A/N: And, once again, another unremittingly mushy pile of thanks to my readers and reviewers for your reads and reviews. I really didn't imagine that this story would be so well received (paranoid!) and to find that people are not only enjoying it, but really enjoying it, is fantastic. Ridiculously over-large numbers of thank-yous to you all.

And onward we go - into the Badlands. Hold tight!

As always, I own nothing other than that which has escaped rather frantically from the confines of my imagination...


Chapter Twenty Two

Stealth versus Urgency

As the rover pulls off the grassland and onto the rougher, sandy ground, Mira leans forward, "Pull up."

"What?" Taylor asks, his foot still firmly on the accelerator.

"I said, 'pull up'."

"Why?" Jim demands.

"They have a sensor grid. It's patchy, and you never know whether it's working from one day to the next, or which sector it's monitoring, but it picks up vehicles."

"So what? They'll think it's one of theirs."

"They haven't got any rovers. Only rhinos. If they pick up an approaching rover, they'll know it's a hostile, and Wallace will be dead before we even sight the perimeter."

"They did have rovers." Taylor snaps, crossly, "What happened to them?"

"What do you think? I couldn't ask everyone to walk out of the encampment. It's a five hour drive, so imagine what it would be on foot."

"You stole their rovers." It is not a question, more a weary observation, "Why does that not surprise me?"

"They weren't up to much; there was only one left with power in it by the time we got to the edge of the forest - and that one's cell was on the verge of giving out. We had to walk the rest of the way. Most of them have been cannibalised into our shelters since."

"If that's the case," Jim disputes, "How come they didn't come out and try to take out our recon team?"

"They probably didn't know about them. Even I know how good Guzman is: he would've left a vehicle well back and gone in on foot - and kept his distance when he found them. There's patches of water out there - if you can process it - and as long as you take shelter during the night, you're generally safe from the local predators. Chances are that, if their vehicle was picked up, Hooper would've thought it was one of theirs on patrol anyway. Whatever vehicle Guzman used, if it was before we left, there would've been rovers in the camp as well as rhinos."

"And what are we supposed to do?"

Mira looks at Jim with almost pitying eyes.

"Walk? You want us to walk across a damned desert? How the hell are we supposed to do that with the supplies we've got?"

"There's a way in. We devised it almost as soon as we arrived - I wanted a means of getting to the forests and back. There's a sequence of staging shelters from here to an outcrop overlooking the encampment. Hooper's never known about it; it starts outside his patrolling zone. We can follow it and be on his doorstep in three days."

"Three days?" Jim stares at her, aghast, "Are you serious?"

"We could do it quicker - but we'd be dead before we were even within five miles of the encampment. It's not flat terrain, most of it's sandy so walking on it's harder, and we'll need to shelter during the bulk of the day to avoid the heat, and most of the night to avoid the predators."

Taylor's anger has, so far, been silent; but his expression has been doing all the talking for him, "So, we can't get to the camp in a vehicle because they'll know a rover's a hostile; walking there is going to take days rather than hours, and you've given the encampment mere days left to live. And you still think there's hope of a deal after this? What the hell chances are there of us getting there and finding Malcolm's still alive?"

Mira glares back, "Given that the reason for all of this is your son: who, if I remember, you didn't have the guts to kill - you left it in the hands of a girl to shoot dead. I'd suggest, if you're looking for someone to hold culpable, go find a mirror. I can only hope that you'll have the guts to kill your precious Lucas this time."

He bares his teeth, and the growl of anger that emerges is such that Mira takes a step back almost instinctively. Grabbing at the hilt of the sword, Taylor wrenches it from its sheath, grasps Mira's arm and holds its deadly edge at her throat, "Believe me," he hisses, his voice low with rage, "I have no intention of letting this go on any longer. If that means taking down my own son, then that is what I'll do." The words sink to a deadly whisper.

Despite the feathery sharpness of the blade, Mira shows no fear; but her voice, when she speaks, has lost its disrespectful timbre, "I believe you."

Releasing her arm, Taylor steps back and returns the blade to its sheath, "Get our supplies together. We move out while it's still light. Mira, get us to the first shelter, or you take the watch if we're stranded."

It takes no more than five minutes to gather their weapons and survival gear. Her eyes rather less cold than they were when she first encountered the pair, Mira turns and leads them out into the desert.


Malcolm burrows through yet another pile of electronics components that have been deposited at his side, and sags in despair. None of it is of any use to him. Sophisticated though much of the equipment brought through from 2149 was, the military paraphernalia is proving to be utterly incompatible with the altogether finer and more delicate materials used to power and operate the terminus. The tools that he has been given are little better - it's as though he is being asked to carve a fragile paperweight with a sledgehammer and a mattock. Put bluntly, he has been sitting in front of the panel for nearly two and a half hours, and he still has no idea where to begin.

Behind him, Lucas paces back and forth impatiently, "What about some circuitry from the sensor net? Would that be suitable?"

He wants to say no; but if he says anything that Lucas does not deem to be positive, he is threatened with an hour in that aluminium crate. With the sun still high, it would be almost beyond endurance in there, and Malcolm is prepared to do whatever he must to avoid being locked up in it.

"Let me work through this lot first, Lucas." He offers, trying to sound as reasonable as he can, "Let's not cripple anything vital if we don't have to."

Rather than complain, Lucas deposits a water bottle on the table beside him, and he gulps at the contents gratefully. It tastes foul, having come from the recycler, but it's clean, and at least his captors realise he's not going to get very far in helping them if he's crazed with thirst.

"How did you find me at the outpost?" He asks Lucas, suddenly. Anything to stop him bloody pacing back and forth, "All I can think of at the moment is sheer serendipity."

To his relief, Lucas takes a seat, leaving him free to continue burrowing through his collection of useless rubbish, "Oh, it wasn't. I've been keeping a watch on the colony for more than a year. I knew I'd need you sooner or later, but with only soldiers coming out of the compound, I couldn't work out how to get at you. You were far too protected inside, so I was waiting for you to leave it; everything hinges on you, of course, so I had to get my hands on you. And then, I saw your rover coming out: I remembered your stupid protesting when we took it during the occupation, and the amount of junk you carry on it is quite distinctive. From your direction, it wasn't hard to work out which outpost you were heading for. I was still a member of the colony when the outposts were being planned, and there was only one out to the east.

"I hiked through to the Outpost in about a day or so - and got there just in time to see Tubby pulling you out of the front door. I suppose I could've stopped him then and there - if I'd been armed; but, given that he had you tied up, I realised he was going to do something nasty and I thought I'd see how it panned out. I must admit," He adds, quite cheerfully, "I was impressed with the amount of work he'd put into the demise he planned for you. Given what you did to me when you blew the terminus, it would've been my ideal type of poetic justice to leave you to see out your last hour or so in a ready-made grave. Hell, if I hadn't needed you alive, I would probably've stepped in and helped him. But then, he was so fixed on what he was doing that it was a simple thing to just grab his sonic rifle and shoot him down. Using that machete thing on him was just for insurance purposes."

Despite what Robert was doing to him, Malcolm can't suppress a violent shudder at the offhand manner in which Lucas describes murdering the man. Taylor's son seems to have absolutely no respect, or reverence, for life in any fashion at all. It may well have been vicious hate that drove Robert to do what he did, but Lucas viewed his act as merely a means to an end, casually killing someone because they were an inconvenient obstacle.

He can't think of anything to say, and he's run out of objects in the crate to examine. Before Lucas can comment, however, Katz - apparently some sort of second in command, by the look of it - approaches, "Mr Taylor, the last of the water condensers has blown. We're down to a single recycler." He sounds calm, but there's no disguising the look of consternation in his eyes. All they have now is recycling the contents of urinals. Filtered urine.

Malcolm looks across at Lucas, wondering if this will prompt him to accept that they're on a hiding to nothing and give the desperately needed order to move out. For a moment, the man is obviously deep in thought, and then he turns, "Can we use any of the circuitry in the terminus?"

"Are you out of your mind?" Malcolm looks at him as though he's gone insane, "How am I supposed to repair the terminus if we're all dying of dehydration, for God's sake? Have you any idea what heat exhaustion's like? I have. I volunteered for a digging party once when we were laying the foundations for a new lab building and I overdid it. I had to spend the rest of the day in a darkened room on a drip."

"If the terminus is working," Lucas insists, "It won't matter, will it? Get it working and we can go back to 2149 - and we can have all the water we want. That's the priority - and if we can use the condenser to make it happen, then we do it."

"What kind of priority is that?" Malcolm demands, "You'd condemn everyone in this entire camp just for something that probably won't even happen? I'm more use to you if I repair that damned condenser! Or do you want everyone in this bloody place to be reduced to drinking each other's urine?"

Lucas glares at him, viciously, "The priority is the terminus."

"Screw you. I've got more chance of repairing the sodding condensers. At least then we've got more time for me to get it through your thick skull that the terminus is finished!"


He is crumpled on the floor, a hard, smooth surface that brings him no relief. The walls burn, the air burns and the light that comes in through the vents brings in only more heat with it. Breathing is a torment; hot air finding its way down to his lungs to replace the hot air already present, and that robs him of yet more moisture on its way out. Heat rises - that's why he lies down; but it makes no difference. It is hotter above him, yes, but the air below is hardly any cooler.

He must not move. The more he moves, the warmer he gets. Would it help if he stretched out? Perhaps the heat would leach out of him into the metal floor. But then, that would mean exposing more surface area from which moisture can be leached. Whatever he can think of to ease the misery seems only to have disadvantages.

How long has he been here now? He has no idea; it's impossible to measure the passage of time when each second, and the next, and the next, and the next, serves only to hurt him. Time might as well have slowed down so as to be functionally immeasurable, and he is not entirely sure how long they intend to leave him here.

Swallowing is painful; the bottle of water that he was granted - he can't remember how long ago - reduced to nothing more than that distant memory. His mouth is completely dry, and the thought of water is almost a worse torture than the heat of the air that he breathes.

Lucas is insane. He's utterly out of his mind. Why else would he have demanded that the only person who could save them all from a hideous death by thirst be locked in an aluminium box in the open sun? That it's lower than it was earlier in the day means nothing; the accumulated heat of the day is still present, and shows no sign of dispersing.

Why can't he see that they need a condenser more than they need a terminus? Why? Does he really intend to allow all the soldiers in the camp to die just so he can be proved right? Why can't he just let it go? Why not?

Because he doesn't want to, Braveheart.

He looks up, bemused at a nickname he hasn't heard since he was a child. The movement is sharp, and it makes him dizzy. Assuming he's imagining things, he rests his head back down on the floor. His father called him that - long ago and as a joke. He'd been getting ready to attend a Clan dinner, in formal Highland dress, with his favourite Prince Charlie Jacket and the Wallace Green kilt as he hated the formal trews normally worn by the Lowland Clans. He'd let his seven year old son look at his ornamental dirk - though he wasn't taking it; his sgian dubh already tucked into his kilt hose. The sight of his boy waving the ornate dagger about had made him laugh, and he had christened him after that ridiculous film about their famous Clan member, William Wallace. His beloved Da had called him 'Braveheart' right up until the end…Look after your Mam, Braveheart. I'll be back before you know it

Oh God…he hasn't really thought about his father for as long as he can remember - except in a formal, detached manner that indicates history rather than experience. Why now? Why? Is it because he's at such a low ebb? Maybe he's starting to develop heat stroke, and he'll die soon. Maybe that's why.

Try to sleep. It'll make the time pass more quickly…or perhaps he'll die in his sleep, which is infinitely preferable to dying while awake and knowing what's happening to him. He knows that from experience.

He groans, faintly. The heat is no worse, but it's no better either, and every breath he takes just seems to grow more uncomfortable. He must not think of water…must not…another groan, because now he can think of nothing else.

And then - the most welcome sound in the world; the crunching of approaching footsteps on the gravelly sand. A thump, a clunk, a scrape, and then the front is pulled forward.

"C'mon. Out."

He tries to comply, but his arms and legs are shaking so much that he can't. Forcing himself to concentrate, he starts to issue himself with orders.

Left arm. One inch. Right arm. One inch. Now legs. Left. Right.

Slowly, painfully slowly, he begins to crawl as best he can towards the opening. Even outside, there is no relief. Not yet - the sun is going down, yes, but its rays are still brutal, even now.

Impatient, the two men who have come to fetch him reach in and grasp his arms, dragging him out of the aluminium crate in which he has been imprisoned since he insulted Lucas. His legs still refuse to work properly, so the pair heft him up, and lug him back into the camp, to where Hooper and Lucas are engaged in animated conversation.

"You idiot, Lucas!" Hooper snaps, furiously, "What happened to the 'non-damaging torture' stipulation? Look at him!"

"Let him rest up overnight." Lucas ignores the raging Commander, "Find some shade and give him one cup of water. No more." He gets up and approaches them, "I don't take kindly to my work being disparaged, Malcolm. Just bear that in mind in future."

He is dragged into a tent, and dropped unceremoniously upon the floor. In the dimness, he can make out a single enamelled mug that contains his entire portion of water for the coming night. Despite his thirst, he does not dare to touch it, knowing full well that, if he does, he will be unable to stop himself from draining it - and then what will he drink for the next ten hours or so?

The temperature is dropping, at least, so the air that he breathes is cooler now. As long as he stays completely still, and allows the heat to leave him, the water can wait.

Taylor's coming for me. I know he is. He wouldn't abandon me here - he wouldn't…even if not for me, then for Max…

Why the hell did he let himself think that? Already he can feel the first sob forming. He can't cry. He can't afford to lose the moisture.

But he misses her. So much it hurts. If he sleeps now, then all he wants is to wake in the morning and find himself in the infirmary, seeing her face as she looks into his; her hand grasping his…safe…home…

Moaning softly in his misery, he draws his legs up and tries to shut out the thought in sleep.


Jim has lost any sense of the passage of time. While the air is not too hot now, tramping over sand that yields under his every step is far more tiring than he remembers, and his calf muscles are strained and complaining. Besides, the light's fading, and what was it that Mira was saying about finding shelter? But then, now that he thinks about it, he remembers Guzman talking about shelters built by the Sixers - having found one or two.

"Where's this shelter you promised, Mira?" He asks, still tramping along.

"Do you really think we'd make them that obvious?" She answers, sounding utterly untroubled by the exertion, "It's just up ahead. We'll need to stop: there's so little cover out here that the predators tend to be nocturnal - more chance of catching stuff if you can see in the dark better than your prey can."

The shelter, when they reach it, is so well hidden that Jim knows they would've missed it entirely. Slightly away from the path that she's following, Mira recognises it from an incongruously planted desert shrub that seethes with vicious thorns. Seeing it, he suddenly remembers that there's been one such shrub at regular intervals all along their route - their nasty defences having captured his interest, though not their placement. They don't look out of place, not to an inexpert eye; but to a Sixer, it would be a signal as plain as day, both of the path they need to take, and the location of the shelters. And he's taken absolutely zero account of every single one. Damn, she's smart: no wonder Guzman found so few - and had to speculate about the existence of the rest.

Setting aside some dry grasses, Mira lifts a cover and indicates the hole it reveals, "Down there. Believe me, you don't want to be caught above ground by a Bambiraptor - it's bigger and faster than you are, and a sonic pistol's no better than pop-gun against one. If you need to answer a call of nature, do it on the other side of that rise. There's no room for a latrine in the shelters, and Bambiraptors are attracted to the smell of human waste."

It's a short drop, and one that won't leave them unable to climb out again. The shelter itself seems to have been carved out of the rock, a rather soft sandstone, and contains rough hewn sleeping platforms, and a storage bay that holds a selection of ration packs, a large canister that proves to be filled with water and a bottle of iodine. Without hesitation, Mira empties a portion of the water into a smaller pot, and adds a stream of the iodine, "This'll make it taste filthy, but better than it actually being filthy. I don't want either of you two having to make an emergency exit overnight."

"How is it that this canister's still got water in it?" Taylor asks.

"These aren't used all the time; we used to keep the stocks up in passing when we were out hunting. I didn't see things panning out any differently from this, and I wanted to hedge my bets - so we built these along the shortest route out from the encampment. Hooper didn't have a clue what we were doing."

"I bet you didn't expect to be using them to go back in, rather than get out." Jim observes, as she breaks out some rations.

She shrugs, hands out the ration packs, and checks her watch.

"I think we'll supplement our stocks with this when we move on." Taylor says, "If what you say about the camp is true, then it might be worth being prepared. At the worst, it'll give us something to bargain with."

"Won't we need it on the way back out?" Jim asks.

"I'm not banking on walking out. We'll take one of their rhinos."

After several checks of her watch, Mira finally pours out the portion of water. As she promised, it tastes absolutely foul, but at least anything that might've given their stomachs trouble has been killed by the iodine. A rudimentary means of purification, yes, but time-honoured for its efficacy.

"I don't know what it'll be like there now," she says, after a while, "Hooper's lost a lot of the men to disease, bad decisions like sending patrols out at night and his punishment cell."

"Punishment cell?" Taylor asks, looking up from his rations, mildly perturbed.

"He had an aluminum crate put in an unsheltered part of the back of the encampment. Anyone who breaks rules enough times gets locked in it for up to an hour at a time in the middle of the day when the sun's hottest. I made it clear that if he tried it with any of my people, he'd go to bed one night and never wake up again. After that, only his men got put in it - in the summer, some of them didn't survive it. Not even a single hour. They forgot one man on one occasion: by the time they went back, he wasn't just dead, he was starting to cook."

"Would they put Malcolm in it?" Jim asks, worriedly.

"Not unless Lucas is entirely out of his mind. Even after an hour, anyone who comes out of there can't move for at least a day. If he wants that terminus repaired, he's going to need Wallace fully functioning." She drains the last of her water, grimacing at the taste, "I suggest you get some sleep. We'll be moving again in six hours."


Malcolm opens his eyes and groans faintly. His head is aching fiercely, as are his limbs. He has no idea what the time is, but it seems from the quiet, and the dark, that it must still be night outside. His mouth is still dry, but the cup of water still awaits his attention, and with luck there may be less time to wait for a top up if he drains it now. A single cup won't be anything close to enough - but it's all he has, so he'll just have to make the best of it.

It's lukewarm, and tastes foul - but at least it's something. The relief lasts perhaps five minutes as his dehydrated body greedily snatches at every molecule, and then he is horribly thirsty again. Slowly he rises onto his hands and knees, and crawls to the tent flap to look out.

The sky is starting to grow vaguely pale; the first hints of the new day dimming the stars just a little. As long as it's not the false dawn, of course. Now that the heat of the day has been given back to the atmosphere, the air is shockingly cold - but after yesterday's agony in the crate, he almost bathes in that chill; revels in it. Each breath seems soothing after the hot air that tormented him in that enclosed space, and he closes his eyes to enjoy it. With matters as dire as they are, he must find enjoyment in anything that he can, otherwise he may well lose the will to keep going; and he can't do that if he's going to survive long enough for Taylor to find him and take him home.

He pushes the flaps aside and sits quietly in the opening. There's absolutely no point in trying to run - where would he go? Instead he continues to allow the cold air to drift around him. His core body temperature has recovered, certainly, but there's still the problem of dehydration. Maybe he should go in search of the dead condenser and see if he can find a way to repair it.

No. While Hooper might appreciate it, Lucas would just see it as another insult. No matter what he does, unless it's related to the stupid terminus, he'll just be punished for doing it. The man is singleminded unto death. And not just his death - that of everyone around him. Just so he can win. Why doesn't he realise that it's not about winning now? It's about surviving and prospering as a community. If Lucas would just allow him to give some time to their survival, then it might be possible to make some progress - though he's not fool enough to think that he can repair that terminus. The only way to do it is to take it back to the colony. He might as well suggest trying to send it to the moon.

Someone emerges from one of the tents nearby, and walks away through the dusty buildings. Bemused, Malcolm watches until he's lost to sight. Going to visit the latrines perhaps? The man was hardly in full combats, after all. Shrugging to himself, he resumes his quiet contemplation.

Then someone's standing in front of him, and he looks up, "Didn't try to run then?" Lucas asks.

"Where would I go?" Malcolm asks, "I'm not that desperate to get away from here."

"Ah yes." Lucas smiles, "Because my dear father's coming to get you."

"Not necessarily. I'm just not sure I could find something out there that would kill me faster than dehydration."

"Talking of which," Lucas adds, fetching out a canteen, "Time for your next cup of water."

"So basically, you want me to be unable to repair anything because I've got no manual dexterity?"

Lucas shrugs, "Everyone's on one cup of water every two hours; the recycler can't cope with anything more than that."

"And what about the condenser?"

"The circuitry is out and awaiting your inspection under the gazebo."

Malcolm stares at Lucas, his eyes widening, "You've removed the circuitry from the water condenser?"

"Of course. It's blown, so what use it is now? Once the terminus is running, it won't matter any more anyway."

"Lucas - how many more times? It's not going to work! If it had, we wouldn't be having this conversation, would we? You would've gone back and changed the outcome of the occupation! Doesn't the fact that you clearly haven't done that mean anything to you? I know I can't possibly match you as a physicist - it's not a field I ever had time to get into - but even I know that time moves forward equally for the points at either end of the fracture. All they do is link one location in time and space with another. There's no way to make the fracture at this end connect with the other at a point when it previously opened. All we can do is predict the openings and tether them."

"Don't push it, Malcolm. I worked out how to make them go both ways; do you think I can't work out how to force the next available fracture to connect with the one that opened in 2149?"

"And you know for certain that it'll open in the same place as the one that we used to use near the colony? I get that there's one that opens in and around here - but where the hell does it even go?"

Lucas crouches and glares directly into his face, "It'll go where I tell it to go. I just need you to repair the terminus. If you want any more water, then you get started on it."

Malcolm sighs. He tried - but he has no choice. He must continue to fail to repair that damned terminus, or die horribly from dehydration.

By midmorning, the sun is high again, and the lack of water is starting to take its toll. The circuitry from the condenser was, as Malcolm surmised, wholly unsuitable to be used to repair the terminus. He has no means of doing a single bloody thing with it, but still he must continue, Sisyphus-like, to engage in an impossible act for a task-master who refuses to see that it cannot be done. He has dropped his laser scalpel for the third time, and he can't see properly. Behind him, Katz is back, "We've lost another man." He says, not as quietly as he thinks, "He walked out into the desert this morning. Hooper's demanding another inspection."

"Of what?" Lucas grouches, "Does he think that making them straighten their epaulettes is going to make this terminus work sooner?"

Katz has no opportunity to reply before the blast of a sonic pistol makes them all jump.

"Now what?" Lucas demands, and Katz hurries away. He is not gone long, "It's Jacobs. He shot himself in his tent."

Keeping his gaze on the terminus, Malcolm sighs. And so it begins.

Their only hope of fresh water is now utterly beyond repair, and the recycler is in such a parlous state that they can't risk pushing it too hard, or that'll blow, too. And then what? No wonder the soldiers are starting to look for a quicker way out.

"Well?" Lucas is now standing over him.

"Well what?"

"How's it coming? Time's ticking."

"It can bloody well tick all it wants. I can't replace anything without suitable parts; of which there are none whatsoever." He turns, "Lucas - there's still time. The vehicles are still working, aren't they? For their sake, if not your own, send them back to the Colony. It may not be 2149, but at least they can make a life there. Terra Nova's all about second chances - why deny them that? I can't repair the terminus - not without going back to get replacement parts, and even then it's not likely that I'll be able to make the thing work again. All you're doing is condemning us all to death, and for what?"

Lucas turns, "Katz!"

For a moment, Malcolm really believes it - that Lucas has seen sense. He is, however, wrong.

"Put him back in the box."

"Lucas - no, don't do it; I can't repair anything if you leave me in there for an hour. I couldn't function after the last time. There's no point! Lucas!"

Lucas ignores him. His expression rather discontented, Katz grasps his arm, "You heard him."

"Lucas! Don't do this! I can't go back in that box! What's wrong with you? If you think that the terminus can be repaired, then why the hell have me put back in that bloody crate?"

"To make it clear to you that I will not tolerate disobedience. This is your fault, Malcolm. Not mine."

He still calls back over his shoulder as Katz frogmarches him away. The sun is almost at its zenith as they emerge into the open space where the crate is set, and Malcolm stares at it in absolute horror, "Don't. Please - don't…"

"No choice. I'll be back when Lucas sends me." Katz pulls down the front, "In."

Malcolm shakes his head, his eyes wide with fear.

"Get in." Katz draws his pistol, "Or die. Isn't someone supposed to be coming for you? Shame if they find your roasting corpse."

With no alternative, Malcolm complies, and groans faintly as the door is locked behind him.


Now that he knows what to look for, Jim finds the trail an easier prospect. His only frustration is the regularity with which they need to hide. In the day, it's from the murderous sun. In the dark, it's from murderous predators. They've been at this for two days now.

At least they still have good stocks of water. Very good, in fact, as they raid each outpost of every drop they can carry. Conversation, on the other hand, is sparse. There is little that they can talk about. Instead, he occupies himself with thoughts about how they can accommodate the remaining Sixers back into the colony. Taylor may not want to contemplate the idea, but it's going to happen, so he might as well plan for it.

"Mira." He says, as she seems completely shut off from them - ignoring their presence unless she is required to acknowledge it.

"Shannon." She answers, shortly. Not exactly a dismissal, but not an invitation either.

"I'm going to need a staff manifest from you."

"A staff manifest?" she looks at him, cynically.

"Yeah. I want to know what your people can offer so that I know who to have in my team, and who can go into others. That 'metalworker', as you called her, runs our newest department. She's not some random woman - and she could use people who can work metal or wood. You said you could offer us skills - it'd be helpful to know where we can deploy them so everyone reintegrates better."

Her expression changes, as she realises he's quite serious. Behind her, Taylor grimaces, but says nothing. Rather than answer immediately, she turns and breaks away from the trail.

"Where are you going?" Taylor asks, at once, "It's not that hot yet."

"Too hot for us to get to the next shelter." Mira counters, "We wait until late afternoon before we continue. Shannon, I'll consider your request."


Taylor sits quietly as both Shannon and Mira grab some sleep. Out of the sun, it's not too hot in the shelter - and he knows that to continue now would probably end in their inglorious deaths. Nonetheless, he chafes at the delay. One of his people is in danger, and needs his help - and he's sitting in a cave while his companions rest.

Drawing the sword, he examines it. He hasn't done so for a long time - not since he first received it. The edge is deadly sharp, the metal decorated with a weaving pattern of iridescence imparted through long folding and hammering as Yseult worked through her grief and pain by making something beautiful. Not again. He is not going to let her suffer again - he lost Niall. He is not, dammit, not going lose Malcolm. Besides, apart from breaking her heart, it would leave the Colony far poorer. Sure, Malcolm's a pain in the ass at times - but he's bright, capable and much less inflexible than he used to be when he first arrived - even more so since he took up with Yseult.

Damn him. Damn that wretched son of his - every time he thinks that everything is safe and secure, Lucas seems to rise again like some sort of revenant and try to smash it to pieces. How can he continue to love a son who is so bent on destroying everything good that his father has built? And yet, he does…

Forgive me, Ayani. He's dishonoured your memory in every way possible - and yet I can't give up. Could you? Any more than I can't?

As with Wash, there's no reply. There never is.

Sighing, he returns the sword to the sheath. One more day and they'll be able to see the encampment, and he can bring this whole business to an end. Once and for all.