Rebel Ice

by S. L. Viehl

  “If she fails,” the lead hunter was telling Daneeb, “you may do as you wish with her.”

  Skjæra liked hunters. They did not taunt and curse the skela as the gjenvin often did, perhaps because they understood that the skela, too, served a purpose on this world. Mostly the hunters brought them a portion of the meat the skela butchered for them and otherwise left them alone.

  People who left her alone were always in favor with Skjæra. She often regretted not living among the hunters.

  “As you say, Kheder.” Daneeb bowed her head.

  The men moved away, mounted their skimmers, and flew up into the sky. Daneeb snapped out orders for two of the sisters to help her lift and carry the bundle inside.

  Skjæra smelled blood, saw dark stain lines on the cloth, and followed.

  The skela did not carry the bundle to the lidded square pit in the ice where they kept their meat, but instead carried it into a portion of the cave they rarely used for anything but storage of extra furs.

  The sisters placed the bundle gently on the floor of the cave, and furs were brought even as Daneeb unwrapped the cloth. Skjæra frowned as a woman’s face appeared uncovered. She knew that face. She knew … but she did not know. She could not be sure.

  It did not seem worth the time or pain to try to remember.

  For a long time no one said anything. The sisters stared at the woman, and the woman stared back at them. The woman was pale and her expression was one of wariness and concealed fear. The sisters simply seemed shocked.

  “It cannot be her,” Malmi whispered, her voice sounding like a string pulled too tightly. “It cannot be, Skrie. She was—”

  “Close your mouth,” Daneeb snapped. She turned back to address the strange woman, who was looking at everyone with visible bewilderment. “Do you know where you are?”

  “No.”

  “What is your name?”

  “Resa.”

  Daneeb said nothing, and Skjæra thought she might be shocked now, too. The tension of her body, the way her gaze would not settle, the manner in which she bit the inside of her lip—all signs that the headwoman felt disturbed, possibly even threatened.

  The silence did give Skjæra time to turn the name over and over in her mind, which sometimes brought the memories back to her without much pain. Resa. Resa. Resa. She knew no one called that name.

  “What this place?” the woman asked. She spoke as if unsure of the words.

  She does not speak our language. Skjæra remembered the fair-haired ensleg man whose face she had repaired. Like him.

  “This is the dwelling place of the skela who serve Iiskar Navn. You have been cast out. Your once-life there is over.” Daneeb bent to wrap furs around the woman’s shivering form, and then stepped back. “You must show that you are worthy to join us.”

  Malmi surged forward. “No, Skrie, please, do not make her—”

  Daneeb slapped the skela’s face with her bare hand before she addressed the strange woman again. “Are you prepared to show your worth?”

  Resa struggled to stand, and pulled the furs around her tightly. “Yes.”

  “Callai, Fren, Opalas,” Daneeb called out. “Bring the choices.”

  The three skela left the area. The remaining women drew back, taking places against the wall and leaving their headwoman and Resa standing facing each other in the center of the floor. Skjæra took the opportunity to slip back to the cave to retrieve her pack of medical supplies. As soon as Daneeb finished tormenting the woman, she would need her wounds attended to. On her way back, Skjæra saw Callai and Fren dragging a fresh carcass in from the butchering room, while Opalas carried a box from the salvage pile.

  “Put them before her,” Daneeb said when the three skela returned, and the box and the carcass were set on the floor before Resa.

  Skjæra checked her pack to see if she had the proper antiseptic and ointments. From the way the woman was holding herself, she had back injuries. The bleeding through the cloth did not appear to be significant, but she would have to examine the wounds. Skjæra felt a strong surge of impatience with whatever game Daneeb was playing with the stranger. She knew the skela had their ways of deciding things, but the headwoman had better hurry up with it. Resa was in pain.

  “Before you are two choices,” Daneeb told Resa, and pointed to the box. “In that are rations from an ensleg vessel. They are sealed in things that keep them fresh. You may eat what you like from them.” She pointed to the carcass, which was far less attractive in appearance. “This is a beast given to us as a portion for our work. It must be made fit eating.” She threw a dagger into the carcass. “You may have all the meat if you butcher it by yourself. Choose one or the other.”

  Resa eyed the box, and then the carcass. She swallowed a few times before she crouched down and took the blade from the dead animal. She stared at it, and held it out like an offering. “Hunters beat me for touching, using blade.” She produced a strange smile. “I use blade to save hunter life.”

  Malmi turned away and made a strangled sound. Daneeb said nothing.

  Resa studied the faces around her for a long time before she crouched and began cutting open the belly of the carcass. Her hands moved easily and with considerable skill.

  Skjæra pushed some of the other skela out of her way to go to Resa. She pulled the woman’s hands away from the carcass and looked up at Daneeb. Skjæra took the knife from Resa and put it aside, and then tugged down the furs covering her back.

  “Are you healer?” Resa asked her.

  Skjæra’s native language was not Iisleg, so it had taken her some time to learn it after she had come to join the skela. She sometimes practiced it when she was alone or with the jlorra, mimicking the intonations of the other women until she could speak as fluently as any of them. She didn’t know why, but it seemed important, as if part of her knew she would have to speak to them someday.

  Perhaps Resa’s arrival meant the time for silence had come to an end.

  “I am.” Skjæra turned Resa gently so that her back faced her. “Were you whipped?”

  Daneeb gaped at her. “What did you say?”

  “I was.” Resa, too, stared at her. “How did you know?”

  Skjæra wasn’t sure, exactly. The blood on the cloth could have come from any part of her body. “I guessed.” She glanced up at the headwoman. “I am a healer.”

  “So you are.” Daneeb gestured to the other skela with a hand that shook. “Take away the choices. The rest of you, go back to the crawls.” When everyone had cleared out except the headwoman, Resa, and Skjæra, Daneeb came to crouch beside them. “Tell us what happened to you.”

  “I use blade, kill ptar, save hunter. They beat me, cast me out.” Resa shrugged out of the furs and unwound the ragged cloth around her body until her back was exposed. “Not beat me much. Cold make feel better.”

  “Daneeb, fetch some warm, clean water,” Skjæra told the headwoman as she gently peeled back the cloth clinging to the fresh lash marks. “I will try not to hurt you, but these must be cleaned and sealed, or they will fester.”

  Resa nodded.

  Daneeb was staring at Skjæra with wide eyes. “You are speaking as if—”

  “My tongue has always functioned. I cannot say the same for your ears.” She noted the depth of the weals and which would have to be sutured. “Daneeb, I still need that water.”

  The headwoman rose and went out.

  “I smell. No clean myself long time.” Resa turned around and touched the edge of Skjæra’s face wrap. “Why wear? No men here see you.”

  Skjæra did not show her face before strangers, and she had hidden it for so long that she never felt at ease with it exposed. Keeping it covered made the sisters feel more at ease, too, and she had to wear the mask when she did the work.

  But Resa had pleased Daneeb with her choice, and would be one of the skela now.

  Skjæra pulled back the wrap and exposed her face. At first Resa’s eyes widened, and then she touched Skjæra’s c
heek. “You look like me.”

  Something happened in that moment. Skjæra was not sure precisely what, but feeling Resa’s hand on her cheek made her head swim. She looked into the other woman’s eyes and saw the same confusion.

  “Who are you?” Resa asked softly.

  There was an answer to that, but Skjæra did not want to go into the place in her head where it was waiting. That place was filled with pain, and not just her own. Pain that no one should see, no one should feel.

  Skjæra placed her hand over Resa’s and pressed it to her face.

  The crash. The cold. The child. The weapon. The light. The pain.

  The vagueness that had embraced her for so long abruptly dissolved, and Skjæra saw Resa clearly. The eyes, the nose, the mouth—they were all the same. She remembered exactly who Resa was now.

  No wonder Daneeb had acted so strangely. She had known this woman for two years. They all had. Resa’s was the first life Skjæra had saved since becoming skela. She had operated on her, repairing the damage from the terrible head wound she had suffered. Resa’s body had slowly recovered, but her mind had not. The wound had induced madness to a degree that Resa had to be restrained. Skjæra had kept Daneeb from killing Resa, and instead had nursed her for months, trying to bring her back to sanity. Then, one day, Resa had somehow freed herself from her chains and walked out onto the ice.

  Since losing Resa, Skjæra had cared little for anything but the work of saving others. Now she had returned, and what did that mean? What do I say to you? Why have you come back to me? Why don’t you recognize any of us? Why did you run away? Why are you still alive?

  “Who are you?” Resa repeated, more insistently now.

  “Jarn,” Daneeb said as she rejoined them. She set down a basin of meltwater. “Her name is Jarn.”

  Skjæra glanced at the headwoman. “I am called Skjæra.”

  “You are Jarn, and you will answer to your name,” Daneeb said, her tone ominous. “Now that you have found your tongue, it is time you stopped living as if you occupy another world and the one where the rest of us dwell does not exist.”

  “Jarn is pretty name,” Resa said politely. Her gaze moved from Daneeb to Skjæra, unsure.

  Skjæra meant “Death Bringer,” and she certainly was not that. Now that she remembered everything, even those things that made her want to scream until her throat swelled shut, she could not return to the vagueness that had protected her. She understood why Daneeb was so insistent, as well. If Resa was to stay with them, and be skela, Skjæra would have to abandon everything that had kept her insulated and safe.

  It would keep Resa safe, too.

  “Turn around,” Jarn told Resa. She held out a cloth to Daneeb. “Soak this in the water.”

  A vibration shimmered across the ice floor of the cave, and the three women went still. It continued only for a few minutes before it died away, and the ice was still again.

  “Tremors,” Daneeb said. “Deep below.”

  “Yes.” Jarn looked at the ground beneath their feet. “But what is making them?”

  The Toskald defense forces expected the rebels to attack during the hours of darkness. They still patrolled the skies during the daylight hours—their leaders were taking no chances—but the bulk of the patrol ships came down from the skim cities as soon as the sun set over any territory.

  Teulon had expected this, and compensated by moving the last of his troops into position only during the brief periods of time when the patrols were in mid-change, or had already flown over the battalion’s present position. Otherwise, the rebels stayed under cover and remained where they had been ordered to camp.

  At times it seemed maddening, even to Teulon, but they had to wait. For the attack on the armory trenches, they were waiting specifically on the perfect conditions under which they could carry out a successful campaign, and take all the trenches on the same day.

  “They will not detect us if we move at night or day,” Hasal often argued. “Why do you not give the order?”

  Teulon refused to move one unit. “We wait until the planet is ready to help us.”

  Akkabarr finally obliged him with the storm he had wanted. It rolled in from the east, a fierce squall that pulled more winds and ice into itself until it swelled into one of the rare storms that covered most of the inhabited surface. The storm was immeasurable, an enormous blanket that settled over the planet and expended its violent energy on anything that dared move out of shelter. No ship could fly in such weather, and the Toskald retreated to their cities, confident that the rebels would do the same.

  That was the moment Teulon gave the order.

  The battalions, which he had stationed in key positions, received the order and sent their troops down into the tunnels they had been burning out by redirecting vent shafts under the ice for the last year. Like the armory trenches, the secret, complex maze, now reinforced to provide safe passage for those who used it, was carefully mapped and well-known by the rebels who had built it. The storm kept the Toskald’s subsurface monitors from transmitting any images of activity below, so no one in the skim cities would know what they were doing or could respond to it. The rebels were free to move through the tunnels to the walls of the armory trenches. There the demolition squads began cutting through the plasteel with harmonic cutters salvaged by the Iisleg and repaired by their Raktar.

  One hour after the order went out the first squad signaled that they had cut through.

  “Trench F417 has been breached,” Hasal said, breathless from running through the tunnel the troops had burned out from the communications shelter to the Raktar’s HQ. He handed Teulon the datapad, on which was listed the complete inventory of the trench. “No casualties.”

  Teulon skimmed the list. “Drones?”

  “Disabled.” Hasal grinned. “The surge torches you designed worked exactly as you said they would.”

  Teulon had known that the automated security systems were impervious to cold, pulse weapon fire, or any sort of mass reprogramming. He could not use standard demolition ordnance or flamethrowers, either, for that would set off the contents of the trenches.

  The drone designers, however, had been too confident of the primitive surface conditions. They had never considered that the Iisleg might take advantage of the natural bioelectric power present in their environment. The surface dwellers were never permitted anything but the most basic technology, and that was never improved. The designers even considered the ice that encased the trenches impregnable.

  In his former life, Teulon had been an engineer and a shipbuilder. As experienced salvagers, the Iisleg had been hoarding components and alloys for years, learning slowly through trial and error how to use the simplest of them. They did not know how to reactivate the malfunctioning drones that the Toskald had replaced and discarded over the years, but they collected and stored them, all the same.

  Teulon showed them how to deprogram the drone before reactivating it, which was when they discovered the drones’ one vulnerability. He then designed the weapon to exploit it: the surge torch. With his knowledge, and the Iisleg’s hoarded tech, they built their own armory.

  The weapon gathered bioelectricity from both body friction and the surrounding atmosphere, concentrated it, and emitted it in a focused stream. The stream was not particularly powerful—it could inflict only an unpleasant jolt to any living being—but it did not have to be lethal to living flesh. The drones guarding the armory trenches had been designed to withstand only conventional weaponry. By experimenting on the reprogrammed, reactivated units, Teulon discovered that they were utterly helpless against surge torches’ streams.

  The inventory list from Trench F417 listed some interesting items, Teulon noted. He indicated on the pad which ones the rebels were to take for themselves, which they were to leave behind, and how he wanted the trench mined and resealed. What he was interested in was what the squad leader had reported as “clear rocks with strange markings.”

  Crystals.

  �
��These clear rocks are etched crystals. I want them wrapped, packed, and delivered to the battalion commanders before the storm breaks,” Teulon told Hasal, showing him the item on the inventory list. “Send a signal to all trench search teams and give them a description of the crystals. They are to retrieve any they find within the trenches and also have them delivered to their commanders.”

  Hasal frowned. “Why must we retrieve rocks? Even if they are decorated, we have no use for such baubles.”

  Teulon handed him the datapad. “You have your orders.”

  “As you say, Raktar.” His second pocketed the device. “There is an emissary who arrived from the east just before the storm descended. He says he flew around it, but it is unlikely that is true.”

  Teulon had been expecting another assassination attempt, but not so soon. “What iiskar does he claim?”

  “Navn. He says he is the rasakt’s only son. There is something else.” Hasal shifted his weight from one foot to the other. “Iiskar Navn is located in the center of the territory beyond the Kuorj and the Pasala. They, too, were within distance of the ensleg launch crash site.”

  “Close enough for these vral the Terran saw to have come from their camp?” Hasal nodded. “Why did you not say before, when we were out there?”

  His second flushed miserably. “Truth be told, Raktar, I forgot.”

  Teulon considered this. He counted on Hasal’s excellent command of intelligence, and had never known him to fail to present the right facts. His second never complained of exhaustion, but the strain was evident on his face.

  I demand too much of him. “Tell me of Navn.”

  Hasal’s expression lightened, and he almost stumbled over his words as he related what he knew about the rasakt. “Navn is a traditionalist. An isolationist, as well. He trades outright only with Sverrul. Since he became headman after his father’s death in battle, he has been consistent, if somewhat unimaginative, with his tribute to Skjonn. His people are excellent hunters and metalworkers.” Hasal thought for a moment. “Navn’s father was a fierce warrior, and a vengeful one. He slew many during the tribal wars, and became a legend among the eastern tribes. Even if Navn the Younger is not the man his father was, he was likely brought up to follow the oldest ways.”