'I won't be caught,' he said confidently, finding handholds and beginning his climb.
It was already too late anyway; the pirates had begun entry. Even if he left now, he'd never make it back to the safety of the tunnel before they landed. If they had heat-sensors, they couldn't help but notice him, scrambling across the snow.
She poured relaxants into her blood and tried to stay as calm as he obviously felt, but it wasn't working. As the looters passed behind the planet's opposite side, he reached the top of the first tier of window-slits, moving slowly and deliberately, so deliberately that she wanted to scream at him to hurry.
As they hit the edge of the blizzard, Alex reached the broken place in the second story. And just as he tumbled over the edge into the relatively safe darkness behind the, wall, they slowed for descent, playing searchlights all over the entire valley, cutting pathways of brightness across the gloom and thickly felling snow.
Alex took advantage of the lights, moving only after they had passed so that he had a chance to see exactly what lay in the room he had fallen into.
Nothing, actually; it was an empty section with a curved inner and outer wall, one door in the inner wall, and a wall at either end. Roughly half of the curving roof had fallen in; not much, really. Dirt and snow mounded under the break, near the join of end wall and outer wall. The windows were still intact, and the floor was relatively clean. That was where Alex went.
From there he had a superb view of both the caches and the building that the looters were slowly lowering their ship into. Tia watched carefully and decided that her guess about an AI in-system pilot was probably correct; the movements of the ship had the jerkiness she associated with AIs. She kept expecting the looters to pick up Alex's signal, but evidently they were not expecting anyone to find this place, they seemed to be taking no precautions whatsoever. They didn't set any telltales or any alerts, and once they landed the ship and began disembarking from it, they made no effort to maintain silence.
On the other hand, given the truly appalling weather, perhaps they had no reason to be cautious. The worst of the blizzard was moving in, and not even the best of AIs could have landed in that kind of buffeting wind. She was just glad that Alex was under cover.
The storm didn't stop the looters from sending out crews to open up a new cache, however.
She could hardly believe her sensors when she saw, via Alex's camera, a half-dozen lights bobbing down the canyon floor coming towards his hiding place. She switched to IR scan and saw that there were three times that many men, three to a light. None of them were wearing pressure-suits, although they were bundled up in cold weather survival gear.
'I don't believe they're doing that,' Alex muttered.
'Neither do I,' she replied softly. 'That storm is going to be a killing blizzard in a moment. They're out of their minds.'
She scanned up and down the radio wavelengths, looking for the one the looters were using. She found it soon enough; unmistakable by the paint-peeling language being used. While Alex huddled in his shelter, the men below him broke open yet another cache and began shoveling what were probably priceless artifacts into sacks as if they were so many rocks. Tia winced, and thought it likely that Alex was doing the same.
The looters were obviously aware that they were working against time; their haste alone showed the fact that they knew the worst of the storm was yet to come. Whoever was manning the radio back at the ship kept them appraised of their situation, and before long, he began warning them that it was time to start back, before the blizzard got so bad they would never be able to make it the few hundred meters back to their ship.
They would not be able to take the full fury of the storm, but Alex, in his pressure-suit, would be able to handle just about anything. With his heads-up helmet displays, he didn't need to be able to see where he was going. Was it possible that he would be able to sneak back to her under the cover of the blizzard? It was certainly worth a try.
The leader of the looters finally growled an acknowledgement to the radio operator. 'We're comin' in, keep yer boots on,' he snarled, as the lights turned away from the cache and moved slowly back up the canyon. The operator shut up; a moment later a signal beacon shone wanly through the thickening snow at the other end of the tiny valley. Soon the lights of the looters had been swallowed up by darkness and heavy snowfall, then the beacon faded as the snow and wind picked up still more.
'Alex,' she said urgently, 'do you think you can make it back to me?'
'Did you record me corning in?' he asked.
'Yes,' she assured him. 'Every step. I ought to be able to guide you pretty well. You won't get a better chance. Without the storm to cover you, they'll spot you before you've gone a meter.'
He peered out his window again, her camera 'seeing' what he saw, there was nothing out there. Wind and snow made a solid wall just outside the building. Even Tia's IR scan couldn't penetrate it.
I'll try it,' he said. 'You're right. There won't ever be a better chance.'
