Frozen Sky

by Jack Stornoway

no longer beating, his brain slowly starving. It takes a special kind of psycho to do that.”

  “It sure does,” André stated absent-mindedly with a hind of pride, then caught himself. “You know what we have here Elayne? A stowaway in a stolen Confederate still-suit. A plane couldn't fly through that storm, or land out here. Clearly she's been here all along, and your dad and commander Conway found her and so she killed them, and staged it to look like they killed each other. Now she's trying to divide us so she can kill us too and steal the ship. You're father's ship, the ship he spent his life saving up for, and then operating so he could leave it to you, a -”

  “Oh shut the fuck up,” Sandra cut him off, then turned to Elayne. “Go have a look at the bodies and you'll know who's telling the truth.”

  Elayne Williams was staring at Sandra, tears in her eyes. She still had the particle beam rifle pointed at Sandra. “Do you really think I'd believe you that my fiancée would murder my dad? I don't know why you're on my ship but get off before I blow you to Hell.”

  Sandra grinned and turned back to André, “I guess that means it's your ship now. So why'd you send the rest of the crew out to freeze to death? You must need crew to fly out of here.”

  “What are you talking about?” Elayne demanded.

  “You told me he sent them to Hyperborea on foot. Hyperborea is over two hundred clicks from here. They've probably already frozen to death. They certainly won't make it to Hyperborea or any other settlement on foot.”

  “You're lying!” Elayne shot back desperately.

  “Look at a fucking map!” Sandra snapped. André was still calm, his eyes showing nothing. Sandra thought he should have been a poker player with those eyes. Then suddenly there were footsteps in the passageway behind André. I slight flicker of triumph flashed across his face, but Sandra's instincts kicked in, and she rushed at him.

  André had turned his head slightly, glancing over his shoulder to see who was approaching when she moved, bending low and then leaping up slamming her shoulders into his torso and lifting him off his feet. She was through the door in a second and dropped André in the direction he had been glancing, where three Sudamérican troops had appeared. The closest soldier was knocked down by André as he tried rolled over trying to get back to his feet, while the other two jumped back, and then raised their rifles.

  Sandra jumped back into the cabin as laser bolts shot down the passageway. She slammed the hatch door closed and hit the lock button as André started shouting in Spanish. Sandra's Spanish wasn't good, but she knew what he had to be saying. Those laser bolts would have burnt through the gondola's outer skin, and André didn't have a respirator mask on like the Sudaméricans. There was panicked movement outside as someone ran to patch the holes, but Sandra knew they must have left at least one guard on duty watching the door. She looked around the cabin, and saw Elayne was still pointing the particle beam rifle at her.

  “Why are they shooting at you? Who is André talking too? Why are they talking Spanish?” Elayne shot out in rapid succession.

  “Sudamérican troops,” Sandra answered. “We're in Confederate Territory, and I'm in a Confederate Uniform. You figure out the rest.”

  Elayne lowered the particle beam, shocked as the reality of her situation set in. Her breathing was too fast, and she was on the verge of hyperventilating. She couldn't believe it, her father killed, now clearly by her fiancée in some kind of plot with the Sudaméricans.

  “Relax, just take a deep breath and let it out slow,” Sandra ordered compassionately. “Sit down and remain calm. It'll take then a few minutes to patch those holes, and they won't try to shoot their way in here. We’ll find a way out of this. How did the Sudaméricans get all the way up here without us spotting them? We've been patrolling the southern regions along their borders for almost a week. They must be after the arms, but how do they plan on flying this ship all the way down to Ciudad de Arcadia without us shooting it down?”

  She checked her gun, right now the Sudamérican scheme didn't matter. She needed to get out of the cabin, the Sudaméricans would be back soon. If they captured her she'd probably end up being sent to one of their mines, and no one would ever see her again. Well, she didn't need to worry about that, the Sudaméricans would probably just shoot her, if not André would likely slash her with his plasma blade. That remark she'd made about his mother had hit a nerve.

  Sandra interfaced with the strato-freighter's computer via her CHUD and access the internal sensors. Two of the Sudaméricans were repairing the holes in the gondola's fuselage, one in the bridge, and one in the passage way just outside the bridge. André was in the next cabin, and the third Sudamérican soldier was just outside the door, guarding them. There were other Sudaméricans in the freight area, presumably checking the cargo.

  The sensors showed the air-pressure had dropped dangerously low in the passageway. Sandra turned to Elayne, who seemed to be in shock, “Do you have a still-suit? Hey, Elayne! Do you have any survival gear in here?”

  Elayne looked up when Sandra said her name, and slowly seemed understand the question. “Yes, we have standard issue emergency still-suits in each cabin.”

  “Put yours on, now!” Sandra ordered, “and hand me that particle rifle.”

  “How are we going to get out of here?” Elayne asked handing the rifle so Sandra. It was large, too large to be carried under normal Earth-gravity, fortunately this was Mars, and the gravity was only a third of Earth's. Still it was heavy. It was designed to be mounted on a vehicle for anti-air defence.

  “Had a problem with piracy?” Sandra asked as she checked the weapon was in working order.

  “Not in the past couple years,” Elayne answered as she pulled off her clothes. “But in the first few years after the Uprising-”

  Elayne paused half undressed, “You're not going to used that?”

  “Unless you have a better idea,” Sandra answered. “Get your still-suit on.”

  “I don't want you blowing a hole in the side of my ship!” Elayne argued.

  “Do you want to get sent to a Sudamérican mine?” Sandra asked, and Elayne face showed it all. The Sudamérican mines were notorious as not much more than death camps. The Sudamérican regime placed no value on the lives of those not loyal to the Conglomerado Nacional. Anyone accused of disloyalty was sent to the mines, and no one ever left. The worker weren't given still-suits or respirator masks, so they couldn't even leave the pressurized working areas, and if a mine blew out, they all died. It was said the Conglomerado Nacional didn't even give them food, expecting the living to cannibalize the dead.

  Sandra didn't know how much of it was true, and how much was misinformation spread by the Conglomerado Nacional to frighten its subjects into loyalty, and she didn't want to find out. Clearly Elaye didn't want to either, as she quickly pulled the last of her clothes off and started putting on the still suit. Sandra looked into the locker the still-suit had come out of, and then turned back to Elayne. “No thermal-suit?”

  “No,” Elayne answered, pausing slightly and then returning to work. “If you could get here from your plane without one, I can get to your plane without one.”

  “I left my thermal-suit on the bridge,” Sandra stated. “You will need one to survive outside.”

  Elayne paused again, and then continued, “There are some thermal-suits in the emergency pod, near the back of the gondola.”

  “I don't want to leave my ship in these people's hands,” Elayne said standing up, as she pressurized the suit. It quickly contracted around her showing a thin toned body, somewhat uncommon on Mars. Sandra hoped that meant she worked out regularly, otherwise she probably wouldn't make it back to the Lockheed.

  “I'd rather not leave it in their hands either,” Sandra agreed. “But our first order is survival. As long as we make it back to my Lockheed we can let Hangtian know what's happening, and they can intercept the ship before it reaches the Sudamérican colonies.”

  “You mean shoot it down,” Elayne stated
. “This is my home you know.”

  Sandra paused, the ship would probably be shot down. That would probably be her next order. But still, “The Arean Army needs those battle-skiffs you're carrying. There was virtually no arms manufacturing on Mars before the Uprising. Most of what the Arean Army has is what the rebels captured during the war. The Confederacy seem to have a few lite-arms factories operating down south, but nothing up here in the Boreum. They'll try to capture the ship before they give the order to destroy it. Hold on to something. The air pressure should be low enough out there that there won't be much of a blow-out.”

  They both pulled on their respirator-masks, and Sandra lifted the particle-beam rifle. She approximated the Sudamérican soldier's position from the internal sensors map, and fired. The hatch and wall around it exploded in a bright flash that quickly flew out the hole in the outer fuselage behind where the soldier had been standing. If anything of him remained intact it was blown out the hole too. The blow-out was minor, and Sandra dropped the particle beam rifle, and drew her handgun as she stepped through the opening into the passage beyond. There was a large hole blown through the side of the gondola and the temperature was quickly dropping inside. She raised her gun towards where the soldiers had been a few seconds earlier, but saw the bridge hatch sliding