and run smack into a family of mantisaurs.

There was no time to hide, and there were too many of them to fight. So, "Run!" Danika had cried, urging her teammates ahead of her as they scrambled back the way they came. Even with their head start, the snarls and clicks of the mantisaurs giving pursuit were much too close for comfort. The sound was punctuated by the reports from Nyoka's gun as she fired blindly over her shoulder, but it wasn't enough to silence them entirely. The mantisaurs just kept on coming.

So Parvati just kept on running.

She was so occupied with pumping her legs as fast as possible and trying not to slip that she didn't notice the captain falling behind until it was too late.

"Leave us alone, you bug-brained freaks!" was the shout that finally made her pause and turn, horror rising to grip her throat as she laid eyes on the unfolding scene. Captain Danika stood in the middle of the road, feet rooted like one of the great trees that rose up on either side of the path. Her assault rifle was in her hands rather than her favorite pistol. As Parvati watched, she fired into the cluster of beasts bearing down on her. One fell, and another, but it wasn't enough. Her intentions were clear: buy her teammates time to escape.

At the cost of her own life.

"Danika!" Parvati hardly recognized her own voice, twisted with panic. She lunged back down the path toward the captain—

Or, she tried, but Nyoka's firm hand clamped down on her arm suddenly, keeping her in place. The engineer spun to face her, desperate. "Let me go! She needs help!" She pulled against Nyoka's grip, aware of the continuing sounds of battle behind her. If she didn't act now, her captain would die.

"Dan knows what she's doing," Nyoka said grimly, looking at Parvati with something like resignation in her eyes. "We have to get you out of here."

"No!" Parvati tried to plant her feet like the captain had, but Nyoka was stronger than her. Almost without effort, the hunter began dragging her bodily up the path. Parvati struggled, throwing a glance behind her to see Captain Danika facing down against the last three mantisaurs, looking dreadfully small. "Nyoka, we have to help her! We can take them. Please," she begged, but the hunter didn't let go. Parvati raised her voice. "Why are you doing this? She's your captain too!"

That made Nyoka stop and fix her with a hard-as-steel gaze. "I know. That's why I'm following her orders."

"What?" Parvati's mind raced, juggling too many puzzle pieces to even begin trying to put them together. "Why would she order you to let her die?"

"She didn't. She ordered me to protect you."

Parvati's ears were ringing so loud she was sure she'd misheard. But at the same time, deep down, she knew it was the truth. Captain Danika absolutely would have ordered such a thing. Especially if Felix had been right all along.

But Parvati was not about to sit by and let it happen. Orders or not, she was not about to let her captain—her friend—her crush—sacrifice herself for her sake. Not while they still had a chance.

"Let me go," she said in deadly calm tones that surprised even herself. Nyoka did, if only out of sheer shock. Parvati lifted her chin and looked the hunter right in the eyes, the flinty eyes that tried so hard to hide the care underneath. She knew Nyoka didn't want to leave her captain either.

So, they wouldn't.

"We are going to save her," she declared, sure as death itself.

And without waiting for Nyoka to respond, she turned and raced back down the path toward her captain, gun drawn.

She was firing even before she reached the battlefield. The three mantisaurs that now surrounded Captain Danika flinched as her shots bounced off their chitin, but it wasn't enough to break their focus off the vulnerable woman.

"Hey!" Parvati yelled, trying to accomplish what her potshots could not. "Over here!" Her pulse was pounding in her throat, threatening to choke her, but Danika's life was more important than her fear. "Fresh, juicy meat, just for you!"

One of the mantisaurs shifted its attention to her, mandibles clicking in what could pass as curiosity.

She shot it in the face.

The beast screeched in rage and agony, rearing its wicked pincers far too close to the captain for comfort, but its focus was no longer on her. Now, it was coming for Parvati. Good.

Danika whirled around to fix her with a look of pure horror. "Parvati, no!" she cried, voice ragged with something the engineer had never heard before.

She met her captain's eye more calmly than she felt. She didn't intend to sacrifice herself to a bunch of bug-monsters today, but she sure as hell wasn't going to let Danika do it either. She hadn't come this far only to let the woman slip from her grasp forever.

Only, that might be exactly what she'd done without even meaning to.

While Danika's attention was on her, it was not on the pair of mantisaurs that still faced her down on either side. Her assault rifle was cradled limply in her hands, half-forgotten, which meant it was not defending her from the pincered onslaught.

And mantisaurs were not stupid creatures.

"Look out!" Parvati shrilled, too late.

A big, sharp claw swung at Danika from behind. She started to turn, belatedly, raising her gun as if in slow motion.

She never had a chance.

The claw caught her in the side, flinging her off her feet, and Parvati could hear her flesh tearing from where she stood.

"No!" Parvati's scream shattered the air.

It was soon accompanied by the frenzied reports of her pistol and Nyoka's minigun claiming vengeance on the remaining mantisaurs. And, "That's the last thing you'll ever do!" Nyoka's voice joined the din as she appeared at Parvati's side, and the two of them pressed forward as they rained bullets down on the unfortunate creatures.

Parvati wasn't even sure how they beat the last three monsters. Everything was a blur as she pulled the trigger on the captain's pistol over and over until nothing came out; as Nyoka picked up the slack; as she ran down the road toward her fallen captain, uncaring of the bug guts and shrapnel filling the air.

All she knew was that when she slid to her knees at Danika's side, the bugs were dead and her captain was dangerously close to following.

Danika breathed shallowly, unevenly, her eyelids fluttering as she hovered just shy of unconsciousness. Blood was pooling beneath her from an ugly gash in her side. A glimpse of bone was visible through all the red, and it didn't quite look like it was in the right place.

Parvati cradled the captain's pale, clammy face in her hands, panic sending a constant stream of oh, God and oh, no tumbling from her lips. She couldn't stop imagining the captain fading away in her arms, breathing her last while Parvati knelt there unable to do anything.

Except, she realized, she could do something. Adreno, she remembered hazily, and that was enough to jerk her into action. She began rifling in her belt bag for a shot of the medicinal substance. She found one quickly and drew it out, then reached for the inhaler Danika used to take her doses. Only, her hands were shaking so badly she couldn't slot the syringe into the port. Come on, come on. As Parvati struggled, she was aware of the captain's breaths growing fewer and farther between. A glance told her that Danika had lost the battle for consciousness and now lay unmoving in the spreading pool of her own blood.

Nyoka materialized by her shoulder just as she finally succeeded in preparing the inhaler. Now the problem was getting an unconscious woman to breathe deeply enough to get the medicine into her system.

Parvati held it to her lips and tried her best. "You gotta breathe, Captain," she said shakily to Danika's waning body. "It won't work unless you breathe. Come on. Please, Captain."

There was no response.

Parvati shook her shoulder, fear fermenting into hysteria. "Dani, come on. Breathe!" She was having trouble following her own advice, however, as the seconds passed and Danika showed no signs of hearing her. Was this it? Was this where she watched her captain die, without ever telling her how she felt?

Parvati regretted not saying anything while she'd had the chance. Now she might lose it forever.

Suddenly Nyoka dropped to her knees beside her and said in calm, businesslike tones, "Give me that."

Numbly, Parvati handed her the inhaler. Then she watched as, in one smooth motion, the hunter ejected the Adreno syringe and simply stuck it into Danika's arm.

Oh my God. You're an idiot! Parvati cursed herself as she only now remembered it's a syringe, duh! She buried her face in her hands, feeling an inch tall and just as useful.

Nyoka's hand landed on her shoulder comfortingly. "You weren't thinking straight. Panic does that to a person," she reassured, and Parvati felt marginally better.

Except they were not out of the woods yet. Danika was showing no signs of recovery, even with the Adreno in her system. She was still deathly pale, still struggling for breath, still bleeding out onto the grass. Still unconscious.

"Why isn't it working?" Parvati wondered, feeling panic clamp down like a vise around her rib cage again. She picked up one of the captain's hands and pressed her fingers to her pulse. It was barely there.

They were running out of time.

"Nyoka, why isn't it working?" she said again, voice breaking in the middle. Her thoughts were spiraling downhill fast. What would she do if the captain died here, on the side of the road outside Cascadia? What would any of them do? She was the reason they were all out here, cruising through space on a slender thread of a mission. They weren't much of a crew without a captain.

Instead of answering, Nyoka dove into Parvati's belt bag and unearthed a second Adreno. She plucked off the cap and jabbed the needle into Danika's arm, just beside the hole left by the first.

They waited anxiously. Silence blanketed the grove where they knelt as if the world was holding its breath. Parvati sure was holding her breath as she watched the captain's face for signs of life, hoping and praying and desperately fighting back tears. Was the captain's wound closing, just a little? Was color returning to her cheeks, just a little, or was that all in her imagination?

The pause grew so tense that it hurt.

Then, all at once, the captain's chest shuddered in a great gasp. Her eyes flickered open and she started to sit up before sinking back with a grimace.

Parvati couldn't help it; she collapsed onto the other woman in relief, tears slipping free. Danika coughed and groaned as she came back to her senses, and her expression was clouded and confused, but as if on instinct, she wrapped her arms around the engineer and embraced her without a word.