They holed up in a pocket of shelter beneath a leaf of rock about the size of a football field that had been driven like a blade into the southern slope of a coastal mountain. There they consumed a day recovering from their exertions and waiting out a snowstorm, while communicating in short bursts with a transmitter on the Denali habitat. Blue military dropped a pod through the storm. Kath awakened long enough to announce that it had landed just down the slope from them. Bard stomped out there, his huge feet acting like snowshoes, and returned a quarter of an hour later dragging it behind him. He then stood for a few minutes contemplating Kath. Her sickness had abated, but she woke up now only to eat, eliminate, or make delphic pronouncements.
The pod contained food, fuel, ammunition, robots, and equipment for snow travel that stood them in good stead during the next day, as they descended out of the mountains toward the southern coast. Much of this happened under cover of the heavy clouds that almost always blanketed this part of the world, and so if anyone was watching them, it had to be directly—by actually following them around—or with flying robots. But now they had flying robots of their own that could alert them to the presence of both. Since those remained quiet, they felt reasonably certain that they were not being tracked, except by large canids who tended to make their presence obvious by howling a lot. Because of them, the next night was a restless one, and led to an early departure and a final day of hiking that rapidly developed into a pell-mell descent out of the Alpine zone and toward the Pacific.
During their lunch break, they spied a trio of single-person gliders—inflatables like the one Kath Two had taken on her Survey mission—dipping and darting along the coast from the general direction of Qayaq. As these carried Blue markings and were transmitting Blue codes, Beled felt comfortable divulging their position. Minutes later the gliders had touched down in an expanse of heather a few hundred meters below them. Their occupants climbed out, eviscerated their cargo holds, and began to deflate their gliders so that they could be rolled up. Most of that work ended up being done by a Teklan, shorter and more lithe than Beled. This left the other two new arrivals free to approach. One of them was a Camite whose gait and posture were more expressive of male than of female characteristics, and so Ty made a mental note to employ male pronouns until and unless the Camite requested otherwise. He wore one of the utilitarian coveralls employed by Survey personnel, with red cross patches on the chest and shoulder, marking him as a medic. The other was a middle-aged Ivyn dressed in civilian clothes marginally more posh than might be expected in the wilderness of Beringia, but suited to the conditions.
Regarding them from a more sheltered position overlooking the meadow, Ty had mixed feelings. Any assistance was, of course, welcome. He had known better than to expect a thunderous show of force. Blue’s high political councils, having been caught badly off guard, and having lost the first round to their Red counterparts, would still be assessing the situation and thinking about their options. For public consumption, they were probably characterizing the Seven as a plain vanilla Survey team that had fallen victim to an ambush. They didn’t want to undercut that story now by sending in an undeniably military force.
The name printed on the Camite’s uniform was Hope, which probably meant that, like many Camites, he only used one name. Bent under a medical pack, he went directly to Kath. Beled and Bard were descending to the meadow to help the Teklan pack up the gliders.
The Ivyn singled out Ty from a distance and approached him. The family name on his uniform was Esa and he introduced himself as Arjun. The former was an acronym frequently seen in the background of shots in the Epic, standing for “European Space Agency.” It had become a common name. Ty considered asking Arjun flat out who he was and what he did for a living that caused him to show up in circumstances like these. But he knew it would get him nowhere. The man would have some bland answer cued up. He was probably some kind of high-powered intelligence analyst with five advanced degrees.
“How’s this all playing up on the ring?” Ty asked him. “Do I even want to know?”
The mere question caused Arjun to break eye contact and gaze out over the sea.
“That bad?” Ty prompted him.
“You know the Aretaics,” Arjun said.
“They made it into grand opera, eh?”
“That’s as good a description as any. I am still coming to grips with it. Of course, we rarely see content from the Red side of the ring.”
“Just the propaganda,” Ty said.
“Yes, and when we see that, we have a laugh at the overwrought style, the baroque production values, while harboring an inner sense of anxiety that some people within Blue might—”
“Might actually believe their shit?”
“Exactly.”
“So Red did broadcast it.”
Arjun nodded. “Live, to the whole ring.”
“Sorry I missed the show. We bolted before the actual contact. It seemed like as good a time as any.”
“That was a fine tactic,” Arjun replied, “and saved you a great deal of annoyance.”
“How do you mean?”
Arjun turned to look directly at him. “The Diggers,” he said, “were as receptive to Red’s overtures as they were hostile to yours.”