by Lucas Bale
‘Both of you seem so keen to sacrifice us, Abraham,’ Gant said. ‘I understand the Caestor—he’s part of the Magistratus, one of their dogs. He thinks like them, takes us all to be criminals and expendable. He’ll do anything to leave this place, and the deaths of some of our people will mean nothing to him. But you? Why are you so content to see our people die out here?’
‘It is necessary. A war cannot be won without death.’
‘This is not a war, Abraham.’
‘It is survival. You saw them, on the trail. You saw how they reacted to Bradman. Some do not have the resolve to survive. They are weak. We cannot allow them to drag the others down with them. You must learn to think differently.’
Gant stared at the col above them. Around him, his people were huddled behind rocks and in crevasses, trying to keep out the wind and fear. They clutched rifles, axes, tools. Few spoke, as much from the edge of tension as from concern their voices might carry on the wind to the chukiri in the basin on the other side of that col. People will die, he thought. Are you really ready for that?
‘There are more than a hundred of us,’ he said to Abraham. ‘Most have weapons of some kind. The Caestor is right about this—if we all funnel through that col, the chukiri will pick us off two or three at a time. The terrain is our only advantage. There’s a trail on that ridge. It leads around the basin. We should send our hunters, anyone who can shoot, along that trail, and force the chukiri to fight us on two sides.’
Abraham nodded. ‘Agreed. I will go with them.’
‘The moment we attack, you must do the same,’ Gant said.
‘We’ll need some time to get into position.’
‘Then we have to hope that the Caestor and Nikolaj can give us that time.’
Abraham paused, and for a moment he looked at Gant with no expression on his face. Then, almost as though he had just remembered how, he smiled. ‘Good luck,’ he said. Then he turned away and began to gather the hunters together.
‘What now?’ Kayt said as she came to stand beside him. Gant still felt the chill of her anger.
‘How are they?’ he asked, nodding towards the huddled shapes of his people.
‘Scared. Naturally. But they are all ready to fight. They are back in the fleet. They know what it takes to survive there, and they know the same applies here.’
‘I don’t want to lose people, Kayt.’
‘What I said about Henrik—’
‘It doesn’t matter.’
‘I was angry. You’re right. He made his own choice.’
He wasn’t sure she truly believed that, but he accepted her words. He put his hands on her shoulders and she rested her cheek against one of them.
‘We can do this, Kayt,’ he said. ‘We have to.’
‘I know. So what now?’
‘I need to see where they are.’
‘I’ll come with you.’
He shook his head. ‘If they see me… ’ He paused, then said, ‘Stay with them. I’ll climb faster alone. We don’t have any time to waste.’
Kayt nodded. She understood. She leaned up to him and kissed his lips lightly. Then she nodded again, pressing her palm against his chest. When she finally turned away, Gant felt something sink inside him, but he didn’t know why.
He gathered his equipment and scanned the lines leading up to the ridge beside the col. He understood why Kayt had wanted to come, but he needed her down with the rest of them, getting them ready. She was good at that. They trusted her, believed in her. She could motivate them, if anyone could.
He strapped the spikes to his boots. He had built them himself, repaired them at the end of each season, replacing spikes that were too worn, sharpening others. They were oiled and slipped over his boots easily. He hefted each piolet in his hands, and they felt familiar and comfortable there. Yet still he swallowed hard in his dry throat as the knot built in his gut.
He tried to climb quickly, driven by nerves and fear, but he felt burdened by the responsibility. Here, alone, it seemed more real than it ever had. It weighed heavily on him, sapped the strength from his muscles, made him feel weak and fatigued. As he drove the axes and boot spikes into the ice in alternate, smooth transitions, he realised that, for the first time in his life, he felt no pleasure at being up here. There was no release from crawling up the rock and ice, nothing like the joy he had found in climbing ever since he was a boy. No excitement at the empty abyss beneath him. He was no longer energised by the risk in it. These moments are what you were addicted to, he told himself. They are the reason you stole, and lied, and risked everything to escape your given life. What are they to you now? He had gambled back then, and lost. It had cost him his freedom, and led him, ultimately, here—to this moment.
He refused to lose again.
As he approached the ridge line, he slowed. Just below it, he screwed some protection into the ice. The wind swept along the flank of the mountainside and tugged at him. It had made the climb harder, and he was tiring. He clipped into the screw so he could relax his muscles a little, and once he was secure, he took in a deep breath. There was no turning back. He had gambled again, but this time on the fact that the chukiri would be watching the col, expecting Gant’s people to come over it as Gant himself had done before. He had set his stake in the belief that they would not be scanning the rest of the crags along the ridge line; that they believed the ice and stone there to be too dangerous. Yet here it was where he now hung, suspended by tiny slivers of steel and a single screw, driven into the ice.
He pulled the oculars from the side pocket of his pack and then slowly, silently, and with considerable care, climbed upwards so he could peer over the ridge.
At first he couldn’t see the chukiri. The freighter was as they had left it, hours before. Yet the terrain around it seemed empty. He scanned it slowly, painstakingly searching every boulder and crevasse for any sign of the chukiri. Then he picked up the first, his orange jata wrapped up in some kind of scarf, a little way from the freighter. He was installed in a crevasse at the base of the mountain’s muscular flank, bathed in shadow and swirling mist. The heavy rifle was slung comfortably across his chest, in easy reach.
As Gant continued his search, he eventually found another, crouched within a cluster of rocks and boulders. He looked for another ten minutes, but found no more. Two, he thought. There are only two? He shook his head, and the tension built again his chest. For a moment, the thought excited him. He considered briefly that perhaps the rest had been in the raiding party that had destroyed the huts and was now bearing down on them from behind. But there were others in the compound, he knew. They had sophisticated radio communications, and the initial party, those who had stumbled on Bradman and his men, would certainly have communicated with the compound. No, there had to be more in the basin; more of them protecting the freighter until the rest of their kind came.
Gant just couldn’t see them.
C H A P T E R 18
THE VAST, seemingly endless expanse of the jagged landscape unfolded yet again ahead of Natasha each time she edged precariously beyond a dark stone spur or frozen waterfall. The wind and fog seethed on the summits and swept down into the valleys, kicking off snow and polishing ice. Every single layer of clothing she had found inside the emergency survival pack from the lifeboat was now wrapped around her, yet the chill wind still swept through them. The only way to stay warm was to keep moving.
The terrain grew worse, but a vague trail remained. She stared at it, winding ahead of her like some endless river of stone along a sheer cleft. The scarred savages ahead of her, shifting motes of black against the blue-grey, were stretching the distance between her and them. They traversed the mountains quickly, almost effortlessly, the Peacekeeper suits working in concert with their bodies, enhancing them, insulating them from the cold.
Skoryk had once told her about the suits. He'd been keen to impress her, and she'd let him. As he spoke, she'd grown bored and almost drifted away from him. She had allowed him inside her
because he had stim and access to lucrative Bazaar contracts. She had done so more than once—broken her only real rule—because he was influential and connected. Instead of selling her body for coin to buy stim, she had tried to give herself a future.
Now, as she followed the shadows of powered suits threading a path along the mountainside, she was grateful for the knowledge Skoryk had given her. Although she doubted whether knowing any of it would even the odds much. They were better armed and faster; stronger and better trained. What advantage over them did she have?
As she saw it, just one. They didn’t know she was following them.
She would make that work for her somehow, but in truth she had no idea how. She was alone on this planet, with only these savages for company, and both were looking for the same thing. She couldn’t fight them all off. And to get to a freighter that was probably nothing more than wreckage strewn across the mountains? She flexed her hands into fists and breathed out slowly. What the fuck am I doing?
Something, she told herself. She was doing something, and that was all that mattered. She didn’t know how long she would be down here; if she was going to be trapped on the planet forever. She needed to know who these men were, where they came from. Maybe she could take one of them down, with her one slender advantage, and arm herself. She couldn’t use a suit—Skoryk had been clear about that—but maybe she could salvage something from it. She needed to know if the freighter was repairable. If so, it would take time for them to repair it—and maybe she might get an opportunity to take it from them.
But it’s not just about that, is it? Benton was there, in front of her again, in these frigid cold mountains, sipping her hotleaf and, in her clumsy but well-meaning way, offering her comfort and understanding. Benton, who had cared for an old man who had, in turn, loved her back. Benton, who was now dead with him. Benton had been with her from the moment the lifeboat crashed into the canopy of trees, sitting there in the back of her mind. Yet when those bastards had continued on their way in the jungle, each of them passing beneath her, close enough for her to hear their desolate hearts kicking inside the Peacekeeper armour, Benton had come right up front and never left.
Yes, this was as much about Benton and Kent and the rest of the crew of the salvage titan. She knew that; she allowed herself that admission. Good people, and you let yourself care about them. Now you have to do something about what happened to them. People you hardly knew.
Did that matter to her? That she hardly knew them? How many people had been kind to her in her life, without wanting something in return?
Her legs ached as she clambered across the crevasses and rifts in the vague trail and bit into one of the nourishment bars she had found in the pack. It tasted of nothing, but she welcomed even the vaguest lift in energy.
The first shot surprised Natasha. She ducked back instinctively, seeking cover behind a boulder. The sharp crack resonated off the walls of the valley, then retreated to the shadows of its echo as it fell away beneath the rush of the wind. She took in a short, edgy breath. She couldn’t say where the shot had come from. Had it been meant for her? No, the savages couldn’t have a clue she was here; she’d been too careful and had remained hidden. If they knew she was behind them, she would already be dead. Which means the shot was meant for them. However obvious it seemed, the realisation was startling. There were others here.
Another crack. Who's shooting at them? Who else is down here on this planet? If they were enemies of the scarred men, maybe she could use that. Use the distraction.
She edged around the boulder until she could see the dark shadows below her, themselves hunkered down behind what cover the mountain provided. Seeing them that way, knowing that there would soon be a battle from which she might not emerge unscathed, her own death loomed large before her. It was constant now, a feeling she felt crawling over her skin and down her back. Cold and bitter. Yet somehow, she wasn’t afraid. She was desperate to survive.
A third crack came, searing through the wind then echoing away again. All around her, the banks of snow and ice trembled with its sharp, hollow clap.
Furtively, she glanced ahead, searching the jagged spurs of the massif, scanning the summits and ridges, the waterfalls of ice, but she could see nothing. No movement of any kind; no gleam of light catching cold metal. Just swirling mist and bitter spindrift. Does it matter who it is? she thought. The enemy of my enemy.
She saw her opportunity. A chance to make it to the freighter before them, or at least to even the odds and lessen the threat they posed to her.
She reached breathlessly into her pack and searched between fabric and plexi-resin, fumbling and pushing. She felt a surge of relief when her fingers closed around the two cylindrical signal flares. There had only been two, and she now felt heavily the weight of that number. She glanced beneath her at her enemy gathered below. They were edging forward in short waves, in the breaks between the rifle cracks. They had not begun to return fire. They had no idea yet where to shoot. That wouldn’t last long, she guessed. Eventually they would see muzzle flash, or be able to trace the sound to a ridge or spur.
Even as she thought this, there came the harsh, guttural pulse of heavy Peacekeeper rifles. It swept through the valley, cutting through the wind. It was so close, so loud and overbearing, she shrank back reflexively. Now is the time, she told herself. Get moving. She peered over the boulder and searched the flank of the mountain above the pack of black shapes slinking below.
It stretched forever upwards, a leviathan of black rock and blue ice. Hanging from its flanks were phalanxes of vast waterfall seracs, javelins thirty metres long that hummed as the vibrations from the heavy rifles shook the valley. Natasha swallowed, feeling the hardness of the tension in her throat. The first flare quivered in her cold hands. She fumbled with the trigger mechanism, knowing there were only two chances. That it might even take two hits to bring the whole lot crashing down on top of those mutilated savages. She closed her eyes, took in a breath, and tried to focus. Tried to push the rising panic deep down into her gut.
She stood, giving herself as much room as she could, levelled the flare to where she thought she would get the best arc—and fired.
C H A P T E R 19
AS GANT made his way back to Kayt, he knew what had to be done, and it sickened him. The climb to the ridge was easy for someone like him, but there was no time to lead his way up that pitch and place protection for others to climb. Or to hope that, even if he did, they would be able to climb the slick ice. He was the only one who could reach that spot and cover the others as they descended. He could begrudgingly see the inevitability of it, but it still felt like galling cowardice, crouching in safety while others walked into a cauldron of fire.
He rubbed his eyes and tried to breathe.
‘How many?’ Kayt said when he reached her.
He didn’t take off his spikes. He retrieved his rifle from her. ‘I can only see two.’
‘That’s good,’ she said breathlessly. ‘The rest must be behind us. In the other group.’
He shook his head. ‘It's too easy,’ he said, almost choking on the words. ‘There must be more hidden. Maybe Abraham’s group can find them when we attack. We have to hope he will.’
‘Joern and Matthias are good hunters. They can shoot. You have to trust them.’ Both had gone with Abraham. Anyone who could shoot had gone with Abraham. The rest, apart from Gant, were bait. Just like they had been when they first ran from the chukiri years before.
‘We don’t have many choices, Kayt… ’ He couldn’t finish.
‘I know, Will,’ she whispered. ‘They know what they have to do.’
He lowered his head and closed his eyes. Then he looked at her again. ‘Some will die.’
‘They understand that too,’ she said. Again she pressed her hands against his chest. Even in the cold, he thought he could feel their warmth. His heart kicked, and all he wanted to do was protect her. ‘We can’t run anymore. They know that. They saw what the chuki
ri did to Henrik, Thom, and Marin.’ She took in a shaky breath. Her eyes twitched as she spoke. ‘They don’t want that to happen to them.’
‘Stay back,’ he whispered. ‘Just stay at the back of the group.’
She shook her head as she smiled sadly. She glanced towards the people Gant knew she loved. Her family. ‘I don’t deserve to survive more than any of them. We all have to fight, Will.’
‘Then spread out. Take different routes down. Keep behind cover as much as you can. The mist will help, but the wind’s too strong in the basin. They’ll see you eventually. The moment they start shooting, we’ll have them.’ Gant glanced at the col and hit on a glimmer of hope: an idea that might protect them, at least a little. ‘Gather things that will burn. If we can start a fire by the col, we can get some smoke going. You’ll lose your surprise, but they’ll know we’re here soon enough anyway. It might give you a chance.’
Kayt nodded and ran over to the group, hunkered down amid the boulders. They removed layers of clothing until she had enough to burn. He watched her hike up towards the col and set them alight. Then he headed back to the wall of ice and climbed to the ridge.
Below him, his people moved through the smoke like silent ghosts—flickering shapes creeping slowly up towards the col. He couldn’t see their faces, but he felt their fear. He feathered his fingers around the rifle’s grip and rested his forefinger on the trigger. He sighted it on the area where he had seen the first chukiri. He could no longer see him there, so he scanned the surrounding area. Still he found nothing.
He didn’t know where Abraham was, and he couldn’t see him or the men who had gone with him. He had to trust they had line of sight to their targets. That they would make their shots when they needed to. Save as many as you can, he told himself. They deserve this more than you. He admired them fiercely now, their courage and resolve. At that moment, they seemed more like his family than they had ever been. Than anyone had ever been.