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 look-ed 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
Anlyn screamed. She ran out of the command center and down the hallway, the glass tube providing an anguishing and perfect view of the fiery destruction beyond.
The corridor beneath her feet trembled as Edison raced to her side, reaching for her as she collapsed to her knees.
“Nooo,” she whimpered. She covered her face with her hands so she wouldn’t have to see, but the flashing lights and warning alarms from the command room echoed off the glass around her, sliding through the cracks in her fingers and hammering home the reality of the loss—of the so many lives destroyed.
“It came from the Rift,” someone in the command center yelled.
Anlyn could hear Bishar screaming orders, demanding updates, and scrambling a regiment. She felt like the great paradox of burning ice—the frozen heart of the depressed wrapped in a flame of vengeance.
That didn’t come from the rift, she told herself. She knew. Bodi, her ex-fiancée, was responsible. It was an act of sabotage, designed to spare only her. It stunk of him. Immediate. Remorseless. Savage. The cowardice of asking lackeys to sacrifice their lives.
Anlyn looked at her palms. Below—past the grav panels and through the transparent visisteel—she could see ships darting out from their stations. She watched them as they roared toward the expanding cloud of debris.
Edison wrapped his arms around her as she fought valiantly to not break down. She felt like a Wadi canyon with its base eroded by the wind. Her shoulders shivered as if they threatened to topple off her body. Outside, all her hopes were scattering in a billion pieces. So many noble, valiant believers had been reduced to dust. Thinking of them—of the many faces, smiling and bowing in the corridors—it made the ridiculousness of her mission hit home. It made her feel lonely and young. A little princess, spoiled and spouting prophecy, journeying to the Great Rift because of some old words handed down through time.
The shame she felt—the guilt—they shattered floodgates already weakened by despondency. Anlyn sobbed into Edison’s fur. She heard his lance drop, felt him scoop her up into his lap.
Over his arm and through the tears, she watched a pointless fleet of emergency response ships circle the new nebula, looking for clues. The only good they did was to whip what remained into whorls and eddies of nothingness.
“We caught something on vid,” Bishar said softly.
Anlyn tore her eyes away from the debris field. She had no idea how long she’d been staring, transfixed, into the blossoming cloud. She wiped her face and looked up at Bishar, then pushed herself from Edison’s lap. She took a few steps away from them both, trying to look less like the child she suddenly felt.
“It looks like a solid beam of light,” Bishar said. “It’s only there for a single frame, right before the explosion. We’ve never seen anything like it from the Rift. It’s—there’s nothing we could’ve—”
“It wasn’t your fault,” Anlyn told her cousin. “And it wasn’t the Rift’s. I know who did this, and I know why.”
“Cousin, I know you’re upset. We all are. Several among your volun-teers had family here at the Keep. There will be a great cooling for all—”
Anlyn turned to face Bishar, her face as stern and serious as she could muster. “There will be a great burning, Bishar Nooo, that’s what there’ll be. And I do not doubt the Rift’s involvement out of some superstitious fancy—I know the work of my former suitor. Check your vid again, and tell me which direction that beam of light was going.”
“But Cousin, I already told you it was on a single frame. How do you suppose we determine the direction if we can’t see it moving?”
“I don’t expect we will. You have your bias and I have mine. They just point in opposite directions.”
Bishar rose to his feet and looked through the visisteel. “If what you say is correct, I’ll file the charges myself. There’ll be an investigation. The Circle will look into this—I’ll demand it.”
“The Circle is aflame,” Anlyn said, “and Bodi’s the torch. My mission here was our only chance at snuffing it.” She looked down the passage-way toward the control center. “I’ll not be surprised if the flash of light you saw was a message to the Bern, or that the reduced break attempts are no coincidence ahead of my coming—”
“Preposterous! I’ll hear your theories of jilted lovers and such barb-arisms as this,” Bishar waved a hand at the scene beyond the glass, “but not of treason against the Empire. Not from the Circle, nor from any Drenard for that matter.”
“I wouldn’t put it past him,” she muttered.
Edison picked up his lance from the floor and rose, taking his place by Anlyn’s side.
“I detest supposition,” he said, looking out at the ships encircling the cloud. “All theories are testable, or they are not truly theories.”
“I don’t follow,” Bishar said. “Is he speaking English?”
Anlyn turned to Edison. “I think he’s saying we should go and see for ourselves. Is that right?”
Edison nodded.
Anlyn rested her head against his side and reveled in his warmth. She looked out at the swirling loss, at the stars of her galaxy beyond. Reflected in the glass, she could see the confusion on Bishar’s face.
“He means,” she told her cousin, “we need to enter the rift to know.”
Bishar gaped at Anlyn. “I hated the idea of you hanging out here with a full complement of peacekeepers while you waited on some insane prophecy to come true. What makes you think I’ll go along with this plan?”
Anlyn looked over at him; she noted the way his hands clenched the sash across his tunics.
“Because,” she said, “I asked the former as is my right and duty as a member of the Circle, a right you were prepared to deny. I ask you now as my cousin—”
“A cousin I hardly know!” Bishar shook his head. “I’m sorry, but what you need now is some rest while my men investigate. You can burn away your woe in peace and think with a cooler head come morrow.”
“Come morrow, I will be on the other side of that rift or I’ll be dead by your hands,” Anlyn said. “For that’s what you’ll have to do to stop me.”
Bishar laughed, but eyed Edison warily. “Nonsense, Cousin. To stop you, I’ll just have to stop you. Come, my men are on the alert, and my best experts will go over the evidence. We’ll travel to Keep Central and get you more cloaks and a warm meal. While you rest, I’ll prepare my report for the Circle and request transport for your safe return to Drenard. It does no respect to the dead for you to add to their number.”
Anlyn reached over and took hold of Edison’s lance; he relinquished it willingly. Bishar made a sudden move forward, but Anlyn backed away, and Edison shoved her cousin so hard he nearly fell.
“Not a move!” she told him as he staggered backward.
In the command center, several heads watched the scene intently, hands reaching for warning devices—and worse.
“In case legend of this lance has not yet arrived to this corner of the galaxy,” Anlyn yelled beyond Bishar, “I will tell you that what you saw beyond this glass is easily reproducible right here! I’ll take an entire corner of the Keep with me, by the twins of Hori.”
“Anlyn.” Bishar held out his hands, pleading. “I understand your rage, but you must cool yourself.”
“I am cool, Cousin. Cool as ice. And I take it from the quiver in your voice that you know of this lance.”
It was a bluff, the lance a mere pyrotechnic toy, but in Anlyn’s exper-ience, rumors rarely dwindled in their retelling.
“I’ve heard stories,” he said, a false smile creeping across his face.
“You’ve heard whispers from shadows carried on a Drenard wind compared to what this device is capable of. What I am capable of. Here’s what you’ll do. Before you write your security report, you’ll craft a letter to every family from that ship expressing my—expressing our deepest grief. Then you’ll swear by Hori it was sabotage and open an investigation. But first, call your best pilot and have him bring the swiftest Bern ship you have in impound and lock it to the end of this corridor. Make sure there’s plenty of fuel and supplies. One pilot. He’ll be free to go.”