The Freezer Read online

  My breath had even begun to mist on my helmet. The fan had kicked on to clear it, and that was making my face even colder.

  I swore.

  There was nothing there.

  * * *

  I searched for thirty minutes, widening the radius with each circuit. I had gone over a very large area by the time I started to think about cutting my losses and heading back.

  And then my communit beeped.

  * * *

  Someone was nearby, close enough to be communicating suit to suit. It meant within a kilometer, two at the most.

  But he didn’t say a thing.

  I could hear breathing.

  “Who is it?” I finally said between clenched teeth. I had to force them not to chatter. There was no one around. The uneven terrain could easily hide someone though.

  It wasn’t a pleasant thought.

  The pistol was on my thigh, thankfully. Back at The Freezer I had loosened the holster and belted it to the outside of my suit. I was on an investigation, after all, and I’d learned that lesson before.

  I drew the weapon.

  The breathing continued.

  I wished the damned suit would tell me what direction the signal was coming from, however it was just a basic design. Nothing fancy. A soldier’s suit, on the other hand, would not only provide such information, it would also jam the frequency, send an audio response to stun and short out the other’s nervous system, identify his precise location and provide the coordinates for a weapons’ assault.

  All within an instant of giving the command.

  I, unfortunately, had to do this the old-fashioned way.

  I held the weapon in my left hand as I powered up the vehicle and set the throttle. Then I switched the pistol to my right. I continued my search pattern, this time looking for a figure on the ice.

  “You won’t find me,” a voice growled in my helmet. There was a mechanical distortion and I couldn’t identify the speaker.

  “Did you kill Aoki Tali?” I whispered, still searching.

  No response.

  “And Bojdl? Shaheen?” I said in a rasp. “Did you kill them too?”

  Still nothing.

  And then a laugh. A mechanical laugh, almost a bark. A robot bark.

  I would have laughed myself if the situation had been different.

  The Voice: “You have no idea what the CCF has gotten you into. You shouldn’t have come here.”

  “Why?”

  “The only thing here for you is death.”

  “What was Aoki going to tell—”

  Without warning something slammed into me from the side and I flew from the icetrack. The lower gravity resulted in a long and low trajectory, but the hit had been hard. I wondered absently if some of my ribs had been broken.

  But I had seen a flash of what hit me.

  A figure in a white vacsuit.

  Nearly perfectly camouflaged on this damned moon.

  And my pistol had arced away after the collision.

  * * *

  I skidded ten meters on the ice when I hit, grunted when I landed and by the time I’d stopped my legs were twisted beneath me and I had hunched forward awkwardly. Leaning back, I finally toppled over to relieve the pressure on them.

  I groaned in agony. It felt as though another icetrack had rammed me. I’d seen my attacker, however, and he’d been on foot.

  Pushing up from the ice, I searched for my pistol. It might be my only hope in this situation...

  There it was. Black grip against ice. Easy to see. About twenty meters away and sticking straight up. The muzzle had hit first and it was buried to the hilt.

  I took several deep breaths, trying to reorient myself, and frantically searched the area for the figure. Even if he were close I might not see him. That suit had been remarkably effective in the environment.

  I crouched and sighted the weapon again. Three big steps, a huge leap, and I sailed toward my target. In the lower gravity I barely touched ice before I landed, rolled and scooped up the pistol.

  It felt good in my hand.

  “You think you can shoot me?”

  An image of Shaheen strobed through my brain, and I ground my teeth. “Gonna try my best.”

  “That won’t be good enough.”

  Crouching again, I searched in vain. No one was near. The ice in that area was relatively smooth, but there were some large blocks protruding upward.

  He might be there.

  I only got three steps toward the nearest before he hit me again.

  It was harder this time. I landed on my side and slid over the broken surface. Suddenly, the potential for a rip in the vacsuit became very real. The cracks were uneven and I was bouncing slightly as I skidded.

  Thankfully I had kept a tight grip on the weapon this time.

  As I slid, I aimed in my assailant’s general direction and pulled the trigger. I had no idea if I was close or not, but I needed to keep him wary and less confident when he made his attacks.

  The energy blasts sizzled across the ice, barely half a meter above it, and flashed away into the distance. The pulse reflected upward from the ice below. Its heat left a trail as it melted the surface.

  A whisper came to me: “That’s not where I am anymore.”

  I had come to a stop and raised myself on my left elbow. My right hand still clutched the pistol.

  I was breathing hard from the pounding I’d taken. Another hit like that might end it for me.

  Looking around, I had to stifle a gasp.

  The icetrack was only a few meters away.

  The last impact had launched me back toward the vehicle.

  I started running before I was upright. Beginning in a squat, I started to build up speed toward the icetrack. I jumped for it and fired blindly behind me.

  It might have saved my life.

  A flash of white moved across the ice beside me. My weapon had forced him to change direction...and there he was...

  I hit the icetrack and slammed the throttle up. The vehicle spun in a ninety-degree skid and then surged forward.

  I frowned. My vision was blurry because of the beating. I hoped I didn’t have a concussion. The guy was sprinting in a half crouch across the ice, darting from side to side so fast he was a blur, and it was hard to target him properly.

  Aiming with my right hand while steering with my left, I fired three more times.

  Damn!

  He had dodged at the exact moment I’d squeezed the trigger.

  I followed his path and an instant later he leaped over something on the ice.

  I was only ten meters behind him now—the vehicle was on full throttle and had closed the distance—and suddenly I realized what he’d jumped over.

  A chasm.

  Fissure.

  Fuck! He’d led me right to it then jumped over the thing.

  I frantically holstered my weapon and pushed off the icetrack as it soared into the yawning fracture, but I followed a moment later.

  * * *

  The vehicle slammed into the far wall and spun end over end as it fell. Pieces flew away from it and I watched them disappear into the darkness below.

  The crack was very deep.

  I hit hard and scrabbled for purchase. Outcroppings and ledges crisscrossed the wall in an intricate pattern, but everything was too small and slippery to get a good grasp on. I slid downward in short jerks, unable to find a good place to arrest my movement.

  I was gasping for air now as I struggled to survive. The end was very near. If I couldn’t stop myself I would follow my icetrack downward...

  Searching behind me on the chasm’s other wall, I finally saw a ledge. It was a few meters below me and on the other side.

 
I bent my legs and gave a massive push off the ice. I was out over the emptiness again, but thanks to the lower gravity I moved much farther than I otherwise would have. I crashed into the far wall and tumbled down...

  And landed on the ledge on my left shoulder. I swore loudly at the jolt.

  That had hurt, but at least I was alive.

  And then I remembered my suit. I anxiously searched myself, expecting to see a fountain of frosty air as it vented out, but there was nothing.

  I fell back and exhaled forcefully, relieved. Nothing.

  I might very well die here in this fissure if I couldn’t find a way up.

  The surface was a good fifteen meters above and the ice impossible to grasp. My equipment—including rope and crampons—was in a tangled pile of debris at the bottom of the fracture, which might very well be hundreds of meters down.

  But another worry ached at the back of my brain. Even if I made it to the surface, how would I get back to The Freezer?

  Chapter Fourteen

  The ledge was a meter wide and four long. The crevasse itself was three or four times that length. The walls were pitted and rough, but there were no protrusions large enough to pull myself upward with. Jupiter loomed over me. Uncaring. Unflinching. My own stupidity had gotten me into this mess; now I had to get myself out or I’d be dead in a matter of hours.

  Dead from a lack of oxygen, radiation exposure or a fall into a narrowing crevasse complete with teethlike ice stalagmites to greet me at my final impact.

  None of the options were very appealing.

  The lip of the fissure was fifteen meters above me. I could jump maybe five in this gravity. It was difficult to see the wall that far above my current position, so I decided to make a practice attempt.

  Squatting as low as possible, I straightened my legs quickly and jumped. Reaching up, I quickly scanned the wall as it streaked past my visor.

  Just more of the same.

  Nothing to grab.

  As I fell, I looked downward to make sure I landed back on the ledge. It had seemed wide enough when I’d jumped, but now as I descended, I realized that I wasn’t coming straight down. I was on a slight angle toward the chasm.

  I swore as I hit, one foot dangling over the abyss. I threw myself toward the ledge and hauled my legs back up. A section of it collapsed right under me. Rolling frantically to avoid falling, I suddenly found myself on a much smaller section of ice.

  It was not stable.

  If I didn’t do something within seconds I was going to fall to my death.

  * * *

  I needed a tool to grab the wall with when the ledge collapsed. A pick, a spike, a knife, anything. I searched myself frantically, hoping there was something in a pocket or on a belt somewhere. Suits are vulnerable to sharp objects, however, and there was nothing there. Just my datachip reader in a thigh pouch.

  Resigned, I stared at the ice under my feet and prepared myself. When it began to fall, I would have to try to hold on to something.

  Even as I thought it, I knew it was hopeless.

  And then I noticed my thigh.

  The holster, and my pistol.

  Of course.

  I drew the weapon.

  The ice at my feet begin to tremble.

  “Oh, shit,” I mumbled.

  Aiming at the ice wall directly next to me, I pulled the trigger and the weapon bucked in my hand. A bolt of energy sizzled into the ice and I blocked my visor with my left arm as shards sprayed in all directions. Steam surged from the wall and obscured everything around me.

  The ledge suddenly dropped and I cried out as I thrust my left arm into the roiling cloud.

  I hung suspended like that as the ice crashed into darkness below and joined the wreckage of my icetrack somewhere in the pit. I had buried my arm right to my shoulder. The blast from my pistol had melted a hole a meter into solid ice. The rest of my body hung free.

  Now came the hard part.

  I picked a spot in the wall slightly above the first and held the pistol to it, angled inward and slightly down, and fired again. The blast was just as explosive and I had to make sure I didn’t knock myself off. I also had to angle the arm holds enough to withstand my weight without cracking the ice. The fact that gravity was slighter here was the only positive in the situation.

  By the time I had made six more holes, I could support myself with my feet and take some weight off my arms. I gasped in pain as I rested like that for a minute.

  Just another day working in the field. How much longer would I be able to do this? I was thirty-five now and each investigation involved different physical challenges, some of which had caused lasting injuries. The fight with The Torcher was just one. Here was another. But the mental stresses accumulated as well. Each took its toll.

  Above me the edges of the crevasse grew closer and closer as I climbed incrementally to the surface. I half expected to see a helmet stick out over the edge and that voice to continue taunting me. However, the communit was dead. No more signal.

  I was gasping for air by the time I hit the surface. Pulling myself out of the fissure, I lay on the ice and stared up at Jupiter.

  If the killer had attacked then and there, I doubt I could have done a thing to stop him.

  Time passed.

  * * *

  I opened my eyes slowly. Breath misted on my face mask and I shivered uncontrollably. My wrist readout informed me that it was nearly 1800 hours.

  I had been on the surface now for over six hours. The temperature in the suit was ten below. I would freeze to death before midnight like this.

  The chemical heating packs.

  The thought came to me like a stabbing shard of ice.

  There was one in each glove and one in each boot. Crushing them was a simple matter. I simply isolated each and pinched until I heard a pop in my suit. I discovered that the one in my left foot had already ruptured and was perhaps the reason those toes didn’t feel quite as numb as the ones on my other foot.

  My reader was in my left thigh pocket. The map told me that I was 70.6 kilometers from The Freezer.

  Shit.

  * * *

  I didn’t waste any more time. I had to get started back and hope for some miracle before I froze.

  And then my heart nearly exploded, and for an instant I thought the bomb had detonated.

  I had realized something that I should have earlier.

  My extra oxygen was in the icetrack at the bottom of the crevasse and I had almost exhausted my current supply. I had started the trip with an eight-hour bottle on my back—larger than was standard but necessary for this long trip—but now I had only two hours left.

  And then I’d die.

  Jupiter was watching me. I was bouncing along in loping hops, moving quickly and wondering exactly what was going to kill me first. There was also the device in my chest, eating away at my arterial lining. It might just pop right then and there and bleed me dry right into the space around my lungs.

  I had been in some bad spots before, but this...

  I wasn’t shivering so much now that I was moving, which was something anyway. I had gone two kilometers already in just thirty minutes. At this rate I would make it back in...

  Seventeen and a half hours.

  I snorted. It was an absurd distance to make and I wondered why I hadn’t brought a partner. CCF regs required it in space. Why hadn’t I done so here?

  Whatever the reason, I knew that lack of oxygen would kill me by 2000.

  Two more hours of life.

  There was usually a safety margin built into the tanks. Say ten percent. But even so...

  There was a ridiculous disparity between the two times.

  By 1930 hours I had made it seven kilometers, which meant my pace was slowi
ng. I stopped and kneeled on the ice, gasping for air. The increased breathing rate would exhaust my supplies even faster. I had to get it under control.

  It seemed hopeless, but I knew I had to try. I couldn’t give up. Regardless of the fact that I could never make it back, I needed to at least make an effort.

  Shaheen was locked in a freezer herself right now. Dead. Waiting for my decision on what to do with her corpse.

  Just like Aoki Tali, in the freezer in Module C.

  I stared at the ice and tried to calm myself.

  I wondered what my parents had done in those last few moments as their car had plunged into that canyon. Had they held hands? Had they wondered about me as their car twisted, uncontrolled, in that final death spiral?

  My parents and Shaheen.

  Dead.

  Dust.

  Soon I would be joining the elements of the universe and fate would someday recycle me into something else. Perhaps one day my component chemistry would make up a planet or a star. I’d probably freeze solid on this ice for a few thousand millennia at least. Disappear into a fracture eventually, swallowed by the tidal forces of cracking ice. And then the moon would collapse inward into the sun and the rest of the nearby stars when the Big Crunch occurred.

  And my fragile and brittle body would shatter and dissolve and—

  I pushed my fist to the ice and rose on unsteady feet. I couldn’t give up now. I had been through too much.

  But still, I could feel the nagging desire now at the back of my mind. The one that thrust itself into my consciousness on occasion. The one that told me to just give in. Just close my eyes and the pain would go away.

  Just lie on the ice. Jupiter will watch over you.

  I winced as I straightened and stared at the white landscape pitted with cracks and craters and littered with ice boulders and protrusions the size of buildings.

  The Freezer was still so far away.

  But I wouldn’t give in.

  One foot in front of the other. Then the other. Repeat. Continue for as long as possible.

  Continue until everything went dark.

  I didn’t want to pass out lying on the ice. I wanted to pass out while still marching. Perhaps it would be a minor distinction to some, but to me it meant everything.