Jeff Carlson - The Frozen Sky

It wasn’t dead. It thrashed and snapped at her gear block, ripping into her helmet.

Vonnie saw a blurry flare of holo imagery in one eye as her visor flashed orange, then red. The sunfish was about to breach her armor. Berserk with fear, she caught the sunfish’s body and squeezed her fingers into it like blunt knives, overtaxing her suit’s amplified strength. She punctured its skin. The sunfish shuddered. It went limp.

She threw away the bloody mess and hopped to her feet, falling, scrambling, falling again.

She put her life in the ghost’s hands, letting it replace her blind, pell-mell sprint with its controlled stride. “Take over! Run for the ice! Can you keep the blast zone between me and them?”

— Affirmative. Most of the lifeforms are disabled. Nine dead, three wounded.

“Where are my mecha?”

— 84 is under duress. 85 is unresponsive. The surviving lifeforms are battering them with rock clubs .

And yet the sunfish had bypassed her mecha at first, even ignoring the gravel that 84 had thrown. How had they known to target her instead? Because she was larger? Why hadn’t they listened to her sonar calls?

Carried by her suit, Vonnie’s emotions swung back to self-doubt. The savage clarity she’d felt faded as guilt returned. There was a lesson there, but she was too overwhelmed to recognize it.

She hoped she’d lose the sunfish in the ice. Didn’t they live mostly in water and rock? Maybe the ice was too cold or too precarious for them.

She knew she was grasping at straws. The carvings were proof that they inhabited the ice or had at one time, but grasping at straws was all she had left. She couldn’t even hack the ghost from outside her suit’s systems now that her mecha were gone, and she was dizzy and weak. The blood from her face had leaked down her chest like a growing stain.

— Four lifeforms are close behind us .

“Where am I?”

— We’re inside a seam in the ice. Radar indicates more chasms and holes above us.

“Tear down as much ice as you can! Block them off!”

The suit jostled her, hammering at the ice. Fresh pain coursed through her head. Her shredded face felt like a drum skin, sensitive and taut.

If she couldn’t reprogram the ghost, she might be forced to let him operate before she lost consciousness. What would happen then? If she slept, the ghost would keep running and climbing with her body inside it like a corpse. That could be a mercy unless she never woke up.

The suit lurched forward, left, forward again, and then backward and to the right.

Vonnie gasped, “Talk to me!”

— Two lifeforms squeezed through the avalanche I created, but I no longer have a clear radar image of their positions. There is rock mixed through the ice. Many of the openings are too narrow for us. The lifeforms may be circling around.

“Can you hear them?”

— Negative. Our sonar is inoperative.

“When did that happen?”

— During the second attack. Von, radar shows new lifeforms above and behind us.

“Pull down more ice or rock! Do anything you can!”

Her suit pummeled the walls, crabbing away from the sunfish. She felt herself wiggle and kick and dig. Once an arm tip slapped her boot. The sunfish were very near.

She quit moving abruptly.

— We’re safe. I’ve packed more ice into barriers than the lifeforms can move without laboring for hours .

Vonnie reached out with both hands and clunked her fingers against the walls. Then she pawed at the ceiling and floor. “Is there a way out?”

— Negative. I’ve sealed this pocket on all sides.

“You… Why would you…” Vonnie swallowed, tamping down her claustrophobia. She’d told him to do anything necessary to protect her, and he’d obeyed with his literal, idiot logic. “Which side has less sunfish?”

— The chimney above us held only one lifeform.

“Dig out that side before more of them come. Go. Get ready to fight.”

Her suit clawed at the ice, raining dust and heavier chunks on her helmet. Vonnie steeled herself against each blow. Pain was becoming normal.

“List all functioning sensors,” she said.

— MR-7 radar 100%. SPRD radar 100%. Bryson infrared array 100%. Mobile platform seismographs 70%. Spotlight at full power but controls intermittent.

“Wait. Is my spotlight on?”

—Affirmative.

“Turn it off!” The heat of the camera spot might explain why the sunfish had ignored her mecha at the reservoir. “Was the light on when we were in the ravine?”

— Negative .

“What about residual heat?”

— Affirmative. With intermittent function, the spotlight’s temperature has fluctuated between twenty-two and eighty degrees Celsius since damage sustained in the first attack.

“Turn it off.”

— The controls have short-circuited.

“Cut power.”

— The spotlight is slaved to the same energy grid as the radar and infrared arrays.

Should she break it with her fist? She would need the light when she regained her eyes. Even if there were spare bulbs left in her kit, she might not have the tools to extract a shattered bulb before installing a new one.

— Seismographs indicate scratching on the other side of the ice. I estimate two lifeforms are excavating this hole.

“Stop digging when you get within sixty centimeters. Let them do the work. They might get tired. Grab them as soon they come through. Throw them behind us. Jump out of the hole and knock down as much ice as you can. Confirm.”

—Confirmed.

“Can you fix my gear block? I need sonar.”

— Those transmitters are missing. There is nothing to fix.

What did that leave? Could she translate radar or infrared signals into something she could hear? Like their mecha, her suit was over-engineered, over-equipped, and highly adaptable. But there was a better solution. Her helmet contained a voice box for communicating with people who weren’t in suits. She also had hardware designed to assess injuries with ’sound bullets’ from a nonlinear acoustic lens in her chest plate.

“Run a patch from my voice box to the medical imaging systems,” she said. “I want to control the MIS by voice command. Don’t let the box make any external sound. Its function is to control the MIS. Understood? When I shout like this — yah ! — make the MIS generate a terahertz pulse, then translate those signals back to me as normal sound.”

— It’s improbable the lifeforms will be able to hear frequencies in the terahertz range if you intend to broadcast their sonar calls.

“Just do it.”

Using Vonnie’s hands, the ghost began to rearrange the panel circuitry on her ravaged, filthy armor, creating a patch from her med pack to her helmet. That the sunfish wouldn’t be drawn to a terahertz pulse was good. She didn’t want to talk to them. She wanted a sensor independent of the ghost, because if she lived, her fight with him would be next.

— Here they come.

Her arms stabbed up. Her gloves clenched on squirming muscles. The sunfish squeezed their arms around her wrists as an eerie vibration passed through her chest. It was their sonar, an intimate, unpleasant buzz.

Her suit tossed them down and sprang out of the hole, chopping at the ice to seal them in.

The sunfish were too fast. One snarled itself around her boot. It hauled itself up her shins to her groin. Vonnie tried to run. She punched it loose, but the other sunfish roped four arms around her ankle, screeching.

Was it bringing more of them?

Vonnie wept as she stomped on them. They felt like rubber bumps until their bodies ruptured, spraying juice and guts up her legs. “I’m sorry! Sorry! Oh God, I’m sorry!”