Abruptly freed of its load, MTJ careered forward, beginning a wild turn. The back end of the vehicle caught Dean Creshaun as it spun, knocking him sideways. Meanwhile its cable end slashed through the cold air, keeping parallel to the snow. It slammed directly across Paresh Evitts’s chest. The armor vest he wore underneath his parka saved him from being sliced in half, though the tough woven filaments of the breastplate section buckled and cracked from the ferocious impact, dissipating the impact back through the layers of sweaters and shirts. His arm was also flicked by the cable. Again the armor protected him from any direct lacerations, though the humerus was instantly snapped in two and the shoulder dislocated. He was flung backward several meters through the air to land on fresh snow, already unconscious.
Ophelia Troy was still kneeling at the side of the ramp of ice that had been dug down to the truck’s offside front wheel. The truck was rolling laboriously up the ramps, bringing its chassis level with her head when the tow cable snapped. The length still attached to the truck lashed sideways with its signature high-frequency whistling. Ophelia’s brain was just starting to register something was wrong when the cable caught her across the side of her throat, above the collar of her armor waistcoat. Her unprotected neck was severed clean in two by the guillotine-like swipe. The muscles of her body took a moment to lose their rigidity, holding her headless torso in its upright crouch position while her heart’s last few beats sent blood fountaining up out of her severed carotid artery. Only as the sickening jet of blood finally dwindled did Ophelia’s body relax and topple over.
In the cab, Gillian didn’t know what had gone wrong, only that an unexplained judder ran down the length of the vehicle. She was also aware of a slight hiatus in her progress forward. In response she twisted the throttle, determined not to lose the momentum that had brought the tires out onto the flex grids. “Come on!” she yelled at the recalcitrant truck. Out of the corner of her eye she saw the rear of MTJ-1 starting to skid sideways. It smashed into poor Dean Creshaun. “Shit!” But still she kept power on, forcing the truck up the ramp toward freedom. Paresh Evitts flew through the air, and a whole cascade of icons burst into her grid like a firework explosion. That was when she acknowledged what her subconscious already knew: Something was drastically, terribly wrong.
Truck 2 lumbered out of the ramps, and Gillian eased the power back. Then she began to focus on what the red icons were telling her. At the same time, the shouts and screams came thundering through the cab’s makeshift insulation.
Angela had no memory of running. One second she was standing with everyone else as the truck did its weird quiver, the next she was panting from exertion, staring down frantically at Paresh’s limp body. The front of his parka had been split as if someone had taken a knife to it, cutting through the padding to expose his armor. That, too, was battered; she could see the thick weal of stress cracks across the front, ironically mimicking a frost pattern. Her e-i was accessing his bodymesh medical smartcells. He was still alive. She ripped his goggles off and tugged the skewed balaclava around. A faint breath mist puffed out of his lips. Blood was dribbling from the corner of his mouth.
“Paresh!” she screamed.
Dr. Coniff emerged from the crowd that was arriving and sank down beside Angela. “Move,” she barked as she tugged her gloves off. Angela shuffled aside, allowing the doctor to reach for Paresh’s face, finger pressing to find a pulse. “Airway open, no sign of obstruction. Mark, scanner!”
Mark Chitty dropped to his knees on the other side of Paresh, extracting a small handheld scanner from his pack. The doctor started waving it across Paresh.
Angela hated how helpless she was. It was all she could do not to interrupt the doctor and demand an explanation. Instead all she could do was watch.
“Damnit,” Coniff growled. “Can’t get through the armor. Okay, arm’s broken, but that’s clean. Shoulder will need relocating. Can’t inspect the chest wall for flail segment, but there’s going to be a lot of soft tissue damage. Mask!”
Chitty had already gotten a clear oxygen mask ready, a plastic tube coiling back into his pack.
“I need a stretcher,” Coniff called out. “Mark, stabilize the arm and get him into the biolab.” She clambered to her feet and looked around to where Dean Creshaun was sitting up in a daze, surrounded by his buddies Olrg and Lance.
“Wait,” Angela yelled as the doctor started hurrying over to Dean. “What about Paresh?”
“We need to get him inside,” Coniff said over her shoulder. “I can treat him properly when I can get him scanned. He’s stable enough.”
“Ho crap!” Angela exclaimed. She gripped Paresh’s hand, squeezing him through the protective gauntlet. “I’m here, sweets, you hear me? I’m here. You’re going to be fine, just fine.”
Mark Chitty cut the parka off Paresh’s broken arm with a small power blade and rolled a tube sleeve up the armor. The sleeve inflated quickly.
It seemed like hours before Juanitar Sakur and Sergeant Raddon came shambling gracelessly through the fluffy snow, carrying the stretcher. Paresh was eased on to the canvas. Angela took one of the corners, and they made their way back to biolab-2 as fast as they could. As they went she was dimly aware of a commotion breaking out: A hysterical Erius was shouting at Leif. Everyone knew that Erius and Ophelia had a thing going back at Wukang. Now Erius was blaming Leif for the calamity, since he was the one who’d connected the tow cables … and he was the one whose plan they’d been following.
“Your fault, you bastard!” Erius screamed, and took a maddened swing. In so many clothes it was a pitiful blow, slow and cumbersome. But his fist did make contact, and Leif swayed back, stumbling. So then he launched himself at Erius in equally furious retribution. Several Legionnaires waded forward, pulling them apart.
That was when the stretcher bearers passed Ophelia’s corpse. Someone had covered it with a plastic sheet, but it wasn’t wide enough to conceal the spray of frozen blood that was scattered across the churned-up snow. A couple of meters away another, smaller, sheet was draped over the head. Angela felt her stomach churn, and thought she was going to be sick.
Paresh groaned. Blood started to fleck the inside of his mask as he coughed.
“You’re okay,” Angela shouted at him, trying to bend over as she trudged along, putting her face above his. His eyes were fluttering. She wasn’t sure he was fully conscious. “You hear me? You’re doing okay. The doc’s coming and everything’s going to be fine.”
They reached the mobile biolab and maneuvered Paresh into the small door compartment. The outside door slid shut, and Angela stomped her feet impatiently while they got him through into the central cabin area. When the door slid back again Coniff had arrived with Ken Schmitt helping a limping Dean Creshaun. So again Angela had to wait while Dean and the doctor went inside.
When she did finally get through the door compartment, the central cabin was badly cramped. They’d moved Luther to the driver’s cab passenger seat; the other members of the xenobiology team traveling in the vehicle had vacated into the lab section to give the medical team space to work. Dean was sitting in a corner, with Juanitar Sakur helping him get his layers off. Paresh was lying on a gurney with Mark Chitty and Antrinell removing the last of his armor. The oxygen mask was still clamped over his mouth and nose, but the bleeding seemed to have stopped.
Dr. Coniff gave Angela an annoyed look. “We don’t have room. Wait outside, please.”
“Make me,” Angela spat back.
Antrinell gave her an exasperated glance.
“Come sit with me,” Luther said, and patted the driver’s seat. Angela gave him a fast nod, slightly shocked by how sickly the catering supervisor still looked, and wormed her way around to the little oval hatchway, scraping snow off her boots and gaiters as she went. It started melting right away. She stared at the little puddles in a daze. The inside of the biolab was life from another time and world: white light, warm dry air. She’d been braced against the grinding cold for so long that this was the milieu that felt wrong now.
With Luther’s cautious help, she began removing her own layers. Coniff slid a big scanner arm across Paresh, her eyes closed as she concentrated on the image. Chitty began cutting the last T-shirt away. Angela’s breath caught as she saw the vivid purple and black welts discoloring the skin across his chest.
“It’s okay,” Mark Chitty told her kindly. “The armor’s impact honeycomb absorbed a lot of the impact. It’s good stuff. Without it he’d probably be dead.”
“Multiple broken ribs,” Coniff reported, her eyes still closed. “Can’t see any signs of pulmonary contusion, but I want to keep an eye on that. Repeat the scan every hour to see what develops.”
“Got it,” Chitty murmured.
“Moving on to the heart. With this kind of blunt force there’s going to be some myocardial contusion. Let’s set up an EKG, please. Get me a baseline.”
Chitty sprayed a clear gloop saturated with smartdust on Paresh’s violet chest. “Mesh established and linking to our net. Processing and monitoring his cardiac rhythm now.”
Paresh moaned again, wheezing down a breath.
“Enough,” Coniff said. “I want him properly sedated. We’ll put the shoulder back in and set the arm.” She turned to stare at Angela. “Your boyfriend’s lucky. He’s young and built like an ox, which helps. We’ll repair the damage and pump him full of anti-inflammatory steroids. The ribs will cause a lot of discomfort for a few weeks, but that can be mitigated by some internal nuflesh insertions once the bruising reduces.”
“He’s okay?” Angela was dismayed at how pathetic she sounded.
The corner of Coniff’s mouth lifted up, which must have been her version of a smile. “Yes. Now you
will
leave us, because I’m not having you in here when we hammer his shoulder back into its socket—it’s too gross for friends and family. He’ll be under anesthetic for hours anyway. Mark will let you know when he’s awake; you can talk to him then.”
“Thanks.” She took her time getting her outer layers on again. Watching as Paresh was properly anesthetized. Chitty started tightening some nasty-looking metal clamps around his torso and upper arm. Angela wrinkled her nose up, gave Luther a quick hug of thanks, and left.
The transition numbed her for a long moment. St. Libra’s malignant cold wriggled its way through gaps in her layers, scratching minute prickly fingers against her flesh. The pink sunlight was beset with bold green flickers, turning the snow a sickly gray-purple. She stood outside the biolab, looking around. The scene now was identical to all the other refueling breaks they’d made on the journey so far. Vehicles parked in a line. People walking about carrying equipment. Darwin and Olrg packing the flex grid sections away in the sledge. Truck 2 being reconnected to its sledge. Legionnaires on patrol. There was no sign of Ophelia’s corpse.
Angela abruptly set her jaw and marched across the rumpled snow to truck 2. When she reached it, the cab was empty and the tow cables had been removed. A bulky figure was moving to intercept her.
“How is he?” Elston asked.
He’d know, of course; he was giving her an excuse to babble, to let her pent-up fear go spewing out. At any other time she’d appreciate that. “He’ll be fine. They’re fixing the arm now. The doc didn’t want me there for that.”
“I see. I’m glad.”
Angela pointed at the truck. “Where’s the tow cable?”
“It got packed away. We have additional cables so there’s no problem.”
“I want to see it.”
“Angela …”
“I want to see where it split. I want to know how a cable with a fifty-ton breaking strain can snap when an MTJ gives it a little tug.”
“Come with me.”
Elston took her arm, which was an almost useless gesture. She had so many layers on, her arm was too wide for him to grip properly. Certainly he couldn’t pull her along. She chose to go with him as he headed slowly back to biolab-1.
“You’re right,” he said quietly.
“What?”
“I looked at the ends. The cables are a bundle of superbonded carbon filaments inside a triple-layer polymer sheath. Someone had cut it. Not all the way through—they’d severed just enough filaments so it wouldn’t snap straightaway.”
“The son-of-a-bitch has caught up with us,” she grunted.
“We haven’t seen any sign of it for the whole week we’ve been traveling. But that tow cable’s been used a dozen times to pull the MTJs out of drifts. If it had been weakened back at Wukang, it would have snapped before now.”
“Son-of-a-bitch,” she said in a throaty whisper. “You think it was done today? But that means one of our people did it.”
“Yes. The only possibility I can come up with is Karizma, who wants to go back to Wukang. But I’m not sure how this helps her case. Besides, Ophelia was her friend, and an active member of their little turn-back-now cabal.”
“She wouldn’t,” Angela said. “She had to know she’d be putting Ophelia in harm’s way.”
“Which leaves us with a big problem. We were all out here. It could have been anybody.”
“Damnit.”
“Anyone you’re suspicious about?”
Angela regretted he was all wrapped up; she couldn’t make out his expression. Because that was one hell of a leading question. “Nobody. Sabotage doesn’t make any sense. If we get stuck out here, we die. It’s that simple.”
“All right then. I’ll reorganize the vehicle rotas to take the injured into account. Biolab-2 is getting crowded, and truck 2 needs another driver. We’ll move on as soon as the doctor has finished with Paresh’s shoulder.”
From the front passenger seat in Tropic-2, Rebka watched the intense talk between Angela and Colonel Elston play out. She was pretty clear what topic was under discussion. As soon as the tragedy happened, most people instinctively rushed over toward the MTJs where Paresh and Dean lay, battered and incapacitated. A few hardier souls, led by a distraught Erius, had made their way over to Ophelia’s headless corpse in time to see her steaming blood slowly freeze into the snow. Rebka had gone with the bulk of the convoy personnel, taking a slight curving detour to pass by the broken tow cable. As she went she picked it up and let it run through her mittened hand until she got to the end. She let it drop immediately. By then her cache had captured the image perfectly.