“Preparedness? If we can work out why our tech isn’t working, we can get the ship in the air faster. Not sure about you but I’m not sure I want to stay here longer than needed. Great job picking this planet by the way. Real smart idea randomly choosing.” Aileena stopped again. This time she lit another torch, flicking it off the side of the chasm a second time. There was another bout of chittering noises, louder and more numerous than the first batch.
“He wasn’t wrong in the casino. He was right so many times I was starting to think there was something to this knower thing.” Brekt brushed Michaels shoulder as he passed another torch forward. “Two now.”
“I keep telling you all, I’m not some messiah. I’m not magic. I’m not all-knowing. That was nothing but luck.”
“I don’t know, luck like that is basically impossible.”
“Impossible, or just really, really unlikely? God, this all feels like some cosmic joke at my expense.”
“It is written,” Mellok began, “that the knower shall deny his status. His humbleness shall have no limits.”
“For fuck’s sake,” Michael muttered. “Of course it does.”
Aileena stopped again, though there was no torch lighting this time. She placed a hand to her ear, listening intently. “Hear that? That’s wind. The surface must be near.”
“Oh, thank God,” Michael said. “That can’t be any worse than down here.”
Chapter Eighteen
The air was chill, an icy wind blowing through their skin and freezing the bone beneath. Michael pulled his jacket tight, dreading what it would have been like without it. The tunnel had emerged onto a large plain, a field of perfect white stretching for miles around. It was beautiful in a way, an unspoilt canvas awaiting the brush strokes of civilisation. In the distance was a set of mountains, rising from the snow and ice like a whale breaching the surface of the ocean. Though tiny, from here the tower was visible, a tusk jutting from the mountainside at a forty-five-degree angle.
“That’s a lot further away than I remember it being,” Michael said. Flashes of the crash were coming back to him, snatched images of fire and ice screaming past the command centre windows. He raised his hand, holding it flat above his eyes. The sunlight was reflecting off the icy expanse, giving everything a bright sheen.
“Well, we were travelling extremely fast. It’s a miracle we made it down safely at all. A real feat of piloting.” Aileena’s voice was smug. She gestured to her left, welding torch still in hand. They had emerged near the edge of the crevasse they had fallen into. A huge trench stretched out across the snow away from it, carved deep by the heat from the Seeker. “If there were some kind of emergency landing awards, this would be nominated for sure.”
“Yes, yes, we all get it. Excellent landing Aileena, you saved us all. Not sure it counts if we all freeze to death on fucking Hoth though.”
“What’s a Hoth?”
“Never mind,” Michael said. He shivered, wrapping his arms tightly around himself. “Fuck, it’s so cold.” The coat he was wearing was oddly heavy. There was a fur lining that felt like nothing Michael had ever touched, whilst the outer layer felt oddly like polyester.
Mellok skittered forward, his pointed legs giving him excellent traction in the ice. Michael had thought of him as a kind of tropical bird, but he was seemingly closer to a penguin than anything else. His feathers had laid themselves down flat, forming a tight sheet across his body. He reached down, rainbow plumage shimmering and put his hand beneath Michael’s coat. There was a loud click.
“Odd,” Mellok said. “Your coat should be heating itself.”
“A heated coat? That sounds perfect right now.” Thick clouds of mist were escaping from Michael’s mouth as he spoke.
“Yes, but do you feel any warmer?”
“No, I don’t”
“It doesn’t seem to be working,” Mellok said.
Aileena chuckled. “Hardly surprising, if our weapons are dead and the ship’s power is failing, why would the heating pack on a coat work?” She held up the welding torch in her hand. “This only works because it’s just a spark and gas.”
“Will the guys be ok in the ship then, if the power is failing?” Michael said. He tested the ground before him, prodding his toe onto the ice. It seemed stable enough, he didn’t want to fall back into the chasm, into the waiting claws of the crabs within.
“Ship is airtight. It’ll keep the heat in well enough. Evicans hibernate during the winter anyway, like Mellok they’re built for the cold.
Michael couldn’t help but laugh. The idea of the two burly gladiators being the space equivalent of bears made too much sense. He could picture Meggok on his knees, snatching fish out of a stream. “Sorry, Earth joke. So, I guess we’re heading for that tower. It’s the only building I can see.”
“That’s the plan,” Aileena said tucking the welding torch into the pocket on the front of her jacket. It was impossible to miss her, vivid pink outlined against the infinite white. “We better get moving, if you think it’s cold now, wait until nightfall.” She began to walk forward, taking a handful of steps. There was a loud crack.
“Everyone else heard that, right?” Michael said. No-one replied, instead they simply stood silent, hands outstretched in readiness.
“Ok,” Aileena said after what felt like an eternity. “Nice and slow, gentle footsteps.” She took another step. There was another noise, different this time, like a series of bells ringing. It was a tell-tale sound, the noise of icy crustacean legs clattering up the tunnel behind them. The creatures poured forth, gleaming in the light of the sun. They stopped at the edge, claws raised. As one they began to clash them together rhythmically.
Snow and ice burst around them as more of the crabs emerged from the ice field. They clambered out from beneath the snow, white powder sloughing off them. There were dozens of them, a swarm of angry crystalline beasts hiding in plain sight.
“Maybe quicker, harder footsteps, hey?” Brekt said. He broke into a run, and the others followed, feet pounding across the ice. As they did the crabs filed in behind them, scuttling forward, claws lashing at their ankles. There was another loud crack, snow sliding down the gap where the ice shelf had splintered.
“Faster!” Aileena shouted as she sprinted past Michael, her face turning a darker shade of green.
“Try… trying,” Michael spluttered. His body was screaming in defiance, his teeth somehow aching from the effort. He hadn’t run like this in a long time, flashbacks of high school gym lessons came back to him, forcing their way into his mind with all the bluster of a gym teacher who could have gone pro if it weren’t for his knee. There was an almighty crash, a loud shattering noise, like a thousand glasses being thrown against the ground simultaneously as part of the ice fell away, a cluster of crabs tumbling with it, down into the series of chasms and caves below.
Michael turned his head as Mellok passed him, putting all three of his companions before him. Mellok was handling the ice better than any of them, barrelling ahead of the pack. As Michael looked over his shoulder, he could see crabs toppling backwards into the growing gap. He was sure he could make out structures in the ice, chunks of frozen concrete falling with the furious monsters into the dark.
“Keep up, Keeper,” Mellok said. He didn’t even seem breathless, as if he were simply taking a pleasant stroll on a winter’s morning.
“I’m… I’m not built for this.” Michael could feel himself flagging, the collapsing ice snapping at his heels as much as the crabs were. His right leg struck the ground, another unsteady step on the ice, and he lost his footing, tumbling forward, snow spraying into the air.