"There are risks to employing freelancers. There are any number of variables, and with those variables; potential outcomes. They can prove expensive. They can prove reliable. They may have a particular value, or a unique skillset, but no two are alike.
Far too often, they are trouble."
- Teachings of the Free Market, Collected Thoughts of Frohd Bek, Third Edition
They hesitated at the top of the ice shaft. The boy was delaying them now.
He lingered at the narrow gap leading back to the ruined space craft. They had been careful to sweep the ground behind them; masking the trail as best they could. They had not survived this long in the Frozen Sector without learning a few tricks.
"Kid, we need to move." Telin warned. "You said it yourself."
"This feels wrong. I am forgetting something." The boy's hands balled in frustration as he looked up at them, eyes wide and suddenly helpless. "Something important."
Any pity Telin felt was quickly overwhelmed by the thrum of propulsion drives. Multiple landing craft, on an approach vector. Full burn. They were almost on top of them.
Kelpo didn't waste time debating. He was already fitting the boy with a descent harness; cinching its straps with thinly disguised panic.
Landing barges kissed down simultaneously; grav-drives kicking up a tumult of swirling snow. Scavengers bundled out in wet splashes; boots squelching in pools of melting coolant. Above, out-riders and aerial drones flitted through the howling wind, search lights piercing the gloom.
The Severance Package lurked in the sky above; an ominous shadow on the Venusian sky.
A full complement of the Severance's crew had been deployed; every able bodied man and woman not actively manning a station. Climbing lines were staked around the access tunnel leading down to the crash site. Scouting drones led the charge, and a dozen scavengers followed; smoke steaming from rebreathers as they fast-roped down. Others set up a perimeter, distributing pulsing flares and marking landing zones for further reinforcements; waving glowing marshalling wands that strobed in the darkness.
Vern and his hunters strode through the chaos at their own pace, indifferent to the surrounding bustle.
The two largest of the group were the lumbering Grineer, Brakarr; and the Moa Master Ladahr.
The Corpus master of hounds rode a small bipedal walker; a large cage rattling behind it. The cage contained two parallel lines of dangling puppets, who rattled in their moorings with each lurching stride
The Hunters stopped by the yawning hole in the surface of the ice. Vern addressed them quickly, yelling above the surrounding din.
"The Frozen Sectors are vast. Our quarry arrived here on a ship. Ladahr; sweep the area with your Moa. I want it found! Bycek, you're with him."
Ladahr's walker took two hunching steps backward. The cage on the back opened up, whirring as it lowered out six stalker-pattern Moa onto the steaming ground. Ladahr unbuckled a Lecta energy whip from his belt; holding it aloft. He snapped it to life and cracked the whip against the ground. It sparked and crackled. The Moa shrilled as they activated.
Torr Bycek clambered into the empty cage, which folded into a rear saddle. His Opticor unfolded with a mechanical clack as he buckled himself in. The two men often functioned as a unit.
They both saluted, and vanished into the storm; the Moa bounding before them like ravenous pack hounds. Vern watched them go.
"The rest of you, with me."
The descent proved difficult.
The boy did not lack for confidence, but he was physically frailer than his stern demeanour suggested. He was no match for the two scavengers, in terms of field craft. Soon he was a good five metres above them, and falling behind.
"Keep pace, boy!" Telin growled. "They'll be on us in no time; the speed you're moving."
"I am trying!" the boy shot back, face screwed in determination. "And stop calling me boy!"
The scavengers for their part moved too slowly for their own liking. They were battered and bruised; badly wounded in Kelpo's case. Kelpo offered no complaint; primarily because doing so proved far too painful. His ravaged face flared from the pinch of the biting cold. Instead he focused on the mechanical movement. On routine and experience. Play out the line. Find purchase with your feet, inch downward; repeat.
There was no choice. The sounds of engines had long since faded, which meant only one thing.
Their pursuers had landed, and they were out of time.
"The trail begins here, Surah." Parson-Luk knelt by snow melt surrounding the damaged space craft; sniffing the ground. Their prey had covered their tracks well: the snow looked clean, unblemished. But there were few trails the Ostron trapper could not follow. The planets changed; the terrain along with it. His senses never did.
The Ostron picked his way across the chamber. He barely left a trace on the snow as he moved; a stark contrast to the meandering churn the salvage crews left as they teemed over the ruined ship; securing tethers and preparing the ship for extraction. Vern went to follow, but for a tug at his sleeve.
"A moment, Terrenus."
Few were permitted to call Vern by his first name. Isolde was one such exception.
Brakarr stood guard as Vern and Isolde clambered inside the ruined ship.
"They've moved on from here." Vern murmured, "The Ostron has the scent."
"Parson-Luk has one method; I another." Isolde replied, running an almost sentimental hand down the ruined ship's walls as she walked. "Two paths, converging on the same destination. Have I ever failed you?"
Vern knew better than to doubt the Void witch. He followed.
They found themselves before the empty casket.
"Behold, the Sleeper has woken." Isolde smiled sadly, "His Dream is now ended."
"We're wasting time."
"Patience, Terrenus. Indulge me."
Isolde knelt before the golden casket, folding her hands across her chest. She closed her eyes.
The walls of the chamber began to sweat. The very air itself crackled, threatened to tear.
Her lips began to move.
The boy had halted. They were a long way down the shaft, and had been making good time. Even the boy had found his rhythm. There was still so much farther to go.
Now this. Telin only noticed when he looked up and spied the boy; frozen in his tracks. The boy stared up, unmoving.
"Boy." Telin whispered up at him. "What's wrong. Boy!"
"Shh!" the boy hissed.
"Answer me!"
"Listen."
Telin listened. He heard the lingering plop of condensation in the chamber. He heard the distant rumble of landing craft circling the dig site. Closer still, he heard Kelpo's rasped breathing; his own, laboured from the arduous descent.
Beyond that, nothing.
Snarling, Telin clambered up level with the boy. The boy stared rapt withal; his eyes staring a million miles away.
"Snap out of it, kid." Telin gave him a shake. "This is no time to be going squirrelly on me now."
"You don't hear it, do you?" the boy sighed in breathless wonder. Tears sparkled in his eyes.
"Hear what?!"
The boy smiled as he wept openly.
"The music."
If Isolde made a sound, Vern certainly couldn't hear it.
He coughed and started when he discovered blood pattering down his front. The hunter swiped at his nose and stepped hastily from the chamber, distancing himself from her arcane mutterings.
Outside proved no different. All around the ship, work crews staggered groggily. Some in wonderment; others clutching their heads as though experiencing a keen and sudden migraine. Many vomited within their suits, and doubled over; choking. Perimeter lights flickered on and off. High on the surface, even Ladahr's pack units suffered a momentary spasm of confusion, temporarily losing their stride and tumbling head over heels before recovering scrappily.
Only Brakarr seemed unaffected. He had worked with Isolde in the field before. After their first mission together, his fee request had been singular:
Void dampeners, the most expensive available.
"Our Witch sings?" The Bombard rumbled.
Vern nodded groggily, collecting himself. His com bead hissed raw static in his ear. He unplugged it, trudging his way to where the Ostron crouched patiently in the shadows; visible only by the merest glint of the teeth encircled the neck of his primitive furs. The Grineer enforcer followed, plodding heavily through the snowdrift.
"Report." Vern grunted, finally recovered.
"They mask the scent, Surah; but the Void… it leaves a taste." The Ostron reached forward and swept aside a seemingly innocuous snow drift.
Hidden behind it was a narrow crawl space.
"See how it reveals them so."
Telin was moments from slapping the kid when a spotlight blazed to life at the height of the shaft.
Telin's heart froze in his throat. They were exposed, their only available cover: a jutting spar of metal; some forgotten section of ancient wreckage.
The light swept from left to right, spearing toward them.
Telin grabbed the kid and swung to the left, feet braced. He slammed an ice pick into the far wall; wincing at the sharp crack as it impacted.
The light snapped off. Telin and the boy were eye to eye; the boy blinking as he finally snapped out of it. They stared at each other in terror, almost nose to nose. The only sound Telin felt in the dark was the terrified hammering of his own heart.
Then something yanked the boy's cable upward, jerking them both out of cover. Telin spun and slammed bodily into the wall; stubbornly clinging to the boy's harness. The beam snapped on again, bathing them in damning light.
Something took hold of his own cable, and started hauling it upward.
Whatever it was, it was immensely strong. They might as well have been on a motorised winch. Kelpo looked up, aghast; as his companions were pulled steadily toward the blazing light.
Telin fumbled with the utility harness attached to his rigging. One handed, he produced a knife and began frantically sawing at the boy's cable. Eventually it frayed, then snapped entirely. The weight on Telin's own harness increased exponentially; tightening against his ribs and legs. Crushing the wind out of him. The survival knife tumbled from his fingers.
Telin didn't have time to think of anything else. His next response was instinctual.
He took a firm grip of the ice pick. Then he unsnapped his harness.
They fell.
Telin swung the pick; striking again and again. It never bit.
Their heart-stopping fall suddenly came to a bone-jolting halt.
Kelpo had Telin's harness with his free hand; all but dislocating his arm in the process.
Kelpo howled through mangled lips. Kelpo Marr was as strong as an ox, but there was no way he could hold their combined weight. Telin twisted about in the harness with no purchase, no angle at which to help.
The boy appeared in view. He clambered up onto Kelpo's harness, in a surge of spry agility. Somehow, he had produced the survival knife Telin had dropped.
Telin watched the boy sawing through Kelpo's cable. Telin's eyes bulged in horror.
"Kid what are you -"
The cable snapped.