"I am unarmed," he announced, voice echoing from the suit's speaker, and tossed the sidearm to the floor. The gun made a clanking sound – very loud in the sudden, shocked silence – and fell over on its side. "I need to speak with Captain Ketcham urgently."
One of the men in the crowd – flattened against the wall, watching him over the muzzle of a massive handgun – twitched and Hadeishi turned slightly to face him. The man – the captain, Mitsu realized, spying rank decorations on a dark-blue uniform with red and gold piping – was tall and broad, easily a foot taller than the Nisei, with wavy blond hair and deep-set, narrowed blue eyes.
The very image of our ancient enemy, Hadeishi thought, continuing to walk forward.
"Stop right there!" Ketcham moved forward, the miners around him – most of them technicians and machine operators, if Mitsu was any judge of their work clothing and departmental insignia – shrinking back to make way. The gun centered on his breast did not waver. "I'll accept your surrender, Nisei, and we can discuss whatever you want once you're in the brig."
Mitsu shook his head. "Captain, the Imperial Navy does not surrender. You should remember the oath you swore at Academy -"
Ketcham's face twisted in a foul, ugly snarl of rage. His finger twitched on the trigger of the Webley and there was a deafening crack as the gun discharged in a gout of expelled gas. Hadeishi tried to throw himself aside, but the flechette round had already broken into a dozen supersonic splinters and at least four smashed into his chest, flinging him around like a broken doll.
Base Camp One
Another bone-deep cough wracked Gretchen's body, coupled with a shiver running from head to foot. Vapor leaking from her mask formed a rime of ice across her collarbone and goggles.
I'm going to freeze to death. The raw thought managed to force itself past crippling pain. Gretchen lifted her head, staring around in the darkness. Through the fog on her lenses, the queer lights had faded away and the nighted shape of Anderssen was gone. Heartened, she rolled up, feeling bone and muscle creak. Though her hands were tucked into her armpits, they had lost all feeling.
The single light on the upper floor of the main building shone clear and distinct, a welcome beacon in the darkness. Gretchen forced herself to her feet, the twinge of her brutalized soles barely noticeable against the hacking cough torturing her upper body. She swayed, dizzy and short of breath, but managed to stumble forward.
Putting one foot in front of the other was torturous work, but she kept her eyes on the light in the window and kept walking. The drifts of sand now seemed to be monstrous ridges.
Near the corner of the lab building, she stumbled and fell. Lying on the ground felt good – for a moment – but then the cold seeped into her suit again. Gretchen staggered up, then slid along the building wall, leaning into the concrete for support. At the corner, she took a careful look around – saw nothing – and then limped stiffly across the quad to the hangar door.
The pressure door was locked. Bumping the access plate with her hip evoked no reaction.
"Shit." She lifted her wrists – eyes averted from the lacerated, discolored flesh – and clicked the comm band alive with her chin. "Hummingbird? Hummingbird?"
Anderssen? His response was immediate and surprised. Where are you?
"Outside, outside the hangar pressure door. I can't get in."
The side door has frozen up. Come around to the main airlock. It's clear now.
"Sure," she grunted, slumping forward against the wall. A wave of dizziness threatened to pitch her over onto the ground again but the cold ceramic of the hangar door caught her. She decided to take just a moment to regain her strength. "I'd love to. I'm hurt."
Gretchen jerked awake, barely cognizant of someone helping her stumble through the pressure doors on the main airlock. A little old man in a z-suit was holding her up, his wiry shoulder under her arm. Then they were in the common room and the air – the air was warm enough to breathe without a mask – and there were lights and a heater humming on the floor.
Hummingbird sat her down and bundled blankets around her shoulders. A minute later he was tipping a cup of warm – not hot – syrupy liquid into her mouth. Alcohol and sugar and something mediciny flooded her throat and then a matching warmth spread through her chest.
"Show me your hands." Hummingbird sounded concerned and his face tightened into a grim mask when he saw the blue-black sheen to her flesh and the ragged welts where the jeweled chains had bound her to the earth. His green eyes lifted to stare into hers. "What happened?"
"She was here – outside – she caught me on my way back from getting rid of the Sif."
"The Russovsky echo?"
"Yes," Gretchen mumbled, the frail burst of adrenaline ebbing away. "She looked…just like me."
Completely drained, Anderssen curled up and fell sideways into the blankets. Hummingbird rummaged around and found another blanket for a pillow. He put the heaters on either side of her and started to warm more of the rum/cough syrup/energy concentrate mixture on the camp stove.
He made her drink more of the nasty fluid. "The shape attacked you?"
"Ittried…" She frowned, trying to remember. Her head felt very strange inside, all jumbled and disordered. For some reason – and now she became cognizant of not knowing why – memories of her children and graduate school were very sharp and close at hand. Remembering what had happened earlier in the day was suddenly impossible. "Something happened," she said helplessly. "I saw her, but she was me. There were shining lights in the sand. I can't remember everything…properly."
"Were there two figures? Or just one, which changed?"
"One." She mumbled, feeling her wounded fingers throb. "I couldn't move – something had hold of me, of my hands…and you were there. There were – I had a vision! Yes, there were visions in my mind, someplace ancient, dead…under a foul yellow sky."
The nauallis squinted at her curiously, then carefully examined her hands. Clicking his teeth together in thought, the old man sprayed them with something cold and prickling from his kit, then carefully cleaned the welts. The pain of his touch lanced through her, drawing a whining cry, robbing the last breath from her lungs. At some point, she passed out.
"I'm really doing very well," Gretchen said, staring at her hands wrapped in more gauze and stinging from the dermaseal working away on the freeze damage. "Between my feet and hands I look like a cirq clown." She sighed, shaking her head, and gave Hummingbird an aggrieved look. "Aren't you the lucky one? You crash and walk away, while I fly halfway round the world and am fine, then I'm here at base camp for two days and I look like a tree-rigger on leave."
"You're lucky," he said, giving her a severe look. "Your medband was working the whole time and dispensed enough circulatory booster to keep you from losing any fingers or toes."
"Great – I could have suffered heart failure instead." Being flippant was making her tired, so she decided to stop.
"You're alive and will heal." Hummingbird squatted at her side, peeling back an eyelid with his thumb. "You might have more drug than blood in your system right now, but you don't seem to have become psychotic."
"Yet." Gretchen felt grainy and tired and wrung out. Again. "Is the Gagarin ready to go?"
The old man nodded. In the morning light streaming through the round windows, he seemed rather drawn and gray. "You'll want to check everything."
"I slept a day?" He nodded. "Then we need to get in the air. Where's my chrono?"