by Kelly Jensen
Bram checked his readouts: O2 filter and atmosphere. They had time, but— “I don’t know what’s down there.”
“We’re about to find out.”
“Orfeo, this is dumb. The deposit is unlikely to flow down. The edge is blank with no leaders. If anything, it probably tunnels back into the rock some.”
“Then we’ll go around.”
“Why is this so fucking important to you? Why are you trying to take my life?”
“Because it’s more than you deserve.”
Bram’s mouth dropped open. “How do you measure that?”
“You take no risks, Abraham. You’re always playing the safe bet. You did your thirty years, now you’re on your safe little farm, possibly sitting on a fortune in some unexploited crystal. I put in forty dusting years and what do I have?”
“A town?”
Orfeo scoffed. “It’s not my town. It’s the company’s town.”
“And you’re their man on the ground.”
“Their man.” Orfeo sounded as though he was spitting inside his helmet. “Do you know what it costs to be their man? I’m their dog. And Landing isn’t worth the crap I have to lick up. There are no prospects here. This planet is as cracked as it looks from space. Every investment I’ve made has turned up nothing. I needed this win.”
“Are you talking about the deal with Cliver?”
“I gave all I had and then some to that dusting fucker, and he’s up and disappeared.”
“And then some? Are you in debt to the company?”
Orfeo didn’t answer. Instead, he moved to the far end of the ledge and leaned around a corner of rock.
“Orfeo.”
“What?”
“Are you in debt to the company?” Muedini could be called fair when it came to their contract employees. With their debtors, not so much. The best Orfeo could hope for if he couldn’t repay his loans would be a lifetime indenture.
“So what if I am?”
“You stupid dumb fuck. If that’s the truth, your best option is to jump off that there ledge. Let Maia pay everything off with your death benefits.”
As though considering his advice, Orfeo swung one leg out. Bram leaped forward. “Don’t.” He grabbed Orfeo’s arm. “I didn’t mean—”
“I know.” Tone quieter, more thoughtful, Orfeo turned and grabbed both of Bram’s arms.
Bram couldn’t see much through his own reflection across the front of Orfeo’s helmet, but he sensed the fluctuation of thought and emotion through the changing pressure of Orfeo’s fingers. One second he squeezed, the next he almost let go. Then he was gripping Bram’s arms as though they would save him. Bram wondered if Orfeo would nudge him backward. If he could go there. He almost wasn’t surprised when Orfeo began to apply pressure.
Shaking his head, Bram pushed back against the small force edging him toward the end of the ledge. “This won’t gain you anything. My lease will return to the company.”
“I have access to your personnel file. Sure wouldn’t be hard to put a note in there like ‘If anything happens to me, I bequeath all I have—’”
“Don’t do this.” Bram’s boots were skidding against the slimy rock. “This isn’t you.”
“You don’t know who I am.”
“We were friends!”
“We were fuck buddies, Abraham. Nothing more. You never wanted more.”
Bram dropped to his knees, hoping to upset Orfeo’s balance. He managed to pull free of Orfeo, but one of his legs shot over the edge. Bram tried to roll, but Orfeo came down on top of him. Bram heard something crunch and hoped it wasn’t a vital suit component. No immediate alarm flashed inside his helmet.
With one leg hanging out over the abyss, Bram struggled to center the rest of his body on the ledge. The suit made every movement awkward, and Orfeo was between him and the safety of the rock wall. Their fight, if that’s what it was, took on a surreal aspect. All Bram could hear was grunting breath and the interior scrape of components. Their helmet lights danced around the darkness, showing nothing useful, and all the while he was aware of death at his back, behind and underneath him. He didn’t have a finger wedged into the rock this time.
Catching hold of Orfeo’s other arm, Bram attempted to heave himself upward. Orfeo pushed back, and for a shocking second, Bram thought that was it. He slid backward, and the weight of his boot started to work against him. Then his toe touched down. Bram held his breath as he applied a little more pressure, exploring what he hoped was a microledge. It was. The jut of rock was just wide enough to stand on. It wouldn’t save him, but he had a chance to regain his balance.
Bram pulled one of his hands free, and Orfeo slid toward the edge of the shelf above. Panic surging through his veins like fire as Bram swayed back. He reached one hand out, caught hold of a narrow fissure in the rock, and wedged his glove into the gap.
Orfeo scrambled above him. A boot came out of nowhere, and Bram grabbed it. He swayed backward again, the boot the only thing keeping him on the narrow outcropping.
“Let go!” Orfeo kicked and Bram teetered back, but held on.
“Not in this lifetime.” He could see another fissure in the rock. If he timed it right, got his other hand in there, he’d be immoveable. That didn’t fix the problem of the man trying to kill him, but it would at least pin him in place until a better idea occurred.
Bram waited until Orfeo pulled back to kick again, and let go. He lurched forward and thrust his hand toward the rock. A heavy weight landed against his back, pushing him forward. The weight began to drag him down, and it was only as he sank to his knees, arms stretching over his head, that Bram realized it was Orfeo, dangling from the ledge above.
Then the weight was gone.
Bram tried to tug his glove from the fissure, to reach back, to grab the man who had been his friend for so many years. He could sense Orfeo trying to do the same—the long moment of his fall broken up by the syncopated beat of gloves against Bram’s suit, Orfeo searching for something to hold on to. His breath through the pickup. The slow, dawning horror of the inevitable.
The moment ended, and with no more than a shocked gasp, Orfeo was gone. Gone into the dark.
“Orfeo!” Bram called.
No reply but an awful crunch of static. Bram cycled through his HUD, looking for the ping of Orfeo’s suit. It was about five hundred meters below him.
“Stay there, Orfeo. If you can hear me, stay there. I’ll find a way down.”
Softly, as though from a great distance, “No.”
“Orfeo?”
“Can’t feel my legs.”
“Fuck, fuck, fuck.” Bram’s filter wouldn’t last long enough to carry Orfeo out on his back. Maybe he could head up and come back down after he’d scrubbed the filtration unit. “I’ll head up and get—”
“Don’t.”
“I have to try.”
“My suit’s torn.”
“Patch it.”
“Can’t feel my arms, either. Can’t . . . Bram?”
It was awful hearing Orfeo use the short version of his name. When had he stopped? Probably sometime after Bram had decided they didn’t really fit together as anything more than friends.
“What?”
“I didn’t want . . .”
Bram waited through a long beat of hissing quiet before asking, “What? You didn’t want what?”
“To push you. Lost my sense.”
“We’ll figure it out. This trouble you’re in.”
No answer made its way up through the darkness.
“Fe?”
“Bram.” Another long silence, then, “Take care of Maia for me.”
“Orfeo, no.”
“Just do it, you dumb fuck.”
Orfeo went quiet then, and though Bram called his name several times, he received no response. Frustrated, Bram tried to recalibrate his pickups to connect to the more modern suit, the one that had probably cost twice as much as his, but hadn’t made a lick of difference when it came to a fi
ve-hundred-meter fall.
Through a crackle of static, Orfeo spoke again, his voice soft and full of wonder. “I can see the lights. It’s red and purple down here. I can see the lights.”
Then nothing. Bram hung there, waiting for more. Waiting for something. Waiting for the numbness in his chest to recede. Finally, his suit flashed him a warning. If he didn’t head back up soon, he’d run out of clean air.
He started the climb with heavy limbs. Halfway back to the farm, a new resolve caught him. Forget scrubbing the filtration unit, he’d use the old suit. The one Gael had worn. Grab another rope and head straight back down. Orfeo might simply be unconscious.
He cycled through his HUD again, looking for the suit feed he couldn’t connect to. The display of Fe’s vitals. He stopped at a flashing display, thoughts almost too scrambled to parse the message scrolling down the inside of his helmet. When the words slid together, not some weird cuneiform, but recognizable text, fresh panic seized him.
His sensors were pinging wildly. A storm was coming.
The wind picked up, the breath of it cool against Gael’s cheeks. Slitting his eyes open, he looked toward the north. A streak of lightning broke through the clouds. Gael blinked a few times, watching for another flash. He didn’t have to wait for long. Along the line of the crevasse, the sky was starting to darken as clouds piled on top of clouds. The air around them stirred more intensely as a heavier gust of wind blew through.
Trying not to panic, Gael let go of Aavi and picked up the mask resting in her hands. “You need to put this on, okay?”
The storm could rise out of the crater. Bram had said that most did—well before they got to the farm, so that any poison mist collected from the bottom of the crevasse would pass harmlessly overhead. Gael didn’t like the look of this one. It was too low and dark, and he didn’t know enough about the weather patterns to trust whether the storm would pass beneath them or move up to the plateau above.
Aavi was still holding her mask. Gael tugged at the strap. “Aavi, put it on!”
Finally responding to his change of tone, Aavi put the mask strap over her head and settled the rebreather in front of her mouth and nose. Gael did the same with his. Then he reached for her hand. “C’mon. We need to get home. Now.”
Whatever came, they’d be safe inside the deep stone corridors beneath Bram’s farm. Pulling Aavi behind him, Gael strode toward the path leading down from the cloud garden. He glanced back once, at the storm building to the north, and wondered if his panic was ill founded. The clouds didn’t seem to have moved.
The next time he looked back, the storm had advanced so fast that panic seemed an apathetic reaction.
Aavi tugged on his hand. “Where’s Bram?” she asked, her voice muffled by the mask.
Down in the crevasse with Orfeo?
“Don’t worry about Bram. He knows what to do in a storm.” He’d be okay. He was wearing a suit. Even if the storm pushed below the farm, he’d be all right.
Holding to that, Gael nearly dragged Aavi through the first switchback, slowing his pace enough to keep from sliding off the trail. He guided her around a narrow bend, then stepped to the outside of her, keeping her away from the edge. They were now walking into the wind, and it grew stronger with every step. Dark grit flew up off the trail, stinging his hands and face. He checked Aavi’s legs. On warmer days—which was every burning day on Alkirak—she skipped the leggings, preferring to wear her tunic like a dress.
Sure enough, her legs were exposed to the wind and already pinking beneath the blasting sand.
“C’mon.” Gael gripped her hand harder.
The path angled down more steeply after the next switchback, and the wind seemed determined to throw Gael forward. His hair blew around his ears and across his cheeks, tangling in the mask strap. Several strands lodged beneath the plastic, blocking the vision out of his left eye. He stumbled as he reached to tug the hair free, and the wind pushed him to his knees.
Gael checked over his shoulder.
Oh, scorching sand and burning sun. The storm loomed right behind them, either so close a fork of lightning might conceivably arc right through him, pinning him to the ground, or so unimaginably large that they weren’t experiencing the worst of it yet.
Had the wind dipped low enough to collect mist out of the crevasse?
Aavi looked back and her eyes widened. She pointed over his shoulder and Gael shook his head. He didn’t want to see it again. Collecting Aavi in his arms, he gritted his teeth against the hot surge of pain in his left shoulder and started running. The soles of his shoes skidded over the scree, but Aavi acted as a counterweight, keeping him upright. The next switchback came up fast, and Gael slowed his pace so he wouldn’t careen over the end of the trail. The wind worked to opposite effect, pushing him toward the edge. He grabbed at the rough rock and snatched his hand back as a sizzling drop of rain hit his knuckle.
Oh no. He needed to find cover. Now.
Gael glanced over the edge of the path, judging the rocks below. Not a lot of cover. He eased Aavi down onto the path and faced her, both his hands on her shoulders.
“We can try and outrun the storm. I figure we’ve got half a K to go until we get to the road, then maybe another half a K. We could run it in maybe ten minutes.” He looked over her head at the advancing storm and the imminent horror. Lightning flashed, a hellish streak in the churning darkness, and the scent of ozone and poison pushed through his mask. Swallowing, he turned back to Aavi. “Or we can try to hide behind some rocks. Dig in and wait it out.”
Aavi shook her head, and Gael took that to mean run rather than hide. He grabbed her hand and led the way. They made it to the next switchback before the rain started. Not the heavy shower presaged by the drop against the back of his hand, but a sheeting mist that curled down out of the sky, cloaking the surrounding rock in moisture. The effect was ethereal, as though a giant hand had dragged a wet brush across the landscape.
Gael feared the mist. It might not be all poisonous, but the atmosphere of Alkirak was too uncertain to take that bet. He picked up Aavi and held her against his chest, pressing her face against his shoulder and covering the back of her head with one hand.
Aavi started whimpering.
Ahead, Gael saw the last switchback. Over it loomed an outcropping of deep-red rock. He pushed Aavi beneath the overhang and started stripping off his shirt.
“Huddle down and tuck your head in,” he yelled, the words almost lost to a crack of thunder.
After Aavi had curled herself into the tightest ball possible, Gael wrapped his shirt around her exposed skin. Then he wrapped himself around her, pushing her up against the rock until she whimpered.
“Hold on, it won’t be for long.”
He hoped.
The wind scoured his bare back and the mist prickled his skin, stinging, but not burning. Briefly, he wondered if stripping out of his pants would make a difference. He could drape the sturdier cloth of Bram’s cut-down coveralls over his shoulders.
Lightning sizzled overhead and thunder boomed.
Unsure if the shake passing through his limbs was the storm or his fear, Gael huddled in closer.
Bram resisted the urge to pull his helmet off as soon as he hauled himself up over the last ledge. The atmospheric readout warned him not to. When the sound of the wind brushing over his suit had risen to a deafening hiss, he turned off the external mic and began the headlong run back to his farm. The storm stampeded through the crevasse, and it was as though the clouds were breaking against his back. Even in his suit he struggled to stay upright.
The shield arcing over the high terrace flickered, snapping along the edges. A glance up confirmed that three of the four turbines were locked, a safety mechanism that kicked in when the wind got too high. The last spun wildly—the same one that had given him trouble a couple of months back. He was already a battery down. If he didn’t get the turbine locked, it could short out the whole system. Bram considered stopping for all of three secon
ds before letting the wind pick his course: across the farm to the garage.
He pushed through the deflector field covering the cave mouth and panted in the sudden stillness, the lack of bullying gusts almost enough to have him falling sideways. Clutching the wall, Bram moved toward the rear of the large space, aiming for the ramp down. When he reached the bottom, he released the catch on his helmet, pulled it over his head, and called out for Gael. No answer. Bram jogged into the kitchen, his suit shushing and whispering with every movement, and tried again. “Gael, Aavi, you two down here?”
He couldn’t think where else they’d be.
Thunder rolled over the complex, reverberating through the stone beneath his feet. Bram ran down the hall to the room Gael and Aavi shared, calling for them. The room was empty, evidence they’d been there strewn across the bed: clothing and Gael’s duffel bag.
The random pattern of the clothing tickled something at the back of Bram’s thoughts as he paced toward the bathroom, poked his head into the closet, and left the room. He jogged back through the kitchen, visiting the pantry and cold room, then ran to his bedroom. Checked the bathroom there. Every time he passed the wide arch leading into the HV room, he looked inside and saw nothing. He paused in the center of the small space, turning a quick circle.
“Gael! Aavi!”
The lighting strip along the far wall buzzed and flickered in a random pattern, and the meaning of the disarray across Gael’s bed snapped forward, spreading across the front of Bram’s thoughts like a flashing holo. Gael had left in a hurry. He’d never have left his clothes in such a mess otherwise. Gael was systematic about everything being in its place. He’d have been upset, sure, but emotion tended to make him more rigid, not less so, as though tightening the reins on himself was the only way he could exercise control over the universe.
Gael would only abandon his order for one thing. One person.
Aavi.
Bram started running. The power failed as he reached the top of the stairs, plunging him into darkness. He activated his helmet light. Breathing hard—his boots were heavy and fear clawed at his back with every step—he raced through the garage, helmet bouncing against his thigh as he moved, light dancing over the walls, each thump echoed by the storm as thunder ripped the sky apart overhead.
