If fact, there didn’t seem to be much wind at all, not enough to explain snow moving horizontal to the ground. Suddenly, the incongruent mix of sight and sense induced vertigo, and Cole felt as though he were peering out through a window in a cliff face. He cracked his visor a little to see if perhaps the helmet was blocking out the wind.
Nothing.
He snapped the visor back in place, banishing the sliver of bright light that had attempted to work its way inside. Looking beyond the belly of the Firehawk, Cole noted the visibility would probably have been pretty good without all the driving snow—the visor seemed to filter the light perfectly.
Which means, Cole realized suddenly, the ambient air in this place is as bright as a cutting torch!
He checked out the side of the hull catching the drifting snow. Like Riggs had said, the level had already ramped up even with the massive bulk of the upturned ship. He lowered himself back down below the lip of the open hatch and cracked his visor; Riggs knelt across from him, clutching the other side of the landing struts.
“Give me one of the kits,” he told Riggs.
Riggs passed it up, and Cole worked the long strap over his helmet. He then pulled the utility knife out of his flightsuit and held it out to his former friend.
“What? I get to kill you know?” Through the crack in his visor, Cole could see a thin smile on Riggs’s lips.
“Maybe, but not directly. I want you to follow these wires from the landing gear down into the maintenance tunnel and cut them back as long as you can.”
“You gonna rappel down with them?”
“I want to see if the snow is packed enough to walk on. If not, we’re gonna be trapped here while we get buried alive.”
Riggs took the knife. “Joy,” he said. He worked his way down the well, tracing the wires and cutting them free of their zip-ties as he went.
A minute later, Cole pulled the free end of the wires up to him. He had a good seven meters of the stuff, more than enough to get to the edge of the snow.
He checked the other end of the wire to make sure it was secured to the hatch, and then began climbing out.
Riggs grabbed one of his boots before he could get very far. Cole looked down at the black visor peering up at him.
“Be careful,” he heard Riggs yell through his helmet, his voice muffled and distant. “Don’t die before I can kill you.” He shook the utility knife at him for effect.
Cole smiled behind his visor and pulled himself out, crawling all the way up on top of the metal belly of the Firehawk.
The surface had already iced up, making Cole’s boots slip as he tried to rise to his feet. Coupled with the vertigo of the sideways flurry, the slickness made him feel unstable and a tad nauseous. His brain wanted to lean into the snow, but there was no wind to hold him. His stomach flipped; he sank back to his hands and knees and decided to stay there, the survival pack dangling off one side of his back.
Cole kept one end of the wire wound tight around his glove and played the rest out behind him. It was a half-dozen meters to the edge of the white, fluffy snowbank that led up to the ship’s belly. The thick flurries in the air made everything fuzzy, but it seemed as if the bank was visibly growing and creeping forward, the large flakes piling up fast.
Riggs was right: they didn’t have very much time. If they didn’t figure out something quick, they were going to freeze to death in a large Navy-built coffin.
Cole crawled toward the snowbank, reaching it just as the mostly flat belly of the ship started curving down to the side. He pressed one gloved hand into the whiteness and felt the solidity of wet pack, not the dry stuff he feared he’d find. He crawled into it another meter until his knees crunched in the stuff, and then his boots. He worried about the dizziness, his head still reeling from vertigo, but at least the snow gave him more traction than the ice. Enough to think about standing up.
Before he could, he saw something strange in the snow. One of his gloves was inside a boot print. Cole lifted his hand and looked down at the impression, feeling even more turned around. He looked over his shoulder, back at the bare metal of the Firehawk’s belly, and saw his tracks through the snow—the parallel furrows created by his knees as straight as the wire trailing through them.
How did I make that impression? Cole thought.
When he looked forward again, the mystery resolved itself: out of a thick flurry of snow, he saw a boot a few meters away. Looking up, he saw there was a furry leg inside that boot—and a twin next to it. Together, they supported a humanoid wrapped in scraps of fur to the top of its head. Black goggles poked out of the mottled strips; the figure seemed to be staring down at him.
Cole reached one arm to the man. “Mortimor?” he shouted inside his helmet. He couldn’t believe it. He felt giddy with the thought of not just finding living beings out there, but possibly the very person he thought he’d heard during the crash, the last person he thought he’d ever meet in person.
The figure nodded his head as if he’d heard Cole.
But the gesture must’ve been a signal to whoever had crept behind him, because that’s where the blow to his neck came from.
Cole collapsed, his helmet striking the metal hull through a few inches of snow. The impact popped his visor open, letting in the searing light and the biting cold. Cole squeezed his eyes shut and tried to bring his hands up to close his helmet, but someone knelt on his back, bending his arms high in a direction they didn’t normally go. Cole felt the emergency kit being ripped off him.
Whoever it was barked out orders to someone else. He spoke English, but with a strange accent: “Check for more crew. Grab everything you can, fusion fuel first.”
“Why we still raiding?” someone else yelled. “Ain’t we getting outta here soon?”
“And leave this lovely weather? Hell, no. Now get moving. You’ll be buried in an hour.”
Several pairs of boots stomped away; Cole could feel the vibrations coming up through the fuselage and into his helmet. He yelled out to warn Riggs, but the person on his back twisted his arm up until his shouts turned into gasps. As Cole fell silent, fighting to breathe past the pain, he heard more sounds: the crunch of snow as someone approached from the other direction, stomping up the drift. Cole tried to peer ahead, to see who it was, but his visor was open too wide to hazard even a glance.
“Take this one to the sled. I’ll help Saul.”
The person on Cole’s back released him. Before he could move to close his visor, a new set of powerful hands—more than one pair—seized his arms. Cole was dragged forward; he dug his toes into the snow in protest. He tried to snap his visor shut by whipping his neck, but it had already frozen in place.
The men on either side had no problem handling his weight as they crunched down the bank of snow. They marched for what seemed a hundred meters or so. Cole heard more voices ahead; he kept his head down and his eyes tight, conserving his energy.
When they stopped walking, one of his escorts let go of his left arm. Cole didn’t hesitate; he spun in that direction, back around the guy holding his right arm and lashed out with one knee. It connected with something soft, causing his other arm to come free. He reached up and slammed his visor shut so he could see what he was fighting.
The blow to his stomach came just as he was blinking the world into focus. He doubled over. Something slammed into his right knee, buckling him. Cole fell to the snow as several people crashed down on his back, beating him unconscious.
5