Snowburn

by E J Frost

  the barrier rolls back to admit us.

  “I knew I’d be glad I didn’t leave you to

  the rats,” Kez says weakly.

  “Is that how it was? Coulda sworn it was

  the other way around.” I tease her to keep her

  distracted. Only a couple hundred meters to

  my ship, then she can rest.

  I end up dragging her those couple

  hundred meters. She’s stumbling with every

  other step. Finally, at the Marie’s ramp, I

  scoop her up and carry her the rest of the

  way. She doesn’t protest.

  I settle her into a passenger cradle. No

  copilot’s chair for her now. She needs to

  rest, not be distracted by the view. “Ape,” I

  say to her brother, who is struggling to stow

  the large box in the passenger baggage

  locker. There are cargo bays designed to

  hold containers dozens of times the size of

  that box just a few meters away. I don’t

  mention them. Let him struggle. Unfriendly

  little fucker. “There’s a recycler over there.”

  I nod at the decorative panel that covers the

  passenger recycler. “Your sister needs

  fluids.”

  “Yeah, okay.”

  Finally, no bullshit. Maybe he actually

  cares about his sister.

  I linger to make sure he’s being

  appropriately attentive, then go and fire up

  the Marie’s engines.

  Chapter 5

  Kez misses the takeoff, and I miss her

  wide-eyed sense of wonder. After I clear the

  spaceport, I set the autopilot and watch the

  lights of Kuus fall away behind me. Pull a

  packet of chillied soyu strips out of the cold

  tray under my seat and chew them

  meditatively.

  The chrono in my eye says it’s just

  coming up on two. I’ve been awake for

  twenty hours and I should be more than ready

  to take a cat-nap during the flight to New

  Brunny. But I’m not. What I mostly want to

  do is go and check on Kez. A quick glance at

  the ship’s passenger monitor shows she’s

  still awake, messing about with her

  backpack-of-many-tricks. I could help her

  get to sleep. Keep her company until she gets

  drowsy. Offer her my shoulder as a pillow.

  I flick off the monitor.

  Fucking her is one thing. It’s been a long

  time since I’ve had a woman I didn’t have to

  pay for and she’s more than willing. Helping

  her down in the tunnels was in my self-

  interest. I want to get paid, and that’s not

  going to happen unless her box is in New

  Brunny by five. But none of that is a reason

  to get tangled up with her. Getting tangled up

  with women ends badly. Usually for them,

  but also for me. Losing Marin fucking ruined

  me for a year. Before Marin there was

  Mouse, who died in our cell. She swallowed

  her own tongue rather than endure another

  rape by a prison guard she’d pissed off. I got

  ten life sentences added to my tally for what

  I did to the guards, but it didn’t bring Mouse

  back. Before Mouse, there was that girl on

  the Galaxaura, who was happy enough to

  hump me senseless for the three days of the

  flight, but once we docked, knocked me out

  and disappeared without even telling me her

  name. And so long ago I can barely

  remember what she looked like, there was

  Selly. I had less than a month with Selly

  before Mother Superior caught us fucking

  and I got shipped off to juvie.

  It’s ended badly, every time.

  Maybe this time will be different.

  That’s Marin’s ghost thinking. Still

  reaching back from the grave to fuck with my

  head. Experience is a fine teacher, and she’s

  taught me to use women for the one need only

  they can really satisfy, and stay away from

  them otherwise. Getting tangled with them

  just leads to running gauntlets of monsters.

  Like tonight.

  I should drop Kez and her box and her

  orangutan in New Brunny and be on my way.

  I don’t have any flights scheduled for a

  couple of days, but I was offered a long hop

  that I turned down because I’d have to go

  into cryo and I fucking hate cryo. That job’s

  probably still open. It would get me away

  from Kuseros for the better part of a six. Or I

  could spend the next couple of days at my

  place by the river, getting drunk and

  watching star-set from my deck. Either way,

  I don’t have to see Kez again.

  Either way seems unbearably bleak.

  I could have gone to ground somewhere

  after I escaped Tol Seng. Somewhere too

  hostile for human settlement, where my only

  concern would have been surviving day-to-

  day. But Marin ruined me for that, too. She

  made me want to be around people again,

  after I’d sworn off the whole fucking

  species. She made me want to live, not just

  survive. Ninety-nine percent of humanity is a

  disappointment. But then there’s that one

  percent. That one percent like Marin. Like

  Kez. That one percent makes enduring the

  other ninety-nine percent worthwhile. That

  one percent makes enduring everything I’ve

  had to do to bury myself and live as Snow

  worthwhile.

  Crumpling the empty bag of soyu strips

  so the packaging disappears in a flash of

  moisture, I give in, and go check on my one

  percent.

  She’s lying in her cradle, across the row

  from Ape, who is already snoring, his mouth

  open wide enough to catch a Roystean

  superfly. She meets my eyes when the door

  snicks open. Rolls her eyes when Ape emits

  a particularly loud snore.

  I climb into the cradle next to her. The

  cradles are too small for two side-by-side,

  no matter how friendly. I lower the plaz

  barrier between the cradles and Kez reaches

  for me. I take her hand in mine. Her hand is

  dirty, blood-streaked; so’s mine. I rub my

  thumb across her knuckles.

  “Don’t you want to try to get some sleep?

  I’ll wake you before we hit New Brunny.”

  She bites her lip. Avoids my eyes. “I

  think . . . I think I might have bad dreams.”

  I slide my arm into her cradle, ease it

  around her. The contours of the cradles make

  it awkward, but she settles into my embrace

  and I pull her as close as the cradles allow.

  “Fuckin’ rats’ll give anyone bad

  dreams,” I say.

  “Do you ever have bad dreams?”

  “Yeah.” Nightly. Everything I’ve seen,

  everything I’ve done, what wakes me up

  every night? That last moment with Marin.

  Watching the light die out of her eyes.

  “How do you get to sleep?”

  “Truthfully? I have this big teddy bear.

  His name’s Ralph. Whenever I have bad

  dreams, I cuddle up with Ralph.” I’ve never
<
br />   had a teddy bear. Or anything to cuddle with.

  Last time I cuddled with a woman was on

  Enlyoss. Back when my face was still

  healing and I was laying low, I shared a

  crash pad with a street urchin named Joh.

  Fucking kid wasn’t more than thirteen. One

  night she climbed into bed with me,

  whispered something about monsters, and

  fell asleep against my back. I never closed

  my eyes all night, and left Enlyoss the next

  morning. Kid was in bed with the biggest

  monster on the planet, even though she didn’t

  know it.

  “Can I call you Ralph?” Kez whispers,

  her voice thinning with exhaustion.

  “Yeah.” I stroke the fine wisps of her

  bangs off her forehead. “Ask him nicely and

  Ralph will dream the bad dreams for you.”

  “Will he?” Her voice thins down to a

  bare thread of sound.

  “Yeah, he will.”

  It takes her a few minutes to slide through

  exhaustion and blood loss into sleep, but it’s

  only a few minutes. I let her settle into a

  deep sleep before I sit up, slide my arms

  under her shoulders and knees, and lift her

  out of her cradle. She murmurs but doesn’t

  wake. I lie back down in my cradle, settle

  her on top of me, her head on my shoulder,

  her arms folded against my chest. I pull the

  flight webbing around us, fasten it over her

  back, and put my arms around her, enclosing

  her body in mine. Even if we hit some

  turbulence, she’s not going anywhere. Then I

  close my eyes, focus on her soft, warm

  weight against me, and let myself drift off.

  If there are any bad dreams, Ralph

  dreams them for me.

  Two hours of sleep isn’t enough, but it

  takes the edge off my fatigue. It restores Kez

  more than me. She looks bright-eyed when I

  wake her. I envy her the resilience of youth

  for a moment, then put it aside as I head up to

  the flight deck. I’m a long way from old.

  She joins me after a few minutes, alert

  and freshly scrubbed. She’s pulled her

  dreadlocks back with a black band again.

  Having seen the light show and the edged

  monofilament she wears in her hair, I

  wonder what else she’s got hidden in there.

  She straps herself in to the copilot’s chair

  and watches our descent through the

  threatening clouds avidly. “New Brunny’s

  not such a safe place right now,” she says

  after several minutes. We’re still some

  distance from the city, but beneath the

  clouds, the pre-dawn sky is stained with

  smoke. Fires still burning from last night’s

  riots. Feels like I’m back on fucking Phogath.

  “Yeah, I know.” I tap one of the monitors

  between us, which is scanning for the

  signatures of anti-aircraft weapons and other

  deterrents to flying New Brunny’s friendly

  skies.

  “I don’t think the riots have reached the

  spaceport, though.”

  “No?” I haven’t heard anything one way

  or the other. But I haven’t been listening.

  New Brunny’s not a place I fly into

  regularly. “How far from the port to the

  drop?”

  “They’re supposed to meet us at the port.

  Dock 216 North.”

  I nod. I know where that is. Hell, I think I

  flew into it on that run I did for the

  Chiangles. Maybe all Kuseros’s smugglers

  use the same berth.

  As I’m tapping the dock number into the

  ship’s computer, the monitor between us

  beeps. I glance at it. See what I least wanted

  to see.

  Anti-aircraft weapon detected, it tells

  me. Fuck.

  “Make sure you’re strapped in,” I tell

  Kez. Flick on the intercom and relay the

  same warning to Ape. This time I check the

  monitor to make sure he’s heard and obeyed.

  Putting him on the deck during a routine

  takeoff is one thing. Turning him into a

  human pinball while I evade missiles is

  another.

  Ahead of us, the ground blooms. Once,

  twice, three times. Then a barrage of small,

  bright lights. Covering fire for the missiles.

  I rotate the Marie’s engines. Drop her

  nearly straight down. Below the missiles and

  covering fire. Low enough to break a few

  windows in the housing blocks below. Red

  warnings light up across the control panel;

  klaxons blare. I bump them off with my

  elbow as I fight the g-force to rotate the

  engines again and bring the ship back up to a

  minimum safe altitude.

  The tracer fire’s gone overhead, but two

  of the missiles are heat-seekers. The monitor

  flares again. ‘Acquiring,’ it tells me.

  “Yeah, acquire this.”

  I open the Marie’s powerful engines,

  flick on the auxiliary booster for a little extra

  kick, and throw the ship into a roll. The

  Marie doesn’t have any weapons – too

  conspicuous for a civvie short hopper – but

  she’s got speed, and some kick-ass

  countermeasures. When I estimate we’re

  over the missile emplacement, I drop a set of

  the countermeasures. In the rear monitor, they

  heat quickly to a red glow. They’ll attract the

  missiles, which would be hard pressed to

  catch the Marie at this speed anyway.

  I flip open a red latch marked

  ‘Emergency Only.’ Wait until we’re out of

  range of the blast. Tap the panel under the

  latch.

  Behind us, there’s a brief flare of bright

  white light. Then the lights on the ground

  wink out, in a spreading circle from where

  I’ve dropped the countermeasures.

  Kez, straining to look in all the monitors

  at once, whispers, “What was that?”

  “E.M.P.”

  “Elec-electro—”

  She probably doesn’t know what E.M.P.

  is, since it’s rarely used against civilians. To

  save her any embarrassment, I say, “Electro-

  magnetic pulse.”

  “I thought the cities were, you know,

  shielded.”

  They are. Against the constant E.M. wash

  off Kuseros’s binary star. But the bomb I just

  dropped was about a thousand times

  stronger. “Not from this.”

  “Wow.” She looks a little green, whether

  from the Marie’s rotation or because of the

  devastation I’ve unleashed on the ground, I

  don’t know. I even the ship out and survey

  the monitors. Most of the city’s western

  sprawl has gone dark. Fuckers won’t be

  firing anything at anyone for a while.

  I ease back on the roaring engines and

  turn the ship towards New Brunny’s northern

  docks.

  By the time we reach the dock, the clouds

  have delivered on their promise and rain

  sheets off the Marie’s flight canopy. I settle the ship onto the landing pad; st
are out the

  rain-lashed view screen as the engines cycle

  down. Remember sitting in another ship,

  staring out another view screen into the dark,

  and listening to Conro gurgle his last. I

  should have killed that fucker twice for what

  he did to Marin.

  I flick off the main engines. Bring her

  down to stand-by. I’m not sure what’s

  waiting in the dark, but I want to be able to

  leave quickly if it turns out to be unfriendly.

  I run through the pre-flight, so there’s

  nothing I need to do other than power up the

  engines and release the landing clamps. As

  I’m finishing the pre-flight, I focus on the

  chrono in my eye. Zero-four-forty. Still a

  little time to kill.

  “You ready?” I ask Kez.

  She’s been watching my preparations

  attentively. Like she’s trying to memorize

  what I’m doing. At my question, she shakes

  herself, then nods.

  “Thinking about trying her yourself?” I

  flick the flight controls over to the co-pilot’s

  console. The display in front of her lights up.

  She snorts. “I’d fly into the nearest

  mountain.”

  At least she recognizes her limitations.

  No false bravado. I admire that about her.

  “You could learn.”

  She turns in the copilot’s chair so she’s

  on her side. Props her chin on her fist.

  Watches my face with those hugely dilated

  kitten eyes the same way she watched me

  prep the ship. “You could teach me.”

  “Flying lessons are expensive.”

  “How much?” she counters.

  “Five hundred hard a lesson. Thirty

  minutes. Plus expenses.”

  “Expenses?”

  “Fuel. Handcuffs. Paddles. They add up.”

  She gives me that mischievous grin.

  “Guess I’d better save my credits. Where did

  you learn to fly?”

  “Long time ago.” I shrug.

  “I didn’t ask when, I asked where.”

  Tenacious kitten. “Dacondier system.”

  “What were you doing out there?”

  Killing civvies. “I was with S.A.W.L.

  You know what that is?”

  She nods. “Space Marines, right?”

  Close enough. “Yeah, long time ago.” I

  reach under my chair, tug out the cool-tray

  and pull out two plaz bulbs. Toss one to her.

  “More fluids for you.”

  Kez opens the bulb and takes a drink. It’s

  just water, but it’s decent quality water. Not

  the desalinated shit she’s probably used to.

  And it tastes, mmm, it tastes like water

  always tastes when you’re thirsty: like life

  itself.