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.”