The second riverbear grew more animated and alert as the bulb’s thick, veiny base became exposed, dark permafrost soil staining the white surface. It guarded the opposite side as if something might spring out at any second.
It didn’t so much spring as swim, slithering up and out for a last-ditch escape. As the second riverbear trapped the eelish thing between four feet, dancing atop it like a cat on a jingly ball, Minnie’s own campsite felt a notch less safe than only a second earlier. Within 20m of her tent, no less than a dozen bulbs sprouted from the permafrost, like giant golf balls balancing on little tees. These snake things didn’t match any species in the master catalogue, and were probably dangerous, given Minnie’s track record thus far. Even if they weren’t, they were part of a riverbear’s nutritious breakfast, and legitimate cause for concern.
She watched the first riverbear join the second, cordially dividing the convulsing serpent between them. Minnie zoomed in all the way to their gobbling mouths. The silvery creature looked more like a long fish than snake. Tailfin, dorsal fin, eyes—only the pelvic/pectoral fins appeared adapted for surface mobility. This organism could very well offer an eye-opening peek into Epsy’s evolutionary history.
Shrug.
Minnie wasn’t a scientist anymore. She was just another animal fighting for survival. With any luck, she’d have some help with that soon.
The skimmer sat parked on a clear beach straddling the 50th parallel, three different beacons rigged and silently blaring for anyone with even just a fone. Aether was either three days late, or had already come and gone before Minnie’s arrival yesterday.
Minnie refused to believe that.
Sated for the moment, the riverbears engaged in a conscientious, leave-no-trace ritual, repacking the soil around the bulb’s base, then the frost, until the surface returned to a seemingly undisturbed state. Minnie’s focus centered on those claws as the pair ambled to the next bulb, sniffing around. Remorse already tugged at her gut, but she’d decided that her own life would remain priority one, even if it called for preemptive action. These animals were not endangered (yet), and like everything else alive, they’d meet their end one way or another. Prox sensors or not, she wouldn’t be able to sleep tonight knowing those things were wandering the area.
She slid back, rolled over, and sat up, pulling out her MW. Ample power, still plenty of ammo. She aimed at the ground nearby and fired a test shot on lethal. A tiny piece of the glacier’s frost coat flinched. She stood up and magviewed through the surface. The round had fragmented and dispersed in the proper starburst shape. Cold didn’t appear to be an issue for the weapon or multirounds. Still fearful of a malfunction, she wanted the other MW and a spare cartridge on her.
Descending the icy slope, she took a few precarious steps before deciding it’d be safer on her knees. She dropped down, sliding the rest of the way to her saucer-shaped safe zone. At ground level, she jogged a wavy course through the bulb grove, optics flashing toward each bulb’s subsurface root stock. Indeed, roughly half of them were home to an unmoving coiled serpent, mouth clamped on a vein. Ugly, but seemingly inert when left alone.
Her camp was as she’d left it. Supply bins and gear stacked up as a wall between two bulbs. The tent stood only a couple meters from the wall, and before it sat her symbolic campfire—the heater on a metal container lid—along with John’s survival bag stuffed into a squishy chair.
She found the second MW and a spare cartridge, affixing the holster to her free hip like a gunfighter. An insulated case supplied a bottle of water she’d earlier melted. She unsealed her suit and poured the water in to top off. A few strips of bunny jerky remained in her pocket, but she grabbed a couple more, just in case. She wouldn’t be caught unprepared again. No more overconfidence. No more presumption about “quick” excursions. Her eyes touched each container as a mental inventory scrolled. There didn’t seem to be anything else she’d need.
But …
She turned to the “campfire” and had an idea. The heater’s charge was at max. She set it to medium power, then stood, peering west through bulbs and a low permafrost crest. Just beyond the dark crest, the skimmer shone yellow and green in thermag, yellow in pure therm, and pale blue in mag. If Aether or Pablo showed up and stood near that skimmer, surveying the area with optics, the heater would light up like the sun through pretty much any go-to optic. They’d then hike over the little ridge, walk the short distance to her camp, and see that she’d only just stepped out. Satisfied, she set out toward the glacial rift.
* * *
The riverbears had moved fast, leaving the adjacent valley for another farther south. By the time she finally caught up, premature remorse had swelled to a tormenting new level. The animals were leaving, possibly calling it a night. As the sun set on the glacier, the temperature rapidly dropped. They were now more than 5K from her camp and still moving. What if they’d just grabbed a final snack before some great seasonal migration? Or they could be stopping into the den to check on the kids before heading back north to hunt in the nighttime field, AKA Minnie’s camp.
Keep telling yourself that, she thought as she stalked near the couple.
Creeping close, with only a single bulb between her MW and a riverbear ass, Minnie chose to focus only on those claws, and a vision of being dragged from her tent before her body was bisected for a polite, even-steven meal. She strove to ignore the beasts’ somewhat adorable trotting before her, hind legs prancing like a pair of dressage horses.
She darted right, through the open, and alongside another bulb. A few shots to the hindquarters would surely be devastating, but this needed to be a quick death for both. Their pace steady, Minnie ran ahead, obscured by the tall orbs, and then cut back left to head them off. She stopped, raised her visor to listen, counted two beats—listening for their thumping canter—and realized something was wrong. Without a glance, she pushed her body away from the bulb, diving and twisting, rolling and spinning about, landing on foot and knee, MW in the air and ready.
Her senses sound, the riverbears had indeed noticed Minnie and snuck right up behind her. All four eyes fixed on her, broad bodies advancing with the fearless audacity of a true apex predator.
“Hey!” Minnie roared, hustling to her feet.
Both paused, confused. Minnie’s finger tightened on the trigger. The one on the right tilted its head, like a puppy unsure what master wants. Minnie growled inside.
Shoot, idiot!
But her finger wouldn’t squeeze any tighter. She stomped a foot forward and shouted again. “Haurgh!”
Both riverbears recoiled with a start, retreating backward, skirting behind the bulb Minnie had last used for cover, and back toward Minnie’s camp.
Well, if you’re not going to shoot the damned things, at least scare them off in the right direction!
Minnie gave chase around the bulb, screaming like a looner and clapping her free hand against the side of the MW. Like herding sheep, she had to run out ahead and guide them back on course, away from her site. The riverbears huffed and spat, but continued running with their heads hung low. Still anxious about a potentially unwise decision, Minnie deliberated as the duo reached a straightaway between bulbs and accelerated. She couldn’t keep up with their burst of speed. Last chance.
She fired a single shot, non-lethal, toward the space between their joggling rumps. The multiround exploded behind them, casting forth blunt fragments. Projectiles struck home, eliciting pained warbles, tripping their pace, before they galloped on with no sign of slowing.
Minnie blew the muzzle tip, mock twirled the weapon around her finger, and shoved it into the holster. She refrained from an ill-fated “They won’t be coming back,” shut her visor, and headed west toward the shoreline.
* * *
The frozen white surface gave way to mossy permafrost, sloping gradually upward to a dwindling cliff above the beach. Minnie glanced down the shore to the skimmer’s little yellow dot (still there), then slowly scanned the horizon from end to
end. Still no sign of Aether’s rescue team. They were just taking a bit longer than they’d thought. Just had to fight against tougher opposing tides than usual. No reason for alarm.
She sat down on the cliff edge, cracked her visor open to invite in some misty sea air, and broke off a handful of frozen soil, playing with it in her lap.
There was reason for alarm. Without a PCU or the other gear that fell from John’s skimmer, she had no way to connect to the supply pods. No way to confirm receipt of a message that ended with “Confirm.” No way to see if a new message had been uploaded: “Dear Friends, hurricane wiped out area. Not coming yet. Standby for 90 days.” Had she known, she would’ve defied the blizzard and stopped to pick up the gear. She could have gone back, though. She should have gone back. When she found out at the waterfall, only a day trip away, that’s when she should’ve backtracked for the PCU.
And then the bigger cause for concern: the predictable return of Minnie’s HSPD. With her glands and levels nearly normalized, good old Uncle Huspid would come knocking again anywhere from tomorrow at the earliest, all the way to an optimistic ten days out. Without some kind of sedative—hell, any meds whatsoever—averting an attack in the next seven days seemed pretty implausible. Maybe they’d show tomorrow, Pablo handing her a nasty trial med milkshake of fungus spore. He’d tell her to drink the whole thing, warning her not to puke, because “That’s all there is right now.”
She should’ve gone back for the medkit.
Impossible, Minnie scoffed. To discover Aether was alive and probably already waiting for her on the coast? Given this revelation, Minnie was supposed to fly in the opposite direction for supplies? Yeah, right.
Minnie reclined onto the mossy ground cover and looked at the stars. The sun was in the right spot to catch a supply pod, but in that moment she preferred the organic calm of nature—Threck constellations—the Great Afvrik, descending on a small cluster of crustaceans. The tip of one fin shared the double star, Mintaka, with Orion’s Belt, but from this perspective, one would never guess. The remaining stars of Orion were irrevocably scattered into other images.
Aroused by hunger pangs, somehow still unanticipated, Minnie sat up, edged over to a safer drop-off spot, and leapt down to the slope of decaying sandstone, surfing the last few meters. From cliff to shore, the beach was coated in tide-smoothed rocks. Each crashing wave clattered and cracked as if not water, but stones, made up the ocean.
When she finally reached the skimmer, Minnie peeked at the status panel. Beacons still beaconing. And plenty of juice to last well beyond sunrise. Time for food.
Remembering the heater she’d left on, Minnie stepped back to the skimmer and reactivated her optics. She faced her camp, verifying the heater was as obvious as she’d earlier assumed.
Oh, dammit.
She had guests, and not the slender little human kind. The warm blobs of three riverbears merged and warped around the heater’s static glow. They better not have gotten into her damned food, or she’d be replenishing her stockpile with fatty riverbear meat.
MW in hand, she scuttled up the crest. Upon reaching the peak, she saw her heater’s glow illuminating the megabulb tops, also spotting the stretched shadow of a soon-to-be-crapping-itself riverbear. Down the slope she ran, dodging around a young bulb, and into the grove. She slowed a little as she neared, noting that they weren’t exactly rifling through her things, just sort of hanging around. Maybe they just liked the heater. Cold wanderers happening upon an abandoned smoldering campfire.
‘Happen upon.’ Keep telling yourself that, idiot.
The heater’s glow was visible from every part of her little valley, and from every surrounding ridge. It’d been stupid to leave it on.
With only a few bulbs between her and her camp, Minnie raised the MW before her, inflated her lungs, opened her visor wide, and burst on the scene with her fearsome, anti-riverbear shriek. “Haauuurrrgh!!”
She skated to a stop at the edge of her camp clearing. Her mouth clamped shut, a small residual howl croaking in her throat. Her eyes darted around the site, a thumping bass drum in her ears.
Two of the three immediately rose from their huddled positions. The third lay slumped on its side, close to the heater, slack-jawed and panting, with semi-conscious eyes.
Not riverbears.
The two standing Hynka stared at Minnie as she stared back. Both appeared to be calculating as Minnie calculated. Her little thumb was always just out of reach of the MW’s lethal toggle. She’d have to run backward, reach up quickly with her other hand, or slowly shift her grip until her thumb reached. It’s how she usually toggled it, but her hand didn’t feel all that keen on loosening.
The one standing to her left—fingers twitching as it stink-eyed her—was less than a Hynka stride away. If it moved now, before she could switch to lethal, she wouldn’t have a chance. The other, a pace and a half. She couldn’t wait for them to make the first move.
“Ayk-yra,” the farther muttered.
The closer shot a glance at the farther, then back at Minnie. “Arp tprik khoh.”
Minnie recognized the word. Khoh. Stop. They were discussing the situation, assessing, probably wondering if she was a threat. She’d come screaming before them like a looner and had yet to run away.
Remaining still, she fumbled through her fone to activate Livetrans.
And then the one on the ground spoke, faint and gargling, as if it was dying. “Ha-aykh … uh-possyr.”
The other two looked at the third, startled, as the translation popped up in Minnie’s app.
LIVETRANS: No kill. It [unknown].
No kill sounded good. Minnie allowed herself to breathe and took the opportunity to slowly shift her grip, sliding her thumb over the toggle. The little indicator light changed from orange to red. Now she could most likely take out both primary threats.
She studied the visitors. All three wore multiple riverbear furs over their heads and shoulders. Though not visibly connected to each other, the furs overlapped and made up a sort of hooded cloak. Hynka had never been observed with any type of clothing. Then again, as she’d erroneously consoled herself earlier, they’d also never been observed anywhere close to this far north. Yes, Hynka stretched their boundaries in search of food, but these three would’ve found food aplenty—and certainly better weather—2,000K south of this place.
Whatever the motivation, once they’d reached this latitude, it certainly made sense to stick around. Those bulbs didn’t grow anywhere else in the world, and nothing else grew in this region for hundreds of kilometers in every direction.
Bulbs drew the snake things to their root system.
Snake things drew riverbears.
Hynka apparently enjoyed riverbears. And warmth.
The closer Hynka studied Minnie once more before turning to the farther.
LIVETRANS: It home. Not we.
Farther replied, angry—sounding much more like a typical representative of its people—gesturing at the one on the ground.
LIVETRANS: [unknown] with! Hot [unknown] [unknown]!
These guys clearly had their own regional dialect. Minnie wondered if they’d even understand words from Ish’s DB. Fascinated by the relatively composed discourse before her, she elected to attempt communication over all of the other sketchy options she’d thrown around. She linked Livetrans to her suit PA and prepared for an unexpected response. Hell, Livetrans might speak to them in the accent of their mortal enemies’ clan. There was no way to predict their reaction.
She composed a greeting and watched Livetrans simplify it, paring down 33 words to the 10 that conveyed the basic sentiment.
She waited for their current exchange of countless unknowns to end, then sent the message through her PA.
“No kill. Hot stay. Home mine. Home we. Down we.”
Their gawking stares sent chills down her legs. Even the sick one’s eyes widened and found Minnie’s face as all stood in awestruck silence.
The one on the ground lurc
hed and began breathing heavily once more, then murmured.
LIVETRANS: [unknown] speaks.
Without a single step taken toward her over the past two inexplicable minutes, Minnie dared a weakening of her position. She slowly lowered the MW (that they wouldn’t know to be threatened by, anyway), and began a gradual squat, repeating the end of her message.
“Down we.”
The one closest to her began bending its legs, then shot a look at the other standing Hynka, and growled the same words.
LIVETRANS: Down we!
The other complied and Minnie’s head buzzed with delight as all three standing individuals eased into seated positions around the heater. The Hynka still towered over her, losing a mere quarter of their height while Minnie reduced to half. She felt like a mouse sitting with cats.
Minnie had rehearsed this moment since she was 14 years old. She readied Livetrans and stretched an arm out sideways, bringing her palm back to her chest.
“Call Minnie.”
The one closest to her worked its long mouth around, trying the sounds, then said carefully, “Nn-neee.”
Right, no M without lips. Ninnee will do just fine.
Minnie heard the sick one faintly say it as well, before resuming its labored breathing. The farther, largest Hynka scooted closer to its ill comrade and pressed a hand on its back.
The Hynka beside Minnie shared its own name.
“Call Fitchsher.”
Trying her best to remain present in the moment, head above the surreal, Minnie felt her chest quaking as she attempted it on her own. “Fitch-sher.”
Fitchsher’s head rolled around, fingernail tips poking the frost excitedly. Fitchsher pointed to the groaning Hynka on his other side.
“Baby in. Call Leeg.” Not sick. She was in labor. Fitchsher pointed to the last of the three. “Leeg … Onjr.”
Minnie looked at the female and said, “Leeg.” She turned to the male she guessed was the baby’s father. “Onjr.”
Leeg began howling from deep inside, like wind from the far end of a tunnel. Onjr continued playing the supportive birthing room husband, tapping Leeg’s back and pulling her arm up, then dropping it to her side … helpfully?
Exigency Page 36