It was the third day of my fifth week when Barbas came to me in the cabin by the lake, his expression serious. “You’ve landed, Joanna,” he announced without preamble. “It seems the vacation has come to an end.”
I met his emerald eyes and frowned. “You seem awfully grim, Barbas.” I gestured to the cabin around us. “I’ll still have to sleep, and you can bring me back here when I do. This isn’t really goodbye.”
A somewhat ironic smile twisted his lips. "That's not what I'm worried about." He made a gesture in the air, and a window opened up before me from nowhere, as if he'd just wished a computer screen into existence before my eyes. The window showed me the view from behind my armor's faceplate. I was seeing out of my own, real eyes, but at a distance, as if they were cameras, and I was a security guard at a monitoring station. At first, I thought something must have happened to my suit's visor, because all I could see was white, with the power armor's Heads Up Display superimposed over the brilliant, featureless field. Then things started to come into focus as my physical eyes adjusted to the glare, and I realized that I was looking out over a vast, endless expanse of ice, sprawled lifeless beneath a merciless gray sky.
I turned to Barbas. “This must be one of the poles.”
Barbas shook his head grimly, "I doubt it. The Bullet doesn't have much by way of strong sensors, but our approach orbit to this rock took quite a while, and I got a good look at the world as we circled it. This planet is actually a moon, and it's tidally locked to its parent. What makes that a bad thing, is that for some reason the planet this moon is orbiting is also tidally locked to its parent star, and so we’re basically in a permanent eclipse, on the dark side of the planet. The only thing giving this ball of ice any warmth at all is the fact that we’re pretty close to the planet. It provides basically all of the light and heat you will see out there.”
“Well fuck,” I cursed. This didn’t sound at all like a beach full of underwear models. “Can I even terraform that? I’m supposed to make it fit for habitation in ten years. How am I going to make a planet capable of supporting life when I don’t even have sunlight to work with?”
Barbas showed his teeth in a non-smile. “I have no idea. But I know the only thing we really can do is start.”
“How cold is it out there?” I asked, resigning myself to some horrible answer.
He didn’t disappoint. “Most of the sensors on the Bullet were destroyed during reentry, but your suit’s outer measurements read at negative one-hundred fifty-six degrees Celsius, or around one-hundred seventeen Kelvin.”
I swore again. “How long can my suit withstand these temperatures?”
“Indefinitely,” he answered promptly, and then added, “Provided you establish some kind of shelter. The current wind speed is forty-eight kilometers per hour, but I was clocking storms moving upwards of three-hundred KPH.”
“Fucking hell.” I shook my head, staring out at the frozen wasteland before me. Just my luck. But there wasn’t time for wallowing in self-pity. If I didn’t have shelter by the time one of those storms came around, my armor wouldn’t be enough to keep me alive. “Alright then, Barbas. I guess you’re right. Vacation’s over, and we’d better get to work.”
The AI sighed, and nodded. Before I could ask how this went, I was no longer in the warm, comfortable cabin by the lake. I was ensconced in heavy armor, strapped into a thick, cylinder that was half buried in the ground by its own impact. I tore away the straps and got to my feet, ducking the edge of the open hatch in the side of my Bullet and lumbering my power armored bulk outside. I was standing in the midst of a frozen hells cape, and I had to turn it into a home, or thousands of settlers would die here. No pressure at all. Barbas' voice came through my helmet speakers. "Welcome to Chalice Colony, Joanna. Good luck."
Chapter Two: A Fallen Star
Volistad
The first time I saw her, I thought she was a god. Long have the wise elders of the Erin-Vulur spoken of great celestial beings descending from beyond the winds to the frozen skin of Ravanur, where they might visit their will upon their mortal subjects. When she appeared, it was as a great golden arrow falling from the firmament above to the ice below. Though I suspected great happenings and portents were tied to her arrival, I could not have imagined then how thoroughly she would change my world.
That day was the fifth day of the monthly hunt, and I had been tracking a burug’s movement through the ice beneath my feet. The great, armor plated monsters tunneled through the glacial shell of Ravanur as easily as a worm in the sand, and rarely did they emerge into the eternal twilight above. A hunter skilled as I knew that the best way to track one was to make the difficult trip to the surface of the ice, and follow them from above until they came close to the surface. Their attentions were always focused on their prey below, on the krill and rodents that infested the warmer layers of ice closer to the heart of Ravanur. A correctly placed strike could, with some difficulty, ensure me a clean kill. The burug had come within two spears of the surface of the ice, it’s great, chitinous mass visible through the ice in places as a colossal, distorted shadow. I stepped out over that shadow, slowly, carefully, placing each fur-clad boot carefully as I slowly walked the length of the burug, starting at its tail. I checked the Deepseeker shaman's blessing lashed to my arm and nodded in grim satisfaction. Though I was not precisely comfortable with using the magicks crafted by the reclusive old shaman, his work was always meticulous and precise. Though he was half mad and prone to fits of alternate mania and melancholia, the Deepseeker was more than suited to his purpose. Out of the scores of my Tribesmen, he was the only one who could make any use out of the ancient relics that littered the deepest chasmic layers of Ravanur's frozen skin. The particular charm I was wearing was at first glance just a steel vambrace. The back of it, however, where it touched my body, had been more intricately woven of softer metals. Between the woven wires and the steel shell, there was a strange, greenish material that seemed too brittle and thin to be as strong as it was. In the center of the outer metal face smoldered a lambent glow, the strength of its luminescence telling me that the charm I wore as a vambrace would last me another two days before it ceased to protect me from the vicious cold of the surface world. It was good that I had found this burug. Returning to the tribe empty handed would be a source of great disgrace, and I had worked hard to cultivate the modicum of respect that I had.
As I crept the length of the burug’s indistinct form, I counted each pair of segmented legs that I passed. Most creatures of its kind had seventeen pairs of legs, with its central heart and brain both located somewhere between the fourteenth. I would only get one chance at a surprise attack. If I didn’t kill it with my first few strikes, I would probably die in the counterattack. The only problem with a surface strike was that there was nowhere for me to run or hide. An angry burug could breach upward through several spear-lengths of ice, and if I were lucky, it would kill me outright in doing so. I came to the place where I thought the monster's heart and brain would be, and unslung my great hammer from my back, followed by a single iron spear from the long quiver that hung beside my fur-bound pack of dwindling supplies. I positioned the spear with one hand, pointed down, and adjusted my aim to account for the distortion caused by the ice. My first swing was a light tap, the head of my sledge still driving the spear's point three-quarters of its length into the ice. Then I backed up, swung once to loosen my shoulder, and leaped forward, swinging down an overhand blow with all of my body's strength. The strike, made precise by long years of practice, hammered the spear into the ice with incredible force. Ice split before the iron point with a thunderous crack like a gigantic bone being snapped in two, and the spear vanished. A moment later, a great chattering roar shook the ice beneath my feet, buzzing through the hide soles of my boots and sending chills rippling along my spine. Without waiting to check if the monster had started to turn, I drew and set another spear, and raised my great hammer to send another blow home into the burug’s back.
Before I could leap forward into my strike, the shadow of my hammer suddenly stood out starkly before me in a silhouette grip, so clear it might have been painted on the ice. There were no shadows on the surface of Ravanur, for there was very little direct light, only the hazy gloaming of eternal twilight. But something was casting that shadow. I whirled, hammer held two-handed before me in a defensive stance and froze as I saw the source of the light. A star burned yellow-white in the silver sky, growing ever larger as it streaked down from the heavens toward me. It trailed a tail of thick smoke and before it came a bloom of heat that I could feel even from where I stood. I wondered then if I was going to die. As I gaped, open-mouthed at onrushing doom, the ground lurched beneath my feet, sending me down to one knee, only then I was tipped over onto my back as the plates of thick glacial ice cracked and lifted into the air. The burug was breaching. I was definitely going to die. The next several moments were lost in a confusion of impact, an avalanche of skull-splitting crashes and roars, and a wave of all-encompassing heat that sucked the breath from my lungs even as I was driven into crushing darkness. I barely had time to wonder what great sin of mine had brought down such punishment before my mind slipped away sideways into silence, and I knew no more.
…
I woke in complete darkness. For a moment I panicked, sure that I had died and was awaiting judgment beneath Ravanur's heart. But then I realized that I could move my arms and legs, and I was breathing, so chances were, I was still alive. I fumbled in my furs for the bundle of glowstones I kept for just such an occasion, found one of the smooth little rocks, and then cracked it against the hard, stippled surface of the ice that supported me. The stone broke smoothly, and bright, greenish-white light spilled from the two halves of the palm-sized stone. I sat up. The first thing I noticed was that the ice below me was not actually ice. It was hard and slightly sloped, pocked with scars and abrasions, and continued in great overlapping plates out of the range of my little light. It took all of my self-discipline not to shout with alarm. I had been lying on the great, broad back of the burug. As near as I could tell, the monster was dead, though whether my spear had played any role in its demise I could not have said. All around me were broad slabs and boulders of cracked ice, piled one atop the other, many of them partially penetrating the chitin and flesh of the dead burug beneath me. The great heat I’d felt was gone, replaced again by the dull, gnawing hunger of deep cold. The sensation was unpleasant, but the blessing strapped to my arm kept it from being truly painful. The edges of the frozen chunks all around me were slick and smooth, as if they’d all started to melt, but had been immediately refrozen before they could take the idea too far.
Whatever had happened, I wasn’t dead, and the burug definitely was. It was my duty to return to my people, to tell them what had happened, and give the forage teams a location so that they could begin the process of collecting the valuable meat and chitin from the dead beast. I found my great hammer lying beside me, picked it up, stood, and slung the weapon over my back. It wouldn't do me much good now. The pair of climbing axes in my pack, however, was a different story. They were actually more like spikes attached to a recurved handle, and they could punch through even the hardest ice with brutal efficiency. I removed them from my pack and unwrapped them, then returned the pack to my back. Before moving, I spent a few minutes rolling my shoulders, warming up the muscles for what I knew would be a strenuous task.
The light of the broken glowstone cast a feverish reflection of my face onto the smooth ice before me. The wan light changed my normally ice-pale skin to a strange greenish hue, even as it cast a rainbow aurora through my crystalline, reflective hair. My eyes were hooded, glittering orbs of darkness, the left one ringed with a ferocious purpling bruise. I grinned at my reflection, showing my rows of jagged, carnivore’s teeth. I looked like I’d just been kicked in the head by a god. But I wasn’t down just yet. Wasting no further time, I crouched, resettled the axes in my grip, and jumped with all of my strength. My first axe bit the ice, stopping me before I could fall. I dug into the icy wall with the array of claws attached to the toes of my boots, then pushed off and slammed the second axe home.
My chest and back burned, and each blow showered my bruised face with shards of ice, but repeated the action over and over, dragging myself up the sheer walls of shattered ice toward the distant light at the top of the pit. It was as the Warmaster always said. "Pain is our teacher, our lookout, our friend. But it is not our chief." If I stopped, I would die frozen in the pit. If I died, my tribe would not harvest this burug, and children would not eat. No warrior of the Erin-Vulur would ever give up with stakes such as these, and I was no exception. I fell into a rhythm. Strike, dig, pull, jump, strike, dig, pull, and jump- I lost track of the movement of my body and simply stared up at the slowly growing window of silver against the smooth aquamarine darkness of the pit where the burug had fallen. It was amazing how deep we had gone. Perhaps when the beast fell, it had dragged us both into a natural crevasse. I was lucky to be alive in that case; those cracks in the skin of Ravanur could descend for hundreds of spearcasts.
When I reached the surface, the banks of silvery clouds that normally covered the frozen sky had parted somewhat, offering me a view of Palamun, the Great Father, in the skies above Ravanur. His face was hidden, appearing as a great orb of darkness that took up fully half of the night sky. He was, as always, limned in a mane of burning, sullen crimson all around. His thoroughly shadowed face, and all about him, was arrayed his celestial host. They were uncountable pinpricks of light in the sky, stretching out to the limits of my vision, each one a god, a warrior in the service of the Great Father, the King of the Sky. One of those warriors had just fallen to the surface of Ravanur’s skin, and I wondered why the Palamun would send one of his own down here in such a dramatic display. Such an omen could be either very good for the Erin-Vulur, or very bad- there was no way the fall of a god could be any kind of middle ground. “When the gods walk twixt men,” I found myself muttering, quoting the High Epic, “Storms follow in their wake. Ware, mortal. Beware the storm.”
With an effort, I turned my face from the fire-ringed dark visage of the Great Father and surveyed my surroundings. I stood at the mouth of the burug’s pit, itself within a deep scar that had been melted into the glacier and promptly refrozen. The trench in the ice began not far from me, in the direction of the Great Father, and, as I turned, continued, ever widening for at least five-dozen spearcasts behind me. I hurriedly stowed my axes and unslung my greathammer. Whatever lay at the end of that trench may well have been a god, but just as messengers from the Firmament did sometimes descend aboard burning sledges, so also did dark, corrupted gods. And they didn’t come down to help anyone. They came to Ravanur to twist the hearts of men. I found myself torn between a burning tide of excited curiosity in my heart and an acute spike of religious fear in my mind. The desire to know more won out, and I set off toward the wider end of the scar in the ice, my greathammer sitting ready on my shoulder.
…
As I approached the crater left by the god’s landing, I dropped to my belly, slinging my hammer and drawing my horn shortbow out of its oilcloth shroud. I rolled onto my back, crooked a leg over the bow and bent it with a minor effort, slipping the wound gut string up into its notch and letting the weapon settle into full tension. I rolled back to my hands and knees and then opened another quiver, which hung opposite the spears on my pack. I drew out an arrow, nocking the shaft and keeping it ready as I crept up to the edge of the crater. When I came close to the rocky lip, I dropped to my belly and crawled forward. Careful to avoid detection, I peered over the edge with one eye and stared down at what stood in the center of the blast zone.
A short, blunt, metal pillar smoldered in the center of the crater, surrounded by a tangle of metallic lines and shredded silken cloth. It stood in a turbulent pool of ice; it turned to water in its own heat. I could feel the radiant energy pouring off it, but even as I watched it, the heat w
as draining away, sucked away by the greedy thirst of the glacier. The pool billowed white steam even as it began to ice over once again, and the strange pillar was obscured in a hazy veil. I waited, tensed, not sure if I should approach the thing or not- but I didn't have long to wait. There was a flash of bright blue light from within the smoke, leaving afterimages of a doorway burned into my vision. A moment later, a figure stepped out from amidst the smoke, and I knew for a fact that I looked upon a god.
Alien Romance Box Set: Romantic Suspense: Alien Destiny: Scifi Alien Romance Adventure Romantic Suspence Trilogy (Complete Series Box Set Books 1-3) Page 31
