Page 46 of Alliance
“Thank you for everything, Captain Traveler.”
“Just Trav, little bit. Not too late to stay on theMummerforever, you know.”
“No thank you. But can I visit again sometime?”
He took my elbow, locking me in place with an intensity that caught my breath. The smile vanished from his face, and his stare bore into mine like a laser cutter. “Watch yourself out there. I mean it.”
[Warning] I nodded once, the code at the edges of my mind flaring up again, tickling my LMem, pushing me to leave. “I will. I promise.”
He let me go but said nothing else as I stepped away, our eyes still caught and an unsettled sickly feeling building inside my gut.
Of course I would watch out. I’d make sure all of us got there safely, no matter what. I’d promised Fásach already, hadn’t I? That I’d do anything at all to help him and to get home? Ineededto get home. The thought of not going scorched my synapses. There was no way I’d abandon ship and—
Fásach tugged on my pant leg from outside of the pod, motioning for me to jump down to him, and I breathed away that sickly feeling. Fásach always made me feel better. I crouched, put my hands on his shoulders, and broke eye contact with Traveler.
He watched me, deathly still, colder than ice, as I hopped out into the howling wind and darkness.
14
Fásach and Roz had walked for two sols already, keeping an eye on the storm clouds gathered in the distance. The whiteout ahead of them thickened with each passing hour, only visible against the green glow of Big Blue upon the snow-laden mountain pass. Traveler had warned them that the storm would thicken over the course of a couple days. They should take their time approaching Relay Station Pahadthi 03 so they’d be in sufficient cover when they passed it by, but Fásach felt the itch of impatience under his hackles.
He was slowing them downtoomuch.
Not only did he insist on taking a belly position every hour, covering Safia and Misila in the white thermal blankets he and Roz were carrying to observe the landscape, but he also wasn’t strong enough to move at a clip with all the equipment weighing him down. He needed the breaks to catch his breath, and his paranoia was the perfect excuse.
Was that a predator in the distance or a rock?
Could an arctic sea creature bust through the ice from below?
Was the ice even thick enough to walk on?
The polar cap wasn’t ground at all but Svargapan Samudr. They caught glimpses of the black sea beneath the ice more and more frequently as they walked towards the permanent blush of pink on the horizon. The ice was so ancient and clear, there was no telling how thick it really was. Fásach found himself staringdown at his feet as the wind tempered and the snow gathered along their path in pristine, glittering dunes.
“We should stop here,” he panted. The vital pods whirred to a standstill, the horizontal tear drops hovering ten feet from both their positions. Roz called Misila’s in as she set her pack on the ground with a heavythunk.Fásach’s ear twitched and he scolded her, “Don’t do that. We don’t know how thick the ice is now that it’s warming up.”
“Sorry. My sensors estimate a thickness of seven inches though, so we shouldn’t have any problems,” Roz said with a frown. She squeezed her eyes closed as she unlatched her pack, withdrawing her set of auto-stakes. Fásach unpacked their shelter and secured one side to the ice before unfurling the rest of the enclosure.
Roz wasn’t lying but she wasn’t chiming either. In the deepest darkness of the polar cap, with the wind roaring and the moisture of their breath freezing on their faces, they’d focused entirely on the trek out. They hadn’t spoken except to coordinate the shelter and call for breaks. But now that Fásach could hear her, he wondered if there was a problem.
As soon as the shelter was up and the vital pods stowed safely amongst their packs, Fásach turned on the space heater and latched the double-insulated entrance. Both he and Roz removed their hoods, and he brushed the frost off his facial velvet, watching her with deliberation.
“Are you alright?” he asked.
Roz sat on her heels and hugged her knees with a pinched smile. “I’m okay.”
“You can tell me if you’re not.”
“I know.” She hugged herself a little tighter. “I’m not used to the silence, that’s all.”
Fásach’s ear twitched. Silence? Then it dawned on him.
“You mean the echoes?”
Roz nodded, then squeezed her eyes shut again, patting her ears. “It’s not really silence, but—” She let loose a shaky exhale. “There’s this constantbump, bump, bumpinside me. And an incessant ticking. They’re different rhythms and it’s driving me mad.”
Fásach set down a pack of rations and crawled across the thermal mat. “That’s your heart beating. The ticking though, I don’t know.”
“It’s my atomic clock,” Roz sniffed, rubbing her nose with a haunted look. “And now I just hear rhythms everywhere. Our feet crunching in the snow and the hum of the vital pods…”
