Marny spoke up. "Cap, you've always believed you chose me all those years ago. The fact is, I chose you. Ada, Jonathan, Nick … the list is endless. We all saw in you that thing all great leaders have."
"What's that?" I said, smiling despite myself.
"I'm not sure what it's called. Sense of destiny, maybe? An inability to let something go just because it seems impossible? You make the impossible possible. You say we're going to go get Ada and I believe you, Cap. Just like when we met. I'm all in."
A lump had formed in my throat and I busied myself, pulling Nick's belt around my waist. "What do we need to do to get going?"
"I've loaded two frame packs with supplies. I just have these last items and we can roll whenever you're ready. Nick, did you finish the repairs to the snowshoes?"
"Yup," he answered. "I also tossed five meters of braided gut into your pack, just in case you need to do repairs on the way."
"Don't know what I'd do without you," Marny said, leaning over and giving him a quick kiss.
I followed them outside, finding the packs leaning against the side of the barn. Nick lifted one and helped me pull it onto my shoulders. The pack was a reminder of just how much things had changed. Nick lifted the weight with ease, causing me to believe it was light. Turns out, his time on Fraxus had hardened him. The straps bit into my shoulder and I winced as I adjusted to the weight.
"Just need to attach the belt," he said, slipping around in front of me. "It'll transfer some of the weight to your hips."
"I don't think you can call those hips," Marny chortled, tying off her own pack.
I glanced over to Tabby's cabin but saw no signs of movement. I wasn't sure what I hoped for. I wasn't up for another scene like last night, but it felt weird leaving without saying anything to her.
Nick must have caught my glance. "Tabby and Peter took off on a hunting trip this morning. With winter coming, we need the meat."
"Right," I said. "Makes sense. I'll get started. You guys can say your goodbyes."
As I trudged off toward the northern end of our camp, I checked the suit's power. It was capturing a small amount of energy from Fraxus' star, but the suit was using more than it was capturing just to keep my body warm. With the weight of the pack bearing down on me, I had no doubt my ability to keep myself warm would change quickly.
As I hiked, I shifted the pack around until I found a comfortable way to carry the load. Nick was right, the belt had taken much of the weight off my shoulders, causing my legs to complain. I pushed forward as hard as I could, not wanting to stay in camp any longer than necessary. After four ten-days of doing menial chores, it felt good to be moving toward a real objective.
I hiked in silence for nearly an hour. The trail was worn and easy to follow. Even though I was headed up the mountain, the path descended slightly as I followed the terrain. The crisp mountain air was invigorating, and the sounds of the mountain mixed with the rhythm of my boots crunching along the gravelly path.
A blip on my HUD warned of Marny's approach forty meters before she caught up with me. I pushed my pace, but she overtook me. "It's a long hike, Cap. You might want to save some of that energy."
"When will the Scatters catch on that we're on the move?" I asked.
"A few kilometers," Marny said. "They give us a wide berth, but eventually we'll run across one of their scouts."
"Any idea why they've avoided contact for all these years?" I asked. "Surely this valley wasn't abandoned when you arrived."
"Our suspension chambers all landed within a couple kilometers of each other," Marny said. "I had Peter with me, Tabby landed half a click from our position and Nick was further away. As far as we can tell, our revival sequences were initiated within minutes of our arrival. We were lucky; we arrived in late spring. It was Nick who figured out we weren't getting off planet and that if we didn't start working for long-term survival, we wouldn't make it through the winter."
"Sounds right," I said, glad to have something to take my mind off the effort of hiking.
"We didn't even know the Scatters existed until we ran across the clearing where our camp is now," she said. "We found evidence of a large group of people who'd just up and left. They were pretty thorough about it though, leaving nothing but bare patches of dirt."
"How large of a group?"
"Initially, we thought maybe fifty or sixty," Marny said. "Since then we've revised that number to more like a couple of hundred."
"I don't get it," I said. "How could you be so far off and why would they leave?"
"The best we can tell, Scatters are vegetarian," she said. "They don't just live on the ground. They also live in the trees. We probably wouldn't have made it if not for the discovery of that camp. With the Scatters gone, we harvested their crops and set up shelter."
"They just let you take over their village?" I asked.
"Nick and I have talked about this a lot," Marny said. "The day we discovered the clearing, Tabby was chasing a blood-deer with a spear Nick had fire-hardened. We were having trouble because, while we had all the protein you could want, we didn't know what plants were edible and which weren't. We think the Scatters were actually pushing the blood-deer toward the clearing, leading us to it."
"Why would they do that?" I asked.
"That's been the conversation," she said. "I personally think it's because they wanted us to stop killing so many deer. Nick thinks they were offering the clearing to give us a chance at survival."
"Those aren't competing ideas," I observed. "They might have been doing both."
"We've had a few more run-ins with them," Marny said. "About ten years ago, we started pushing our boundaries, trying to find any evidence of civilization. We knew the Scatters were out there, but short of having Tabby run one of them down and capture them, we didn't have too many options for conversation."
"How'd you learn their language?" I asked.
"They're not completely the ghosts they'd like to be," Marny said. "Over the years, we've all had moments where we've run across a group and been able to observe them without their knowledge. Peter is by far the best at this. His ability to move through the forest quietly is almost uncanny. Nick has recorded all the words we know."
"You said something about the Scatters shooting arrows at you when you got outside the area they wanted you to stay in," I said.
"Nick thinks they were bluffing," Marny said. "I'm not as convinced. As vegetarians, what would be their purpose for developing skills with ranged weapons? Nick thinks they need to defend against maracats. I just don't believe you become that good with a weapon without a daily purpose."
"You think the Scatters have an enemy?" I asked.
"I do," she said. "Maybe its other Scatters. Maybe there's a whole other species of sentients we haven't run into yet."
"Do you ever see satellites or spaceships?" I asked.
"We've seen ships, but they're not landing anywhere on this side of the planet as far as we can tell," she said.
The grade of the path had changed, finally giving us the arduous climb the mountain had been promising. I worked to maintain steady breaths, only able to concentrate on one step at a time. Idly, I recalled some ancient philosopher who had suggested that a journey of a thousand miles starts with one step. I wasn't as worried about that one step as much as I was the million that remained.
Chapter 8
Point Masters
"We're being watched," Marny said, having casually walked up next to me.
The well-marked trail had evaporated over the last four days, and we were now relying on my AI to pick out the most traversable route. My body was still loudly complaining. Working around the camp was nowhere near as grueling as the constant battering inherent in placing one foot in front of the other, hour after hour. My only defense was to allow my mind to fall into a semi-catatonic state where I simply existed for that next step, pushing away all other distractions.
I looked up, startled by her presence as much as her pronouncem
ent. On the edge of my HUD, I could see two red dots moving in conjunction with us on the uphill side of the mountain, their presence cloaked by trees.
"Two," I said. "Forty degrees portside."
"Could be Scatters," Marny said. "They won't confront us without a larger group. How is the energy situation on your suit?"
"It's converting my excess body heat to energy. It's not much, but I'm recovering the loss from overnight heating."
"Do you have enough to lift off?" Marny asked, adjusting her pack so the water skin she carried now hung from a hook on the side. The two-meter-long spear she used as a walking stick was transferred into her right hand.
"Are you expecting trouble?" I asked. "Weren't we expecting Scatters?"
"Scouts travel solo," she said. "Can you get your AI to fill in any details?"
My AI heard Marny's suggestion and prompted me to do just that. I accepted and was shown the rear flank of a feline. "Do maracats travel in pairs?"
"Mother and cub," she said. "They'll track us for a while. Once they decide we're good prey, they'll make their move. We have to take the fight to them."
"I'm going to guess that idea sounds as dumb to you as it does to me," I said.
"It does," she admitted, "but the longer we let them track us, the more they'll be convinced we're lunch. Just remember, that suit you're wearing is there to keep you alive. Use it that way and don't worry about me. I've dealt with maracats before."
"And how'd you do?" I asked.
"I'm still here," she said.
I pulled Nick's iron knife from the sheath, turned uphill and charged, making as much noise as I possibly could.
"Cap! Frak," Marny shouted.
On my HUD, I watched one of the two dots race off, heading up the hill while the other stood its ground. I couldn't see the actual cat, but knew I was only fifteen meters from its position. I'd always been fascinated by various tactics of warfare and had voraciously read texts on the subject. One of those books outlined the advantage given to someone on higher ground. It wasn't until I was scrabbling up the side of the mountain, charging a man-sized cat, that I realized just how superior the cat’s position was. Apparently, my adversary also understood the concept and was simply awaiting my arrival, probably wondering just how dumb I could be.
"Frak, Cap, not like this," Marny sputtered, working to catch up.
A loud, angry yowl cut through the trees at the same moment I came into direct line-of-sight of a very pissed-off maracat. Instead of running off, like I had been secretly counting on, she lurched forward, her giant paws digging into the rocky soil. The cat’s thick shoulder muscles tensed, propelling her toward me.
I'd only seen a maracat once and even then, I'd been barely conscious and it had been dead, draped across Tabby's shoulders. This cat was huge. I realized I was indeed crazy for charging into battle. The fact was, I'd committed myself and there was no turning back.
Since I had no idea how the maracat would attack, I did the only thing I could come up with. I waited until we were two meters apart and leapt, using my grav-suit to lift me from the ground. My plan, such as it was, was to flip over the top of the cat and give it a taste of Nick's knife. It was a good plan. I was more than agile enough to execute the maneuver and it would put the cat off balance.
Turns out, the key phrase there was off balance. The only experience I’d ever had with cats had been Filbert, an orange tabby we'd rescued from a space station. Filbert had an uncanny ability to twist his body and accomplish the most amazing acrobatic maneuvers. I'll just tell you, this is not a skill limited to house cats from the Milky Way galaxy. Instead of being even remotely impressed with my maneuver, the adult maracat pushed off from the ground and twisted in midair as I attempted to gain an advantage.
To say her maneuver was more effective than my own would be something of an understatement. About halfway into my overhead spin, I realized things were going very poorly and I attempted to adjust. With grace found only in the wild, she tracked my movements and came at me with the swipe of a paw the size of my head. Her claws raked across my shoulder, sending me spinning wildly onto the rocks.
My grav-suit stiffened as the cat's claws attempted to split me open. Ordinarily, the suit was capable of resisting energy and projectile weapons, but in its beleaguered state, I was lucky it was operational enough to keep me from being eviscerated. Unfortunately, the suit did little to stop the pain of landing amongst the boulders on the side of the hill. The strap on my pack had taken a direct hit and as I hit the ground, the entire thing exploded, unpacking itself in a microsecond.
"Cap?" Marny called, over the angry yowl of the cat, who was no doubt turning on her now.
Pushing aside my own concerns, I bolted up from where I'd landed and streaked back to the maracat, which had, indeed, turned to face Marny. I screamed as I approached, iron dagger raised high overhead. The sight of Marny, facing down the large cat with nothing more than a spear in hand, spurred me on.
I believe cats to be fickle beasts. If the maracat had simply stuck it out, we all would have learned just how ineffective a warrior with a single spear and a crazy man with an iron dagger were against a fully grown maracat. As it was, my reappearance startled the cat, which no doubt assumed I'd been put down hard enough to be of no concern. Without a care in the world, she dismissed us, leapt to the side and trotted away.
"Are you okay, Cap?" Marny asked, working hard to catch her breath.
"Burned through about half the suit's stores," I said, "but I'm okay. Were you really going to go one-on-one with that spear?"
"Only if I had to," Marny said. "I'd forgotten about the armor in that suit."
"Think we're done with those cats?" I asked.
"She's just looking for food for her and her cub," Marny said. "I suppose it depends on how hard up they are. We hunt this mountain pretty hard."
"Very reassuring," I said, rubbing my shoulder.
"Let's see if we can repair that pack," she said, turning to where the contents of my pack were dumped all over the ground.
An experienced hiker knows that descending a steep trail is harder than climbing it. While going down is not as anaerobic, it is both tough on the knees and hard on your quads. Add a mixture of snow and ice to this equation and you end up with the reason people prefer not to hike in the mountains during winter.
"We need to set up camp once we get to the bottom of this draw," Marny said, her breath billowing out in a long stream of vapor. I was thankful for the small uphill that heated me up and given my legs a rest. We'd been on the trail for fifteen days and were behind schedule, only halfway down the back side of Juba Mountain.
"A bit early for today, don't you think?" I asked. Each day we hiked, my suit battery drained further as the cold was barely offset by the exercise and the nights were frigid. On the positive side, my body had grown stronger, seemingly with every step. In that we only had the food we carried, we were both in a constant state of hunger.
"We're burning through our food too quickly and our pace is too slow," Marny said. "We need to restock before we get hit with that." She pointed south down the Juba range to what looked like happy, fluffy white clouds.
"Snow?" I guessed.
"A lot of snow," she said. "By the look of things, it could be on us for a few days. If that happens, we won't be going anywhere."
"Frak," I said, nodding. Never had I expended so much effort to travel seventy kilometers.
"That's an understatement, Cap," Marny said. "We could be in bad shape if that weather sets up like I think it might. We'll need to push it."
"Lead on," I said, grimacing as I adjusted my pack higher on my back.
The camping spot Marny indicated would, under normal circumstances, be a three-hour hike. Given our new pace, Marny was attempting to make the distance in half that time. I'd underestimated her. With the old Marny, I would never have felt the need to jump between her and a charging maracat. For some reason, I'd thought that was a good idea. Moreover, she had
n't corrected me afterwards. However, from that point forward, she pushed our pace, forcing me to my limit, only slowing when I proved I couldn't keep up. The next day, she pushed even harder. The years might have whittled her down in size, but there was no doubt she was still a warrior at heart.
An hour into our descent, I felt the first sprinkles of rain against my cheek. I'd heated up considerably and at least initially, it felt good. Ten minutes after the sprinkles started, an arctic blast of wind followed, freezing my hair in place. "Put your hat on, Cap," Marny warned, not looking back. "When we stop, you need to be as dry as possible."
If anything, I was glad for the rain-slicked trail as it forced Marny to slow. What I wasn't glad for was the rapidly dropping temperature, which had been hovering around three degrees and dropped to minus three in only a few moments.
"New plan," Marny said, as the terrain shifted from short, widely disbursed pines to a thickening forest of tall pines and deciduous trees. I took some satisfaction that she was breathing hard from the exertion. "When we arrive, you need to construct or find shelter. I'll gather as much food as I can find."
"What's going on?" I asked.
"We're in for snow," Marny said. "Plan for holding back a lot of snow with your shelter and you need to get a fire going. Once things are wet, fire will be difficult to start."
"I got it," I said.
Twenty minutes later, Marny pulled to a stop. "This is going to have to do." The look on her face suggested she wanted something better.
"Show plans for emergency shelter using the tools I have available," I instructed my AI. My encounter with cold nights and the maracat had left the suit at half the power I'd started with. That was after generating power from the day's hike. Fortunately, the AI could operate almost indefinitely on low power.
"Cap, I need to locate food, you'll need to figure out the shelter on your own. We're against the clock," Marny said.
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