“I told you…” A weak smile touched his lips. “Trust the ice.”
“We need to get out of here before they send more.”
“Give me… a moment.” He closed his eyes again. “That was more than I have attempted before. My strength returns, but slowly.”
She checked the rear display. Nothing but the wall of collapsed ice, already settling into its new configuration. The pursuing vehicle and its driver were entombed somewhere beneath that frozen mass.
She should feel guilty. A person had just died because of them. But all she felt was relief, fierce and overwhelming. They were trying to take her mate and cage him. Study him like some kind of specimen. Whatever guilt she might feel could wait until they were safe.
“The ranger station,” he murmured. “How far?”
She consulted the navigation display, then checked it again because the numbers didn’t seem right. “About eighty kilometers south. If this thing holds together that long.”
“It will hold.”
“You can see the future now too?”
“No. But I believe in your ability to will it so.”
Despite the terror of the chase and the exhaustion settling into her bones, she laughed.
“Okay,” she said, settling back into the driver’s seat. “Okay. Eighty kilometers. We can do that.”
She put the crawler back into motion, gentler this time, nursing the damaged engine through the open terrain beyond the valley. The polar wilderness stretched behind them, white and endless and, for the moment, empty of pursuit.
He drifted in and out of consciousness beside her, his body demanding rest to recover from the impossible thing he had done. She let him sleep, one hand occasionally reaching out to touch his arm, and reassure herself that he was still there. Still breathing. Still hers.
The thought caught her off guard. When had she started thinking of him that way? When had this strange, impossible creature become someone she couldn’t imagine losing?
Somewhere between the first moment he said my name and the last time he held me,she admitted to herself.Somewhere in the space of days that felt like a lifetime.
The ranger station appeared on the horizon as the sun began its slow descent, the dimming that signaled the shift from day to night. The structure was small and prefabricated, clearly designed for function rather than comfort. A supply depot and emergency shelter, maintained by the rangers for situations exactly like this one.
She had never actually been inside, though she knew it existed. The rangers kept to themselves mostly, patrolling their territories and enforcing the loose laws that governed territorial disputes and emergency protocols. She’d met the ranger in charge of her territory a few times over the years, but she’d always been slightly unnerved by him, if she was honest.
And now I’m going to ask him for help,she thought grimly.Life really does have a sense of humor.
The crawler limped into the station’s hangar with a final grinding protest. She powered down the engine—which promptly made several sounds no engine should ever make—and sat in the sudden silence, gathering herself.
“We have arrived?” His voice was stronger now, though still edged with exhaustion.
“We have arrived.” She turned to face him fully. “How are you feeling?”
“Better. Not well, but better.” He straightened in his seat, his wings rustling against the cramped confines. “This is the ranger station you mentioned?”
“Emergency supply depot, technically. But yes.” She bit her lip. “I need to contact them. The rangers. If GenCon is really committed to finding you…”
“You believe these rangers can help?”
“I believe they’re the only option we have.” She ran a hand through her hair, dislodging chips of ice that had accumulated during their flight. “GenCon has a lot of resources. Money. Influence. They can pressure Earth Government to look the other way, at least for a while. The rangers operate outside most of that. Their charter gives them autonomy.”
“And you trust them?”
The question hung in the air between them, and she considered it carefully. Trust was not something she gave easily—a lesson learned through hard experience. But R-339, the ranger assigned to her territory, had always been fair in their dealings, both professional and honorable.
“I trust that they hate GenCon even more than I do,” she finally said. “They tried to experiment on them when they first arrived on Mars. Then they tried to say they were unnecessary and that GenCon security could handle law enforcement instead.” She smiled thinly. “The rangers took it personally.”
“The enemy of my enemy.”
