Chapter 6
"If the Devil hates us, why does he want so many of us around?"~ Curtis Browne "The other side of Alice"
"There is nothing worse than a man with high standards complaining of loneliness. I wish choosy men chose silence." ~ Patricia Blackwell "Hekuba"
"Revenge, like wine, sweetens with age." Cor Lai mantra, mid 5th century SGD.
The Thin; a place so terrible, even the planets own atmosphere refuses to go there. Yet, here she was, moving very slowly through a jumbled terrain
of brown-grey boulders and eerily sculpted ice columns. On warm days, the atmosphere would return, to sculpt more out of the ice or frost, or occasionally drop some in thin, dry flakes.
This was not a warm day. Fully one-hundred twelve below, with no air pressure. Water would boil, except it would freeze, first.
She shook her head, watching the crawl of Aurora Borealis flicker like a river
of greenish-red light above her. As thin as the atmosphere was, the magnetosphere still worked, at least.
North of here was the Great Barrens; a sheet of virgin ice more than 2 miles thick and twenty-five million years old. It was no-mans land, and even by the surprisingly low standards of Buran, it was ugly, dreary and cold.
South three hundred klicks was Christmastime; to her direct west (behind her, in this instance) were the jumbled peaks of several mountain ranges, and directly ahead, due east, was a great glacier nearly three miles across.
On the other side, over the frozen white and airless nothing, some twelve kilometers, were the Enemy, meandering slowly south in the narrow side valleys carved by the glacier as it advanced and retreated.
If the glacier had a name, she had never heard it; like her own, it simply didn't matter. It was simply another thing that could present either an opportunity, or a problem.
And there are few things, either living or dead, animal or mineral, that truly wished to become her problem.
She loped across the frozen river, her suit easily mapping for crevasses, adjusting for grip, and pumping much needed oxygen to vital muscles. Nano-machines repaired strained tendons and ligaments before "pain" could be felt
for the most part, though occasionally a bad landing would produce a white-hot burst of searing pain from this ankle or that. Minutes would pass as she
swore, and the nannites knit her back together again.
Then off, to the east, as if she was magnetically drawn, and the Enemy
was a Lodestone. She stopped twice for more than an hour; once, because her suit needed an emergency repair, once because a wrong landing from a skittery jump popped her knee nearly around the back of her leg.
She screamed for a full 10 minutes, her eyes tearing, her teeth gnashing, as the cold of the nannites pumped into the region. For nearly forty minutes, she watched as her leg repaired itself, then, for twenty minutes, she hacked
at the ice she had landed on, using a thermal knife to gouge, cut and rend massive pieces away.
Done, she moved on, at first gingerly, but gaining confidence as she pressed east.
She was close, and she could feel the presence of the Enemy crawlers moving about through the vibrations in the rocks and ice.
At last she slowed to a near halt, finally removing her weapon from her shoulder and scanning the valley wall for a perch to hide in.
It would not be long now.
"There is nothing worse than a man with high standards complaining of loneliness. I wish choosy men chose silence." ~ Patricia Blackwell "Hekuba"
"Revenge, like wine, sweetens with age." Cor Lai mantra, mid 5th century SGD.
The Thin; a place so terrible, even the planets own atmosphere refuses to go there. Yet, here she was, moving very slowly through a jumbled terrain
of brown-grey boulders and eerily sculpted ice columns. On warm days, the atmosphere would return, to sculpt more out of the ice or frost, or occasionally drop some in thin, dry flakes.
This was not a warm day. Fully one-hundred twelve below, with no air pressure. Water would boil, except it would freeze, first.
She shook her head, watching the crawl of Aurora Borealis flicker like a river
of greenish-red light above her. As thin as the atmosphere was, the magnetosphere still worked, at least.
North of here was the Great Barrens; a sheet of virgin ice more than 2 miles thick and twenty-five million years old. It was no-mans land, and even by the surprisingly low standards of Buran, it was ugly, dreary and cold.
South three hundred klicks was Christmastime; to her direct west (behind her, in this instance) were the jumbled peaks of several mountain ranges, and directly ahead, due east, was a great glacier nearly three miles across.
On the other side, over the frozen white and airless nothing, some twelve kilometers, were the Enemy, meandering slowly south in the narrow side valleys carved by the glacier as it advanced and retreated.
If the glacier had a name, she had never heard it; like her own, it simply didn't matter. It was simply another thing that could present either an opportunity, or a problem.
And there are few things, either living or dead, animal or mineral, that truly wished to become her problem.
She loped across the frozen river, her suit easily mapping for crevasses, adjusting for grip, and pumping much needed oxygen to vital muscles. Nano-machines repaired strained tendons and ligaments before "pain" could be felt
for the most part, though occasionally a bad landing would produce a white-hot burst of searing pain from this ankle or that. Minutes would pass as she
swore, and the nannites knit her back together again.
Then off, to the east, as if she was magnetically drawn, and the Enemy
was a Lodestone. She stopped twice for more than an hour; once, because her suit needed an emergency repair, once because a wrong landing from a skittery jump popped her knee nearly around the back of her leg.
She screamed for a full 10 minutes, her eyes tearing, her teeth gnashing, as the cold of the nannites pumped into the region. For nearly forty minutes, she watched as her leg repaired itself, then, for twenty minutes, she hacked
at the ice she had landed on, using a thermal knife to gouge, cut and rend massive pieces away.
Done, she moved on, at first gingerly, but gaining confidence as she pressed east.
She was close, and she could feel the presence of the Enemy crawlers moving about through the vibrations in the rocks and ice.
At last she slowed to a near halt, finally removing her weapon from her shoulder and scanning the valley wall for a perch to hide in.
It would not be long now.
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