Chapter 1 #2
I swallowed hard and tried to ignore the churning in my stomach.
A blue light was fine. The crawler wouldn’t tip; it was built not to.
I was on course and nearly two-thirds of the way to the station.
Arron and the rest of the team at Inga were monitoring the crawler’s progress, ready to spring into action at the slightest sign of trouble.
Never mind that pretty much any kind of trouble out here on the icy expanse would kill me long before anyone from the station could reach me.
That last thought was not helpful, so I kept my eyes on the window and made a mental list of what I most looked forward to once I was off this planet.
Sunshine. Wind that didn’t sear my skin or make my bones ache.
The ability to take a day trip to a lake or beach.
Come to think of it, water in liquid form rather than as endless ice.
The sound of ice pellets scouring the hull made me add rain to my list. I missed the sound and feeling of rain as much as I missed the sun’s warmth and skies in colors other than gray.
Hyderia experienced lovely thunderstorms all year long, especially in its northern hemisphere’s temperate rain forest. My future colleagues at the station there would probably think me strange, but I might just spend the first few storms outside to savor the sensation of raindrops on my skin—
An alarm blared, a light flashed red, and something huge and black and half as big as the crawler smashed through the front window.
It was all over in a blink.
One second, I was searching the horizon for my first glimpse of Inga Station’s domes and daydreaming of a Hyderian thunderstorm…
…and the next, my ears were ringing, I tasted blood, and I was unbelievably, agonizingly, heart-stoppingly cold.
Everything was hazy and in slow motion, as if I was looking into the distance down a long tunnel or I’d been submerged in some viscous fluid. I blinked a few times and tried to make sense of what had happened.
My nearly unbreakable helmet visor was cracked on the right side. The roar in my head—or at least part of it—was the wind screaming through the crack. Ferocious cold poured into my suit through a rip in its right shoulder.
The right half of the crawler’s passenger compartment was gone. If I’d been sitting on the seat to my right, I would be gone too. I stared blankly at the ruin of the compartment as if watching it on a viewscreen instead of sitting in the midst of the destruction.
Somehow, the crawler was still moving. Groaning and clunking, it trundled across the ice in the general direction of the station. The impact had thrown it off course, but the heavy track rollers seemed intact.
Blood pooled in my mouth and dripped down my chin. The air blasting into my helmet sprayed the blood across the inside of my visor.
How badly was I injured? Was I bleeding internally? I licked blood off my lower lip and flinched. No, I’d bitten my tongue during the impact.
Through the ringing in my ears and roar of wind in my helmet, I caught the sound of someone shouting over comms. The voice sounded like Arron, but I couldn’t tell what he was saying. Probably some version of Stay alive—we’re coming for you.
Stay alive. Sure, no problem. Damaged crawler, no protection from the cold or wind, broken helmet, torn survival suit, and still more than twenty kilometers from the station. This was my worst nightmare come true.
A bubble of terror and panic tried to rise. With effort, I stomped it down furiously.
You’re damn right I’ll stay alive. I didn’t work this hard and come this far and earn an impossible place at a research station on Hyderia to die on this frozen rock.
I fumbled for the emergency repair kit in the pocket on my suit’s right leg. The wind tried to rip the patch out of my gloved hand, but I got it into my left hand and slapped it over the rip in the right shoulder of my survival suit.
Pain nearly whited out my vision. My scream was inaudible in the howling wind.
Shit—I was hurt. My shoulder might be dislocated, or some bones might be broken. Shock and the brutal cold had muted the pain until I hit my shoulder with my hand. Now the agony was so bad that my stomach rebelled and I had to fight to keep from throwing up in my helmet.
When the pain faded enough for me to focus, I saw the patch had done its job and sealed the tear in my suit. The environmental system struggled to heat the frigid air trapped inside the suit.
Shaking uncontrollably, I pulled another repair patch from my pocket.
I couldn’t get a good grip on it. The wind stole the patch before I had a chance to use it.
The next patch I did hang onto through sheer determination, but raising my right arm to try to affix it to my cracked helmet hurt so badly that I screamed again.
Despite the agony, I got the patch onto my helmet somehow and covered the crack almost completely. Cold air still streamed into the helmet through the tiny remaining opening. Not ideal, but I wasn’t going to be able to raise that arm again to apply another patch.
Ahead, through the demolished front window and my blood-splattered visor, I spotted dark shapes in the far distance: two crawlers, one large and one small, traveling side-by-side. Rescue was within sight, but the distance between us seemed more than a light-year.
Gods, I was so cold and I hurt so badly. I couldn’t tell if my suit was getting any warmer or not. That seemed like a bad sign.
“Elena.” Arron’s voice crackled in my helmet comms. It sounded like he was shouting, but the words were indistinct and barely audible. “Elena, gods-dammit…answer me.”
I gritted my teeth and tapped my right middle finger and thumb together twice. No beep. The suit was too damaged on that side. I repeated the action with my left hand. Beep. A light sputtered to life on my helmet.
“Arron,” I called, hoping he could hear me. “I’m alive. My suit is damaged. Hurry.”
“You’ve…gear…up.” Crackles drowned out part of his response. “Red…minutes to intercept…gear…Elena.”
I stared at the distant crawlers in disbelief. Did he just tell me to shift gears and increase the crawler’s speed above the safety limit?
This stretch of ice had been analyzed closely and the speed of the crawlers set accordingly. Going any faster meant the crawler’s passage might create a resonance that could cause it to break through the ice or create hidden damage that would endanger others who used this path later.
The wind picked up again. The crackles in my helmet drowned out whatever Arron said next. The wind indicator went from blue to orange.
My thoughts were getting sluggish. I didn’t feel cold, but my gut told me I was.
That rip in the right shoulder and the crack in the helmet might not be the only damage my suit had taken.
The approaching crawlers were still so far away that I had to risk increasing my speed to meet them as quickly as possible.
They were probably already traveling at top speed.
All the gods above and below, get me back to Inga Station alive. I changed gears and accelerated.
Warning lights flashed across the control panel—the parts that still worked, that was. The crawler groaned and rumbled as if protesting being forced to go faster.
“I changed gears,” I called. My voice sounded like it was echoing in my helmet, or maybe I was getting woozy. “Speed now fifty-five kph.”
I would have given a lot to hear Arron’s reply, or any voice at all, but the only sound in my comms was more crackling.
They probably couldn’t hear me either, but I kept talking so I didn’t get sleepy.
“Something hit me,” I said. “It was big and round, like a cylinder. I think it was a part of something that broke off. Maybe the crawler’s scanners recorded the impact and someone can figure out where it came from.
I hope the cylinder and the parts that broke off my crawler don’t hurt anyone else. ”
Not that there was much else out here besides the station and its array of smaller research pods, but the wind might blow those debris a long, long way across the ice. They probably wouldn’t do too much damage to a pod, but a small crawler like mine…might…
I forced my eyes open. I didn’t remember closing them.
Everything was hazy, so I blinked until I could focus on the approaching crawlers. The endless ice made judging distance difficult, but my rescuers were close enough now that I could just make out two figures in helmets and survival suits sitting in each crawler.
I only had to hang on a few more minutes. Just a few more minutes.
“I’m awake,” I said, because saying it aloud made it feel more true. “I’m awake. I’m alive.”
But for how long? I couldn’t feel my body anymore. Each time I blinked, time seemed to jump ahead several seconds or as much as a minute. The intercepting crawlers inched closer but the distance between us seemed to stretch with every sluggish heartbeat.
Through the growing fog, anger rose. That didn’t help my body but it did clear my head a bit.
“I’m alive,” I mumbled as darkness came and went. “I’m not going to give up. I’m not going to freeze to death on this gods-damned planet. I’m going to bring these samples back to the station, and then in two days I’m leaving to go study fungi on Hyderia. I’m not going to give up.”
My eyes drifted closed. “I’m not going to give up,” I repeated. “I’m not letting that spot go to anyone else. I worked too hard to get it.”
The crawler ground to a stop and seemed to lurch several times. Shadows moved around me and I could have sworn I heard voices, but the noises might have been wind or my imagination.
When the fog lifted enough for me to open my eyes, I found a familiar human face hovering above mine. I seemed to be rocking gently.
“No one is going to get your spot,” Arron promised, cupping my cheek with his very warm bare hand. He stroked my jaw with his thumb. “We’ve got you, Elena. You’re safe.”
I blinked up at him, too puzzled to formulate a reply.