Two days later, after the unending attack on the planet outside had become familiar ambiance, the explosions stopped. It was abrupt and the sudden silence and abrupt stillness of the ground jarred them all from sleep. They looked upward and each privately speculated. The quiet seemed almost more ominous than the sound of a people and land being ripped apart. Kaegan had brushed the chip off her shoulder to step closer to Carlin and Thera and Jonah had looked into each others' eyes and a depth of meaning beyond their lives as workers flashed between them.

It took them a long time to stop waiting, breaths held, for the next wave of the attack. When the ground continued to stay stationary and the air was not shattered by bone-rattling bass booms they slowly began to adapt to it. After a while Thera left Jonah's side and continued her work with Carlin.

Perhaps as much as an attempt to stave off cabin fever and boredom as to aide them in any manner, Thera had begun to study the ship with Carlin's translating assistance. She was stunned to discover the workings of the ship, the engines and propulsion and function, just came to her. It was like an old contraption from childhood she found in an old chest and the embedded memory of how to use it was still there in her mind. It made intuitive sense to her. Carlin, excited by the new information in an area he had not been able to master beyond knowing the language under which it was created, seemed to forget some of their woes in the thrill of discovery. Thera, too, was enthusiastic about her findings and she was aglow for the first time since their worries had begun when Carlin's misdeeds were uncovered. Jonah stood back and let them lose themselves. Mechanics was her forte and he left her to it, glad that she could let go of the sense of danger for a few minutes and enjoy herself. Carlin, too, seemed to have found his natural place as a translator, deciphering the intricacies of the unknown language surrounding them. Jonah was content to stand back, staff in hand, and keep watch over them. It felt natural.

Kaegan, the odd-man out as it were, slowly made her way over to where Jonah stood, watching his two friends try to discern why the bombardment had stopped. Thera had figured out where the sensors on the ship were, and she speculated (with a frightening degree of detail) how they worked, but as yet she had not hazarded to try them for fear of alerting the enemy to their presence. Even now she was debating whether she should try them in light of the renewed silence.

Jonah glanced over at Kaegan, suddenly right beside him, and for once she didn't look like she was spoiling for a fight. Jonah let her be for that and returned to his watch over Carlin and Thera, who were bickering. That was so normal, even though he'd rarely seen them in a snit such that it made a smile pull at his lips despite it all.

"If what Carlin said is true, this is all his fault," Kaegan finally said.

Jonah wasn't surprised. He'd thought the same thing more than once since this all started. He wasn't about to let Kaegan divide the three of them with mistrust, though. "'Suppose so."

Kaegan looked at him, agape at his nonchalant reply. "How can you forgive him so easily? How can you trust him when he may have gotten all of our people killed?"

Jonah's jaw tightened. "He didn't mean to do it."

"So!" Kaegan hissed. "Jonah, he is responsible for the death of all our friends, the end our existence, destruction of everything we've worked so hard for!"

Carlin turned at Kaegan's rising voice and his expression was so desolate and sad. He dropped his eyes, resigned, and slowly looked back at the console in front of him.

"Kaegan," Jonah said darkly, his voice so low even Kaegan hardly heard him. "If you knew Carlin you'd know he's thinking everything you are and worse. He knows what he did, but there's nothing we can do to change what happened. Now we have to worry about staying alive and getting out of here."

"And you still trust him?" she asked incredulously.

Jonah gave an infinitesimal nod. "Yes, I still trust him."

Kaegan shook her head in disbelief but Jonah looked over at her and said, "He could have left you to die with the others but he didn't, Kaegan. Remember that."

Kaegan blinked, taken by surprise, and was left standing there when Jonah walked away and headed toward his two companions.

"What's the word, Campers?" Jonah asked.

Thera and Carlin, engrossed, only spared him a glance each before Thera said, "We think they've started ground assaults with troops on foot."

Jonah looked toward the dimmed controls and saw no indication they'd been used. "How you do you know that?"

Carlin shrugged. "Hunch?"

Jonah realized it was his own 'hunch', too. Had it not been he would have ordered the cockpit door opened as soon as the explosions stopped. "Good enough for me. So we keep waiting."

"I think it's the best option available to us at the moment. At least we still can hide here. Once the food and water is exhausted we'll have to risk it." Thera looked at their ever-dwindling stack of supplies and chewed on her bottom lip anxiously.

Jonah was taken with the desire to reach out and touch her face, smooth his thumb over her worried lower lip, but he restrained himself and leaned against the staff in his right hand. More waiting. His usual inclination was to detest so much lying-low, but he found himself unusually amendable to hiding with Thera so close to delivering their child. Within the last few days he'd found himself looking at her and wondering how she could possibly get any bigger, how the baby could grow any more and still safely pass through the birth canal.

Nope, hiding was fine, no shame in keeping out of sight.


A day and a half later, with still no indication the enemy that had attacked them without warning was still present, they were forced to risk showing their hand. The food supplies were down to almost nothing, their tempers from such close-quarters were frayed, and their need to know what had become of the world they knew was irrepressible. They had to leave the safety of the tel'tac cockpit and take their chances outside.

They set about preparing to leave with great care, in no hurry to face what could conceivably be their deaths. Kaegan packaged what little remained of their food supplies, pouring the small allotment of gray gruel left into empty water bags and dividing up crusty bits of bread and cold vegetables. Two packs were evenly stocked while of the other two one was given more of each remaining food item and the second less. Kaegan set these aside for Thera and Jonah, respectively, and Jonah gave her a nod of approval. Kaegan, while not stead-fast friend to any of them, had learned to coexist with them. If nothing else the close confinement with the three of them had been good for that.

Jonah was dividing up the blankets. There was an odd number and he heaped the extra on to Thera's pile and the blankets, individually, were so pathetic that Kaegan didn't think it was worth raising a ruckus and Carlin conceded willingly to Jonah's decision. Thera, luckily, was too busy to notice the favoritism over all the rest of them or she might have complained herself. As it was she was sitting at the pilot's seat, Carlin alternately over her shoulder helping her read the commands on the panel and parsing out water rations into four bags.

"Thera?" Jonah asked. He had only a vague idea what Thera was doing, she'd tried to explain it to him and she'd lost him with due haste, but he trusted her to a fault so he let her continue what she was doing. Now he was wondering what that effort had yielded.

Thera, still watching her hands move, nodded and said as she worked, "I've been able to bring the sensors back online to see if we could get any idea of the condition of the surface."

"And...?"

Thera shook her head. "Sorry, sir, but I think the sensors were damaged in the crash, I'm only getting echoes from the rock around the ship."

Jonah was too focused on the content of the message to notice what Thera had called him.

"Well, I didn't think it would be that easy." Thera started to move her fingers purposefully over the controls again and he cocked his head. "What are you doing now?"

"I'm accessing environmental controls and increasing the atmosphere regulation three-fold."

"Ah... why?"

Thera smiled to herself. "I'm assuming the tunnels between us and the main cavern collapsed and that we'll have to dig our way out."

"Yeah," Jonah replied. He'd even presumed that much but he had no idea what that had to do with the ship's air conditioning.

"Which means once we're in the tunnels we'll be trapped with the only oxygen we have, but if we keep the tunnels between us and the ship clear as we go the ship's power system should keep feeding us enough breathable air that we don't asphyxiate."

"Oh, good." Jonah looked down at the pile of blankets on the floor and asked Thera after a moment, "You done yet?"

"Almost."

As though in answer the hum from the ship increased and a breeze wafted over the occupants, a breath of sweetly clean air.

"Good work, Thera, now get over here."

Thera grumbled something softly to herself but levered herself out of the seat and waddled (yes, Jonah noted, Thera was to the point of 'waddling') over to where he stood. Jonah bent to pick up the first flimsy blanket in her pile and said, "Take your jacket off."

Thera, gaze questioning, did as he asked and Jonah began to line the inside with blankets as he said aloud, "I want everyone to line their outer clothing with as many blankets as possible. It's going to be cold once we hit the top so we need everything we can get."

Kaegan and Carlin watched Jonah a second then started to shed their own clothing and line it with blankets. The pants were trickier, the blankets stuffed inside inclined to ball up when limbs presumed to join the party, but eventually they all struggled their way back into their clothes with the new layers. Edges of the blankets they had crammed in their clothes stuck out unevenly at the sleeves, bottoms of the jackets, waistbands, and pant cuffs, but it was a few degrees warmer and it made full use of their supplies. Jonah had to practically undress and redress Thera, to her unamused chagrin, and with the new lining her pants (previously tightly fastened) refused to close at all. Thera was perturbed but Jonah only danced his fingers along the underside of her hanging belly and tore one dangling end of his own impromptu jacket stuffing off in a jagged strip that he used to bind the open ends of her pants closed as snugly as possible. Finally, as a last touch, he took off his orange cap and tugged it down on Thera's head. It was too big and came to her eyebrows and she looked up at him and scowled. "Okay, this crosses the line into ridiculous."

"Oh, I don't know, I think it works for you," he teased back, kissed her on the nose playfully, then helped Thera to shoulder her food and water bags while Carlin and Kaegan did the same with their own supplies. Jonah, after hefting (though 'hefting' might erroneously imply great mass) his food and water he picked up the two staffs and nodded at Carlin. "Open it up."

Carlin, padded in his new outdoor-wear, moved to the door and input the sequence. Obediently, though not without grinds and creaks of protest, the door slid up and open.

The room beyond, the cargo space, was clear of debris as the cockpit had been. The moment the four of them went to the hole blasted in the side where they had entered the ship, however, there was a stone wall.

"It's all right," Jonah said confidently before anyone could be discouraged with how quickly they hit a cave-in. "When Brenna told us to abandon this sector we hadn't had a chance to shore up the braces yet. Once we clear this section the tunnels should have held up better. Carlin, come on, let's get started."

The two men started to shift rocks and stones aside while Kaegan and Thera moved the dislodged pieces to the back end of the cargo hold to keep the work area clear. When the boys tired the girls took over, though Jonah had railed ardently against Thera doing any heavy lifting. In a fit of temper (in no small part due to the discomfort of her advanced condition) she told him she would contribute to their own survival or she'd endanger his and Jonah grudgingly backed down. After her outburst, Thera's face still flushed with anger, Kaegan had given her a strange smile and Thera felt, for a moment, like she had a woman-ally. It lightened her spirit, placated her mood, and Jonah slunk around in the periphery and duly out of her way enough for her to settle down.

The women, physically not as strong (and one considerably handicapped), were worn out sooner by digging than the men and they shifted jobs again. Fortunately the short break seemed to be enough to rejuvenate Carlin and Jonah enough for them to set back into their work with energy. It helped that, after months assigned the duty, Carlin and Jonah were conditioned for the work. They limited their breaks for water, knowing their little remaining might be all they had until they could reach the surface where they could replenish their supply (the one good thing about an ice age was the guarantee they would find plenty of ice to be had).

True to Jonah's assurances, the team soon broke through the wall of rock into a largely unblocked passage of the mines. Jonah signaled the others to stay behind, took up one of the staffs, then shimmied through and walked a good distance ahead, on the alert. He stopped at one point to salvage a lantern (the light from the tel'tac did not reach so far into the mines and, underground, it was ink-black. He waved the lantern one-handed in one direction, then the other, then turned back and motioned for the others to follow. Kaegan, with the second staff, squeezed through next and Thera and Carlin worked to clear enough rocks for him to help her through then follow right behind.

The trio joined Jonah in the mine shaft.

"Anything?" Thera whispered as she drew up beside Jonah, mindful to keep enough distance that he still had full range of motion for quick moves with his staff.

"Not a peep, still as death.

"Kaegan," Jonah looked at Kaegan and the woman met his gaze. Jonah mulled over his idea a moment then took a chance. "Find another lantern then we'll scout ahead together."

Kaegan, seeing she was being trusted to watch out for them all, nodded and picked her way through the darkness hunting for a relatively undamaged lantern.

When she returned, a light source of her own in hand, she looked to Jonah for direction and waited.

Jonah turned to Thera and Carlin. "We'll take point, you two stay back and we'll signal you when it's clear."

"Jonah," Thera began to protest, but Jonah would have none of it.

"You're not fit to fight if someone or something pops up and you know it."

Thera frowned but couldn't deny the truth in his statement. She could barely manage her own body as of late.

"What about me?" Carlin asked.

"Watch after her," Jonah nodded toward Thera and Carlin didn't argue his position again.

Kaegan and Jonah, each with a lantern and staff in hand, started to creep down the tunnel ahead while Carlin and Thera brought up the rear.

They didn't find enemy troops but instead their next obstacle was another wall of rocks from a ceiling collapse.

Jonah set aside his things, as did Carlin, and wordlessly they set about clearing the debris again. Thera and Kaegan looked around for salvageable support beams and wedged them against the roof of the mine shaft, hoping it would be enough to forestall another collapse.

At last they broke through to the other side and Carlin, on his stomach pushing aside rocks, said breathily, "I can see light."

A man-sized hole was dug and Kaegan and Carlin climbed through. Jonah and Thera had to toss aside more of the stones before Thera could clear then the four of them were at the mouth of the main entrance to the west mine shaft.

The sight was numbing. The main cave was almost unrecognizable. The entire left portion was buried under rubble, the wall that had always seemed to solid a frozen landslide that covered so much of their old home. A few engines were still running but it was far from the din that used to accompany the main room. And the skylight was gone. In its place was shaft of sunlight, piercing the darkness and showing gray skies and billows of smoke beyond.

On the ground, scattered like bothersome rag dolls, were bodies. Orange-clad figures were sprawled seemingly everywhere. Small fires burned, filling the air with the acrid stench of smoke, burned skin, and rotting bodies.

Thera felt like she was going to be sick when the smell of death hit her.

"Oh no..." Kaegan whispered and covered her mouth.

Jonah's free hand moved to Thera's waist like an aside and Carlin looked down at the floor.

"Who could do this?" Kaegan uttered, aghast.

"Come on," Jonah said gruffly, "we have to see what's left, if there's any survivors." Jonah looked upward toward the bared sky beyond the hole in their once ceiling them propelled his team forward.