Michael Siemsen - Exigency

2K. Safety scan. Still not even a blip of—

John?

No.

No life in thermal view. Gear was visible in mag. She could see the side of a skimmer. Cases. Her pace quickened.

There was zero sign of John. The outline of the tent was visible but no body inside, not even a dead one. As the distance closed, she noticed the missing skimmer. He’d left the site, gone out looking for her.

Dammit, John!

But how the hell had he managed that?

Two layers of fresh, dry clothes, envirocap, pairs of gloves and runners, and with a few teasing minutes of glorious heater time, Minnie hastily tore down the filled tent, stuffing the bundle between other gear on the second skimmer, and launching into a hostile sky. The blizzard had yet to reach its full fury, but visibility was already nil, and abrupt up- and downdrafts had the skimmer console insisting she immediately land.

“UNSAFE CONDITIONS! LAND WITHOUT DELAY!”

Repeated slaps failed to silence the obnoxious alerts. She tuned it out, instead training her thermag focus on the air all around her. The skimmer, too, maintained a constant watch for other active units, whether aloft or grounded.

The heater in the tent had been off but still warm. John couldn’t have been gone for long. Minnie’s main challenge was in not knowing the direction John had traveled. Her shoulders buttressed against the wind, deft snowflakes still slunk their way into her collar, trickling down her chest and back. Riding the skimmer like a surfjet over wild breakers, she oscillated her head and eyes for a near-360 view.

It didn’t take long to find a sign of John. He’d left a trail.

A mere half-K west of the camp, a stack of thin gold and salmon bands in an epsequoia revealed the scattered remains of their medkit—the case itself lying wide on a high pad, while its contents littered layers of lower pads below. They’d need all of it, but no time to land and gather it all now. Minnie placed a pin in her map and continued on, slower, following the line created by their campsite and the medkit location.

Not even 100m west, a splayed survival suit, half-buried in a snowdrift. It was Minnie’s suit with the boots still attached. Another pin.

Snow in her eyes. Incessant body shakes. She pressed her hips to the warm panel.

A sharp dodge around an especially tall, swaying tree.

“UNSAFE CONDITIONS! LAND WITHOUT DELAY!”

Her heart thumped. Three more glowing points quivered in thermag, laid out ahead in the swirling whiteout like landing lights on some remote runway. The farthest was the biggest. Accelerating, Minnie streaked past the first two without a glance.

She banked round with eyes fixed on the scene. One quarter through the circle, her life drew up into her throat, compressing and withering there all at once—an unrealized seedpod decaying atop rock.

John’s rugged skimmer had come out mostly unscathed, only splitting in two: pad and console assembly, still clinging to each other by outstretched cables and glistening fiber ribbons. Their pilot, however, lay twisted and broken, half covered by the skimmer pad. A dark crown of hair and a single gloved hand, draped on the overturned pad, were all that remained unburied by snow.

As she descended beside him, his remaining body heat dropped into single digits.

Her skimmer was pleased she’d finally complied. “NOW SEEK SHELTER!”

Slogging through deep snow to John’s side, she disabled enhanced optics for the grisly view beneath the surface it kept trying to show her. Now, there remained only a few orange knuckles and the back of his head, persistent flurries set to finish the job any minute.

She dropped to her knees and set a gloved hand on his head.

Tears freezing at her eye corners, she shouted over the wind. “You were right about my problem affecting us both. Can’t deny this is my fault.”

Minnie brushed loose snow off his shoulder and back, nudged her legs in beside his body, and set her cheek against the back of his icy suit. There was no warmth here, but she imagined there was. She slid her buried hand up to her chest, wedging it between them, then reached over him with her free arm to grab his stiff hand off the skimmer, pulling it in. A solid, unnatural tok sound she pretended she didn’t hear—a frozen finger or knuckle grazing the skimmer’s plastic corner bumper. No, none of that. This was all quite normal. She’d had a nightmare, crawled into Dad’s bed. He wouldn’t notice until morning. Eyes closed for bedtime.

tok

The haunting sound echoed in her head. A noise created by the impact of two inhuman things. No, an inhuman thing struck by flesh frozen so stiff it could pass for wood. It was how her own body would soon solidify.

tok

Tok? With a glove on?

Minnie moved her hand around John’s, probing the underside of his palm. Empty.

She opened her eyes, reactivated mag, and peered through his body. It materialized instantly in the wall of snow between John and the skimmer pad—all alone, as if hovering in the air. Minnie sat up enough to extend her reach, thrust her hand into the snow, and plucked John’s fone from where it’d fallen. She held it in front of her face.

He’d extracted it, had it under his hand on the skimmer for her to find. Something he wanted her to see. But what? Something leaderly, of course. An inspirational sermon about driving on, assurances that this wasn’t her fault… or ick, a full on I-told-you-so condemnation and orders to make it right by saving herself, returning to Earth to tell the whole tale.

Whatever his dying mind had wanted her to see, it didn’t matter. Even if she wanted to, there was no way for her to access his fone. He would’ve had to—

Hmm…

Minnie sat up the rest of the way, shaking out her head and elbowing away the thickening white blanket. She dropped his fone into a zippered inside pocket, freeing her hands to wipe off the edge of the skimmer. After reaching an ice coat, a moment of scratching and striking chipped it away, revealing a few jagged scratches. A numeral 1 or lowercase L. A lightning bolt… maybe a 3 or Z, or the start of an S. A backslash. And that was it. He’d tried to give her his passcode, but failed.

Or maybe he’d realized the carving approach wasn’t working out. Minnie looked for his multitool and found its hot pink outline deep beneath the snow between him and the skimmer. Now on her knees, one hand on John’s back, she jammed her other hand down, returning with the tool. She noticed it at once. The blade had been folded back in, and the marker tip protruded from the other end. He’d written the passcode somewhere.

The question of whether she even wanted to know John’s final thoughts had yielded to the primal impulse to solve a puzzle, the deciphering of clues, and this new quest was an energizing—if cheerless—prolongation of their relationship.

She wiped more snow from the edge of the skimmer, digging out the underside, and dipped her head beneath for a look. Nothing. Flipping through optics, she searched around him for some buried fragment. Still no… maybe his suit…

Despite a dogged new resolve, her raw emotions refused to be buried as clumps of snow flew aside, exposing his contorted body. She climbed out of the pocket, shuffled around over his head, and banged a knee into a hidden boulder—the rock against which John’s face lay tilted. Numb to any new pain, she clutch his suit behind the shoulders, and threw her weight back. His upper half slid out above the snow. She averted her eyes from the impossible twist at his waist, rolling him onto his back. Her hands swiped across his chest, dusting the snow from around pockets and seams, intentionally disregarding the pack on his face.