“It's no great mystery. They're eavesdropping on you, listening in.”
“I'm sure they're not, you've seen how careful I am. Insanely paranoid, I believe you said. If they knew where the Refuge was, they'd have come for us a long time ago.”
“Then the answer's obvious. Omn knows and sees everything.”
From the flicker of his smile, it appeared her words had amused him. “Of course. That would explain it.”
“Why are we even alive? Why did the other three harpoons miss us?”
“I assume because Concordance don't want us dead yet. They brought us down so they could capture us.”
“Or they want the memory fragments.”
Ondo shook his head, closed his eyes. “They could have retrieved the artefacts any time they wanted. This is about us.”
Another idea occurred to her. “If they knew about the fragments, maybe they were manipulating my father all along, letting him make his discoveries so they would reach you, make you come here.”
“It is possible. Me or someone else, some other enemy of Concordance.”
He was shivering in her arms; she needed to raise his body temperature. The lander was equipped with environmental suits for use if it lost atmospheric integrity or, in extremis, if they needed to carry out EVA manoeuvres. The suit would be clumsy to wear but would give Ondo a degree of protection. A couple of hours outside, and she'd need one too, but for now her augmentations protected her. She propped Ondo up against a bulkhead and retrieved a suit from its locker, vacuum-sealed to minimize its volume. She helped him into it, feeding his arms into the sleeves and closing up the seals, like he was a child and she his mother helping him get dressed.
“What do we do now?” she spoke out loud as she worked, as if it was something of little importance. “They've destroyed the Dragon. We're alone.”
“Most likely the Dragon detected what was happening to us and went into a stealth/evasion pattern. It's possible it's simply hiding itself.”
“Where?”
“Hard to say. I gave its Mind considerable autonomy to act in these situations. Preprograming an adequate response is basically impossible, and its capacity for analysis and strategy is considerable. Besides, it would be a risk if we knew exactly what it was up to; if we did, then potentially others could find out from us. If it's out there, we still have a chance.”
“So, we sit and wait?”
“The Walker is waiting for us at the pole. I think we should go and see what he wants.”
She studied the distant scene, seeing it from overhead through the eyes of an atmospheric nanosensor. The Walker stood unmoving in front of his buried ship. Clearly waiting for them. “I don't like it. We're safer here.”
“It's not like you to be cautious,” said Ondo. “I thought that was what I brought to the relationship.”
“There's taking the attack to them and then there's suicide. This ship gives us some shelter.”
“Not enough. It's broken beyond repair and our food supplies will run out very quickly. Sooner or later we have to confront him, especially if the Dragon has been destroyed. His ship is the only way off this planet. Perhaps there is something going on here we don't understand. Perhaps this Walker has gone rogue, isn't what we think. In my encounters with them, I've sometimes had the impression that there are suppressed, conflicting personality traits within them. Some repressed side-effect of their indoctrination. Or, then again, if he is what we think, and he's summoned other Concordance forces, we should move before they get here.”
With her help, he climbed to his feet. His core temperature still wasn't as high as she'd like it to be, but it was stabilizing. Moving would be good for him. The air outside the ship was frozen cold, but it was mercifully still, with no wind-chill. At least they'd be safe from the ice-wolves that had once prowled the snows. They'd even have the weak light and heat of the sun on them for the five kilometre trek to the pole. The thought of that, her homeworld sun, the sun of her childhood, shining on her skin once more, was an appealing prospect.
They scavenged what few supplies of food and water they could from the wreckage. They obviously had access to an unlimited supply of ice, but she was wary of lowering Ondo's core temperature again if he consumed it. What else could they take that might be useful? Not much. The craft had been equipped with a rack of handguns and rifles, but these had been thrown clear in the harpoon strike.
She climbed out of the jagged hole in the lander's voidhull and jumped down to the ice. The craft's remaining blaster array was still attached. Bracing her foot against it, she wrenched one of the barrels and its firing mechanism free from its turret. It would do as a makeshift weapon. It would have been too heavy for any normal person to use, unless they were from some seriously high-g world, but she was able to cradle it in her left arm with relative ease. There was no mechanical trigger, but there were electronic control systems she could interface with to make the weapon fire. It retained enough charge for a few shots. Holding it made her feel a little bit better about facing the Walker.
She helped Ondo out of the ship and they set off. The sliver of sun was low in the north, canted onto its side like the thinnest sliver of a new moon. A shooting star arced across the velvet sky and winked out. Perhaps it was some Concordance orbital artefact burning up, or one of Ondo's, or just some random speck of space dust. The hazy light gave the scene a sense of impossible distances, as if the distant peaks and folds in the ice were unreachable, mystical lands. Their path looked clear enough though: head south for the pole and the waiting
