Dark Matters_ Shadow of Heaven (Book 3) - Christie Golden [69]
"Mother!" cried the older girl. Dammit The mother was probably unconscious from the smoke. The girl handed the infant to her sister and prepared to charge back in.
"You stay!" yelled Tom. "I'll get her."
He didn't think he would. He thought it very likely that the hut would collapse on both of them and he would die, right here, burned to a crisp like one of Neelix's failed souffles. He also knew he had no other choice.
He gulped a breath of air into seared lungs and raced back in. Paris couldn't see, so he groped frantically. His hands closed on a leg and he reached along the torso, gathering the woman in his arms. He turned and ran for the exit.
Paris had taken two steps before the hut collapsed into an inferno.
"Mama!" the girls shrieked, and rushed to her. Coughing, the woman sat up. She had been so close to the flames mat her hair and clothing were singed, but she was alive.
'Tom?" she rasped. He realized that it was Winnif, whose child had recently been abandoned to the care of the Crafters. To the care of the Alilann.
He smiled, turned, and kept going. Trima. He had to find Trima.
Suddenly something hard struck him in the center of his back. Paris stumbled and almost fell. A second hard thing whizzed by his ear.
"Betrayers!" screamed a woman's raw voice.
"Yurula?" Tom turned around and was barely able to duck in time as she threw something at him. This time, he could figure out what it was. It was a stone.
"You brought them here! You led them to us!" Stumbling on shaky legs still weak from the attack that had rendered her unconscious, she looked around for more ammunition.
Something twisted in Tom's gut. She hated him. She thought this whole thing had been planned, that the
Alilann wanted to kill them, and mat he and Chakotay had been part of a plan to exterminate Sumar-ka.
He turned and kept running. He hoped there would be time for explanations later.
More sound of weapons fire, but when he rounded a flaming pile that had once been Resul's pottery shed, he skidded to a halt.
Trima stood proudly, alone. Her garb had been torn and burned, but she appeared uninjured. Her hair was loose and hung in a tangle down almost to the ground itself, and her eyes gleamed wildly in the red light of the burning homes. She grasped Chakotay's phaser, the one Tom had left behind, and stood in a bare area encircled by several fallen bodies.
'Trima!" he cried in relief. She swung around, pointing the weapon at him. Instinctively he raised his hands. He hoped to God the setting hadn't accidentally been set to kill.
'Tom," she breathed. As he watched, the anger, fear, and feralness bled from her. "Oh, Tom. It's over."
He wondered how she could say that when there were still cries that filled the night, still houses mat burned, but then he realized that she wasn't talking about tonight's disaster.
Paris walked toward her and held out his hand for the weapon. Wordlessly, she gave it to him. He checked the phaser and relief washed over him. It was still set to stun. Trima hadn't killed these people. She'd be glad of that. At least he hoped she'd be glad.
Shapes ran at them out of the darkness. They moved in a precise military trot, and beside Tom, Trima tensed.
"Shoot them! Shoot them!" she cried, seizing Paris's arm and shaking it.
"It's okay," said Tom. "These are the good guys."
It was Chakotay, Ezbai, and the others who had not allied with loni. "We found and neutralized three of them," gasped Ezbai, "but loni is still missing."
Out of the darkness came a rock. It struck Ezbai on the side of the head and he sank down at once.
Paris whirled, targeted, fired. It was instinct Yurula might be armed only with rocks, but properly thrown, a rock could kill as surely as a phaser. Yurula went down without