But…
She turned to the “campfire” and had an idea. The heater’s charge was at max. She set it to medium power, then stood, peering west through bulbs and a low permafrost crest. Just beyond the dark crest, the skimmer shone yellow and green in thermag, yellow in pure therm, and pale blue in mag. If Aether or Pablo showed up and stood near that skimmer, surveying the area with optics, the heater would light up like the sun through pretty much any go-to optic. They’d then hike over the little ridge, walk the short distance to her camp, and see that she’d only just stepped out. Satisfied, she set out toward the glacial rift.
The riverbears had moved fast, leaving the adjacent valley for another farther south. By the time she finally caught up, premature remorse had swelled to a tormenting new level. The animals were leaving, possibly calling it a night. As the sun set on the glacier, the temperature rapidly dropped. They were now more than 5K from her camp and still moving. What if they’d just grabbed a final snack before some great seasonal migration? Or they could be stopping into the den to check on the kids before heading back north to hunt in the nighttime field, AKA Minnie’s camp.
Keep telling yourself that, she thought as she stalked near the couple.
Creeping close, with only a single bulb between her MW and a riverbear ass, Minnie chose to focus only on those claws, and a vision of being dragged from her tent before her body was bisected for a polite, even-steven meal. She strove to ignore the beasts’ somewhat adorable trotting before her, hind legs prancing like a pair of dressage horses.
She darted right, through the open, and alongside another bulb. A few shots to the hindquarters would surely be devastating, but this needed to be a quick death for both. Their pace steady, Minnie ran ahead, obscured by the tall orbs, and then cut back left to head them off. She stopped, raised her visor to listen, counted two beats—listening for their thumping canter—and realized something was wrong. Without a glance, she pushed her body away from the bulb, diving and twisting, rolling and spinning about, landing on foot and knee, MW in the air and ready.
Her senses sound, the riverbears had indeed noticed Minnie and snuck right up behind her. All four eyes fixed on her, broad bodies advancing with the fearless audacity of a true apex predator.
“Hey!” Minnie roared, hustling to her feet.
Both paused, confused. Minnie’s finger tightened on the trigger. The one on the right tilted its head, like a puppy unsure what master wants. Minnie growled inside.
Shoot, idiot!
But her finger wouldn’t squeeze any tighter. She stomped a foot forward and shouted again. “Haurgh!”
Both riverbears recoiled with a start, retreating backward, skirting behind the bulb Minnie had last used for cover, and back toward Minnie’s camp.
Well, if you’re not going to shoot the damned things, at least scare them off in the right direction!
Minnie gave chase around the bulb, screaming like a looner and clapping her free hand against the side of the MW. Like herding sheep, she had to run out ahead and guide them back on course, away from her site. The riverbears huffed and spat, but continued running with their heads hung low. Still anxious about a potentially unwise decision, Minnie deliberated as the duo reached a straightaway between bulbs and accelerated. She couldn’t keep up with their burst of speed. Last chance.
She fired a single shot, non-lethal, toward the space between their joggling rumps. The multiround exploded behind them, casting forth blunt fragments. Projectiles struck home, eliciting pained warbles, tripping their pace, before they galloped on with no sign of slowing.
Minnie blew the muzzle tip, mock twirled the weapon around her finger, and shoved it into the holster. She refrained from an ill-fated “They won’t be coming back,” shut her visor, and headed west toward the shoreline.
The frozen white surface gave way to mossy permafrost, sloping gradually upward to a dwindling cliff above the beach. Minnie glanced down the shore to the skimmer’s little yellow dot (still there), then slowly scanned the horizon from end to end. Still no sign of Aether’s rescue team. They were just taking a bit longer than they’d thought. Just had to fight against tougher opposing tides than usual. No reason for alarm.
She sat down on the cliff edge, cracked her visor open to invite in some misty sea air, and broke off a handful of frozen soil, playing with it in her lap.
There was reason for alarm. Without a PCU or the other gear that fell from John’s skimmer, she had no way to connect to the supply pods. No way to confirm receipt of a message that ended with “Confirm.” No way to see if a new message had been uploaded: “Dear Friends, hurricane wiped out area. Not coming yet. Standby for 90 days.” Had she known, she would’ve defied the blizzard and stopped to pick up the gear. She could have gone back, though. She should have gone back. When she found out at the waterfall, only a day trip away, that’s when she should’ve backtracked for the PCU.
And then the bigger cause for concern: the predictable return of Minnie’s HSPD. With her glands and levels nearly normalized, good old Uncle Huspid would come knocking again anywhere from tomorrow at the earliest, all the way to an optimistic ten days out. Without some kind of sedative—hell, any meds whatsoever—averting an attack in the next seven days seemed pretty implausible. Maybe they’d show tomorrow, Pablo handing her a nasty trial med milkshake of fungus spore. He’d tell her to drink the whole thing, warning her not to puke, because “That’s all there is right now.”
She should’ve gone back for the medkit.
Impossible, Minnie scoffed. To discover Aether was alive and probably already waiting for her on the coast? Given this revelation, Minnie was supposed to fly in the opposite direction for supplies? Yeah, right.
Minnie reclined onto the mossy ground cover and looked at the stars. The sun was in the right spot to catch a supply pod, but in that moment she preferred the organic calm of nature—Threck constellations—the Great Afvrik, descending on a small cluster of crustaceans. The tip of one fin shared the double star, Mintaka, with Orion’s Belt, but from this perspective, one would never guess. The remaining stars of Orion were irrevocably scattered into other images.
Aroused by hunger pangs, somehow still unanticipated, Minnie sat up, edged over to a safer drop-off spot, and leapt down to the slope of decaying sandstone, surfing the last few meters. From cliff to shore, the beach was coated in tide-smoothed rocks. Each crashing wave clattered and cracked as if not water, but stones, made up the ocean.
When she finally reached the skimmer, Minnie peeked at the status panel. Beacons still beaconing. And plenty of juice to last well beyond sunrise. Time for food.
Remembering the heater she’d left on, Minnie stepped back to the skimmer and reactivated her optics. She faced her camp, verifying the heater was as obvious as she’d earlier assumed.
Oh, dammit.
She had guests, and not the slender little human kind. The warm blobs of three riverbears merged and warped around the heater’s static glow. They better not have gotten into her damned food, or she’d be replenishing her stockpile with fatty riverbear meat.