He looked up from the screen. His bio eye began adjusting to the darkness while optics displayed a crisp, enhanced world. Orange points rose from the white plain like giant carrots stabbed through paper. Still-foreign constellations patterned the sky. A charcoal cloud wall loomed above the plains to the east. Heavy snowfall would surely come with it. It was already -2°C. Minerva was out there somewhere. Aether would scour this land until she found them, or until their fates were certain.
John pushed the PCU from his lap and slumped over on his side, reaching for the medkit. His wounded ribs stretched. Raw, budding new flesh split apart. With the destructive crawl from the tent and now this, Minerva would be furious. He slid the pack across the skimmer pad as he sat back up and rifled through the meds. In his fone, he scanned through treatments for the most severe trauma, unresponsive patients, and stopped hearts, then searched for misdiagnoses and misadministration.
The three bulb injectors sat on his palm, each sealed within its own cautionary red casing. He stuffed two into a breast pocket, trading them for one of the diclomorph tabs.
Pill down the hatch, three gulps from his suit, and he unsealed the injector case. More fearful of wasting the meds than inadvertently killing himself, John found the pulse in his neck. It was critical to stick the jugular—not the carotid. A mirror would’ve been helpful. A medical team would’ve been more helpful. A fully functional body.
He pierced his skin, believing he was on target, and squeezed the bulb.
Wow, that was quick.
His mind and body came to life. Heat ripples rolled out to the ends of his extremities, bouncing back like sound waves.
Somehow he’d expected that he would head out with one of the skimmers to find Minerva, pick her up, bring her back to the site, and promptly drop dead. Now he realized he could not only rescue Minerva, but endure on—returning to re-pair with the second skimmer, load up all their gear, and go streaking through the air, all the way to the damned coast, where Aether and Pablo would take things from there.
He gripped the bar above him, pulled himself to his feet, and powered on one skimmer. This was going to work!
Wait… the suit. She’d need her suit.
No problem. He locked in on the clothes heap, stepped down from the pad with a dull tug in his thigh, and limped to the pile, undaunted. Bend, clutch, lift, turn. Back to the pad.
He hung her suit over the main grip bar, took the controls in hand, and ascended into the brisk evening air.
3.6
Minnie’s wild flailing and screams sent Mama into a tizzy. She pinned Minnie’s arms to her body and pressed the ear against the bleeding wound, as if to reattach it. Minnie squealed with each movement as Mama delicately nudged the ear around with her snout.
“Owjt… toh… toh…”
LIVETRANS: Quiet. Fix. Fix.
Minnie focused on her own breath, tried to quell the panic, slow the hyperventilation. A mistake. Mama had made a mistake. She wasn’t being eaten. This didn’t have to be the end. Not yet.
The weight of Mama’s hand lightened and Minnie dared a peek. The toothy snout loomed right beside Minnie’s head; attentive, dilated eyes shone in the ambient light. Minnie could see the sandy texture of the iris all the way into the ocular cylinder’s dim inner wall. Like many organs with common roots across Epsy, the eye had evolved in its own unique manner. A fascinating topic, but Minnie was more interested in its sensitivity to damage. If unobstructed, could she thrust her fingers in there? Could she destroy both eyes in a swift attack? And most importantly, would a blinded Mama still come after her?
Minnie slowly slid an arm up from her side, timidly probing the side of her head. Her hair was wet with blood, but the wound wasn’t gushing. Mama had actually set the ear fairly close to right. With measured breaths, Minnie’s flat hand trembled near the ear—closer, contact, stinging, pressing—she rotated until it slid into its familiar orientation. Raw tissue burned, but she pushed harder and held there.
“Toh.” Mama repeated.
Yeah, fixed. Got a needle and thread?
As if all was now well, Mama scooped Minnie from her lap and set her in the dry nest bed. Minnie stiffened her body and was able to keep her hand pressed against her head. She didn’t know the likelihood of her ear simply healing without additional surgery, but it probably wouldn’t hurt to wrap her head in gauze. She considered her one remaining sock, but it seemed a tad too short, plus she’d been stuffing her other foot in there for warmth.
Mama busied herself with old critter bones, splintering them lengthwise and sucking out the dregs of marrow. It sounded like someone cracking nut shells or giant sunflower seeds, followed by gnawing, and then the desperate slurping of an all but clean soup bowl.
Keeping one hand on her ear, Minnie pulled an arm into her shirt, then back out over the top of her first tank strap. A careful handoff, and she followed with the other arm. She wriggled the tank down her body, Mama glancing over periodically with vague interest, until Minnie extracted her second foot, and the tank was free. Some fancy maneuvering, agony, and tears later, Minnie’s head was wrapped tight.
So what was it going to be? A perilous eyeball assault? A mad, futile dash out the door? Prior to the ingested and regurged gutful of exotic bodily fluids, and before she’d learned what it was like to lose a body part, she’d elected to wait it out—watch for escape opportunities. The approach hadn’t worked out so well.
Mama flung another bone shard and it slid down the wall to Minnie’s feet. Minnie eyed it, then peered up at Mama, still absorbed with extracting a calorie or two from every animal scrap in the burrow. The bone had a nice, dense knuckle at one end, tapering to an impressive point at the other. This was one of those auspicious decision moments. To grab or not to grab?
Minnie knew her strength still wasn’t close to normal. How much damage could she realistically do with that thing? Then again, what if this was her one opportunity? What if Mama’s frustration swelled with each unsatisfying slurp of marrow? Hynka were cheerfully cannibalistic; at what point did hunger trump maternal instinct?
Minnie flexed her fingers. She pumped her fists to test her grip strength.
Without warning, Mama swung around with a grunt, pinching Minnie’s legs between fingers, and dragged her away from the wall, releasing her near the burrow’s center. Was this it? Where was the bone? Minnie grasped about where it’d been, blindly searching.
Mama huddled over her, staring for a long second, and then reached down with both arms, digging into the nest floor. Minnie slid into the depression and Mama shoveled two giant heaps of tree litter over top, burying her.
Clamping her mouth shut, unsure if she’d be able to breathe, Minnie held onto the air in her lungs. She switched optics and looked around through closed eyelid.
Mama had left the burrow.
Minnie tried to move her arms beneath the load of particles. Surprisingly easy. She wasn’t all that deep. Without exhaling what she’d already reserved, she tested a sniff through her nose. Yes, plenty of air filtered into the loose pack. She could breathe. Could she sit up? Her hands worked their way down beside her as she shimmied and wormed her body. After another minute of work, she’d gotten her head and torso vertical, a foot planted on firm ground, and could see sprinkles of light overhead.
A quick countdown, the extension of sore leg muscles, and she breached the surface, her head, arms, and shoulders free.