Tundra 37 (12 page)

Brentwood remained silent and Gemme wondered what he thought about this new piece of information. She always suspected the Legacys had special treatment, but to make each generation a lieutenant based on bloodline was utterly wrong.

Luna sighed. “You don’t know what’s like, not being better than the people that came before you, always failing expectations when
others
got better test scores.”

Gemme knew just who the “others” Luna had referred to with such resentment was: her. She brought her hand up to the place where Luna had shoved her all those years back. Even though her entire body was numb from cold, she still remembered the raw ache of the bruise.

Luna continued, “I had planned to meet with the Seers. My family had one more ticket to visit them, as part of the bargain they’d struck with my ancestor, Thadious Legacy. Before the comet shower hit, I was going to try to convince them I was still worthy.”

Brentwood’s voice was soft. “Why didn’t you?”

Luna paused as if considering how much to tell him. “I gave my ticket up for something I wanted more: a favor that didn’t pan out. Besides, with the ship crashed, it didn’t matter.”

Gemme froze, unable to listen further. If Luna had put her pairing with Brentwood before her career, then she wanted the man more than anything.

Gemme collected her miniscreen with shaky fingers. Did she want Brentwood enough to get in Luna’s way?

Emergency bays at full capacity.

Fusion Reactor unstable.

Lieutenants Smith, Levingston, and Kohler unresponsive.

Mestasis fought down an overwhelming wave of panic as she sorted through the upsetting reports. So many problems and Abysme ignored all of them, useless as a baby with her face turned toward the orb. Had her sister lost her mind? Addressing the beacon with the lieutenant present defied the very rule system they’d constructed with the scientists who’d discovered the orb. Either Abysme hadn’t sensed the lieutenant’s presence, or she didn’t care. Either way her sister was losing control.

An incoming message beeped on the mainframe and Mestasis brought up the location of the transmission. Alpha Blue! Thank the stars they were still alive.

Lieutenant Brentwood’s sharp features flashed in her mind as he spoke. “First day successful. We’ve made good time, and the conditions are bearable.”

The muscles in his face twitched slightly and Mestasis registered the facial patterns as disappointment. “No sign of life or anything else besides snow. Ms. Legacy is on the lookout and has taken samples. If all goes well, we’ll reach the mining site in two days.”

Mestasis sent a response.
Good work, Lieutenant. Keep us posted.
She hid the fact that Abysme wasn’t responding by amplifying her voice to like both of theirs combined. No need for the lieutenant to know. He had enough on his mind and she needed him focused.

The message flicked off and Mestasis breathed a sigh of relief. At least one aspect of the day was successful. As long as Alpha Blue pushed on, she had hope for the colony and her own salvation. If the team failed, she’d failed them all.

Gemme woke to sniffling. Did Tech snore? How could she hear him all the way across camp?

She twisted in her thermal cocoon and poked her head out. The energy cell throbbed with warmth from the back of her tent, but her breath still blossomed in the air. Sunlight filtered through the nylon, casting a shadow rivaling the size of the landrover on the northern side.

A quick intake of air rode the wind, followed by a watery snort. Gemme shot up on her elbows, wondering if whatever lurked outside her tent could smell her rising fear. Trying not to make a sound, she dug in her backpack for the laser she’d slipped on the bottom.

She pulled out soybean wafers, extra fleece pants, and a skin regenerizer she’d lifted from the emergency bay, then scraped the bottom of her bag. Where did it go? The shadow grew larger, a mound of writhing snakes pressing against the nylon. Her throat constricted as a clamp squeezed down on her heart.

Her alarm beeped, the sound jarringly loud and alien, disturbing the calm of the morning. The beast lurched back, sniffed, and then pounded the snow as it thrust its head underneath the nylon tarp.

A snout, long as an alligator’s, poked through the bottom of the fabric. Gemme wiggled out of her thermal cocoon and inched back on her rear. She opened her mouth to scream, but terror sucked the air out of her lungs. The beast pushed itself in farther and a hide of tentacles filled the tent, the jiggling appendages casting strange medusa-like shadows on the ceiling. The beast reeked like the dead salmon in the hydraulics tank.

There’s your moving snowdrift.

Gemme scrambled back until the cold zipper pressed against her neck. The tentacles stretched, wrapping themselves around her hairbrush, her boot, and an empty water bottle, the tip wiggling into the spout. Transfixed, Gemme blinked to get herself moving, doing something. She fumbled behind her until her shaky fingers located the bottom of the zipper. She yanked it up, the zipper catching on the fabric halfway up.

The sound lured a sticky tendril across the floor. Suction cups dotted the end, opening and closing like tiny mouths gulping for air. The tentacle curled, feeling around her sock. Gemme pressed her back against the fabric and pushed herself through the hole, rolling backward into the center of camp.

“Couldn’t sleep, Aphrodite?” Tech sat by the remnants of the fire, a half-eaten protein bar in his hand. He stared at her with an eyebrow quirked.

“Something—Something’s in—”

“Well, spit it out.”

She didn’t have to. The tentacle poked through the hole in the zipper, rising like a sea monster from the depths of the Atlantic.

“Emergency Code 43!” Tech shouted, “Get out of your tents!”

He pulled Gemme back and they huddled behind the container he’d sat on. The tentacle attached itself to the tent spike and yanked it out.

She grabbed Tech’s arm. “Where’s your laser?”

“In my tent.”

“Great place for it, Mr. Scientist.”

Brentwood emerged from his tent half dressed in a rumpled shirt and polar fleece night pants. “Code 43?”

“Over there!” The plastic collapsed on top of the tentacle horde and the beast let out a whirring cry. The beast shook until the tent fell off.

Luna screamed, her voice ripping Gemme’s ears in half. Gemme spun around thinking another beast had its tentacles in her hair. But she wasn’t so lucky. Luna stood in her running jumpsuit complete with a fuzzy headband and pink leg warmers-violating uniform code. Where did she get that kind of extravagance anyway? She looked like she’d just returned from a brisk morning jog. Her voice startled the beast, and it took off, scampering on a thousand small paws over the snowdrift.

“Don’t stand there, catch it!”

Gemme twisted around and gaped. Luna shouted at her, of all people.

Watching the beast skitter away, Gemme noticed the sun glaring off of something on its back. The picture of her and Ferris stuck to one of the top tentacles along with two of her soybeans wafers and her miniscreen, which had her entire life on it, including the mineral analyzer she’d need to find the deposit.

Before Gemme could reason with herself, she bolted after the creature. Snow crunched underneath her socks as she hustled up the mound. The landscape looked puffy and soft from the sight panel, but in reality the white ice crystals had hardened like rock, stinging her soles. She reached the top of the snowdrift, spotted the tentacle horde and skidded down the other side on the glacial surface, ignoring her throbbing feet.

The beast ran in a diagonal line to a crevice in the snow. Gemme careened over the ice and lunged toward it, wondering how she’d ever stop it, never mind haul it back to camp for Luna.

She reached out as she sprinted and grabbed a tentacle. The membrane slipped through her fingers like wet jelly. A gelatinous residue coated her palm. The miniscreen stuck like a fly in a spider’s web to its back, the tentacles oozing over it until it sunk deep within the writhing mass. The beast slowed down and she increased her pace, her lungs burning raw. She jabbed her arm into the tentacles. Her fingers brushed against a hard surface in the squiggly mass. She almost had it. Gemme thrust her arm in deeper, but strong arms wrapped around her, pulling her back just as the beast disappeared.

“Whoa there! You almost fell in.” Brentwood clutched her against his chest, his breath heaving in her hair. His arms wrapped around her shoulders as her feet kicked over the edge. The crevice had come up sooner than she thought, plunging three meters down into a splash of ice water. If she’d grabbed onto the beast, she’d gone right over the edge with it. Brentwood saved her life.

“My miniscreen, my picture, it took everything.”

“None of those things are more important than your life, Gemme.”

The way her first name fell off his tongue made her twirl around in his arms. Her hands rested on his chest, grasping his rumpled shirt. His normally combed hair stood up in a massive wave above his eyes. His arms tightened around her, as if she’d slip right from his fingers into the ice waters below. She melted into his embrace, the mingling warmth of their bodies heating up. The feeling of the electromagnetic field returned, stronger this time, sizzling the air around them.

He smoothed back her hair and the gesture resonated deeply inside him, like he’d done it a thousand times before. His warm breath tickled her cheek. Gemme’s lips trembled in anticipation. The moment felt inevitable, each second pulsing forward to bring them here, at the edge of this world, at the beginning of their own.

“You lost my specimen!” Luna’s voice screeched behind them. Brentwood released Gemme as if Luna had caught them committing a crime. Cold wind blew where he once held her and Gemme shivered, crossing her arms against her chest.

Luna slid on the ice, looking like a figure skater in a winter wonderland. Gemme wondered how she managed to keep her cheeks rosy in just the right place and her lips red as the cherries in the biodome.

“How could you let it get away?” Luna’s bright blue eyes seared through hers like lasers.

A hard rock formed in Gemme’s stomach and she wanted to spit it out in Luna’s face. “I almost fell over the edge trying to catch it.”

Luna gazed down into the crevice like an evil stepsister contemplating an appropriate demise for her rival. “You could have at least ripped off a tentacle.”

Brentwood stepped between them. “Ms. Legacy, I’ll handle this. Get back to camp and inform Tech to start packing. We have another long ride ahead of us.” Was Brentwood trying to get rid of her? Gemme fidgeted, feeling ice crystals form inside her nostrils.

“Of course. You know the implications of this don’t you?” Luna grinned at Brentwood, batting her eyelashes.

Gemme stared and Brentwood shrugged.

“There must be an entire ocean underneath us, supporting life.”

“Very interesting, Luna, but right now I must tend to Gemme.”

Luna looked like she’d swallowed one of her samples by accident. “Right. I’ll speak with you back at camp.”

She cuffed Gemme on the arm. “We’re lucky you didn’t jump, dear.”

Anger rose inside Gemme in a rip current. Why didn’t Luna pursue the beast herself? She was the biologist. Gemme wiped her palm on Luna’s jogging suit, the pink staining red with gel. “Oh, I almost forgot. Here’s your sample.”

Luna stared, her eyes wide. She opened her mouth to respond, but Brentwood intervened. “Wonderful! See, you did get a sample.”

Gemme couldn’t tell if he tried to lighten the mood, or if he truly thought the goop would suffice. Whatever the case, she made sure to slather her with every last bit of it.

Luna clamped her mouth shut, flaring her eyes. Brentwood gently nudged her forward, his hand on her arm. “You should get back to camp before the sample dries up.”

“Certainly, Lieutenant.” Luna stormed off with no smile this time. Gemme shivered, balancing from foot to foot to keep ice forming on her toes. If she weren’t freezing her butt off, she would have enjoyed the scene much more.

“My goodness, you aren’t even wearing your boots!” Brentwood offered his arms. “If I may?”

Gemme froze, not understanding what he referred to. Before she could react, he scooped her up, sliding an arm underneath her knees and another behind her neck. He lifted her as if she weighed nothing, and her frozen feet rose from the ground. She molded into his embrace.

“Better?”

“Much, thank you.” Embarrassment flushed her cheeks. Here she was in the middle of nowhere with her frizzy morning hair, no coat, and her dirty socks from yesterday crusted with snow. She probably even had bad morning breath. Quite the adventurer, she was.

A brisk wind blew around them and Gemme hid her face in his shirt, feeling self-conscious and more than a little excited to have him hold her again.

His boots crunched in the snow as he hiked back to camp. “I’ll have Tech take a look at your feet. His wife’s a medic, so he knows more about frostbite than I do.”

“Thank you.” She heard his heartbeat pounding in his chest with each step each took. Wrapping her arms around his neck, she wished the moment could last forever.

Holding Gemme made Brentwood’s skin hot as fire in a land of ice. He forced platonic thoughts into his composure as she wrapped her arms around him, her soft skin brushing against the back of his neck. What kind of lieutenant would he be if he took advantage of one of the members of his team on the most important mission he’d ever had?

Gemme nuzzled against him, and he focused on the remaining steps to camp. Her brave rush to confront the beast both surprised and impressed him, and he couldn’t imagine the terror of waking up with a monster in her tent. She had more strength than some of the other lieutenants, hidden under such soft shyness and modesty.

She looked toward camp, her gaze growing distant as if she had something on her mind.

“You doing okay?”

“Yeah. I can almost feel my toes.”