As they loped into the “fissures,” the ground beneath them changed. What had seemed solid from a distance revealed itself to be a field of loose and shifting rubble. Ghuidicello's foot slipped, and he slid down a shallow slope.
Mneme choked back, “Careful!”
He heard her gasp and knew the Fantomo must have heard it, too. She reached out her hand to steady him and closed her fingers in his. They settled into the dark together.
UNSTABLE, he keyed.
Her helmet nodded. He saw the dim red lights in her helmet display flicker across her sharp features. She was biting her lip, and he could hear her breath. He saw her nose the curve of her bruised cheek, her lips. Her eyes lifted from her display and met his.
The commandant’s words echoed in his mind. Thinking of keeping her … ? Those blue eyes got you by the heartstrings … ? … that’s one kiss you aren’t getting.
He looked away, embarrassed. He heard her breathe. In, out.
If I can hear her, they can hear her.
He keyed on his arm: TURN HEAD RIGHT.
He reached behind her left shoulder for the signal port harness and eased it out.
NOW ME. He patted his neck and shoulder.
She nodded, let go of him, and undid it as he leaned forward. The faint electronic whisper of open circuit died, and he was left alone with the sound of his pulse.
They sagged together, breathing easier. He touched his helmet to hers.
“You hear me?”
“Yah,” she said, a bit distant and murky through the layers of acrylic and metaplastoc. “How long do we need to hide?” Her voice was tense.
Ghuidicello checked his arm tablet. “An hour? Every minute he stays is dangerous for him.”
Mneme nodded, her expression unreadable behind her faceplate.
Outside the fissure, light played across the huge boulder tops, scaldingly bright. Glittering diamonds drifted by, residue from attitude jets.
He leaned forward, trying to see if the Fantomo-3 was moving past or stopping in position. Mneme grabbed him and pulled him back, holding him tightly.
“No,” he heard her say. “No.”
The aviso edged farther into the broken country, the spots stabbed here and there.
“They don’t know.”
“They know we’re here somewhere. Dammit,” she said. “Oh, dammit. So close. If—if they find us—I’m going to pop my seals.”
“No!”
“You don’t know what it’ll be like,” she said. “For me. I can’t. I can’t go back on there.”
He wondered what it would be like for him. Pillowcases of soap bars? No. He imagined blowtorches, pliers, knives, electricity.
He wondered what the cold escape of air, the deep chill, the hot churn of water boiling in her skin would be like for her. What it would look like …
He held her hand tightly. “I won’t let you go by yourself,” he said.
“You don’t—”
“I do.”
She nodded. “Thank you for trying,” he heard her say, soft and far away. “Didn’t even know me.”
The attitude jets flashed gold white, gold white. The Fantomo-3 was almost directly ahead. Leaning just slightly out, he could see the docking port open, booted feet sticking out, and a coil of kanabilon rope dangling. The attitudes flashed, and Fantomo slowly revolved.
They put their heads together again. “What did you see?”
“They’ll abseil down once they get a mark on us.”
“I don’t want to die.”
“Me neither,” he said. He felt the cold slowly seeping into his feet and backside as they sat there. We’ll freeze given time anyway, he thought. “I had so much nothing I wanted to do. That was the best part of working here. Doing absolutely nothing.”
“Must be nice. I never got to do nothing.”
“Heaven for a console jockey like me.”
“Heaven for a girl like me.
The belly of Fantomo-3 drifted almost directly above. He pulled out his emergency flares from his hip. “Here, take one.”
She handled it. “For?”
“Next one of them you see, fire it into him. He’ll love it.”
She laughed. “Funny stuff, crewman.”
“Call me Filipeo.”
“Filipeo.”
The spots rolled down the fissure floor, inches from their boots, and suddenly went dark.
They held each other, watching the light play on the boulder tops from the attitude jets.
Helmets lights flashed down the path, left and right. He swore, and she gasped, and they were on their feet, back to back.
A crewman came each way, pointing their carbines, which did not, he supposed, make much sense as they were in each other’s line of fire. But—
Mneme fired her flare first with a magnesium and oxidizer burst that filled the cleft in the asteroid with painful blue-white brilliance at Ghuidicello’s back. He felt her slammed against his back as Newtonian physics demanded its due. His crewmen flung up an arm to shield his face, his carbine waving, and Ghuidicello took as slow an aim as he dared and crushed the firing ring. Sparks spattered, and the tube ejected blue-white molten fire, shoving him back against Mneme. The projectile sent his crewman stumbling, beating at his chest, and the fire burned into the suit, past the armor, and left him thrashing a moment on the tumbling cobbles of the ravine floor, wound in his abseil line. The carbine tumbled along abandoned to a ground colored white and silver and sheer sparkling mineral gray.
Mneme was falling slowly, catching herself gently, heels over her head, bumping and rolling. Her tethered crewman spun in a circle, spraying molten magnesium everywhere as he tried to pry the flare charge of his chest armor with both hands.
The spots burned yellow-white from above, and Ghuidicello looked straight up at the wide belly of the aviso, as pale and naked as a snail out of its shell. There, stitched in welded metaplastoc patch plates, was the wound the Provisional ship had made.
As Mneme pulled herself to her feet in a cloud of magnesium sparks, Filipeo raised his third flare straight up, aimed it at the ship’s half-healed wound, and crushed the firing ring.
A third time blue-white fire erupted. The shell struck the seam, wedged, paused, and broke through.
Molten hull rained down.
Fantomo-3 hung unmoved for an instant on yellow attitude jets, then the jets pulsed hard, and the ship flew up from 221 KD, all thrusters at full, whisking the downed abseilers away at the ends of their lines.
Fire faded all around, and they were left alone in darkness. Fantomo’s drive flickered and pulsed. The ship turned and receded to a bright, dwindling yellow dot.
His hands shaking, he plugged in her radio harness again, and she his.
“Are you all right?” she said.
“Yah. You?”
“I think so. Pretty cold, though!”
They crawled up out of the fissures. In another direction, they saw a second bright yellow light turned towards them.
“Ribela Floro!” Mneme said, pointing. She grabbed his arm. “What if she turns and follows—?”
He pulled out his last flare, aimed it out, fired it. It raced into space, a bright free gem, farther, farther, farther—burst, a wide chrysanthemum bloom of white.
Ribela Floro didn’t turn but came for them gently as a mother as they waited hand in hand under the stars on liberated 221 KD.