Snowburn

by Frost, E J

  I glance over my shoulder. There’s a finboard bobbing just beyond the breakers. I push Kez towards it. My finboard’s further out, listing aimlessly. Erin’s abandoned it. Bitch. The lights of her finboard have disappeared into the darkness. Doubt she even stuck around to see if we survived the fight. Überbitch.

  Once I’m waist-deep, I dive into the water. Swimming’s faster than wading any day of the week. I remember Kez’s warning as the cold slaps my bare skin. But with the rad dose we just picked up, whatever the water contains probably doesn’t matter much. We’re going to need some serious time in a melanin tank, my kitten and me, if we survive this run.

  I kick hard through the cold, toxic surf, feeling the drag of my wet boots. Swimming is not my favorite thing. Negative buoyancy is a bitch. S.A.W.L. training made me into a decent swimmer and I’ve had to do it on a half-dozen worlds, usually under similar fucking circumstances. I focus on the bobbing finboard. Avoid thinking about what might be following me, or what might be coming up underneath me. Keep kicking. Keep breathing. With each kick, each stroke, I get closer to the finboard and further away from the beach. Then suddenly the finboard’s right in front of me. Kez, leaning out from her own finboard, pushes it towards me and holds it steady.

  I grab the fin just below her hand. Get a knee up on the board and let it pull me up out of the water. “Thanks, kitten,” I shout over the roll of the surf.

  “You’re welcome,” she shouts back. “Let’s get the hell out of here.”

  I give her a thumbs-up as I get my balance. She checks the transponder, the yellow glow lighting her chin and cheeks. “Fifty degrees west.”

  “Right behind you.”

  A skimmer whirrs past us. Then another, and another. In the darkness, I can’t tell the skimmers apart, but I hope that Banks is in one of them, and that he gets away clean.

  Kez waves at the last skimmer, so maybe she can tell them apart, or maybe she’s just hopeful, too. Then she cranks up her finboard, the neg cells’ whine rising over the roll and whush of the water. I twist the board’s fin, hear the reassuring whine, and follow the trail of Kez’s lights over the dark water.

  Disappointingly, we don’t manage to lose the Überbitch. The low lights of another finboard appear, circling back from the north, only a klick or two from Outniss. Erin’s quickly recognizable from the pale banner of her hair. Too bad.

  She falls in behind me like it’s her default position. Maybe she likes having all that open water at her back. I wouldn’t, but I’ve lived in confined spaces most of my life. ‘Course, now that we’re out in the open ocean and there’s no sign of pursuit from the Mirrormen, the real danger’s probably from below, not from behind. Aquatic predators are more active at night, or so I’ve heard. But I’m not a fan of having open air at my back and although I’d prefer it was Kez behind me, I’ll take her bitch-sister if I have to.

  ‘Course she could just prefer being behind me so she has a clear shot at my back. That thought raises goose-bumps as I bounce across the waves.

  Kez leads us steadily away from Outniss, the lights of her finboard appearing and disappearing as she skims over the choppy water. In the glow from our boards and the hazy moonlight, the water has an iridescent, oily sheen to it. I wonder what toxic crap it’s full of. Kuseros as a world has plenty of natural phenomena unfriendly to humans, but this doesn’t look or feel natural to me. More shit humans have dumped into the environment. Pretty soon, Kuseros will be as much of a cesspit as Earth.

  Guess as a species, we just don’t learn.

  In front of me, Kez swerves, correcting our course westward. Where having Erin at my back makes me tense, I’ve got no qualms about following Kez. My kitten won’t lead us astray.

  In the distance, a dull red glare lights the oily water. As I scan the horizon, the prongs of a bowship rise over the edge like skeletal fingers. Blinking safety lights outline each finger. Our ride is here.

  Kez slows and I twist the control fin to avoid outpacing her. “What’s the score, kitten?” I shout to her.

  “We need to come up behind it.” She shakes her head, looking down into the transponder. “We’re only going to have one shot at this. That’s ship’s so much faster than these boards.”

  “Let’s do it.”

  Erin pulls in alongside me. “This is going to be tricky.”

  “Yeah, keep up.”

  I can’t see her expression in the dark, but I’m guessing she’s rolled her eyes. “I always do.”

  We wait in tense silence while the ship grows larger and larger, from a witch’s stick fingers to a huge looming flower that takes up a third of the horizon.

  Kez suddenly shouts, “Go!” The thunder from the bowship’s jets drowns out the noise from the finboards, but I can see she’s cranked her fin all the way to the right. I follow her example and feel the little board leap under me. I lean into it and race after Kez as she angles towards the back of the huge ship. Her finboard carves a tight arc through the water. I see her fuzzy head bob as she checks the trajectory again and again. I don’t need the transponder. I’ll make my own calculations once I scope the rear of the ship.

  The wind and darkness and choppy water and spray off the bowship don’t make it easy. I shake my head, blink hard to clear my eyes. Squint at the dark gridded sides of the huge ship, scanning for the opening I know must be there. As we round the bowship, a vicious slipstream hits us. The water turns to boiling froth. I clamp both hands onto the control fin and lean into the fin to keep the board steady. Strain to make out any details in the bowship’s uniform sides.

  I can’t see anything, but suddenly the tympani of the bowship’s airjets rises to a deafening howl. The glory hole Shaker promised us is tucked between the two rear vents. I crane my head to the left to try to spy it against the ship’s curving flank. Finally spot a shadow where a shadow shouldn’t be. A narrow, curved darkness that reminds me of the sweet dip between Kez’s buttocks.

  “Kezra!” I bellow.

  Her head snaps up. She meets my eyes. I jerk my head to the side, towards the ship. She nods. My kitten knows when to let me lead. I lean hard to the right, cutting across the rear of the bowship at the tightest angle I can manage. The board shudders and crashes over the bowship’s wake. I bend at the knees to absorb the bounce, feel each impact slam up through my thighs and spine. Worse than the pummeling I took under the incinerator’s conveyor when I crawled out of Tol Seng. I push that old memory aside and focus on the task at hand.

  Glancing back, I check on the girls. Kez is just to my left, her dreads streaming behind her as she bounces over the waves. She’s getting huge amounts of air, her board lifting clear of the water at the crest of each wave. If we survive this I’ll have her show me how to do that. Looks like more fun than I’m having.

  Erin’s just a few meters behind me. She’s not surfing as joyfully as Kez, but she looks calm and competent.

  Focusing again on the entrance to our refuge, I double-check the angles, count down the meters in my head, and when I’m just at the edge of that welcoming darkness, throw my weight to my right. Kez moves with me, our boards leaning together into the yawning hole. We’re sucked up into the void like a pair of matchsticks.

  I expect it to be like the last time. Darkness and sudden silence. What I don’t count on is what it will be like without the skimmer’s protection.

  I’m tumbled off the finboard, ass over ears. I have a moment of weightlessness, of total disorientation where I’m not sure which end is up. Then I slam into unyielding metal. So hard it knocks the breath out of me. Pain lances through my left shoulder and knee. The finboard explodes into splinters, razors of polycarb kissing the bare skin of my head and hands. A force like a huge hand presses me against the metal. Roaring fills my ears, and I’m too stunned to know whether it’s air or water or just the pounding of my own blood.

  I grope to my left, where Kez was. I’m blind and deaf from the impact, but I can still feel and what I need to feel now is my kitten’s warm
, breathing body. I grope across the pitted metal while I wait for the world to stop spinning. A breath fills my lungs, and my fingers find a yielding, rubbery surface. Shadowsuit. I grasp it with my fingertips. Tug it closer until I can wrap my hand around it. An arm. I pull on it until she begins to move towards me. She shudders and scoots across the metal, until we’re close enough to put our heads together, and I’m still not sure it’s Kez until she shouts into my ear. “I didn’t think through this part!”

  In spite of everything, I chuckle. “Me neither!”

  “We can’t stay here!”

  I nod, force my eyes open and lift my head up off the metal. The crawlspace between the airjet vents is six meters wide, just like the other ship, and as black as Tol Seng’s pit. We’ve been shoved against the far wall, held there by a g-force stronger than anything I’ve ever felt, even during hyperjumps. I can’t see any light, but there must be an opening at the front of the ship, because the wind whipping through the crawlspace is so wild that even in the darkness, it’s a white sheet, sweeping away the wreckage of the finboards splinter by splinter. It fills my ears with its malicious howl.

  Erin’s a shadow, defined only by her hair, spread-eagled against the metal a few meters below us. Her equipment bags are plastered to either side of her like beetle wings. She’s not moving and I hope she’s conscious because it’s going to be hard enough to get out of here if we’re all awake. Dragging the Überbitch’s unconscious ass to safety is not on my agenda today.

  I hunch over Kez so I can get a view to my left. There’s not much to see in the darkness, but I can make out shapes. There’s only one shape I’m looking for. Finally, I make it out. Two meters above us and three meters to Kez’s left. The rectangle of a hatch. I consider for a moment. It could lead into the port airjet, in which case this is going to be a real short trip. But if the bowship’s designed anything like the other ships I’ve been on, I’m betting on a service corridor.

  I let my head sag back down next to Kez’s. The knot of pain that’s been building between my shoulders uncoils fractionally. Just so my shoulder and knee and head can throb more fiercely.

  “There’s a hatch just to your left. Little bit up. It’s not far. Think you can make it?”

  “I’ll try!” Kez shouts. Slowly, painfully, she lifts her head and locates the hatch. Then she gathers herself, drawing her arms and legs underneath her body. More like a turtle than a kitten. But I can see what she’s trying to do. With the g-force pinning us to the metal, if she stretches her arms out and pushes herself up with those strong runner’s legs, she should be able to shinny up the wall to the hatch.

  I follow her example, pulling in my arms and legs. Something grinds in my left shoulder. Fuck, that doesn’t feel good. Presenting my back to the wind and unrelenting g-force, I rest my forehead against the metal while I wait for Kez to move. Feel my veins throb against the cold metal. Something warm and wet runs from my nose, drips in long strands over my chin. With every motion a titanic effort, I don’t waste the energy to wipe it away. I can feel my ears bleeding, too: warmth running down my jaw to cool and clot on my neck. We need to get out of here before our eyeballs burst.

  Kez wriggles up the wall a slow quarter-meter at a time. Reach, struggle, push. Reach, struggle, puuuush. I shove myself along the wall horizontally once she’s out of my way. White-hot pain shoots through my left shoulder with every movement. Something’s really wrong there. I ignore it the way I was taught in S.A.W.L. Work through it. Get cold. Stay focused. My arms and legs are longer than Kez’s, so I line up below the hatch in only three reach-struggle-pushes. Then it’s one long stretch and the bottom lip of the hatch is under my fingertips. I use the radiating ribs on the hatch as purchase as I pull myself up. Reach out to my right and throw an arm over Kez’s hunched back. Grasp her backpack and drag her across the rough metal until she’s tight against my side.

  “Now what?” she shouts.

  Now I hotwire the hatch, since it probably only opens from the inside. Good thing I’ve got an advanced degree in breaking and entering. The hatch looks like standard U.D.P. Modified military design. The bowships are probably part of the original Colony kit, over a hundred years old now and still going strong. G.D.F. built to last, I’ll give those corporate fuckers that.

  I reach up and feel along the ribs until I reach the center of the hatch. There’s no wheel to turn, even Colony equipment isn’t that antiquated, but there’s a thick square plate that tells me where the pressure controls are on the other side. There’ll be an emergency release on this side, if I can find it. I feel around the plate, carefully tickling my fingertips along the edge. Hyperfocus on the sensations under my hand to block out the pain in my head, my ears, the pressure that’s crushing my motherfucking bones to jelly. Feels like forever before I find a long ridge. I press it and the lever pops out into my palm. I clutch it in my fist and crank it downwards.

  The pressure seal pops like the universe’s biggest cork. I pull Kez down a half-meter to avoid being decapitated by the hatch as it swings open. Moment of truth. I reach-struggle-push just enough to get my head over the edge of the hatch.

  Mercifully, there’s nothing but a dark tunnel beyond the hatch. A couple of slips of flimsy slap my face on their transit from the tunnel to oblivion. I reach over to Kez again and help push her up through the hatch before I follow her through.

  Lying on the tunnel floor, with the brutal pressure in my head easing, there’s nothing I want to do more than close that hatch and leave the Überbitch behind. Maybe she’ll wake up before her brain implodes.

  “You get a good look at your sister?” I finally ask Kez.

  She snuffles and stirs, a whisper of skin and hair over metal. “No, did you?”

  “Yeah. Looked like she’d been knocked out.”

  Kez snuffles again. She’ll be snuffling blood, just like me. “That means we’re going to have to go back in there and get her, doesn’t it?”

  “Could leave her.”

  “God, don’t tempt me.” Kez gives a weak chuckle. “It wouldn’t make Tyng very happy.”

  “Probably not.”

  Kez sighs heavily. “I told him she wouldn’t be able to keep up.” She rolls onto her side and begins to sit up, stiffly and painfully. Her pale skin glimmers in my night vision, marked with thick, dark smears of blood.

  “You look like hell, kitten.” I don’t move. Not yet. I’ll go back for the Überbitch if Kez wants me to, but I’ll do it in my own time. “Mirrormen’d turn tail and run if they saw you now.”

  She shifts so she’s beside me and leans over until we’re nose to nose. “You can talk,” she says, her warm breath feathering my cheeks. She’s got tiger breath again. Not surprising, I guess.

  I pull her to me and give her a kiss. Despite her tiger breath. And the blood all over both of us. The taste of blood’s never bothered me. I’m not crazy about raw meat, but I’ve eaten it before and I probably will again. I suck the blood off her lips, swallow the copperish taste, and then it’s just the warm sweetness of Kez’s mouth against mine. We’ve survived. Again. Against the odds. That calls for a little celebration.

  Before I want to, I let her go. Push her bangs away from her face with a sticky hand and smile into her hugely dilated eyes. “Better get your sister before she’s nothin’ more than a red smear.”

  “Ugh.” She climbs slowly to her feet. Shucks off her backpack. I think through what I saw in her pack. There’s enough snake chain to wrap Erin up like a sausage. But I’d have to go down and get the line on her. Might as well push her up while I’m there.

  This is too fucking much effort for the Überbitch.

  I sit up, wait for my head to stop spinning, then roll to my feet. Fuck, I hurt. There’s a deep grinding in my left shoulder. Hauling up Erin’s dead weight is definitely out. The pain in my shoulder’s echoed by smaller aches and pains all over, and a not-so-small pain in my left knee, which took a hell of a crack when I hit the wall. I roll my shoulders and gauge the
pain. Something’s torn on that left side, but nothing’s broken, and even if it were, I’ve walked and run and fought with broken bones before. Time to get moving.

  Kez is going through the same careful self-assessment that I am. She looks up at me when she’s done. She’s frowning, but there’s no shadow in her eyes. She’ll be battered and sore, just like I am, but she can keep going. “You pushin’ or pullin’, kitten?” I ask.

  She scratches at her dreads with blood-caked fingers. “Pulling? I’m not sure I can get her moving on my own.”

  I nod. Kez might outweigh her sister by a kilo or two, but there’s not much difference between them, and in the tug-of-war against that brutal g-force, it’s going to be all about relative mass.

  We both turn and look at the hatch. It’s empty, save for the howling wind. I think we’re both hoping that Erin will suddenly appear out of that maelstrom. But she doesn’t. The hatch remains stubbornly empty until I put my right hand on the rim and climb through.

  Crawling down to Erin would be easiest, but I’d be upside-down, and that’s more than I can take. The pressure’s already returned, every capillary pounding, the skin of my cheeks and chin rippling against my bones like fucking laundry flapping in the wind. Blood spreads slowly over my upper lip, down my neck. When I blink, my vision washes red. My gut’s fighting its way up into my throat. Puking here is going to be really fucking messy. I force the nausea down as I crawl down the wall. It’s slower going than shinnying up, but at least I’m right-side up, and my slow progress gives me time to observe Erin. She’s breathing, unfortunately, but she’s not moving. Definitely unconscious. Blood’s spread in a wide smear around her, and the fastest way down will have me crawling right through it. Hope she doesn’t have anything communicable. If she gives me something nasty I’m going to program the Marie to fly her right into the Twins.