Destra felt a draft around her neck, and she tightened her makeshift scarf—a strip of animal hide that she’d wrapped around the seam between her suit and her helmet. The seam was just a finger-width gap to let in fresh air, but it felt like a collar of ice around her neck.
The Gors were baffled by human frailty. Torv made occasional visits, updating her on the progress of his search for survivors. He remained convinced that there were crechelings still alive on Noctune somewhere in the depths of the planet’s icy warrens. Destra had given him her handheld scanner since day one, showing him how to use it and wishing him the best of luck in his search.
So far all he’d found were bodies. Frozen Gor corpses littered the deeper sections of their tunnels. Destra hadn’t seen the bodies with her own eyes, but she believed it. The Sythians were ruthless and thorough. They’d hunted humanity to extinction. Now they’d added the Gors to their hit list.
Hides flapped, drawing Destra’s attention to the entrance of the shelter and startling her out of her thoughts. A familiar hiss followed, and Destra knew what the Gor had said even without the translator in her ear.
The Gors had returned from the hunt.
Destra heard the sound of armored hands and knees scraping on ice as one of the sentinels began scuttling out on all fours. It was Sergeant Cavanaugh’s turn to go out and cook the meat. He would use the cutting beam strapped to his back to melt a pool of water, and then he’d drop chunks of raw meat inside and boil the water.
It was the same thing every day. Boiled meat. They’d tried a direct application of the beam, hoping for something that tasted grilled, but even on the beam’s lowest setting, the result was pure charcoal.
Destra leaned over and turned on her glow lamp.
Cavanaugh cursed and flinched away from the sudden brightness. None of their eyes were accustomed to light anymore.
“Shut it off! I can feel my way out just fine.”
“Sergeant,” Destra croaked. Her throat was scratchy and dry with thirst. They needed to save the charge on their cutting beams.
“What?”
“It’s been too long,” Destra said.
“Too long for what?”
Another hiss. Destra turned to see Torv crouching just inside the entrance of the shelter, looking uncomfortable in the low-ceilinged space.
“Too long of waiting in the dark for death to find you,” the Gor suggested.
“What’s that Skull Face blathering about now?” Cavanaugh demanded, long past frustrated that he couldn’t understand their language.
“Admiral Hale isn’t coming back for us,” Destra said, voicing what all of them were surely thinking by now. “We need to go. We can’t last much longer in here.”
“Sure, let’s go! It’s only fifty below in the tunnels outside. While we’re at it, why don’t we go to the surface. We can freeze to death even faster up there! Let’s all give our legs a good stretch before we go running off to the netherworld.”
“Sergeant.”
“What?”
“The tunnels go much deeper than this. Torv says they get warmer the deeper you go. The only reason we stayed this close to the surface was so that the admiral would be able to detect us through the planet’s interference. But it’s been too long. He’s not coming back, so we need to go.”
“A Gor’s idea of warm is a shaky thing to pin your hopes on,” Cavanaugh replied. “They think the surface is refreshing at seventy below.”
Another hiss. “Be careful how you speak to the Matriarch . . .” Torv said.
Destra decided not to translate Torv’s warning. “Look, how would you rather end up? Frozen stiff in a cave, or using your last breath to stay alive.”
“The c-councilor’s r-right,” one of the other Black Rictans said in a soft voice.
Cavanaugh turned and stared at the man. Destra saw the worried look on the sergeant’s face and she followed his gaze. The man who’d spoken was shivering violently enough to make his mech shiver with him, the mechanized limbs rattling ever-so-softly.
Cavanaugh cursed again and scuttled over to him. “Turn your heater up, Seven!”
“N-no use. C-core’s d-epleted,” he said.
“Someone switch power cores with him!” Cavanaugh snapped. “Whose got the most? Report!”
The numbers came in, and they weren’t good. The best was six percent. Cavanaugh was down to four. They’d all been flirting with hypothermia inside their relatively uninsulated mechs in order to make their cores last. Some of them had more natural insulation on their bodies than others, but they’d all lost plenty of weight in the past month. Destra had long since done the math. The Rictans had a few more days of power at best, and the heat radiating from their mechs was probably the only thing keeping their shelter warm. After that, the sentinels wouldn’t be the only ones who froze to death.
The man with six percent switched his core with Rictan Seven and they jacked up the heat. Cavanaugh went out to cook dinner. By the time he came back, Seven had stopped shivering because he was dead, and the core with six percent was down to five point five.
Cavanaugh gave no comment. He began passing around pieces of boiled meat as if nothing had happened.
Destra shook Atta by her shoulders to wake her daughter up. Atta moaned and sat up. She began to whimper almost immediately.
“I’m thirrrstyy!”
“Food first.”
They all reluctantly removed their helmets. As Destra did so, a fresh gust of frigid air raced around her face and ears, and she shivered. The smells inside the shelter were unsavory thanks to the raw hides they’d used for insulation. Fortunately that smell was tempered by the sub zero temperatures.
They ate in silence, all of them eyeing the dead man except Cavanaugh. When Atta asked about him, Destra said he was sleeping.
“Isn’t he hungry?”
“No,” was all Destra could manage.
By the time dinner was over, Cavanaugh tossed a splintered bone aside and licked his lips. They were already blue. Destra still couldn’t feel her face. She finished her meat and wiped the grease from her mouth on her sleeve.
“Well?” she demanded, looking from one man to the next. The Rictans were an elite combat unit and ex-cons to boot, but they looked like scared children to her. They’d just watched one of their own die, and they knew any one of them could be next. This wasn’t death the way their training had prepared them for it. It wasn’t a blaze of glory. It was shivering in the dark until your blood froze solid in your veins.
Without a word, Sergeant Cavanaugh activated his visor, lowering it once more. Then he powered his Zephyr’s systems with a whirr and hum of life. His helmet glowed bright and blue.
“At four percent, with only essential systems powered, I’ve got just over twelve hours,” Cavanaugh said. “Some of you will have more. Let’s hope it’s enough. We don’t stop searching until we find a better shelter.”
No one replied, but the rest of the Rictans began powering their mechs now, too.
Destra turned to Atta and said, “Come on. Time to leave.”
“It’s cold out there!” Atta whined.
“We’re going to find someplace warmer.” Destra took her glow lamp with her as she crawled out through the flapping hides at the entrance of their shelter. Once outside, she stood up. Her legs shook and she swayed on her feet. She wasn’t used to standing anymore.
Her eyes found a fresh trail of blood from the latest carcass, but no sign of the Gors. The trail ended at the icy chasm at the end of the tunnel.
There came a crunch of ice and clank of armor. Destra turned to see Sergeant Cavanaugh and the other four living members of his squad emerging from the shelter. They carried bundles of hides with them.
Everyone walked up to the edge of the chasm and looked down. Cavanaugh shook his head. “It’ll take too long to climb down that. We’re going to have to jump. Use your grav field generators to cushion the fall.”
“What about us?” Destra called out.
The sergeant turned. “Climb on my back.”
“What if you slip when you land? You’ll crush us beneath the weight of your armor.”
“So we don’t slip,” he said.
Destra frowned, but she didn’t have a better idea. One of the Rictans took Atta on his shoulders. Cavanaugh took Destra. She barely had the strength to hold on, but he helped by holding her arms over his chest.
Then he stepped up to the edge of the chasm and jumped.
An icy wind whistled by the seam in Destra’s helmet as she fell. Then came the crunch of their landing. Cavanaugh did slip, but Destra threw herself clear before he fell.
The rest of the Rictans landed without incident, and Atta begged not to come down from Rictan Three’s shoulders. He humored her.
They went on from there, driven by desperation and pent-up energy. Destra slipped at least a dozen times on the icy ground. The Rictans fared better with the deep tread on their armored boots.
When the tunnel forked, Cavanaugh suggested they follow the bloody tracks and trails. The Gors had said their crechelings were also sensitive to the cold, so it stood to reason that they must have already done some of the work of finding a warmer place to live.
Soon the tunnels became cluttered, debris-strewn spaces. Jutting beams and crumbled walls formed irregular shapes, but the Gors had already cleared a path. Destra felt some of the tension bleed out of her shoulders. The old, frozen ruins of civilization felt somehow more welcoming than the naked ice above their heads.
They came to the place where Destra had found the Star of Etherus, and went on from there, still following the bloody trails on the ground.
Destra’s glow lamp flickered and died. One of the Rictans turned on a helmet lamp instead. They walked for what felt like hours, but Cavanaugh was keeping more accurate track.
“Forty five minutes in and counting,” he reported. “Ambient temperature is one degree warmer.”
The ice was growing thinner, and the ruins more recognizable, but at this rate, they would have been better off in their shelter. One degree for an hour of walking. Their shelter had been twenty degrees warmer than the surrounding tunnels.
By the time Cavanaugh called out two hours he also called for a break. By then Destra’s legs were burning and her chest was heaving for air. She collapsed on the ground, too weak to move.
Atta was still riding high with one of the Rictans, and they were all using power-assist, so the expedition was much easier for them.
“Temperature is three degrees warmer now,” Cavanaugh reported. “If this keeps up, we could gain as much as eighteen degrees before our cores run dry. Still far too cold to survive without some kind of heating,” he decided.
Destra finally caught her breath. “Why is it getting warmer?” she asked.
Cavanaugh shrugged. “I don’t know. The planet must generate some of its own heat. Geothermal I suppose.”
“So the closer we get to the actual surface, the warmer we’ll be.”
Cavanaugh nodded. “Probably, but at some point these tunnels are going to end or stop descending toward the surface. They might also become too obstructed to negotiate,” he said, looking around at all the jutting debris and clutter strewn through the tunnel. “Break’s over. Move out!”
The next few hours passed slower than the first. The bloody trail dried up, but still no sign of the Gors. Sergeant Cavanaugh reported five degrees warmer and four and a half hours since they’d set out from their shelter. He was down to 2.0% power. His core was draining faster than he’d estimated.
Destra scanned the ruins, trying to find useful objects lying trapped beneath the ice.
“Comms interference is a lot stronger down here,” Cavanaugh said suddenly.
Destra walked up beside him, stepping over a fallen duranium beam and ducking through an old window frame.
“We’re going deeper beneath the ice,” Destra said. “Isn’t that what you’d expect?”
“No, we’ve descended about two hundred meters. If the interference were diffuse, caused by all the ice and debris, you’d expect it to be linear, but it’s not. It’s progressive. Scanner range is down to just a few dozen feet. Comms likewise.”
“Maybe the ruins are denser down here,” Destra suggested.
“Maybe,” Cavanaugh said.
They continued on. Before long the tunnels grew too narrow to walk side by side. Cavanaugh went first, with Destra stumbling along behind him.
It wasn’t long before he skidded to a stop, cursing viciously. His arms shot out, grabbing whatever he could to steady himself.
“What is it?” Destra asked as she came up behind him.
“See for yourself,” he stood aside and Destra saw that the tunnel had widened out into an infinite blackness—a vast hollow that Cavanaugh’s helmet lamp failed to illuminate. A cavern? she wondered. She crept up to the edge, and looked down.
The ice-covered side of what must have been an ancient building slanted away endlessly into the dark. It was too steep and too slippery for them to negotiate safely. “Where does it go?” Destra asked. The other Rictans crowded in behind them.
Atta called out, “Let me down! I want to see! I want to see!”
Atta appeared behind them, but Destra held her back. “Stay back, Atta.”
“But—”
“I’m serious, Atta. It’s dangerous.”
Atta settled for peeking between their legs. “Wow . . .” she said.
“Well, frek me . . .” Cavanaugh muttered.
“What? You found something?” Destra asked, gazing up at him, searching his expression for some sign of what he’d seen, but he was studying the displays inside his helmet.
“Interference is stronger than ever here, and infrared is giving me a fuzzy picture of the bottom. It’s actually warm down there.”
Destra’s heart thudded in her chest.
“How warm?”
“In places . . . above freezing.”
Destra blinked “How? I mean what could cause that?”
“I don’t know, but we need to find out. I’m climbing down.”
“Wait!” Destra called out. “How do we get down?” she asked, gesturing to herself and Atta.
Cavanaugh was already lowering himself over the edge, extending a pair of retractable, foot-long blades in his gauntlets to use them like ice picks.
“You’re going to have to wait until I can find a safe path,” he said.
“Cavanaugh! Don’t you leave us here!”
“I’ll be back, Councilor.”
As she watched, he slipped and slid a few meters down before fetching up against a jutting beam.
He grunted and went on climbing down. By the time he was out of sight, Destra and the others were left in darkness, listening to the sound of their own breathing. Atta flicked on her glow lamp.
“I’m scared,” she said. “When is he coming back?”
“Soon,” Destra replied.
“I want to go, too.”
“We can’t. It’s too dangerous, and we don’t know the way down.”
“But, Bo—”
“Atta! Quiet. We have to wait.”
Then came a sibilant hiss. A few of the Rictans cursed, and Destra whirled around just in time to see Torv de-cloaking behind them.
“Bones knows a way,” Atta said.
“An easier way,” Torv explained. “Follow me.”
* * *
The way wasn’t easy. It was fast. The Gors had dug a tunnel through solid ice. It was slick and smooth and angled just right for them to slide all the way down at a terrifying speed.
Destra screamed until her scratchy voice failed. Then she hit the ground with a painful jolt and skidded for a few dozen meters until she fetched up against a solid wall of ice.
Atta came next, squealing with delight rather than terror. Her glow lamp lit up the icy tunnel from within as she came skidding out. She slid to a stop just behind Destra and bounced to her feet, grinning wildly behind her
helmet. “Let’s do that again!”
Destra shook her head. Reaching out, she took Atta’s glow lamp and used it to study the bottom of the chasm. It seemed to go on forever.
A sound reached her ears—splashing water. Liquid water.
Destra gasped, unable to believe what she was hearing. A moment later, Torv and the Rictans came whipping down the tunnel. Destra pulled Atta aside, waiting for them to stop sliding.
Once they did, Destra walked up to Torv. He was hissing to himself as she approached. “There’s liquid water down here?”
“Yess,” he said, springing to his feet and dusting ice shavings from his buttocks and back.
“Why didn’t you tell us?”
“I try to tell you it is warmer here, but you do not listen.”
“Show me where the water is,” Destra said.
Torv led them across the ice. Other Gors appeared, swirling out of the dark. Their crechelings were old enough that they were walking instead of crawling. Destra considered that strange. Human babies didn’t manage to walk until they were at least a year old.
Up ahead, the ground became a glittering black pool—broad and no doubt deep as well. Destra stepped up to the edge of it, gaping at the sight of such a vast expanse of liquid water. Thick clouds of steam rose from the surface, melting the icy walls of the chasm. Both of the far walls glistened with rivulets of melting ice that raced into the pool below. It wasn’t enough to make a sound, but the Gors were. They splashed and swam in the pool chasing each other through the water with obvious enjoyment.
Destra marveled at that. “This is incredible,” she said.
A startled shout drew their attention, and they turned to look up, high above the pool. A blurry black shape came tumbling down. Then came a giant splash that sprayed water in all directions.
Destra didn’t have to wonder what that had been. “Cavanaugh!” she called out, searching the inky depths for him.
The other Rictans rushed forward, but stopped short at the edge of the pool, realizing it was deeper than it looked.
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