The wind was howling on the other side of the door and behind us, back in the stairway we'd left behind; water gurgled and metal groaned. The complex was going down, or at least it would end up entirely underwater.

Aside from the few Ottinio we had run into on the stairs, the place had been cleared out, leaving us alone under the ice. There must have been a back door, or the Ottinio were impressive swimmers, I supposed either was possible, but it didn't really matter how they'd gotten out. What mattered was that there could be a small army between us and our only way out of here.

If the plane wasn't cinders already either way.

Victoria looked back to the stairs we'd come up and, even though they were out of eyesight, the bodies we'd left behind. She stared for a little too long before turning back to me, eyes flicking between mine and the door handle I'd rested my hand on. I understood what she meant. She was asking what was out there. I didn't have an answer.

I pulled my Hammerhead out and kept it primed at my side. It should be enough to blow anyone here away. It was almost something to laugh about. We'd come all the way to this planet to find a weapon I'd be comfortable with against the Fotuan hunters. Instead, we were up two shitty Fotuan rifles, a hardlight harpoon, and a Basking that may or may not work.

I took my hand off the door handle for a moment and clicked the ammunition chamber of the Hammerhead open, the gun offering a small chime in response and powering down. The Hammerhead sheared off discs of metal off a central rod. Right now, I had two of those rods, one mostly spent in the chamber and one in storage.

Swapping the ammunition's places was a cumbersome task and took ten seconds longer than I wanted to wait right now, but I didn't want to give the good ammo to the untested gun. I held up the small chunk of mostly spent metal and motioned to Victoria, "Basking, please."

I took her a moment to register what I was talking about, but she handed me the antique a moment later. The gun was wet. That wouldn't matter to a modern Basking, but I wasn't an archeologist, and this thing certainly belonged underground. I slotted the ammo into the Basking, and the weapon sparked to life, almost rumbling in my hands like a faulty engine. I held it back out to Victoria.

She regarded it but didn't reach for it.

"If they get close to you, shoot them with this," I instructed. Her pause turned into hesitation as I saw an incredulous doubt flicker over her eyes. Better than catatonic panic. "Last resort," I explained after a moment.

She nodded at that, "Fuck…" she trailed off. I always wondered how the translator handled curses like that for English; we used them in a lot of different ways.

"I'll get us out of here," I reassured, "and then off Mythellion and Mythellion II station," I skipped the part where we had two ships to get off the station without being followed, "fuck this stupid ice planet."

Victoria turned the Basking over in her hands, pointing the barrel a little too close to me but at least toward the exit. I turned the massive metal handle and unlocked the door with a cacophonous clang. The wind howled through the crack as soon as I pushed it half an inch open; snow flew in with it.

It had been the edge of twilight when we'd arrived here, but now it was midnight despite it only having been a few hours. No light poured in within the wind. It was the storm alone greeting us. "Yinde!" I called out into the night.

The wind didn't reply as much as it continued.

"You don't have to do this," I offered out into the storm, "you head back to wherever you need to go, and we'll be on our way. You already got your money."

Victoria made a soft 'hm', which made sense. From her point of view, we'd been kicking ass the whole way here and I kept giving them chances, but that was her inexperience showing. The first job both of us had was to not get shot, the best way to do that was to avoid gunfights.

I was a quick draw and good in a scrap; I'd also mourned a lot of quickdraws and scrappy mercs in my time as one.

"Maybe they cut their losses," Victoria suggested.

I clicked my tongue to say 'doubt it' before waving her a few steps back and cracking the door open further. Warm light poured out onto the snow, cutting through the ink and catching on the blustering flurries. No gunshots. I tucked behind the frame and pushed the door the rest of the way, letting it swing and clang against the metal siding of the building.

A button on my wrist turned my contacts to green-filtered night vision, letting me scan the small part of the ice I could see from my hiding place. Even without getting affected by the dark, the snow made visibility shit. I swapped to thermals and saw nothing but blue and black. Back to night vision.

I stepped out into the doorway and expected the ring of gunfire but got nothing instead. If there was any movement out there, the wind was stealing away the sound of it.

The entrance's warm, inviting light spread across the ice in front of us. There were lots of footsteps that hadn't been washed away by the storm pacing around the front entrance, just about ten feet away from the door, too far for a guard.

I took three steps back and levelled my Hammerhead at the ice. At this range, there was no pause between pulling the trigger and the ice exploding into powder, followed by the raging fire of the trap explosives under the ice. I covered my face out of instinct even as my shield caught and stopped shards of ice and metal.

Three more explosions rang out, from under the ice, turning the flat floe in front of us into a geyser of ice water and fire. Then two more bursts from far under the ice, and the building below us shook.

Shit.

"Go!" I snapped as I jumped out from the doorway into the darkness of the night, landing on the cracking ice and finding my footing as fast as I could. Victoria beat me to it, her lengthy gait passing me just before she ran into the ice's edge. She went to go around.

Did we need to go underwater?

Pressure waves. Fuck.

I took off after her. As I did, I heard the first shouts of distant Ottinian that were too mangled by the wind to get translated. Clearly, they understood that we hadn't been killed in the initial explosion.

The ice rumbled under our feet as another explosion rocked underwater. Just a little further.

Red light streaked past where we'd just been, the missed shot flying off into the darkness of the storm.

A cracked a blind shot from the Hammerhead toward where the shot had come from, but even with my enhanced eyesight, I couldn't see where it had been.

Victoria was just a little bit ahead of me.

Another rumble.

Another pair of shots.

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I dove forward and tackled Victoria from behind, taking out her knees and throwing her down onto the ice. Just as she was about to yell at me, she was cut off.

Crate after crate of smuggled, aging weaponry ignited deep under the ice.

The ice around the entranceway we'd come out of ballooned into the air, suspended by the shockwave cutting through the water. The floe shattered, and a spiderweb of gouges erupted through the thick ice as it transformed into a massive arctic wave, echoing outward from the core of the explosion.

Then everything caved in on itself all at once, just as the shockwave hit us.

The ice bucked me into the air, slamming against my chest and rocking me through my shield. Everything spun as I flew, trying to keep my body tight to ensure I didn't land on anything in a way I couldn't salvage. Every sound gave way to ringing. The snow mixed with sleet and rain thrown up from the sea.

I crashed down onto the ground, slamming into the somewhat cracked ice and rolling over several times before skidding to a violent stop as my arm pulled too far under my chest.

Nothing but ringing, and it was just raining now like the storm had conceded to the destruction.

My arm was sore but not broken or dislocated, and my spine felt like it had been compressed down, so each vertebra ground against one another.

Brutal cold hissed against my raw cheek, where it had scraped along the ice as my shield gave way.

A chunk of ice slammed into the ground several feet before me, half burying itself and cracking. There was snow in my eyelashes. I blinked it away. I was alive, just battered. It was-

Victoria.

I shook the daze away, wincing and taking deep breaths of frozen air as I figured out how to get my legs back under me one at a time. My knees felt like they were shot. Snow and slush dripped off of me as I finally staggered all the way to standing. I called out into the night, but I couldn't hear it anywhere other than my head over the high-pitched whine of my complaining ears.

I tried again.

"Victoria?" There was no response. My shouts were eaten by the wind, and the flames erupting out of the scattered pieces of structure that were still above the ice.

My PA had powered down the vision to help recharge my shields. I spun around, trying to find her in the reflection of the firelight. The haze-filled air caught and diffused the light, scattering it into a useless flickering red ambiance. I couldn't see her. She couldn't hear me.

"Come on, come on," I hissed to my watch, pressing the vision augmentation button over and over as it chimed at me that the device was resetting charge. "No. No."

Not. Again.

I stared out across the ice away from the explosion, trying to see something, a shape on the ground, anything. She wasn't there. Back toward the fire, into the blazing haze. I was blind.

Not. Again.

I took the first cautious steps toward the overbright haze, reaching out with my toes to ensure that I didn't fall into the arctic water when I didn't have thermal shielding. "Victoria?" My hearing was returning, but there wasn't anything other than the wind. "Victoria?"

My foot found the edge of the ice, and I pulled it back, turning my attention down to the ground to see which way I could walk. Just as I did-

"Etōkiv?" A cautious voice rang out, "Etōkiv!"

I turned just in time to catch my balance on the ice as Victoria caught up with me, grabbing me by the shoulders and shaking. She continued to babble at me, I assumed in Fotuan. She was okay. In fact, from the looks of her hair, she was doing much better than I was. She shook me again.

"Victoria," I answered. She stopped shaking me for a moment, looking me over. Then all at once, she pulled me close against her, pressing me against her rib cage. I could feel her chest shaking.

"-was going to be alone again…"' she sobbed for half a second before collecting herself. She trailed off just as my translator kicked back into gear, and my wrist informed me that everything was coming back online.

"Sorry, translator just came back," I confirmed to save her from saying something she didn't want to, "glad you're okay, too."

"You flew so far, I watched you-" she cut herself off instead of letting the lump in her throat do it. She was okay. Proud but okay. My spine almost cracked from the releasing tension. "Humans must be so light." The fact that my raw cheek was still pressed against her sternum said a lot about why. I slipped out of her hold to take a decent look at her.

"You're okay?" I asked to confirm what I saw.

"Yes, I am uh-" she struggled with the words momentarily. The cold air stopped biting me as my shielding came back. "Physically, I'm great."

"Good," I said first, "I'm glad."

Victoria took half a step back and composed herself, returning to her full height. "I'm glad you're okay too."

I took another deep breath and shook the last cobwebs out of my head as the vision enhancement came back online, cutting through the overbright haze and letting me clock the shadows picking through rubble on the other side.

"You see them?" Victoria asked after a second.

"Mhm."

"And you're going to-"

"Yep."

"Why now?"

Why? I didn't like people trying to kill me. We couldn't let them call the Fotuans if they didn't find our bodies. We needed a way off this damn chunk of ice and back to our boat. But mostly because a minute ago I'd been terrified. "Because now I'm fucking pissed," I spat.

"So, we're-"

"You hang back."

Victoria opened her mouth to protest but decided against it, standing still as I started matching toward the shadows.

Down under the ice, I couldn't just solve all of my problems with firepower unless I wanted to drown us. They'd set a trap and almost killed me, but almost wasn't enough. They'd given up their one advantage.

On a galactic scale, humans, like most species, were relatively unremarkable, but back at the colonies, there had always been one thing hammered into us about what made us special. Humans recovered from injuries a lot faster than other species. It was something about the platelet count in our blood, but we could take a lot more damage than other species and still keep working.

Sure, we couldn't take a bullet quite like an armoured species, but the first contact wars had taught the Ovishir that humans would keep fighting for hours even past the point where they were bleeding.

The Ottinio were new to the Galactic sphere. They could consider this a free lesson.

The first one in my sights wasn't looking up, instead poking at a piece of rubble, somewhat clouded by the misty haze slowly getting blown away and overtaken by the snowstorm.

The venomous song of my Hammerhead called out into the night, overtaken by the shattering sound barriers half a blink before the Ottinio evaporated and became a splatter on the slick ice.

"Wh-"

The second Ottinio almost got to look up before I was trained on him and pulling the trigger. He never quite managed to.

"Fuck. He's Alive!"

"Get to co-" I cut the one making that call off with a third shot, half missing and only taking his bottom half.

The other silhouettes disappeared behind cover, shielded by the dying firelight and the last mist from the seafloor-shattering explosion. I kept walking toward where they'd been searching for our bodies. A slow march. "You there, Yinde?" I called out into the night. I knew that he had a translator, but I doubted anyone else in the audience was going to understand me

"Fuck off you Alien," Yinde called out from somewhere out in the storm. As they did, shots rang out into the night, the red light from them matching the remnants of the haze as they flew wide of me. Speaking was inviting bullets.

"Tried to," I replied as I pointed my Hammerhead in the general direction from which the shots had come and waited for the silhouette to peek out. I noticed the gun, but the user was 90% behind rubble. I shot anyway, blowing away half the cover and hearing the pained grunt from the person behind it.

"When I get my hands on you, I'm going to tie you up and throw you to the bottom of the ocean where nobody will-"

I turned my attention to where the voice was coming from, a massive piece of metal wall that had sunk halfway into the ice with a jagged edge reaching toward the sky.

"Fucking find you and-"

I levelled the Hammerhead and fired a shot at the metal, taking off toward it as I did, breaking my slow pace and into a sprint.

"Take the girl to those Fotu-" Yinde was cut off by the shot cracking against the metal. I fired off a second just as he stopped speaking.

I was close now.

The third shot tore the top half of the wall off, punching a massive hole through and sending pieces of shrapnel spiralling off into the storm.

I used my running start to leap over the remaining part of the cover, grabbing the freshly torn metal and vaulting over it and the cowering Yinde, who looked up just in time to see the hardlight harpoon skewer through the barrel of his gun.

"No. You won't."

In his last moments, Yinde wasn't as brave as the men he'd hired. He chose to waste his last breathing moments trying to run away.

Musc had said it first. This planet would be better off without him.

I pulled up the hardlight harpoon and fired its payload at Yinde, skewering his spine down the middle and sending him collapsing to the ice. He didn't slide, pinned fast as soon as the hardlight ate into the floe and stuck him. It didn't take long for me to catch up with him.

"Did you kill Musc?" I asked.

"Wha-" Yinde sputtered into the ice. "The pilot? No, no, no. We wouldn't do that. I'm sorry that we had this misunderstanding, but if we just talk about th-"

I cut him off before he talked himself to death, then wrestled the harpoon out of his temple. "I tried," I pointed out.

The fire was burning out now, smothered by the winter wind. I leaned down, pulled the antique PA off of Yinde's hand, found the credit chip we'd loaded up in his pocket, and took it back.

He wouldn't have made it far on a station with a spine like that, anyway.

I took one last look at the tailless Ottinio as I started to walk back toward Victoria. We just needed to find Musc, and we could leave the planet with more firepower and, for me, knowing how much those Fotuans wanted to find Victoria.