Bones of Ice

by A. L. Strezze

  ~~*~~

  Day Seventy-One

  Jade was gutting a fat ground squirrel when her com pinged, and she looked down to see a reminder that her mother’s birthday was next week.

  Her first thought was of regret. She made a point never to miss Mom’s birthday, after the drama and hurt feelings of missing it her first year in Survey. Even if she was scheduled to be away on the day, she always scheduled a present and a message.

  Her second thought was one full of cold dread. Why weren’t the colonists here yet?

  Up until now, she had been able to immerse herself in the routines of survival, and ignore the passage of time. Her com’s calendar was so out of step with the seasons on Ice that she had removed it from the main display, and it had been easy to simply focus on short-term survival, confident that the colonists would be arriving shortly.

  But now…

  When she first woke, her com showed the date as 12 June, by the Hub calendar. She liked to think of it as Day Zero, the day before the real work of survival started. Her mother’s birthday was 29 August. Two months? No, more than two months. It would be summer soon, if it wasn’t already.

  “Why aren’t they here yet?” she asked the partially disemboweled squirrel.

  “They should be here. There had to be a solid bid from a colony group, or the Survey Authority never would have approved the expense of a follow-up survey. So where are they?”

  There were dozens of possible reasons. Anything from personnel issues to cash flow problems could delay a colonization, but for two months?

  Colony groups often lost personnel at the last minute, as people decided they didn’t want to sign on for twenty years of isolation after all. But that was why there was always a recruitment drive or ten running at any given time in the Hub. There were whole companies devoted to finding ways to fill out a colony group’s 120-person minimum.

  It wouldn’t have taken two months if it was just a personnel issue. Not even for a sub-prime planet like Ice.

  “So… financial problems?” She skewered the squirrel and balanced it carefully over the fire, wishing for the millionth time that her survival kit had included some sort of cooking pot.

  Financial problems were common earlier in the colonization process, when groups were making their bids, paying their deposits, and buying up supplies. It was possible for something to come up last minute, but that was less common, and there were companies that specialized in smoothing the way there, too.

  “Or… they’re not coming at all.”

  What if some aspect of the follow-up survey made them back out entirely? The would-be colonists hadn’t been scared away by the vicious winter storm that cut short the original survey attempt, or by Tad’s misadventure during the full survey. But could her “death” have been the last straw?

  “No, surely not,” she tried to reassure herself. “They would just plan to kill the Ice badgers off. No big deal, right?”

  As long as Donly and Alenn made it back to report, there should be no problem. As long as…

  For the first time, Jade allowed herself to question the assumption that they had both made it back alive.

  The Survey Authority had a good record of persuading colonists that a single surveyor death was not worth forfeiting their deposit over. They provided detailed after-action reports and risk reduction recommendations, and the statistics for successful colonies backed up that assertion.

  With two deaths, the forfeit rate jumped to something like eighty percent, and even if the planet wasn’t officially written off as a bad risk, re-bids were vanishingly rare.

  If, for instance, Donly had broken No Hazard, tried to save Jade, and been “killed” in turn, there was a good chance that the colony group would forfeit their deposit and the cost of the follow-up survey in order to back out.

  Would he have done it? If he thought she was dead, absolutely not. But if he realized that she was still alive…

  It would certainly explain the absence of colonists.

  There was no debris from the survey camp, so at least one team member must have survived to report back when the portal opened at the end of the survey, but that could have been Alenn, alone. If that was the case, the colonists might not be delayed. They might not be coming at all.

  What would she do if the portal never reopened?

  “Don’t talk nonsense,” she snapped at herself. “Of course they’re coming! I would have noticed if he was in there with me.”

  But would I have, really? It was so dark in there. He could have been lying right next to me, still unconscious, and I never would have known it.

  He could have been eaten alive, while I was running away.

  Jade remembered the sounds of animals dying while she worked to escape the cave. It was easy, since they still echoed through her nightmares most nights. Had one of those poor, doomed voices been her friend?

  She imagined what it would have been like to wake up a little bit later, just in time to feel sharp teeth tearing into her flesh. A horrifying way to die.

  And the more she thought about it, the more plausible it seemed. She had scars on her shoulder that her memory couldn’t account for, presumably from the bite that had knocked her out. Would it have looked like a death-blow to Donly?

  She pulled down at the neck of her shirt and craned her neck, trying to see. Maybe, but maybe not. And if not, then his bones were still lying in that cave, abandoned in the dark.

  Jade blinked away the tears that suddenly clouded her vision, wishing for the first time that her team had been more strict about No Hazard. They weren’t reckless, but they liked to joke that simply stepping through a portal was already a breach of No Hazard, so why stop there?

  It didn’t seem so funny now.

  She took a shaky breath and tried to think practically, rather than emotionally.

  “So. No colonists, ever.” The Survey Authority was constantly discovering new worlds. If Donly was dead and the colonists had forfeited, the chances of a new group re-bidding and settling here in her lifetime were slim to none.

  “Or he made it back just fine and they’re only delayed,” she reminded herself, a little desperately.

  “I don’t know that he came after me, not for sure. Besides, I said it before - if it was me, I’d want to get started as early in the spring as possible. If I was them, and I got delayed a few weeks, wouldn’t I file an extension, and try again next year?”

  Either way, she had to start thinking longer term. The problem was, her plans if she was stuck here forever, and her plans if the portal was going to open next spring were as different from each other as they were from the short-term survival she had been doing up until now.

  If there was no hope of rescue, then she should move south, perhaps following the river, and hope that she found more temperate climes before the winter struck. She could explore, and hopefully enjoy the rest of her life, however long or short that might be.

  On the other hand, if there was still a chance of going home in the spring, she needed to start preparing for the winter now. She would need a more sturdy shelter, and stores of food. The way the Ice badgers hibernated was a good indication that the one storm she had seen wasn’t an aberration. She would have to figure out a way to augment her clothing, too, since it was all getting tattered with constant use. Even her coat, which was great for chilly nights and rainy days, hadn't been intended for below zero temperatures.

  But which was the correct choice?

  Abandoning the portal site to go south was the more permanent option. If she had any hope of the portal opening again, she should stay near, but the winter…

  The thought of winter terrified her. On their first visit to this planet, her team had stepped out into an ice storm that was like nothing she had never seen. The wind howled so loudly that they couldn’t hear anything else, not even the sounds of hailstones the size of her fist shattering on the rock around them. They set the site markers and retreated - bruised, bloodied, and in Ta
d’s case, concussed.

  But the thought of traveling away had its problems too. If she simply took off for the south, she would always wonder if the portal would have opened, if only she had waited a little bit longer.

  Jade kicked a stone into the trees and started pacing. What was the right thing to do?

  “The uncertainty is the worst part,” she complained. “I mean, even if Donly is dead, can I be certain that no one will ever want to colonize here?”

  She found herself standing by her “J”, and stepped across the portal site, sighing when nothing happened.

  “Yes, probably. But I don't know that he's dead. I don’t know anything for sure.”

  Jade paced across the threshold again, then again, losing herself in thought to the point that she forgot to be disappointed with each pass.

  “I could check…”

  If she was right, and Donly was dead, then his bones should still be in the cave. There were no primates in the local ecosystem, so human bones would stand out from the deer-like grazers that made up the bulk of the Ice badger larder.

  Finding them would give her proof, the certainty that she was so sadly lacking. She’d give him a proper burial, or maybe build him a cairn at the portal site, and then head south with a clear conscience.

  The only problem was, that meant going straight into the heart of Ice badger territory. The original survey hadn’t shown them to be cave-dwellers, so hopefully the cave would be empty by now, but just getting there would be a huge risk. Could she afford to take it?

  “Can I afford not to? Because let’s face it, not knowing is going to drive me crazy, and that’s just not conducive to long-term survival.”

  Most animals were wary of fire. If she could make something portable, bring the fire with her, maybe it would give her enough of an edge. She would need some sort of light in the cave anyway. Her com’s solar chargers were enough to keep it operational, but once out of the sun it would lose power too quickly to count on it for illumination.

  “Right. Torches, then. My com must have something on how to build torches.”

  After an hour of searching, she gave up. Open flame was beyond obsolete when it came to Survey Authority equipment and procedures, so perhaps it wasn’t surprising that they had never foreseen a need to use it as a light source. She would just have to experiment.