Suddenly gray. Moisture formed on exposed portions of my armor and blew streaming upward. One point three five seconds later I saw the ground, dark circles packed tight. Bigger, and therefore closer, than I liked. A surge of adrenaline surprised me; I must have gotten too used to falling. I turned my head, trying to look straight down past Seivarden’s shoulder to what lay directly below us.
My armor was made to spread out the force of a bullet’s impact, bleed some of it away as heat. It was theoretically impenetrable, but I could still be injured or even killed with the application of sufficient force. I’d suffered broken bones, lost bodies under an unrelenting hail of bullets. I wasn’t sure what the friction of decelerating would do to my armor, or to me; I had some skeletal and muscular augmentation, but whether it would be sufficient for this, I had no idea. I was unable to calculate just exactly how fast we were going, just exactly how much energy needed to be bled away to slow to a survivable speed, how hot it would get inside and outside my armor. And unarmored, Seivarden wouldn’t be able to assist.
Of course, if I had still been what I once was, it wouldn’t matter. This wouldn’t have been my only body. I couldn’t help thinking I should have let Seivarden fall. Shouldn’t have jumped. Falling, I still didn’t know why I had done it. But at the moment of choice I had found I couldn’t walk away.
By then I knew our distance in centimeters. “Five seconds,” I said, shouted, above the wind. By then it was four. If we were very, very lucky we’d fall straight into the tube below us and I’d push my hands and feet against the walls. If we were very, very lucky the heat from the friction wouldn’t burn unarmored Seivarden too badly. If I was even luckier I’d only break my wrists and ankles. All of it struck me as unlikely, but the omens would fall as Amaat intended.
Falling didn’t bother me. I could fall forever and not be hurt. It’s stopping that’s the problem. “Three seconds,” I said.
“Breq,” Seivarden said, a gasping sob. “Please.”
Some answers I would never have. I abandoned what calculations I was still making. I didn’t know why I had jumped but at that moment it no longer mattered, at that moment there was nothing else. “Whatever you do”—one second—“don’t let go.”
Darkness. No impact. I thrust out my arms, which were immediately forced upward, wrists and one ankle breaking on impact despite my armor’s reinforcement, tendons and muscles tearing, and we began a tumble sideways. Despite the pain I pulled my arms and legs in and reached and kicked out again, quickly, steadying us the instant after. Something in my right leg broke as I did, but I couldn’t afford to worry about it. Centimeter by centimeter we slowed.
I could no longer control my hands or feet, could only push against the walls and hope we wouldn’t be pushed off balance again, and fall helpless, headfirst, to our deaths. The pain was sharp, blinding, blocking out everything except numbers—a distance (estimated) decreasing by centimeters (also estimated); speed (estimated) decreasing; external armor temperature (increasing at my extremities, possible danger of exceeding acceptable parameters, possible resulting injury), but the numbers were near-meaningless to me, the pain was louder, more immediate, than anything else.
But the numbers were important. A comparison of distance and our rate of deceleration suggested disaster ahead. I tried to take a deep breath, found I was incapable of it, and tried to push harder against the walls.
I have no memory of the rest of the descent.
I woke, on my back, in pain. My hands and arms, my shoulders. Feet and legs. In front of me—directly above—a circle of gray light. “Seivarden,” I tried to say, but it came out as a convulsive sigh that echoed just slightly against the walls. “Seivarden.” The name came out this time, but barely audible, and distorted by my armor. I dropped the armor and tried speaking again, managing this time to engage my voice. “Seivarden.”
I raised my head, just slightly. In the dim light from above I saw that I lay on the ground, knees bent and turned to one side, the right leg at a disturbing angle, my arms straight beside my body. I tried to move a finger, failed. A hand. Failed—of course. I tried shifting my right leg, which responded with more pain.
There was no one here but me. Nothing here but me—I didn’t see my pack.
At one time, if there had been a Radchaai ship in orbit, I could have contacted it, easy as thought. But if I had been anywhere a Radchaai ship was likely to be, this would never have happened.
If I had left Seivarden in the snow, this would never have happened.
I had been so close. After twenty years of planning and working, of maneuvering, two steps forward here, a step backward there, slowly, patiently, against all likelihood I had gotten this far. So many times I had made a throw like this, not only my success at hazard, but my life, and each time I had won, or at least not lost in any way that prevented me from trying again.