Morning Star

I rush to the hole. Water laps peaceably at the edge. The ice is too thick to see Mustang beneath the surface as she swims, but the flare glows gently through the meter of dirty ice, blue and wandering toward the land. I follow it. Holiday tries to drag herself after. I shout at her to stay and get the medkit for herself.

I follow Mustang’s light. Razor skimming over the ice, tracing the light underneath for several minutes, till at last the light stops. It’s not enough time for her to run out of breath, but it doesn’t move for ten seconds. And then it begins to fade. Ice and water darkening as the light sinks into the sea. I have to get her out. I slam my razor into the ice, carving a chunk free. I roar as I jam my fingers into the cracks and lift it up, hurling it backward over my head to reveal water churning with pale bodies and blood. Mustang bursts to the surface, crying in pain. Ragnar’s beside her, blue and still, pinned under her left arm as her right hacks at something pale in the water.

I stab my razor into the ice behind me and hold on to the hilt. Mustang reaches for my hand and I haul her out. Then we pull Ragnar out with a roar of effort. Mustang claws onto the ice, falling down with Ragnar. But she’s not alone. A maggot white creature the size of a small man has latched itself to her back. It’s shaped like a snail in full sprint, except its back is tough, hairy translucent flesh mottled with dozens of shrieking little mouths rimmed with needle teeth that gnaw into her back. It’s eating her alive. A second creature the size of a large dog is stuck on Ragnar’s back.

“Get it off!” Mustang snarls, slashing wildly with her razor. “Get it off of me!” The creature is stronger than it should be and crawls back toward the hole in the ice, trying to drag her back to its home. A gunshot echoes and the creature jerks as a slug from Holiday’s bullet hits it square in the side. Black blood pulses out. The creature shrieks and slows enough for me to rush to Mustang and scalp the thing from her back with my razor. I kick it to the side, where it spasms as it dies. I cut Ragnar’s beast in half, skinning it off his back, and hurl it to the side.

“There’s more down there. And something bigger,” Mustang says, struggling to her feet. Her face tightens as she sees Ragnar. I rush to him. He’s not breathing.

“Watch the hole,” I tell Mustang.

My massive friend looks so childish there on the ice. I start CPR. He’s missing his left boot. The sock’s halfway off. Foot jerks against the ice as I pump his chest. Holiday stumbles to us. Pupils huge from painkillers. Her leg’s bound with resFlesh from the medkit. She collapses to the ice beside Ragnar. Tugs his sock back on his foot like it matters.

“Come back,” I hear myself saying. Spit freezing against my lips. Eyelids crusty with tears I didn’t even know I was shedding. “Come back. Your work isn’t finished.” The Howler tattoo is dark against his paling skin. The protection runes like tears on his white face. “Your people need you,” I say. Holiday holds his hand. Both of hers not equal to the size of the massive six-fingered paw.

“Do you want them to win?” Holiday asks. “Wake up, Ragnar. Wake up.”

He jerks beneath my hands. Chest twitching as his heart kicks. Water bubbles out of his mouth. Arms scrabbling at the ice in confusion as he coughs for air. He sucks it down. Huge chest heaving as he stares up at the sky. His scarred lips curl back into a mocking smile. “Not yet, Allmother. Not yet.”

—

“We’re fucked,” Holiday says as we look over the meager supplies Mustang managed to scavenge from our vessel. We shake together in a ravine, finding momentary respite from the wind. It’s not much. We huddle around the paltry heat of two thermal flares after having humped it across the ice shelf as eighty-kilometer winds shredded us with cold teeth. The storm darkens over the water behind us. Ragnar watches it with wary eyes as the rest of us sort through the supplies. There’s a GPS transponder, several protein bars, two flashlights, dehydrated food, a thermal stove, and a thermal blanket large enough for one of us. We’ve wrapped it around Holiday, since her suit’s the most compromised. There’s also a flare gun, a resFlesh applicator, and a thumb-sized digital survival guide.

“She’s right,” Mustang says. “We have to get out of here or we’re dead.”

Our boxes of weapons are gone. Our armor and gravBoots and supplies sunken to the bottom of the sea. All that would have let the Obsidians destroy their Gods. All that would have let us contact our friends in orbit. The satellites are blind. No one is watching. No one except the men who shot us from the sky. The lone blessing is that they crashed as well. We saw their fire deeper in the mountains as we stumbled across the ice shelf. But if they survived, if they have gear, they will hunt us, and all we have to protect ourselves is four razors, a rifle, and a pulseFist with a drained charge. Our sealSkin is sliced and damaged. But dehydration will claim us long before the cold does. Black rock and ice span the horizon. Yet if we eat the ice, our core temperatures will lower and the cold will take us.

“We have to find real shelter.” Mustang blows into her gloved hands, shivering. “Last I saw of the charts in the cockpit, we’re two hundred kilometers from the spires.”

“Might as well be a thousand,” Holiday says gruffly. She chews her cracked bottom lip, still staring at the supplies as if they’ll breed.

Ragnar watches us discuss wearily. He knows this land. He knows we can’t survive here. And though he will not say it, he knows that he will watch us die one by one, and there will not be a thing he can do to stop it. Holiday will die first. Then Mustang. Her sealSkin is torn where the beast bit her and water leaked in. Then I will go, and he will survive. How arrogant must we have sounded, thinking we could descend and free the Obsidians in one night.

“Aren’t nomads here?” Holiday asks Ragnar. “We always heard stories about marooned legionnaires….”

“They are not stories,” Ragnar says. “The clans seldom venture to the ice after autumn has fled. This is the season of the Eaters.”

“You didn’t mention them,” I say.

“I thought we would fly past their lands. I am sorry.”

“What are Eaters?” Holiday asks. “My Antarctic anthropology ain’t for shit.”

“Eaters of men,” Ragnar says. “Shamed castouts from the clans.”

“Bloodyhell.”

“Darrow, there must be a way to contact your men for extraction,” Mustang says, determined to find a way out.

“There isn’t. Asgard’s jamming array makes this whole continent static. The only tech for a thousand kilometers is there. Unless the other ship has something.”

“Who are they?” Ragnar asks.

“Don’t know. Can’t be the Jackal,” I say. “If he knew who we were then he would have sent his fleet after us, not just one black-ops ship.”

“It’s Cassius,” Mustang says. “I assume he came in a disguised ship, like I did. He’s supposed to be on Luna. It was one of the positives of negotiating here. They get caught going behind my brother’s back, it’s as bad for them as for me. Worse.”

“How’d he know which ship was ours?” I ask.

Mustang shrugs. “Must have sniffed out the diversion. Maybe he followed us from the Hollows. I don’t know. He’s not stupid. He did catch you in the Rain as well, going under the wall.”

“Or someone told him,” Holiday says, eying Mustang darkly.

“Why would I tell him when I’m on the gorydamn ship?” Mustang says.

“Well, let’s hope it’s Cassius,” I say. “If it is, then they won’t just hop on gravBoots and fly to Asgard for help, because then they’ll have to explain to the Jackal why they were on Phobos to begin with. How’d it go down, anyway?” I ask. “It looked like a missile signature from the back of our ship. But we don’t have missiles.”

“The boxes did,” Ragnar says. “I fired a sarissa out the back of the cargo bay from a shoulder launcher.”

“You shot a missile at them while we were falling?” Mustang asks incredulously.

“Yes. And I attempted to gather gravBoots. I failed.”

“I think you did just fine,” Mustang says with a sudden laugh. It infects the rest of us, even Holiday. Ragnar doesn’t understand the humor. My cheer fades quickly though as Holiday coughs and cinches her hood tighter.

I watch the black clouds over the sea. “How long till that storm hits, Ragnar?”

“Perhaps two hours. It moves with speed.”

“It’ll get to negative sixty,” Mustang says. “We won’t survive. Not with our gear like this.” The wind howls through our ravine and the bleak mountainside around us.

“Then there’s only one option,” I say. “We sack up and push across the mountains, find the downed ship. If it is Cassius in there, he’ll have at least a full squad of Thirteenth legion black ops with him.”

“That’s not a good thing,” Mustang says warily. “Those Grays are better trained for winter combat than we are.”

“Better than you,” Holiday says, pulling back her sealSkin so Mustang can read the Thirteenth legion tattoo on her neck. “Not me.”

“You’re a dragoon?” Mustang asks, unable to hide the surprise.

“Was. Point is: PFR—Praetorian field regulations—mandate survival gear in long-range mission transport enough to last each squad a month in any conditions. They’ll have water, food, heat, and gravBoots.”

“What if they survived the crash?” Mustang says, eying Holiday’s injured leg and our paltry weapons supply.

“Then they will not survive us,” Ragnar says.

“And we’re better off hitting them when they’re still piecing themselves together,” I say. “We go now, fast as we can, and we might get there before the storm lands. It’s our only chance.”

Ragnar and Holiday join me, the Obsidian gathering the gear as the Gray checks her rifle’s ammunition. But Mustang’s hesitant. There’s something else she hasn’t told us. “What is it?” I demand.

“It’s Cassius,” she says slowly. “I don’t know for certain. What if he’s not alone? What if Aja is with him?”