“No reason,” I say. “Just a feeling, really.”
“A feeling, huh? That’s a good way to pick an outfit for a first date, but it’s a strange way to pick a weapon, isn’t it?”
Okay. Apparently she’s not going to let this go.
“My feeling, specifically, was that I don’t think burners are likely to be effective against creepers.”
“Oh. Speaking from personal experience?”
I shrug. I can’t see her face through her mirrored visor, but there’s definitely a hint of worry in her voice.
“Not really. But when we were in the armory, I asked myself what I’d usually pick out for something like this.”
She cocks her head to one side. “Well?”
“A burner. Definitely a burner. The max rate of fire on this thing I’m carrying is one round per second, and it’s heavy as shit. I mean, not nearly as heavy as all that stupid armor, but still.”
“I don’t get it.”
I smile, though she can’t see it behind my rebreather. “Doing what I usually do has gotten me taken down by these things twice now. So, this time I did the opposite.”
She nods. “Got it. That’s very Zen of you, Barnes.”
“Well, I do keep getting reincarnated.”
“True,” she says. “Working your way toward Nirvana, right?”
This seems like a weird time for banter, but okay. I shake my head. “I don’t think so. I keep expecting to come back as a tapeworm or something.”
“But every time, you wake up as you. Maybe Mickey Barnes is as low as you can go, karmically speaking.”
I look around. Nothing important seems to be happening.
“Yeah,” I say. “I guess so.”
Dugan is standing almost waist-deep in the snow twenty meters or so away, still jawing with Berto. I could tell him where he can find plenty of creepers—or at least one really big one—but I’m guessing that wouldn’t go over well with anyone. I look up. It’s a beautiful night, by Niflheim standards. The sky is clear and deep and black. There’s enough light bleeding off from the dome to make it so that only a few stars are visible, but the ones that are there are hard, bright bits of silver.
“You know,” Cat says, “I don’t think we’ve ever really talked before, have we?”
I look back down at her. She’s watching Dugan, one hand on her burner.
“No,” I say. “Not that I remember, anyway.”
“That’s weird, isn’t it? Have you been avoiding me?”
I’m about to tell her that, no, it’s not weird that we’ve never spoken, because half the people on the Drakkar thought I was some kind of abomination, and half the rest just found me generally creepy, and so for the past nine years I’ve never really reached out to anybody who didn’t reach out to me first—which she apparently never did. Before I can get into all that, though, the whine of gravitics rises and then dies away as Nasha sweeps by, maybe sixty meters overhead.
“Come on,” Dugan says over the comm. “We’re moving.”
We trudge north, away from the dome and toward the place where I emerged from the tunnels this morning. What would Dugan do if my gigantic friend popped up out of the snow in front of him?
“Something funny?” Cat asks.
“Not really,” I say. “I was just thinking of something.”
“Tell me,” she says. “I’m bored.”
I can’t tell her, of course. I also can’t tell her that I can’t tell her, because then I’d have to tell her why I can’t tell her. I don’t have to figure out where I’m going with that one, though, because just then Dugan starts yelling. Yelling, and dancing.
“Hey,” Cat says. “What the…”
That’s when Dugan lifts his right leg up out of the snow, and I see that it’s wrapped in creeper. There are divots in the armor where the thing’s pointy little feet are dug in, and its mandibles are working on the seam at the back of his knee.
Things happen quickly now. The other two goons, who have been flanking Dugan for the past ten minutes, turn their burners on his leg. He seems to be encouraging them at first, but then the armor starts glowing and the creeper is still chewing and its legs dig deeper and deeper into the softening armor and as a gout of live steam rises up from the snow to hide them, Dugan’s yelling turns into screaming turns into a wordless shriek. I spin half around. Maybe thirty meters off, a hunk of gray granite juts out of the snow. I start running.
Running in snowshoes is not efficient, and it is not fun. I haven’t gone three steps before I stumble and fall face-first into the snow. I’m flailing, expecting every second to feel a creeper’s mandibles sinking into the back of my neck, when a powered gauntlet grabs me by the arm and hauls me to my feet.
“Come on,” Cat says. “Move!”
She gives me a shove in the back, and I almost fall again before stumbling forward. I can hear Cat slogging after me, and farther away the cursing and then screaming of the other two goons. I risk a glance back. The steam is being carried away on a stiff north wind. Dugan is gone—dragged under the snow, I guess. The two from Security are still on their feet, but they’re wearing a couple of creepers each, and I’m guessing that won’t last long.
I scramble up onto the rock, reach over my shoulder for the accelerator, and bring it to bear, wincing as my left hand takes the weight of the barrel. A second later, Cat climbs up beside me. We’re on a granite island maybe three meters across, sticking up a half meter or so above the snow. A creeper pokes its head up, almost close enough for me to touch. I aim and fire. The kick of the accelerator pushes me back into Cat, and in the same instant the creeper’s first three segments explode into a hail of shrapnel.
“Shit,” Cat says. “Zen for the win, huh?”
The other Security goons are down now, though I think I can still see some thrashing going on under the snow. I open my mouth to speak, but then a rising screech of gravitics announces Berto’s arrival. Twin spotlights illuminate first us, then the place where Dugan and the others went down.
“Have you got a sample?” Berto asks over the comm.
“Part of one.”
I hop down off the rock and grab what’s left of the creeper. Berto’s grapple is already descending. I climb back up and hand the creeper to Cat, then latch the grapple to her armor. She wraps one arm around my chest, and we ascend. When I look down a few seconds later, the top of the rock is swarming with creepers. We’re barely into Berto’s cargo bay when Nasha comes screaming in, low and fast, first two missiles already loosed. The bay door slams, and we ride the first wave of expanding plasma up and away.
010