Mulhicky Pass

Lumiara, Survivor’s Refuge

4454.1.29 Interstellar

Once the yeti was immobilized, it was a simple matter to tranq it and set it up with an auto-doser that would keep it under until it reached its new home.

With that done, Janus dug the sat-comm out of his pack and reported he was ready for pickup. The cultist settlement acknowledged the transmission without congratulating him or giving him a timeframe for pickup—cheaper that way, since bandwidth and manners are so damned expensive. Janus shook his head. He was okay that some of the Cult’s factions skipped out on the hero worship aspirants got on other worlds, but some of them seemed to take that to an extreme that made him want to punch them in the nose.

He unzipped his jacket, laid it on the ground, and sat down on top of it, pulling his medkit out of his pack. He turned off the grav boots as an afterthought so they’d have time to recharge. Then he stared blankly ahead for a moment, lost in thought, medkit still in his hand.

A year on Lumiara. A year of being part of the Cult of the Survivor.

The process hadn’t unsettled him as much as others, having done it before on Krandermore. Learn how the locals survive, do it well, then do it better. It probably helped that moving here had been his decision. Some of the other Irkallans resented him for that. Maybe he felt guilty. He spent a lot of time away from New Prometheus, probably more than he should.

A gust of wind made him shiver, and he unzipped the medkit. Even in the early afternoon on a sunny day, a human wouldn’t last long outdoors without thermal wear.

He’d torn his right glove during the chase and scraped his palm open on the ice and rock, so he cleaned it, sprayed it with antiseptic, and wrapped it before putting on a spare glove liner. He shoved snow into a cold pack for his back—minor bruising—then clamped the autodiagnostic on top of his wrist comm while he shivered in the sun.

Fury was nosing about in the snow. She stopped suddenly, then jumped almost a meter in the air and came down with paws and snout first, planting the front of her body into a snowdrift. A few seconds later, she popped back up with a twitching snow hare in her jaws.

“Good job, Fury,” Janus said tiredly.

The jungle dragon padded over and settled down to enjoy her impromptu meal.

Janus checked the readout in his retinal display and saw that things were mostly as expected—bruising, torn muscle tissue in his upper back, and inflammation in his shoulder. He took two pills for the inflammation and a dissolving tab for the pain, then he used a handheld sono-wave to stimulate the torn muscle and accelerate healing.

With his body patched up, he turned his attention to his gear.

Fury tore the hare to bloody bits, occasionally spouting flame to keep her meal “rare” instead of “frozen.”

Time dragged on. Janus didn’t fret about it. Surviving the cold was about routines and economy of emotion. In that, he was perfectly adapted to the endless winter. He patched up his clothing, put it on, then unfurled a lightweight metal disc and set some chem-blocks on top of it to start a fire.

Fury helped, and soon the trioxi-mag bricks were burning bright and hot. The jungle dragon settled on the far side of the fire, shielding it from the wind, while Janus melted chips of ice, brought them to a boil, and made himself some soup to go with what was left of a protein and blubber bar.

It took the Cult settlers two hours to reach him. By then, there were only a few more hours of daylight left. There were four of them, riding an industrial grav-cart that skimmed over the snow with a loud hum that rattled Janus’s teeth until they shut it off.

“Invarian,” the research team leader said, looking at the downed beast and not bothering to shake Janus’s hand. “Help us get it loaded.”

Janus grunted and started untangling the yeti from the shock net. There was no point telling egalitarians he was bruised and tired. Certain parts of their ideology were admirable, but they expected everyone from high to low to pull their weight as long as they had the strength to stand.

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“Never seen a trap that could take down a yeti before,” the youngest member of their party said.

“Friend of mine makes them back at New Prometheus,” Janus said. “You ever travel to the borehole?”

“No,” the young woman said shyly.

“Focus on the task,” the chief researcher chided.

Janus finished getting the yeti clear of the shock net, then helped the four egalitarians haul the two-hundred-kilo beast into the bed of the cart. “What will you do with it?”

“Relocate it three hundred kilometers south,” the chief researcher said.

“It’s a mankiller,” Janus said. “It could come back.”

“We’ll chip it and track it,” the man said. “It has as much right to be on this planet as we do.”

Janus knew better than to argue. Egalitarians didn’t get into fights with other factions, for the most part, but they were zealots when it came to their own lifestyles.

“You disagree?” an older woman said, throwing back her hood.

Janus was surprised to see it was the elder of the research station who had asked him to capture the yeti. The egalitarians didn’t acknowledge hierarchies, but they did respect experience and wisdom. This woman wasn’t their leader, but her words spoke for many voices. “This animal hunted me. It was almost smart enough to avoid the trap. It will kill again if it has the chance, and I will not be here to capture it.”

“You have killed, have you not?” the elder said.

Janus felt his skin prickle. “That’s a simplistic and inaccurate comparison.”

The elder smiled and nodded. “You will tell me that your kills were for your survival and that, as an aspirant, your actions served a greater good. This beast was killed for its survival, and its capture puts us in your debt.”

Janus glanced at the yeti, then back at the elder. “If I’d known I was fighting a fellow aspirant, I would have introduced myself before tranq’ing it.”

The chief researcher threw him an angry glare, but the elder laughed. “Yes! And then you truly would have put Dakkan to shame for not shaking your hand when we arrived.”

Dakkan was apparently the chief researcher’s name. He looked from the elder to Janus guiltily and said, “Thank you for your wisdom, Serina.”

The elder waved her glove at him dismissively, then said, “How does the auto-doser work?”

Janus transferred control of the small device to the elder and told her what to do if it came loose or if the creature showed signs of distress.

“He could come with us,” the youngest member of their team said. “The least we could do is offer him shelter. The night will be cold.”

“No,” the chief researcher said, though not unkindly. “We can accept his aid; we cannot offer ours. We want no part in the dispute between the Prometheans and the compartmentalists.”

“We will pay the value of his work, however,” the elder said, initiating a transfer from her wrist comm to Janus’s. “These are the credits promised by the collective, and more besides.”

Janus accepted the transfer. It was nearly fifty-five thousand credits, a tidy sum and one he knew had been gathered from all the members of her community. “You can have all this back if you’ll just trade with us,” Janus said.

The elder smiled at him sadly. “Safe journey to the Core, Emissary. May the Survivor smile upon you.”

“Strength through struggle, Serina,” Janus said, stepping backward off the grav cart and into the snow.

“Wait, he’s that Promethean?” the youngest member of their team asked.

The chief researcher started the grav cart up, and it started to accelerate away the moment it lifted off the ground.

Janus sighed. He could see the young woman arguing with the elder and chief researcher as they drove away, waving and pointing back at Janus, but it was too late. He’d spent a year trying to get the Consensus to act decisively against the compartmentalists, but he’d failed, and now there was only one thing left to do. One last set of Trials, he thought, only this time, it wouldn’t be a race for points or glory. It would be an end run on the very heart of the Cult of the Survivor. And if I don’t make it, I’ll die knowing I failed everyone. What else is new?

Fury came up alongside him and leaned against his side. He stroked her head and patted the side of her neck. “Let’s head back home, girl.”

Fury chirped and nudged him hard enough that he almost stumbled. It brought a strange sight into view. There, lying in the snow, was an oilskin bag that must have fallen off the grav cart. He trudged over to it, dropped to one knee, and undid the strings holding the mouth of the bag shut. It was full of supplies—fresh rations for his trip home; a wrapped rack of ribs for Fury; some small, handmade crafts; and four bottles of synth-oil New Prometheus desperately needed. “Well, I’ll be spaced,” Janus said to himself.

Someone from their team had collected these things from several members of their collective and left them behind. The elder and the young woman had been speaking to him… Had the chief researcher dropped it over the side while Janus wasn’t looking, or was it the fourth member of the team Janus hadn’t really spoken to? Had they all known except the young woman, or was this a dissident minority within their settlement?

Regardless, it was progress. Even if it came too late for Janus, there would be hope for the rest of them.

With a groan, he got up again, his thighs protesting, and he dragged the oilskin bag toward his pack. The metal frame of the pack could snap out to become a sled. Dragging it would add to his travel time, but Fury enjoyed the work, and he was sure Lira and habitat maintenance would be glad to have the Synth oil.

Fury barked, looking toward the sun, which was only three fingers above the horizon.

“Yep, getting late,” he told her. “Let’s get some klicks under our feet before dark.”