Connie opens a channel via her visor's secure commlink with a quick glance to the left, inputs the private key tied to her biometrics. Waits for the return ping. Sends, to two very different recipients, No protocol for giant alien abominable snowmen. Please advise.
FILSS replies immediately via text, picking up on Connie's unspoken request for radio silence: Oh, dear. Stand by for orders. The second, more secret reply will be slower, tethered as it is to human reaction times.
The snowmobile idling underneath her rumbles a cough, so she gives it an encouraging kick with the heel of one foot. It's an outdated piece of gasoline-driven technology—outer-rim colonies are always a bit of a crapshoot when it comes to a good cup of coffee, never mind maglev trains and climate control—but the machine's held together for several hundred klicks over unforgiving terrain. She's pretty sure it's not about to give up on her now. Pretty sure.
The Director wishes to remind you that search-and-rescue is not your domain, FILSS says. At the same moment, Connie's helmet pings with a heavily encoded message that reads only, Fuck you and your Freelancer bullshit.
Connie grins. Replies to the second message first. That could be time-consuming and now is probably not the time. Any more helpful orders?
Her Charon handler replies immediately—she pictures him hunched over a console somewhere, grumbling to himself. Probably nursing a headache. Who cares what happens to her? She's the enemy! Get that intel back to your ship, make a copy for us, end of story.
Connie snorts, and pages mentally through the file her handler has on her, lays it side-by-side next to the Freelancer dossier, with all its hidden nuggets of data to keep the Director's codebreakers happy. A few discrepancies here and there: some of her intel career is hidden from Freelancer, too-fast promotions covered up with nepotistic connections to an invented uncle in the admiralty. Both files are, of course, entirely fabricated in order to make her look just smart enough to be dangerous, but no smarter than that. Easy to control. And, of course, enough fuck-ups in there to make her handler cocky. Well. Cockier than usual.
Say again, Connie sends to FILSS. Didn't receive the contents of that message. Weather's picking up here. It's actually a fairly clear night, stars flickering too-bright in the gaps between heavy clouds. She flicks her eyes left again to piggyback a little something extra onto her message's signal: the distortion algorithm she'd programmed back in the Pelican. The Director's got override protocols that he can slam into place if his Agents try to dodge an uncomfortable conversation by faking a communications blackout—which, okay, if that's the kind of insubordination you have to plan for, your organization's got problems—but this is a more gradual phase-out, complete with doctored weather radar. It should be enough to mask even the most convenient timing.
To her handler, who appreciates directness (probably), she sends only, Fuck you. Take your headache pills. Watch this.
She straightens, feeling the joints of her cold-weather gear creak ominously, and brushes the gathering snow off her jacket. The lack of armor is disconcerting—although the HUD projected by her visor is the same as always, today it's housed inside cold-weather goggles, a gaudy orange to match the rest of the outfit she'd picked up from a local shop. Even at night, she feels conspicuous, which she supposes is the point: being shot by a hunter aiming at the local wildlife would be an ignominious end for an undercover Freelancer. Still. She misses the armor, especially all the little hacks she's started to implement.
No help for it now. She kicks back and revs the snowmobile's engine, setting her HUD's multispectral imagers to illuminate the spatters of blood in the snow. Agent South Dakota's snowmobile tracks end here, along with her comm chatter. She'd been some thirty kilometers from the rendezvous point, Connie a good twenty minutes behind. Among the blood spatters are massive, indistinct footprints, angling away into the woods.
Connie takes a breath, revs the engine once more, and speeds through a gap in the trees.
After five minutes of zigzagging at breakneck pace, her comm sparks, startling her so badly that she nearly swerves into a ditch. North's voice is suddenly hoarse in her ear. "Hey, the Director's ordering you to turn back."
"York help you hack into my line?" Connie asks, mildly. The two of them are back in town; they're supposed to be holding down the fort and cheerfully assisting local authorities with their investigation into the missing data, no-officer-we-have-no-idea-how-that-could-have-happened, while Carolina works on erasing their tracks behind the scenes.
"I'm not in the mood to screw around, Connie. The Director wanted me to convey those orders to you. Personally."
"That's pretty fucked up," says Connie. "Thanks for the message. Didn't quite catch that. Gonna go ahead and assume we're not supposed to let your sister get eaten by a grue."
A startled silence—Connie resolves to pal around with North a little more, if his first thought really was that she'd follow orders to the letter—and then a slow, relieved exhalation. "Connie," he says. "Thanks."
"No guarantees," Connie says. "There was a lot of blood back there." She doesn't tell him she's not doing it for him, because that's not entirely true. By saving South, she'll simultaneously gain a shit-ton of brownie points with the whole A-Team and establish herself as a potential co-conspirator in any future dissent. She'll impress the hell out of her handler and the Director both, probably in spite of themselves. Also, y'know. South keeps making awkwardly aggressive overtures of friendship in her general direction, and Connie wants a friend.
Could use a friend.
"Yeah," says North. "Okay. Good luck. Sorry I couldn't reach you in the storm."
Just past the snow-covered canopy, the sky splinters into a dizzying array of stars. "Yup," Connie says. "Real bad storm. Let you know how it shakes out."
North says, "Yeah," again, and signs off.
Connie slows her hurtling pace through the trees and bends to the task of tracking the traces of blood and footprints in the snow; even the lack of wind isn't quite enough to preserve the tracks, and the blood has tapered off almost entirely. Her HUD highlights a sort of burrow off to her right that apparently opens up into a network of caves, which seems both promising and like a really, really bad idea.
Connie hesitates a moment, chewing her lower lip mainly to get some feeling back in her cold-numbed face. Thermals are flickering across her HUD like ghosts in the cold; almost anything's warm enough to trip the color scale at the high sensitivity levels she's using. Something on the edge of the burrow—an echo of a handprint?
She sighs, slides regretfully off the snowmobile, and trudges toward the burrow, balancing one throwing knife in each hand. Knives, she thinks, have a refreshing directness about them. She's suffered backfires, ammo jams, and shoddy scopes too many times. A knife means you always get a backup plan.
At the mouth of the cave, she sets a tracker. There'll be hell to pay if the Director decides to send a rescue party after her, but she'd rather be reprimanded and rescued than be dead with an airtight there-was-a-storm-sir eulogy. Best that someone knows where she is.
South's tracker is inactive. Go figure.
There are several tunnels branching off from her location, but only one has what might be recent heat signatures lighting up her HUD. She takes a moment to carve an arrow into the wall of the cave with one of her knives—the specially crafted edge won't be blunted by something as soft as the rock.
A low groan from up ahead. Connie freezes. Animal or human? The groan resolves itself into a faint, whispered series of curses, focusing with alarming directness on a series of new and exciting activities the Director could use to spice up his sex life. Connie smiles.
It's clear that South doesn't have access to her HUD, so Connie doesn't bother trying to make contact, just follows the soft litany of improbable sexual acts until she's pinpointed South's location within a cave somewhere up ahead. Even with a ski mask covering her mouth and nose, even in the extreme cold, Connie can make out the stink of decaying meat and blood. Apparently the abominable snowman keeps an icebox. Funny how the UNSC surveyors of this region of the planet dismissed the colonists' widespread stories of violent fauna as a myth. Real funny.
Her heat seekers pick up South, indistinctly at first, and then more clearly as she moves closer, cautious. Connie can't see her extremities through the final cave wall that separates them, which suggests they're dangerously cold. She taps the wall. "Hey," she says, softly. "South, that you?"
A sobbed breath, almost a laugh. "Jesus. Who the fuck else would it be?"
"You in there alone?"
"Apart from the frozen, bloody husks of meat all around me? Yeah."
Connie wrinkles her nose. "Nice place."
"Yeah, real charming. So's the meat hook that thing jammed through my shoulder." Her voice wobbles, and Connie can hear her gasping for breath, fighting off panic. "Get me. The fuck. Down."
Connie backs up, frowning at South's heat signature through the rock. Sure enough, she looks like she's suspended. Probably by the hook through her shoulder.
"I tried getting myself down," South says, apparently relieved to have somebody to talk to, "but I think I just tore my shoulder up worse. I passed out for a bit, maybe."
"Okay," Connie says, "I think I see the entrance to your chamber down there. I can amplify your voice, but you won't be able to hear me until I'm up close again. Keep talking."
"About what?" South sounds almost childishly confused, and Connie's augmented hearing catches the way she's shifting her weight impatiently. Fidgeting's not good.
"You could explain how a big snow monster got the jump on you," Connie says, and starts moving.
"Fucking thing came out of nowhere," South says. She pauses a moment, gasping for breath, then seems to remember her instructions and keeps talking. "Dive-bombed me straight off my snowmobile when I was going full speed. I hit my head and smashed my goggles, it slammed a fucking hook through my shoulder, and then it just sort of hoisted me up and carted me off. Jesus. What the fuck kind of planet is this? I… wait, I think I hear something. It's close, it's—"
"It's me," Connie says, coming up beside her, pressing a hand against her chest to keep her from twisting away. "Calm down. This place is empty, there's nothing on thermals." South really is suspended by the hook in her shoulder, feet dangling just above the floor. Which is doubly inconvenient since she's at least a foot taller than Connie.
South's eyes are wide. Connie's thermals pick up a smear of blood on her forehead, a wisp of hair flattened against her face. "How did you find me?"
"The power of friendship," Connie says. "I don't think we can pull that hook out without taking a chunk of you with it. It looks like the other end of the hook's attached to a rope." She lifts a knife, balances it carefully. "This is gonna suck."
When Connie's thrown knife splits the rope and South hits the ground, she doesn't make a sound, just flattens her face against the snowy cave floor for a moment and curls in on herself. Connie retrieves her knife, then crouches down and pulls off a glove to press it against the back of South's neck, skin-to-skin, and feels her breathing steady under her hand. She digs with the other hand into her belt for her IFAK and grabs an injector of biofoam. "Breathe," she says, and jams the injector home while South's in the middle of her responding fuck-you.
Connie knows from experience just how badly biofoam fucks you up when there's a foreign body in the wound, and a massive rusty hook definitely qualifies as a foreign body. Thankfully, South's brain decides it's better to check out for this particular part of the process, and she slumps forward into the snow, unconscious. Connie swallows hard, rolls her onto her back, and activates one of the lights on her shoulder so she can see the injury without having to rely on scanners. The biofoam's plugged the wound, stopping the alarming stream of blood. Connie tears away South's jacket to get a closer look; the skin and muscle is ragged and torn around the hook, chips of bone mashed into the mix. But it's South's slack expression that tips the balance, makes Connie have to turn away until her stomach stops roiling.
Her Charon handler, watching through her HUD, sends, Nice rescue, hero. Like a cat bringing home a dead mouse.
Connie cuts the feed, which is probably a mistake given that she's trying to gain his trust, but it's just so damn satisfying. She sits for a moment, breathing hard. She injects South with the most potent cocktail of painkillers and adrenaline in her IFAK. She opens the comm link to North again. "Hey. I found South, but she's not doing so great. Should be at the evac point pretty quick."
A moment's silence; she has to check to be sure the channel is open. Then York's voice comes in, oddly out of breath. "Well, hey. About that."
Connie listens to the whistle of wind in the background. Steadfastly resists the urge to press her face into her hands. "You're on a snowmobile heading this way, aren't you."
"Hey, North's the one driving! I just jumped on!"
"Boss is gonna be pissed about this one," North mutters.
"Carolina will be more pissed if you keep going the way you're going," Connie says. "This thing took South off her snowmobile at full speed. Turn back. There's no need to risk anyone else, and you have to be back there to cover Carolina's tracks."
A pause. York says, "I don't think we're turning back."
"Hey, gimme the comm."
Connie glances down to see South grimacing at her. She looks like death warmed over, but she's awake, a snarl curling the side of her mouth. Connie smiles back and pulls off her goggles, holding them briefly in front of her face. "North, your sister wants a word."
South takes them, crams them on one-handed, says, "Hey, fuckface, turn the fuck back." She pauses. "We got this. We. Have. Got. This. Remember what you promised. Yeah." She hands the goggles back to Connie. "He's turned back. They're close enough that there's no harm done, I think."
Connie slips them back on and finds the link closed. There's also an unread message waiting from her Charon handler—he's annoyingly good at weaseling around the firewalls she throws up—but South hasn't opened it, probably saw the notification and assumed it was the Mother of Invention. "Must be nice to have someone who cares that much about what happens to you."
South snorts, rolls onto her side, curses softly, and lets her head thump back against the snow. Even in the dim light, Connie can see that her eyes are painkiller-glazed. "It's awful. He's always been such a fucking embarrassment. He would've compromised the mission. Carolina could've been killed. He could've been killed. Love him dearly and all, but he's a mess." She points her good hand shakily at Connie. "Don't ever work with anyone who cares about you that much."
Connie sketches a salute. "That's why I'm working with you. Hard to get attached. C'mon, sit up. Let's get out of here before that thing gets back."
"Us ladies who don't give a fuck gotta stick together," South says, a bit vaguely. With Connie's help, South manages to get to a sitting position, and then, stumbling, to her feet. She sways, leaning heavily on Connie. "I'm gonna be sick."
"Save it for after I've carted you out to the snowmobile," Connie says. "You're enough of a mess as it is."
South squints at her, breath fogging in the air between them. "Piggy-back," she says.
"What."
South leans more heavily, and Connie, not expecting the added weight, stumbles. "I think that's about the only way you can carry me so I'm not gonna puke all over you. So."
Connie blinks. "You only have one working arm."
"That's all I need. Well, that and thighs that can crush a man's sternum."
"You're unnecessarily tall."
"Then it'll be hilarious. C'mon. It's not that far, right? Piggy-back ride. Dying request."
"You're not dying."
"Everybody's dying."
"That's deep."
South stares at Connie. Connie stares at South. "If," South says, "you give me the piggy-back ride, I'll explain why it's so important."
Connie taps a finger to her chin. "Or I could wait for you to pass out and drag you there. You've got like twenty minutes before the adrenaline injection starts to wear off."
"Nah," South says, with a sort of drunken candor. "You like secrets. You can't pass that up."
Connie stares at her, idly opens the remaining message from her Charon handler with a flick of her eyes. Sorry for snapping. I think I see what you're doing now. It's important to gain their trust. Her eyeroll doubles as a way to delete the message.
Connie lets go of South, who wobbles into a wall, and bends down in front of her, looping her arms back. "Okay," she says. "All aboard."
"Fuck yes," South says, and hops on with an energy that belies the seriousness of her injuries. Connie stumbles—South yelps and brings her good arm up as a bar against Connie's collarbone—but eventually manages to straighten her legs and find them an equilibrium. After steadying herself for a moment, she starts them off along the tunnel. "Stronger than you look," South says, sounding torn between awe and disappointment.
"I like secrets, remember?" Connie says. She's got her scanners working overtime, proximity sensors watching. Hopefully this thing—whatever it is—has gone out for another hunting trip. She gives South a little boost that makes her latch on harder. "Speaking of which, now you have to tell me. Why the piggy-back ride?"
South laughs. It's an exhausted, nervous sound, but she presses it into the nape of Connie's neck and the warmth of it runs up and down her spine. "I bet York a shitton of money that I could get you between my legs by the end of the month."
Connie laughs, boosts South up again for effect. "Real subtle. You think he'll accept this as legit?"
"He will if he wants to keep that pretty-boy face of his," South says. She pauses just a moment too long, adds, "Of course, you could help me make it more legit."
"You have a hook in your shoulder."
"Kinky?" South says, hopefully.
Connie grins, knows South sees her do it, and hikes her up again. "Stop distracting me. I have to watch for snow monsters."
South mumbles a reply, and Connie tries not to think about how long it's been since she's felt someone's warmth this near.
By the time they're out of the cave, South is having trouble holding on, keeps slipping sideways so that Connie has to stop and prop her up again. Getting her onto the snowmobile isn't too difficult; she groans and slumps forward into Connie, but her good arm is latched strong around her waist.
Connie pauses, revving the engine thoughtfully. No sign of the monster. Her hands are itching with the desire to pull out her knives again, with the simplicity of putting an enemy down, but she has to get South to safety. Leave one more monster in the wild.
South, leaning against her, props her chin against Connie's shoulder and breathes warmth for a moment before leaning in to kiss along the shell of her ear. Connie, smiling, says, "What're you doing?"
South mumbles, "Just preventing frostbite," and buries her face against the side of Connie's neck.
Connie starts on the trail toward their rendezvous point, and despite the reassuring warmth of South's body against her back, her shoulderblades prickle with the feeling of eyes out in the darkness, watching.