Declassified

“A lot closer than it did five seconds ago.”

He primed the braking thrusters. “Hold on to your ass.”

The engines boomed, and the rapid deceleration threw them forward. Bridy winced as her seat’s safety harness straps dug into her chest. Outside the cockpit the landscape spun, black rock and white ice melting into a gray blur.

Bridy pointed at a fleeting image of level ground. “There!”

“Too far!” Qui

“Starboard! Get the nose up!”

She grabbed the console white-knuckle tight.

Qui

Their wide-open eyes remained fixed on the mountaintop.

Bridy’s voice was barely a whisper. “So . . . thathappened.”

Qui

15

Bundled in cold-weather clothing and laden with arctic climbing equipment that had been stowed by SI in the Dulcinea’s hold (along with gadgets and gear for just about every other terrain and scenario Qui

He clenched his jaw against the cold. “Are we there yet?”

“If you ask me that one more time, I’ll smash this tricorder over your head.” She led him across a level and nearly circular plain several kilometers in diameter and ringed by steep black peaks like the one they’d descended after leaving the Dulcinea. The mountains hid the sunset, which painted the sky in shades of violet.

Bridy pointed forward. “The signal’s coming from underground, inside some caves beyond the other side of this frozen lake. Another hour’s walk, tops.”

Qui

“Do you ever stop complaining?”

“I was fine till you made me leave the ship.”

“I didn’t makeyou leave the ship. We decided to track the signal.”

“No, youdecided to track the signal. I wanted to fix the impulse coils.”

She sighed. “Get serious, they’re fried. We’ll need a starbase for that.”

“That’s what you said about the thrusters, but I got those working.”

“Yeah, and if you’d used them, you’d have triggered an avalanche and buried us—not to mention the caves where the signal’s coming from.”

“Which is why we’re walking instead of flying. Of course, if we’d fixed the transporter, we could’ve just beamed over there.”

“I don’t know how to fix a transporter, and neither do you.”

“No, but we have a manual. We could figure it out.” He scowled. “Why is it whenever we disagree we always end up doing things your way?”

She glanced back at him. “Because I’m in charge.”

“Then why even ask my opinion?”

“To make you feel better.”

“Well, it ain’t workin’.”

They didn’t speak to each other the rest of the way across the lake. Qui

Qui

Dammit,he cursed her in his imagination, don’t do nothin’ stupid.

He quickened his pace until he reached the cave, and then he stopped to fish his own flashlight from his jacket pocket. His gloved hands fumbled first to find the device and then to activate it. Its narrow beam slashed through the darkness as he pivoted side to side, surveying the path ahead. It was a wide space populated by stalactites, stalagmites, and pillars of dark-blue ice. He glimpsed another, smaller passage on the cavern’s far side, but there was no obvious clear path to it—only routes of greater or lesser resistance.

To his dismay, he saw no sign of Bridy.

Then he heard a weak and distant echo of her voice: “Qui

“Honey? Where are you?” She called his name again, but he wasn’t sure from what direction. “Keep talkin’, darlin’! I’m comin’!” Bridy repeated his name; it sounded as if it had come from beneath him. He prowled about the cavern, searching its floor with his flashlight beam.

He stumbled to a halt half a step shy of a narrow crevasse. Kneeling beside it, he aimed the flashlight into its depths and called, “Bridy?”

“Down here!”

Targeting her voice, he trained the flashlight beam on her. She was a dozen meters below him and wedged between two walls of rough, black ice.

“You okay?”

“I think my leg’s broken.”

“Yeah, that first step’s a doozy.” He removed his pack and retrieved the spare coil of climbing rope. “Hang on. I’ll have you up in a few minutes.” Fumbling to untie the simple knot on the coil, he silently cursed his bulky gloves for making his fingers so clumsy. As the synthetic-fiber rope unspooled onto the cavern floor, he called back to Bridy, “Try not to move.”

“Not much risk of that.”

Recalling his mercenary training from decades earlier, Qui

“Under the shoulders will have to do.”

“That’s fine. Let me know when you’re ready to come up.”

A minute later, Bridy tugged on the rope. “Let’s do this.”

Qui

Then he fell on his ass and gasped for air. His exhaled breath gathered in a wispy cloud around his head while he waited for his limbs to stop shaking.

Bridy lay on her back a few meters away, clearly in no hurry to move, either. In a droll deadpan she said, “Don’t have a heart attack, okay?”

“Tryin’ not to, darlin’.” After a few more pained breaths, he sat up. “We should patch up your leg. Where’s the medkit?”

She nodded at her torn-up backpack. “At the bottom of the crevasse.”