Over Freezing Altitudes

by Kate MacLeod

  Scout couldn’t nod, but her head lolled in a way that Daisy took to be agreement.

  “Why won’t I leave you behind? I just told you,” Daisy said, counting off one finger. “Why did I come here to get you? Ditto.” She counted off another. “Why do I need your help? Well, you’re connected to galactic marshals, that’s handy. You know who Shi Jian is and what she’s capable of. I’m sure you can see how difficult it could be to try to convince a stranger of the danger she represents. You couldn’t even convince Bo Tajaki, and frankly, he should’ve known already.”

  Scout made a grunt of protest, and Daisy scoffed before taking another swallow of tea.

  “Whatever—he should have. Anyway, I don’t have a lot of choices for allies. I watched you while you were on his ship and I know I can trust you.”

  “How?” Scout asked. Speaking was coming a bit easier now, but the rest of her body was still cold and heavy.

  “How?” Daisy repeated. “That’s more complicated. Short version: I was hiding in the walls of the ship. I’ve been invisible to the ship’s systems for . . . quite some time. I saw you arrive and researched everything they had on you in the Tajaki trade dynasty databases. Then I hacked Shi Jian’s private system and read up on her take on you. Shi Jian rotates her passwords regularly and keeps her security systems tip-top and up to date, but I can always get past those because I watch when she does stuff. She suspects someone is getting past her, but she’s never figured out who or how.”

  Daisy smiled smugly into her tea, then took another drink.

  Then her smile slipped away as if it had been painted on a mask that had just dropped off her face.

  “I came from the surface of Amatheon too, you know,” she said. “My sister and I. Our parents died during the war. Like yours. Well, not from one of the rock strikes. There was more close-up fighting inside the capital. One day my sister and I came home from school, and our parents just weren’t there. It was a week before anyone told us they were dead. Collateral damage when Space Farer and Planet Dweller forces got into a brief exchange of gunfire near a marketplace.”

  She looked away from Scout, out through the tunnel mouth to the wintry landscape beyond. Nothing was moving out there except a few low-hanging clouds.

  “We didn’t have anyone else to take care of us. We were sent to an orphanage that was all kinds of terrible. They split us up. I guess lots of folks think my sister stopped talking when our parents died, but that wasn’t it. It was after that first night she had to sleep in the dormitory with the other girls her age, away from me. I don’t know what happened. Maybe nothing happened except that I wasn’t there. I don’t know. She never spoke to me again, not so much as a nod or shake of her head to confirm or deny my worst fears. She was just . . . gone. Everything that had been my sister, gone, leaving this shell behind that still looked like her.”

  Scout was glad it was too much work to try talking. She didn’t want to even try to find words of comfort about Clementine. Clementine had freaked Scout out from the very moment they had met, Scout and her dogs both.

  “Anyway,” Daisy said, turning back to look at her tea. “Shi Jian found me first. I had escaped the yard. I wasn’t running away, just wanted an afternoon a little less regimented for a change. She caught me stealing sweets off a cart, and at first I thought she was with security. She wasn’t wearing a uniform, but you know how she is. She just feels like authority.

  “But she wasn’t. She bought me a whole paper cone of sweet fried pastry dough and a huge cup of lemonade. I had never had lemonade before. Or that pastry thing; I don’t even know what it was called. Fritters, maybe. Well, you know. Rich kid stuff, right?”

  Scout managed something like a nod. She had never had lemonade herself.

  “Then she told me I didn’t have to go back to the orphanage, that she had a better place for kids like me where I would get to learn how to do the most amazing things. And that I would be able to make everyone who ever hurt me pay.”

  Daisy looked down at her tea, turning the mug around and around in her hands.

  “I’m ashamed now, how much that appealed to me then. But I told her no. I couldn’t go anywhere without my sister.

  “And she said, ‘Wonderful! Let’s go get your sister.’

  “And she just signed us out all official-like, and the next thing I knew I was back with my sister, eating more sweet fried dough and riding a shuttle up into orbit like it was the most normal thing in the world.”

  Daisy drank the last of her tea in one long swallow.

  “Well, you saw the school. Not extensively, but enough, am I right? You saw what she does to kids. Not all of it, but you got the sense.”

  She kept glancing over at Scout as if checking that Scout was indeed agreeing with each of her assumptions.

  “I didn’t take to it,” Daisy said, her mouth twisting as if the last dregs of her tea had been particularly bitter. “But Shi Jian ‘believed in me,’” she said, making air quotes with fingers capable of taking an opponent out with a jab to the right nerve bundle. “She wouldn’t let me go. I went through all of the physical modifications, and all of the mental modifications were tried on me. Even though I wouldn’t conform, she wouldn’t let me go.

  “There had been others who didn’t conform, of course. All sent out on missions they never returned from. I suspected they had been suicide missions. Not that those kids had known or even suspected. I mean, who among us really knows what they put inside us when they were swapping out our bones and blood and organs? Could be anything, right? I could have a kill switch inside me right now and not know it.”

  Daisy stepped out of view again, returning with a fresh mug of tea and settling back in the same spot on the tunnel floor. The dogs came up to her, sniffing around in case she had brought more food as well. Daisy reached out a hand to scratch Gert around her ears and rub at her neck, but she didn’t even seem to be aware she was doing it.

  “I suspected. I prepared. And when my name was up, I disappeared. But I didn’t leave. I couldn’t leave. My sister was still there. I stayed inside that ship, hiding where no one could find me. And they never did.

  “But she still managed to take my sister away.”

  Scout’s nose was itching. She reached up a hand to scratch it but overshot, striking her nose hard enough to make herself wince.

  “Hey, you’re moving!” Daisy said with a smile. “Arms, then legs, then we’re back on the road and none too soon. See, dogs, I told you she’d be okay.”

  “Daisy,” Scout said. It was irritating how just the act of talking was exhausting her, but she pressed on. “Are we after Shi Jian to stop her from doing something bad, or for revenge?”

  Daisy sat back, the smile once more gone from her face.

  “I plan to kill her,” Daisy said. “It serves both ends. What difference does it make which one is the real reason why?”

  Scout gave a short nod, but her stomach was forming a hard knot, and not just because she was hungry.

  Daisy wanted to kill Shi Jian because she blamed her for Clementine’s death. What would she do if she found out that however much Shi Jian had been to blame for what Clementine had become, it was Scout herself who had dealt the killing blow?

  Would she even let Scout try to explain?

  Scout closed her eyes and let her head fall back against the stone wall behind her.

  Better she never knew. Which was easy enough to say, but in Scout’s experience, secrets never stayed secrets. It was just a matter of time before Daisy found out.

  Which was better, to know sooner or later? Would the two of them growing more and more reliant on each other make her feel more bonded to Scout, or more betrayed?

  Scout really, really wished she knew.

  19

  Scout woke from a doze when the entire world around her started to shiver, a low rumble building to a roar all around her.

  Avalanche. They were going to be sealed up in this tunnel like a tomb, with just enough air to
starve to death or freeze to death over the course of many days and nights.

  Scout saw skitters of snow dancing over the road outside the tunnel, a few larger balls of snow shattering into powder on impact but nothing large enough to do even the dogs any injury.

  “Run!” Scout cried and scrambled to her feet.

  Or at least she tried to. She had seen newborn animals on farms back home make a better show of it.

  Daisy caught on to her, holding her up on her feet but not letting her run out of the tunnel.

  “We have to get out of here!” Scout said.

  “No,” Daisy said, then to the dogs, “stay!”

  The dogs needed no such direction. They were huddled together far from the tendrils of snow blowing in from where the balls had impacted. They wanted no part of what was going on outside.

  “I don’t want to be buried alive,” Scout said.

  “Of course not,” Daisy said. “If it blocks the tunnel, I’ll dig a way out, but for now we’re safer here.”

  Scout could see the sense of that. She stopped trying to get past Daisy and just watched as the skitters of snow slowed to a halt and the rumble moved on down the mountain, only the faintest of echoes remaining to dance through the tunnel.

  “You’re doing better,” Daisy said.

  “It’s nearly dark,” Scout said, trying not to sound as disappointed as she felt. She had fallen asleep. If she had stayed awake, they might have moved on by now.

  Why had Daisy let her fall asleep?

  “We can’t bed down here,” Daisy said. “It’s bad enough they haven’t jumped us yet. They probably know they hit you and not me. I’m not sure what plan they’ll make around that information. If it were me, I would have attacked already.”

  Scout didn’t doubt that.

  Daisy quickly repacked her bag and slung it on her back, then came back to Scout to make sure her cold-weather gear was all on correctly: glasses and goggles and hat secure, coat zipped up, boots fastened snugly.

  She felt like Daisy was treating her like a surrogate little sister, but she couldn’t summon up the energy to object. Maybe Daisy needed to feel like a big sister. Scout could tolerate it, at least until the lingering effects of the dart weren’t making her feel like half a toddler herself.

  Daisy kept hold of Scout’s arm as she led her down to the other end of the tunnel. Scout kept her eyes focused straight ahead, waiting for the dot of light that would grow into the mouth of the far end of the tunnel.

  But the light never came. They reached the end of the tunnel to find it nothing but a wash of snow with not even the narrowest beam of light anywhere.

  “This just happened?” Scout asked miserably. Why had she napped so long?

  “Maybe not,” Daisy said, but she didn’t sound convinced.

  “What do we do now?” Scout asked.

  “Hold on,” Daisy said. She tried climbing up onto the snow, but it wouldn’t hold her weight. At last, she just accepted that fact and charged forward, pushing snow ahead of her until she had blasted a narrow path past the drift of snow and back out onto the open road beyond.

  “See?” she said as she came back for Scout.

  “It sounded bigger than that,” Scout said.

  “Sound is weird in tunnels,” Daisy said. “And around mountains. That last one might have been nowhere near us.”

  Scout was about to agree when they walked around a curve in the mountain and the road once more disappeared under a drift of snow.

  But this drift went on for as far as Scout could see.

  “Can we walk across the top of it?” Scout wondered, but Daisy didn’t even have to answer. Perhaps it was the sound of Scout’s voice, perhaps it was some other stimulus, but little pebbles of snow started sliding down the drift, building up speed and number until an entire sheet of snow was moving, sliding off the end of the road to fall to the bottom of the ravine.

  The ravine was deeper here. A lot deeper.

  “Maybe we don’t want to risk it,” Daisy said, and Scout flinched at the way she didn’t even try to lower her voice.

  “Can you really plow it all the way across?” Scout whispered. Daisy was up on tiptoe, shading her eyes against the setting sun as she searched for any sign of the road on the far side.

  Scout realized with a start that they must have circled half the mountain for the setting sun to be visible. She turned to look up at the city and was promptly blinded by the dome reflecting the rosy light.

  “Up,” Daisy said at last, and Scout looked over to see her also looking up, but not at the city. “The road has another switchback ahead of us, then continues back in this direction. It’s right above us.”

  Scout put out a hand to cover the shining city and looked at the rock face towering over them.

  “Are you sure?” Scout asked. She saw no sign of any road or any switchback at all.

  “Very sure,” Daisy said.

  “It doesn’t matter,” Scout said, giving up trying to see it. “I can’t climb that wall. The dogs certainly can’t.”

  “That’s true,” Daisy said.

  “You can climb the wall.”

  “But I can’t carry you all,” Daisy said.

  “No, that’s not what I meant,” Scout said, although that made for quite the image. “You should climb up on your own, get to the city.”

  “I’m not going after Shi Jian alone,” Daisy said, wearily reviving that argument.

  “No, but you can come back for me with more help,” Scout said.

  “If I leave you here alone, they’ll be on you in a hot second,” Daisy said.

  “Fine,” Scout said, crossing her arms. “What’s our other option?”

  Daisy looked around, tapping her mittened fingertips against the scarf over her face. Then she looked around again.

  Gert sat down on the road for a brief moment, then went all in and sprawled out to take a nap.

  “Well?” Scout said.

  “I’m climbing up there,” Daisy said.

  “Good,” Scout said.

  “But I’m coming back for you,” Daisy said. “I have rope. I’ll go up and find something sturdy to tie it to; then I’m coming back down for you and the dogs. However many trips it takes.”

  “You’ll be target practice for all of them if they see you climbing,” Scout said.

  “I’ll be fast,” Daisy promised.

  “I believe you will be when you’re on your own, but what about when you’re bringing the rest of us up?”

  Daisy sighed. “Scout, it’s the only plan.”

  Scout drew her gun and Daisy gave her a sharp nod. Then Daisy was scurrying up the cliffside, her hands and feet finding holds Scout couldn’t even see.

  Scout looked around for any signs of ambush. Nothing was moving on the road on the far side of the washout of snow, not that Scout thought they could have gotten around her and Daisy anyway. The far side of the ravine was a jagged ridge with no spots wide enough for anyone to stand on. An assassin trying to fire from there would need to scale the ridge to get up there and would have to keep holding on with one hand while firing, and they would be completely exposed. Not to mention the only place they could have come from was the ravine below, now filled with snow.

  No, Scout was certain the only avenue of attack was the tunnel they had just emerged from. She turned to face it, gun in her hand but not yet raised.

  She glanced up at Daisy. It took a moment to find her, far above Scout and the dogs on the road. Then her feet kicked out as her top half disappeared, and Scout realized she had reached the road above them.

  A moment later a rope came snaking down, then Daisy appeared over the edge again, using the rope to rappel down the cliff to land with a heavy thump in front of Scout.

  “Did you take a look around from up there?” Scout asked. “Any signs of the assassins?”

  “Yes, I did, and no, there isn’t,” Daisy said, reaching around Scout’s middle to tie some sort of belt around her waist. “This attache
s to the rope. It will catch you if you slip. I’ll come up behind you with the dogs.”

  “Both of them?” Scout said.

  “I can take the weight,” Daisy said. “I left the pack up there.”

  “They might squirm around, especially if they’re together,” Scout said. “Let me take Shadow. He barely weighs a thing.”

  Daisy considered this for a long moment, then conceded with a nod, helping Scout make a sling out of the outermost of her shirts to hold Shadow close to her chest, zipped up inside her coat, leaving her hands free to climb.

  Scout stepped up to the rope and gave it a little tug as Daisy fastened the belt to the rope and tested the catching device.

  “Ready?” Daisy said, clapping her on her shoulder.

  Scout nodded, hoping that nod looked more assured than she felt. She had never climbed a rope before.

  She gripped it in her hands and looked up at the long expanse of rock waiting for her.

  “Put a foot here,” Daisy said, showing her a small outcropping that was somewhat flattish on top. “Then your other foot there. Hold the rope like it’s a railing, like this is just a very steep ramp.”

  “Maybe you should go first,” Scout said.

  “No,” Daisy said, shaking open the empty pack Scout had stuffed in the top of Daisy’s pack. She had found it and brought it back down with her. Daisy didn’t say a thing about it, but Scout was very grateful for the impulse to keep it. Daisy hugged Gert, then stuffed her in the pack before the big black dog had a chance to object. “I have to go behind.”

  “You said this catch wouldn’t let me fall,” Scout said.

  “It won’t,” Daisy said. But if that was true, there was no reason for her to be under Scout, was there?

  Scout didn’t think arguing about it was going to accomplish anything other than burning time, and it was already getting dark far too fast. She had to be on the road above before the sun disappeared or she’d never finish the climb.