“I’ll get her,” Frerotte said. “Ash, hit the jets. Low power. You keep our adjustments to the jeep.”
The last remark was aimed at Metzler. Vonnie understood his words that well. Then she coughed blood onto the inside of her visor. Spluttering, she coughed again. My side? she thought, tracing the worst pain to her ribs.
She grayed out.
When her mind sharpened again, she was shuffling on her knees and her good hand, following her tether as it pulled at her waist. Someone was yelling. Frerotte. He was either cranking the tether reel manually or from inside the lock. Inside would be smarter, where he was protected from eruptions and shrapnel.
Each breath was a chore. The pain made her hurry. The pain lessened when she kept pace with the tether, allowing hints of slack in the line. At some point, she’d broken a rib. The bone must have nicked her lung. Only the no-shock and her adrenaline had kept her from noticing.
Vonnie found herself at the front of the lander. The tether had brought her back. She needed to climb the steps and she’d reach the air lock—
—but she screamed when the horizon flipped, pivoting the ice beneath her—
—as she whacked into the steps—
—and rose with Lander 04 as it hovered over the abyss. Below her, the jeep dropped away. Something else flopped toward the lander’s belly. It was the charging post. It swung into the invisible exhaust of the fusion jets.
Vonnie couldn’t see most of what happened. The lander’s steps and armored skirt concealed its fusion jets, where the post was vaporized in a searing blue-white flare. She blinked and blinked and couldn’t regain vision in her left eye. Radiation burns cooked her feet. Dangling from the harness felt like being impaled on a sword, and she oozed tears that tracked up her forehead into her hair.
Losing consciousness would have been a mercy. But she fought. Trying to right herself, Vonnie squinted with her good eye as the jets tore into the ice below, buffeting her with freezing water vapor.
Normally their landers had deployed foil shields for each lift-off, preserving the ice. Now there was nothing to spare, although Ash banked around the center of the massive hole, where lights stabbed up from the debris or glowed beneath the surface.
Vonnie glimpsed a listening post and the gray corner of a metal structure. “I have a visual on Module 03,” she groaned.
Ash cried on the radio: “Von! Von!? Are you there!?”
“…yes.”
“I’m putting us down! Wait for me! Von!? I’m putting us down in thirty seconds!”
She really is sorry, Vonnie thought distantly. Maybe she smiled. She wanted to smile. She’d saved her friends. That should count for something, but she ached. Her body had been beaten, gashed, baked, and chilled. It was impossible to feel anything except her misery.
They left the chaos behind. Glancing back, Vonnie saw an oval-shaped canyon with a separate, smaller sink hole to one side. The canyon was at least two kilometers long and half as wide. It had swallowed most of the ESA camp.
“Maps,” she whispered.
Through the gore on her visor, her display awoke with beacons and data/comm. Module 02 was safe. Several supply containers and Module 01 also remained on the surface, although 01 laid on its side near a cliff.
Their other flightcraft, Lander 05, was among the survivors. It took to the air in a white gust and crossed toward 01 instead of attempting to latch onto 03.
“Why…”
The low-level AI in her visor responded to her disoriented stare. It coupled her display of the battered ESA surface grid with threat analysis from ESA and NASA satellites.
Growing fractures cleaved through the ice beneath Module 01. Soon the cliff side would give way. The crew in Lander 05 were evacuating Koebsch before he toppled into the devastation with 03.
There was ongoing activity beneath the ice. Geysers and hot gas continued to erode vast pockets in the pit. There would be aftershocks.
Heedless of their own vulnerability, squads of mecha tugged at Modules 01 and 02, dragging the modules westward. Other mecha trundled across the ice. They formed chains into the pit. Already the mecha were evaluating the debris. Welding torches licked at the shadows, fusing the ice into pathways and bridges.
New pain woke Vonnie from her dream. Her harness pulled on her waist and her legs clunked against the underside of the lander’s steps, folding her over her broken rib.
Frerotte leaned over her, but his voice seemed to come from far away. “Can you hear me?”
He was attached to his own tether. He hefted Vonnie from the steps. Their lander was still in the air, although it was sinking toward an open, solid plain.
“Clear! We’re clear!” he shouted.
Another white cloud exploded beneath the lander as they touched down, scorching the ice.
Frerotte unclipped Vonnie’s line. Up the steps, the exterior door of the air lock stood open. Frerotte jogged inside with her limp body in his arms, smacking her helmet against the wall as he punched the controls. “Fuck! Fuck me! Are you—?”
“Aft.. shocks…” she slurred.
“We know. It’s okay. We know.”
The inner door opened. Metzler was waiting. He helped Frerotte set her down. It felt like the lander had taken off again. Vonnie wasn’t sure if the feeling of acceleration was real. Her thoughts rose and fell in waves.
Pleasant feelings brought her back. A gentle warmth coursed through her body. She was on the floor of the ready room near the hatch to data/comm, where Ash was shouting. Vonnie remained blind in her left eye, but she saw Metzler and Frerotte had stripped off her pressure suit and the jump suit she’d worn inside. A medical droid hung between the two men where it had extended from the ceiling, connecting her heart, neck, wrists, and stomach to emergency systems.
Nanotech and optimized blood plasma fed through her veins from subdermal packets and intravenous lines. The frostbite in her arm felt like simmering oil. The radiation burns on her legs felt like snow. Everywhere her nerves sang and twitched.
“Another quake dropped the west side of the pit!” Ash yelled as other voices shouted from their group feed:
“The mecha lost visual on 03—”
“—no beacons or—”
“—secure 02 if you can.”
“I need help up here!” Ash yelled. “Ben, she’s tied in! There’s nothing more you can do!”
“Go,” Vonnie muttered, trying to sit. She winced at the pain in her ribs and feet, but the wounds were manageable now. “You two shouldn’t…”
“Your arm is bleeding,” Metzler said.
“You shouldn’t play doctor with me while I’m unconscious. Where are my clothes?”
“She’s fine,” Frerotte said with a fierce grin. He clapped Metzler on the shoulder, shoving him toward data/comm. Metzler’s eyes were round with terror and affection, but he left.
Vonnie listened to them as the jets thrummed.
“Ben, load these sims into your scout suit,” Ash said. “You might have to cut off 02’s war pods if we can’t wedge it into our cargo lock.”
“Roger that,” Metzler said.
“Ribeiro’s reporting backwash through the FNEE grid,” Frerotte said. “This thing was huge.”
“They swore they’d send mecha to help us,” Ash said.
“There’s a FNEE lander in the air and a few rovers coming across the surface,” Frerotte said. “I’ll coordinate. Koebsch is over the pit with 05. It looks like they’re trying to shoot a harpoon into the ice.”
“How far down is 03?” Metzler said.
“Beacons put them at half a kilometer and sinking fast,” Frerotte said. “They lost pressure six minutes ago. No radio or data/comm. It doesn’t look good.”
“Von, you’ve got to move!” Metzler shouted. “I’m coming to armor up!”