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Night. Only at night.
Daylight had too many eyes.
Too much heat.
The secret to crossing the desert. Move at night.
Walk heavy to spook the snakes away.
What snakes? Not her desert. Don’t know.
Finding food in the desert. Hunt at dawn and twilight.
Raw lizard, no head.
Scorpion, cut off stinger and poison sacs.
Finding water… No water.
Flecks of dew licked from a slit-open and laid-out plastic water bottle.
Now. Mirages?
Elayne flying aloft.
No. That was before. Three days. Yesterday. Last week. Some timeless time ago.
The Mi-28 Havoc.
Landing.
SASR training—she’d loved the rotorcraft.
Punch in the commands.
Especially the weapons systems.
A salvo of missiles, striking into the evening sky.
Then setting the autopilot. Hanging onto the hull, leaning into the cockpit,
