A/N: Chapter updates are back on schedule, or at least as on-schedule as I can get them this month. This is the absolute worst time of the year for me with regards to free time, not to mention the fact that I now have three stories that need updating. Things are looking more back on track now though, so the regular 1-2 week schedule will return, if not immediately then very shortly.

Thanks to everyone for your patience and reviews. Feedback is a tremendous help. Knowing what is going right and what is not is extremely important, and my thanks go out to everyone who has taken the time to let me know what they think.

And now, chapter 6 …

Chapter 6

The flat ice changes to land suddenly, the bump of the raised bank tripping Kal up. He stumbles and his nameless companion yanks him back to his feet, half carrying and half pushing him onward. Tall, dark tree trunks rise around them, blurring in Kal's confused vision. His body won't stop moving, his arms and legs shaking uncontrollably, yet everything seems to be happening in slow motion. He looks around, his mind trying to think properly. Gunshots … are they still coming? Who's shooting? Are they still shooting at us? He thinks he doesn't hear the shots anymore. Good. Maybe we got away. He's so tired. His arms are leaden, and a gentle warmth is easing closer, beckoning him. All he wants to do is sleep, but this stranger drags him relentlessly onward. Kal almost cries with frustration. He just wants to lie down in the nice warm snow, why is she forcing him to keep walking? Can't she see he's tired? He'll feel so much better after a short rest, he knows he will. Kal begins to hate the marine. Bitch, his mind mutters. Is she trying to kill me? Why won't she let me be?

Finally the forward motion stops. Kal drops gratefully into the snow, not bothering to lean himself against a tree, or even turn himself face-up. Instead he lies with his visor half in the snow, a feeling of peace and happiness filling him. He feels better already; not even cold.

"Hey!" It's the marine again. Kal tries to shut out her voice, clutching at sleep. Why won't she leave him be? "Hey!" Now she's shaking him. Kal is jerked back from the threshold of sleep. He tries to push her away, to tell her to fuck off, but his teeth are chattering too badly and the sound gets lost in his throat. "We're not doing this again! Come on, you can't fall asleep! Come on, you stupid sonuvabitch, you won't wake up if you fall asleep now!"

Kal opens one eye slowly, his mind trying to understand. Of course he'll wake up; all he needs is a short rest. Why won't she let him close his eyes for a few minutes? He watches the marine from under a heavy-lidded eye as she fumbles in her satchel, taking out a filled thermal clip. What's she going to do with that? he wonders, barely interested. As he watches, the marine pulls a small folding knife from her boot and slips the point into one of the crevasses of the clip. She wiggles the blade a bit, then pushes down with both hands, cracking the clip. She picks the clip up carefully, hissing between her teeth and nearly dropping it as escaping steam scalds her fingertips. She keeps hold of it though, and gently lowers the cracked heat sink into the snow. It melts before Kal's eyes, the snow shrinking away from the shimmering thermal clip, vanishing in a haze of steam until all that remains is a small patch of dirt and twigs.

The marine drops the clip into the snowless patch and then, with a quick glance at Kal to make sure his eyes are still open, she stands up and begins breaking low branches off of the trees around them. What is she doing? wonders Kal. He has no idea what the marine is playing at, but it's almost funny. He almost laughs, but the action is too much effort. He's running out of air, anyway, his breaths becoming farther and farther apart. Getting tired of breathing anyway. Too hard. Doesn't … Don't need to … His thoughts trail off, unfinished.

The marine squats down by where she put the thermal clip, and Kal can see a faint glow from the hole in the snow. He watches her snap twigs and bark from her pile of branches, feeding them little by little into the hole. Smoke rises and then fades away. The woman curses, and casts another glance to where Kal lies. She turns back to her pile of twigs, and then Kal opens his eyes wider as she raises her hands to her mask and pulls it away from her face. Kal catches a glimpse of a pale indigo cheek and a lock of silver hair before the marine turns her back on him, hunching over her twigs. She picks the little pile up in her hands, and it looks to Kal as if she is blowing into it. She punctuates her breaths with more oaths, as if swearing at the twigs will cause them to ignite. Kal's lips twitch into a smile around his chattering teeth, because it seems to have worked; a plume of smoke is rising from the pile, thicker than before. The marine gives one last breath, then sets the smoldering twigs back down in the hole. She puts her faceplate back on and adds a few more, larger sticks. Kal sees the tip of an orange flame rise above the snow. Fire. She made fire. Just like that … turian, on … on … the planet … His brow furrows. Where has he seen that same trick before? No, not the same. He did it with rocks. Rocks! Fire with rocks, incre incre inceredicred … credible.

Now he's being pulled upright, despite his feeble attempts to resist, and pulled closer to the small fire. The marine pulls him into the growing patch of snow-free dirt next to the conflagration and heaves him onto her lap, positioning his legs out next to the fire and his upper body against hers. She wraps her arms around him, resting her chin on his shoulder. Kal's body spasms with shivers. His side next to the fire begins to crawl with an awful tingling, as if it's being devoured by ravenous insects. He tries to pull away, to return to the blissful sleep state he had been approaching in the snow, but the marine won't let him. Her arms hold him down, holding him to her, and gradually the heat of the fire and the heat of her body begin to melt through the false-warmth of the snow, and Kal can feel the chill in the air again. His mind begins to fuzz over, but this time he can feel his heart beating steadily in his chest, and he knows that if he closes his eyes now he will live to open them again. He lets his eyelids droop, and his mind drifts away. He remembers being held in the same way, in a different time and a different place. Bits and pieces materialize: a familiar smell, alien but comforting, the feeling of hair between his fingers, the brush of stubble against his cheek when neither of them had bothered shaving in two days. We're like a pair of cacti, he had said.

What's a cacti? Kal had asked.

And he had laughed, and Kal had laughed to see him laugh. He smiles now, sleep, real sleep, beckoning him. "I'll make it back," he whispers. "I promise, James."

…

McCormick drops James off in the engineering room, leaving him with a cheerful smile and a wave as he drags Anderson off to get suited up. James is left on is own in a narrow hallway lined by what look like century-old computer systems. He peers into the dimness ahead, his eyes making out a soft glow up ahead around the corner. He steps tentatively down the hallway, unsure whether he's welcome in this place. "Hello?" he calls softly.

A muffled clank answers him from around the corner. James follows the hallways down a bit further, turning the tight corner and ducking under a low-hanging pipe. The hall continues for a short while, leading to a small room lit by a few dim bulbs and a computer screen. The hum of the engine is very pronounced, and James can feel it in his boots as he takes a few more steps, looking around for the source of the clank. "Hello?" he calls again.

"Bosh'tet!" says someone, and James suddenly notices the pair of two-toed boots sticking out from under a rack of pipes and wires on the right side of the room. James recognizes the accent, and the curse, as quarian. He takes a hesitant step closer, not sure what to say.

The boots slide out from under the pipes, revealing themselves to be attached to a pair of legs, which in turn are attached to the body of the quarian James saw earlier. He stands up, and James sees that the quarian is an inch or so shorter than himself and, judging by his voice, a few years younger.

The quarian offers James a hand, then quickly retracts it, wiping the palm hurriedly on the leg of his suit. He offers James the hand again, and James shakes it. "Not you," says the quarian cryptically. When James looks puzzled he adds quickly, "I mean, I meant the pipes. I was, ah, talking to the pipes. Well, not talking to them, I don't actually talk to the machinery, I just meant I wasn't calling you a bosh'tet, it just sort of slipped out because I was trying to fix the pressure relay and the vibration keeps rattling the screws out before I can get them in, and … " He trails off, seeming to hear himself. "And you didn't care about any of what I just said, because it was completely irrelevant and I was just rambling on about nothing for no reason. Sorry."

"It's alright," says James, smiling. "I do the same thing sometimes."

"Well," says the quarian, seeming cheered by the fact that James isn't laughing at him. "My name's Zael'rhoda nar Neema. I do the tech, repair the engines and the gravity and the mech and whatever else can't be fixed by kicking things. Well, that's a lie actually, because whenever they can't fix something by kicking it they kick me, and that usually solves the problem."

"I'm James Mikaelson," says James, still smiling. He likes this quarian already. "I don't do anything. Well, not yet, anyway. I'm still figuring out how things work here."

"By kicking, usually," says Zael, the smile behind his visor audible in his voice. "You know anything about computers, James?"

"A bit," James admits. "I like working on them, although I don't get the chance often."

"It's a hobby of mine," says Zael. "Not that you could call these relics computers. They set me up at a Dell Smartlink and expect me to run the ship from it."

"A Smartlink? I've never heard of one of those."

"I'm not surprised, because it was the first machine Dell made with a haptic display! Fifty gigabytes of RAM and a CPU that goes as fast as ten megahertz, when it feels like it. What a piece of junk."

"Do the omni-tool drivers even still work?" asks James, incredulous.

Zael shakes his head. "No, I had to buy new ones. It took me a while to find them though, and before that I was using a keyboard and trackball! Of course, that didn't matter, because when we got it it was only running Windows Revolution."

"I bet you got rid of that pretty fast."

"Well, it was kind of fun actually dragging windows around on the screen, but that got old fast, plus it would barely work with the ship's systems. It's actually running the Shipsoft 5.6 beta now. It's open-source, so we don't have to worry about licenses."

"That's not too bad," Says James, looking around at the small, cave-like room. Pipes snake this way and that, some of them spotted with rust. Bundles of wires hang like drying herbs overhead. The corner of a cot is visible at the edge of the room, with a small shelf of books next to it. A few more narrow walkways like the one James came down lead off from the main room, reminding James of a story he heard once about a labyrinth. The room is filled with the tick of warming and cooling pipes and the ever-present hum of the engines. The whole place has the look of a quietly staked-out territory about it. "Does anyone ever come down here?" he asks.

"Not really," answers Zael, following James's gaze around the room. "Nobody else really knows or cares how to work the systems. They leave it up to me. I stay out of their way, and they stay out of mine. Of course, I don't mean I don't like to have people down here, it's not my ship after all, and it's nice to have someone down here, especially someone who knows about computers and things and actually takes an interest in what I do, I mean if you are interested, it's okay if you're not …"

James holds up his hands. "Don't worry about it, it's nice to see something familiar. I've got no idea what they're talking about most of the time with the mining stuff. Computers, on the other hand, I know a little more about."

A loud clank echoes down the hallway. "James, are ye in there? Hallo, James!"

"That'll be McCormick," explains James. "He's taking me to get suited up."

Zael nods. "Good, good. Well, come back and visit me sometime. If you want to. I can show you around the ship's systems."

"Sure," says James, turning to make his way back down the hall. "See you later."

"Right," says Zael. He turns back to the rack of pipes, giving them a nudge with the toe of his boot. "Back to work."

…

The sun is beginning its descent. Its steadily sinking light paints the snow a vibrant orange-gold, matching the oranges of the campfire as it hisses and pops in a now much larger patch of clear ground. The snow has retreated away from the heat, and the marine and Kal'reegar sit on the muddy dead grass, the marine's back against a tree trunk and Kal's back against her.

Kal'reegar stirs, opening his eyes slowly. His body aches, all over and in places he never knew it could ache, but he is alive. His happiness to realize this is immediately bittered though, for there is no grace period before memory of the day's events come flooding back to him. Did any of them make it out alive? He thinks, despair weighing down on his stomach. We did, but I wouldn't have without her. Keelah, I don't even know her name. Who are these people shooting at us? They're not geth. This was supposed to be a salarian world. He closes his eyes again, letting out a heavy breath. What a fuck-up. I don't know how we're ever going to salvage this. I don't know what to do, or who to do it to, and I don't even know where the rest of the company is. I failed. "Shit," he mutters, almost under his breath, the sadness and anger finding their way out in a word.

A finger prods him in the side of the head. "You awake? Or are you talking in your sleep again?"

Kal opens his eyes. "What? I was talking in my sleep?"

"Just a little. But you've had a hell of a day. Name's Tannea'rhoda vas Ytriur, since we haven't been formally introduced." A hand curves around from behind him, followed by a calculated-sounding "sir."

Kal has the feeling he's being tested slightly. Oh, what the hell. He shakes the hand. "'Sir''s a bit moot now, don't you think? Kal'reegar vas Ierra, until it got mostly blown up. Now I'm vas snow and more recently vas lake, until you pulled me out."

They're silent for a moment, both of them remembering the awful booming crack of the ice. "You pulled yourself out," says Tannea at last. "I never fell in in the first place. All I did was drag you a couple hundred meters."

"You saved my life," replies Kal earnestly. "It means something to me."

"You must have something better to live for than more fleet rations, then," she remarks. "Speaking of which, who's James?"

Kal stiffens for a second. How much did I say while I was out? He forces himself to relax. It doesn't matter. Nothing matters now. "He's the reason I've got to live through this," he says simply.

Behind him he feels Tannea nod. "I figured as much. I've got one of those reasons to get back to, too, although not quite the same as yours I'd guess." She pauses. "Zael: he's my brother, out on his pilgrimage. We don't have a family for him to return to. That's why I've got to be there. I'll be on leave after this mission, and he's due to come back in a week or so. I've got to be there."

"We've got to see this through, then," says Kal. "It's our only way back."

"You're right," agrees the marine. "We're going to have to meet up with Retellis. Unless there's some major talent you've been hiding, we've got zero chance on our own."

Maybe I do, thinks Kal. But I don't think it would be quite enough. I don't even know if the moon here will have the same effect. Maybe it was just localized insanity. Maybe whatever they put in me only works on that planet. I don't want to find out. "Agreed," he says, shoving aside his line of thought. "What've we got?"

The marine shifts, turning to look at her meager collection of belongings. "One camo tent. Two knives. My rifle and its scope, plus plenty of ammo. Two fragmentation grenades, one smoke. A couple tubes of nutrient paste. That's it."

"I lost my rifle in the water," says Kal, after a quick inventory. "I still have my pistol, grenades, tent, and one knife."

Tannea pushes him forward, getting stiffly to her feet behind him. "Excellent. You feel ready to take on an army, Reegar?"

Kal stands up too, casting a glance at the setting sun. "I'm ready," he says., and thinks, I hope I am.