Chapter 5
"Time is the one thing that fools consistently waste, and wise men consistently enjoy." ~ Ernest E. Ralls "Songs of our Fathers."
"Only the foolish and the very wise never change." ~ Confucius.
"If you added up all the 'if only's' and 'I'd rathers' in the universe, you still wouldn't reach a conclusion."~ P.J. Stoke "Stand Up, Sit Down, Shut it."
It had been three days already since she had left Christmastime and her new lover.It had seemed like a frigid, cold, breathless hell since then, but then, she smiled, Buran IV had always seemed that way.
She loped north putting a half-dozen klicks on her new suit, testing its every reaction, its every thread coming under scrutiny; infinitely better to find it here than in the Thin or the Freeze, where failure equaled death.
She moved north through a rocky terrain of jumbled boulders and craggy peaks, the feeble glow of daylight fading to a watery reddish flow in the far west. Already, a few feeble stars tried vainly to ward of the all encompassing
gray consuming the rest of the sky. Here and there, green whorls of Aurora
snaked over her head, dancing eerily and almost within reach, it seemed.
There. The faint rumble of movement through frigid rocks. She stopped for a moment to be sure, facing north along the rim of a shallow valley, carved by advancing glaciers.
Sure enough, the rumble, though distant, was present. The Enemy was coming south.
She scanned the edge of the bowl shaped rim, finding a large stone pile to
dig herself into, gradually becoming still within the narrow confines of its rocky embrace.
A small snow devil passed within a dozen meters nearly thirty minutes later, depositing a thin layer of snow around and on top of her, neatly completing
her camouflage. Her weapon lay in front of her, her optics already filling her visor with data from the shallow valley below.
When the Enemy slowly hove into view, it was very nearly three hours later
and forty degrees cooler. Two large tracked vehicles, looking like centipedes
lined with antennae, nearly three kilometers distant, and down a slight inclination.
She watched for several minutes, tracking their slow and ungainly progress
over the ice field, carefully aiming for weak points in the armor, where engine heat was ported away from the reactors.
Her breathing was slowed, now, as was her metabolism; everything in the universe seemed to slow under the gravity well of a nearby action. Even the aurora seemed to slow and pulse, giving the ground an eerie green glow
where it reflected.
Joy. This was what she was born to do. This moment of release. She pulled the trigger, a look of understanding crossing her face. Her lover had made this same face, and for very nearly the same reason.
If the Enemy was aware of her, he was unable to do anything about it; the first shot penetrated the Crawlers reactor, its kinetic force more than enough to cause a small amount of the Crawlers plutonium to combust spectacularly. The second Crawler died in the pyre set by the first; the sudden heat evaporated a huge amount of ice beneath the two vehicles, and
swallowed the second almost totally.
If the spectacle could be called anything, "orgasmic" would be an appropriate choice.
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"Only the foolish and the very wise never change." ~ Confucius.
"If you added up all the 'if only's' and 'I'd rathers' in the universe, you still wouldn't reach a conclusion."~ P.J. Stoke "Stand Up, Sit Down, Shut it."
It had been three days already since she had left Christmastime and her new lover.It had seemed like a frigid, cold, breathless hell since then, but then, she smiled, Buran IV had always seemed that way.
She loped north putting a half-dozen klicks on her new suit, testing its every reaction, its every thread coming under scrutiny; infinitely better to find it here than in the Thin or the Freeze, where failure equaled death.
She moved north through a rocky terrain of jumbled boulders and craggy peaks, the feeble glow of daylight fading to a watery reddish flow in the far west. Already, a few feeble stars tried vainly to ward of the all encompassing
gray consuming the rest of the sky. Here and there, green whorls of Aurora
snaked over her head, dancing eerily and almost within reach, it seemed.
There. The faint rumble of movement through frigid rocks. She stopped for a moment to be sure, facing north along the rim of a shallow valley, carved by advancing glaciers.
Sure enough, the rumble, though distant, was present. The Enemy was coming south.
She scanned the edge of the bowl shaped rim, finding a large stone pile to
dig herself into, gradually becoming still within the narrow confines of its rocky embrace.
A small snow devil passed within a dozen meters nearly thirty minutes later, depositing a thin layer of snow around and on top of her, neatly completing
her camouflage. Her weapon lay in front of her, her optics already filling her visor with data from the shallow valley below.
When the Enemy slowly hove into view, it was very nearly three hours later
and forty degrees cooler. Two large tracked vehicles, looking like centipedes
lined with antennae, nearly three kilometers distant, and down a slight inclination.
She watched for several minutes, tracking their slow and ungainly progress
over the ice field, carefully aiming for weak points in the armor, where engine heat was ported away from the reactors.
Her breathing was slowed, now, as was her metabolism; everything in the universe seemed to slow under the gravity well of a nearby action. Even the aurora seemed to slow and pulse, giving the ground an eerie green glow
where it reflected.
Joy. This was what she was born to do. This moment of release. She pulled the trigger, a look of understanding crossing her face. Her lover had made this same face, and for very nearly the same reason.
If the Enemy was aware of her, he was unable to do anything about it; the first shot penetrated the Crawlers reactor, its kinetic force more than enough to cause a small amount of the Crawlers plutonium to combust spectacularly. The second Crawler died in the pyre set by the first; the sudden heat evaporated a huge amount of ice beneath the two vehicles, and
swallowed the second almost totally.
If the spectacle could be called anything, "orgasmic" would be an appropriate choice.
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