Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
The wind whistled by and the cold bit at her face. Kyra snuggled into her coat and adjusted the temperature upwards. Smart coats could do so much, but put a layer of warm air vented over her face to keep out the stinging wind of their passage was not one of them. She could have told the smart cloth to slide down and over her face, but she was not comfortable with that. Kyra always felt a touch claustrophobic when she needed it to cover her face. Yes, it left a mouth hole and eyes holes and she could easily wear googles, but she still felt confined.
Closed in.
Trapped.
And she hated to be trapped, whether by her clothing or by her life.
So she endured the bite and sting of the wind as the robo sled zipped out into the dark of the earliest morning.
Arjun didn't endure the the frosty nips of their passage. He did this too often and had no taste for it whatsoever. His chosen lot in life was to be amongst the cold and wild of this strangely segregated world of steam and ice. He knew it aged him faster than most and he had not desire to let it age him even faster it was going to. He was rough and rugged as it was and could pass for someone ten years older: the brutal cold and wind could and would do that. He just felt no inclination to help it along.
He noticed she was looking at him and he grinned. His pearly whites contrasted with the darkness of his skin and that with the whiteness of the snow. He was definitely not conventionally handsome. His attractiveness deeper than his skin, in his personality, but with the enthusiasm and lack of cynicism he had. He wasn't jaded, not in the least, not by their world or their lives. He was no, perhaps, content, but he was still happy. For her, that was strange. Yet it was part of what made him an attractive person. It was really too bad he was not in town enough to actually meet a woman to court.
Kyra realized her presence probably didn't help; however, any woman who couldn't handle their friendship was entirely unworthy of him. Kyra would just have to smother the woman in a snowbank or discreetly throw her off one of the cliffs if that unworthy one tried to come between her and her best friend.
She looked ahead and Arjun did after a moment, too.
She wondered what he as thinking. He was probably just glad she was there with him.
They zipped up and on. It took time and the sun rose. They stopped and ate. It was far from fancy and really little more than some foodbars and jerky: goat, of course. Biological necessities taken care of - and a little spreading of Earthlife microbial biota - they were off again and on. And on. And on. They journeyed like a courier with an important dispatch. One far too secret and important to trust to electronic transmission and still had a wildly important timeliness.
They followed the roads, at first and then off. They were stuck more than once and the robo sled had to extend its legs to work through drifts that were higher or deeper than they appeared. More than once they had to physically push and pull and pry to get the robo sled through the terrain.
And it went on. For hours. Kyra and Arjun bantered. Her rump was less than pleased. She suspected his was just as unhappy. She knew he didn't spend this long in a single sitting, but she knew they needed to hurry to try to pick of the trail of the shuturamurg.
Even so, she put her foot down when the shadows grew long. Arjun was frustrated but acquiesced. She needed to study and she couldn't do that with the wind biting at her.
She retrieved her tent and told it to deploy through her crystal. She threw in her sleeping bag and then climbed it. The walls of the tent were already heating and the small space was soon warm as home. She almost laughed: this was definitely "roughing it." She prepared for bed and plugged in after she snuggled into her cozy sleeping bag. She set it to massage her back as she started to study.
She made it through an Immie lesson before passing out.
The next morning, refreshed and ready to begin, she dressed and clambered out of her tent. She pulled out the packed sleeping bag and commanded the tent to fold up and stow itself. After she did so, she turned and saw Arjun. He looked haggard. That was odd. He did these trips all the time. Was he always this rough in the morning? If it was this tough for him, he really ought to find another profession. Sleeping that poorly would have taken many years off his life. Kyra shook her head in mild dismay and disbelief.
They sat down to eat and he still looked like a warmed over member of the living dead. Kyra's dismay, concern and unasked question must have finally gotten through because he returned her stare with his bloodshot eyes. A flat, unblinking, not exactly friendly but not really angry look.
She arched an eyebrow and wandered what Arjun's problem was.
And he simply said, "You snore. Like a chainsaw. I would have never thought someone so small could be so loud, especially for someone who was fast asleep. Kyra. I fear for your future husband. Both for his sleep and when you finally decide to yell at him when you are angry. If snore that loud, your yelling would level a village."
Kyra was so shocked she just stared and that stare turned into a glare and the glare turned heated. So heated, Arjun later swore, the snow around him melted, the native ground cover bloomed and then browned, desiccated in seconds.
Kyra, scorchingly and very levelly if dripping with acid merely replied, "I will not have to yell."
And Arjun completely agreed.
Kyra smoldered. She did not snore.
Arjun tried very hard to suppress a smile. It would not have done for her to see. After all, her smoldering anger was hot enough the biting cold seemed a little less bitter this morning, at least in spirit, as they whipped along to their goal, their snipe, their shuturamurg.