Tessa’s eyes snapped open. The icy haze that had blanketed her mind was gone, dissipated instantaneously. Izzy’s words still echoed in her mind, but it took a moment to move, to find the strength and the memories of how to move, the controls of her body that set flesh and bone into gear, alive and full of purpose.

Turning stiffly, she pulled the two MRE packets out from behind her seat and robbed them of their nanochem heaters, adjusting the slips of condensed fuel and oxodizing nanites for a slow burn that wouldn’t injure her once she had them stuffed into her pockets, but would keep her warm for a little while. Days, maybe. The meals would provide enough food to survive for a dozen days or so if she spaced them properly, only ate when absolutely necessary and let the photosynthesizing phytoproteins in her body do the rest. Survival would require dropping into a state that was almost hibernation, almost comatose, but she knew that Izzy was right– it was possible. She could stave off death just long enough for Blavatsky to mount a rescue and pull her dead rig out of the ice.

Pressing aside hunger, Tessa willed herself to wait until the last minute before eating the first MRE and focused on activating her Ninsar implant lacing instead. The process was excruciating, especially in the cold of her iced-over cockpit, but as the complex melatonin phytoproteins in her body rose steadily to the surface, darkening her skin to a ruddy, greenish-brown, she felt the distant warmth of Delta Fujisaki trickling into her body, tingling electric somewhere in her core. Eventually, the pain of the transformation subsided, and as the soft caresses of Oridius’ sun filled her mind, washed away the aches, the edge of a smile peeked across her lips. Happier memories danced at the edges of her mind again, a parade of pastel and sensation that drifted watercolor through the half-waking haze, edges and frames of Izzy, Dimitrov, Phoebe, Alan, her grandmother, others she had loved. Moments and faces blurred, feelings, touches, kissing. The first meal came in the middle of it all like a chore, cold, flavorless and wet. Hours later, it was done, and then the nightmares came, settled into the deeper places of her mind and carried her down with them.

Days passed in a darkening, deepening blur as ice built across her canopy and was scoured free again by vicious, gusting winds. Eventually the nanochem heaters wore down, left her cold again before the soft glow of the experimental implant lacing she’d been given as part of Project Amaterasu flickered to a soft standby, wrapped her in an insulating shield of light and fragile warmth. The air thinned steadily, and as she drifted into a deep, coma-like sleep, she felt her body slowly dying around her, stiffening into the seat, stifling in the heavy air. Izzy’s death replayed over and over again in her mind, an endless temporal loop that she lived through each time, unable to stop events from unfolding as they had, unable to change the course of her life and save the woman she loved. Only the chrome tentacles of a Cygnan soldier reared out of the dream to save her in the end, save her by dragging her away into the night to witness other horrors, to see through her grandmother’s eyes as hateful civilians spat at her, beat her, screamed at her for being born with modified DNA, for being the distant descendent of lab-grown product. Stones flew, bruised skin, cracked brittle bones, and beyond it all, a younger Tessa watched the entire thing quietly, unnoticed, spared because no one knew of her heritage, her relationship to the old woman they hated so openly. Only she knew, Tessa and her grandmother, and so Tessa watched in terrified silence as the older woman was kicked, mistreated, beaten, the only parent she had ever really known, and tried not to cry.

Beyond the second meal came dreams of copper and burnished brass, hazy Martian cities through blurry, rainwet glass. A voice, the sound laced with the static of an audiofeed. Abomination. Abomination. Abomination! Izzy’s voice, her fist, stabbing bright into the air. The cheering, Pope Vultaggio stepping onto the stage, Catholicism’s envoy to the stars in every way, every brilliant flash of white and grinning gold as he handed Izzy a rolled piece of parchment, the key to her future. I love you, Tessa. Came the whispered edge of thought, remembered through the mental link they’d shared, the touch that had connected their minds, so rare, so rare, a connection she’d never shared with Dimitrov, never shared with anyone besides Izzy. I just want you to know that I love you, Tess. Izzy breathed into her thoughts, the lingering mental touch echoing back from a time when they were one, when things seemed so much easier, life so much more meaningful, death a tiny phantom on a forgotten horizon. I will always love you, no matter what happens.

I miss you, Izzy. If only there was some way...

Some way.

Deeper dreams ripped through the screen of the foggy, love-hazed memories with a sound like lightning, clawed open her reality to the sharp clarity of darkness and stars. She shivered uncontrollably, then stared, looked out and beyond the cold void to a fighter, her fighter, her rig as it floated dead in the sky. Touches of light flickered here and there, and then it was gone, pulsing as it punched into the fabric of reality and left a flickering wave of haunting resonance in its wake. Thought came echoing back to her, a turning backward of time and thought, the movement of digital numbers in reverse. A way.

The way.

Light cracked into icy darkness, shattered the vision. A face, familiar, the bite of cold wind, sleeve edge of self-heating all-weather gear. The etched brass on his uniform caught light: Esquer. Memories came trickling back slowly. Major Esquer, Odin squadron, brother to my Freyja squadron on the Hephaestus. She pulled in a deep, sudden breath, and as it rose, it caught in her lungs, airways cold and thick from disuse. A gentle hand reached toward her as the energy shield her body had been generating flickered away, and then a voice.

“Major Eisenherz? Can you hear me?”

This is real. Relief came pouring in. Rescued.

For the first time since she’d set foot on Oridius, she breathed a sigh of relief, truly felt it, truly welcomed the feeling of being alive. One stiff, icy hand reached up, touched his cheek.

“Damn, it’s good to see you.”