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The storm had broken sometime in the night, leaving only a fresh coat of powdery snow dusted along the ice and a few wispy clouds hanging high in the stratosphere. The bright pastels of dawn lit up the sky, giving the frozen world an ethereal, golden glow as the distant sun crawled into view. Purples and pinks gradually gave way to an aurora of yellows and golds high up in the thickened atmosphere, interrupted only by the steady march of 4546B’s large near-orbiting moon tracking its age-old path across the horizon.
A cold wind whipped down from the island’s rock face, breaking against a huddle of frosted pengwings clumped together on an ice flow near the shore. The little birds leaned into the breeze, shaking the snow from their down and stretching their flippers in the morning sunshine. The adults were already trekking towards the water’s edge, seeking breakfast in the schools of peeper fish nesting along the coast, leaving the chicks snuggled together to wait for theirs in the cuddly warmth of the brood.
Far out in the waves, a snow stalker sprung onto the sea ice from the water, fresh catch dangling from its muzzle. The great beast shook the water from its shaggy fur as it emerged, lumbering along the shelf before settling in for its feast. It turned broadside into the sun, letting the rays catch on each dark ridge down its back and basking in the light of day.
The world above the waves came to life with the sunlight, shrugging off the cold of the night and enjoying the brief reprieve from the wailing snowstorms brought on by the season. It was a beautiful view; a burst of life fighting for its existence at the edge of a frozen, inhospitable world.
It was this beautiful view Sam had woken up to every morning, the view she’d convinced herself to fight and die for out here in this far flung alien world. It was the view Robin had rarely stopped to appreciate since her own crash landing, too busy chasing ghosts to take the time to watch the sunrise.
But Robin was here now. Perched alone on the roof of a defunct Alterra building, her only company the unyielding gaze of a thermal lily hanging off the cliff nearby, radiating blissful heat and preventing her wetsuit from freezing to the metal. Her entire life packed away into a leather backpack at her side. She’d been here for hours, watching the world pass by. Sam’s world.
It was hers now, though. Here in this moment. She was right here, and it was very likely that she would never be here again. Somewhere past the abandoned station, Al-an was waiting for her. She squeezed her eyes closed and tried to pretend the sting of salt was only from the seabreeze.
She kept her lonely vigil as the morning sun rose higher, hands balled into fists at her sides. She wanted to punch something. She wanted to scream and cry and yell.To go back inside and curl up in what had been her sister’s bed, shout “I told you” into the empty room until her voice was hoarse. Instead, she stared out at the waves curling over the horizon.
In the distance, the snow stalker lifted its head into the sky, nostrils flaring to scent the wind. It rose to its feet, letting out a thunderous bellow that Robin could feel rattle down in her bones. It would echo for miles across the sea ice; a call for a mate, a triumphant declaration of survival of another day.
A school of bladderfish surfaced nearby the shore, their membranes turning the waves a pretty shade of pink that matched the painted sky. They lingered at the surface, turning onto their sides to steal warmth from the sun. Later the group would dive deep into the kelp forests to feed in the lush seagrasses, joined by curious sea monkeys foraging for scrap among the stalks.
And she felt almost guilty for leaving them nothing, after all the time spent fighting the cheeky animals over battery packs and hardware. Robin had spent all of yesterday stripping her bases to nonexistence. The rooms that had given her shelter from the worst 4546B had to offer had been torn down piece by piece, strong foundations ripped up from the seafloor to leave barren ground behind. Once the structure was down, she spent the day gathering from the local wildlife to fill the void her intrusion had left. Let each long creepvine leaf run through her fingers, made shadow puppets in the strange netted light of the sieve coral. Twined a wreath of violet beau and crowned a passing holefish Caesar. Laid back in the sand beneath where her bed had been hours earlier and watched the daylight fade away through the ice.
In time, the world would overgrow the area and all traces of the place she had called home would be gone with the tides.
Her truck and prawn had gone to Marguerit for parts, loaded with all the salvaged material and storage she’d stockpiled throughout her crusade. They’d grown on each other, during the long months since the old merc had first ambushed her high up on that cliff above Delta Station. The last two humans in the entire world. They’d sat across the rusted scrapwork table for coffee so many nights she’d lost count, weathering out vicious storms with good company. And now Marge didn’t even look up from her mug when Robin dropped the seatruck keys in front of her, finality weighing heavy in the silence.
“You ain’t really gonna go with that thing, are ya?”
“....Yeah. I am. I’m going to help him set things right with Kharaa. It- It’s-”
It’s something. Something she could help with. Meaning. A purpose . She was a xenobiologist, she had dreamed of one day finding sapient life, of sharing science and understanding and the sheer joy of not being alone in the universe. It was the opportunity of a lifetime, even if the shape of it felt hollow in her chest.
And she would never leave Al-an alone, not now, not after everything. He had phantoms of his own haunting his steps; beings constructed to be immortal faced again with the specter of death, bodies engineered to be indestructible left in pieces beneath the ocean. A consciousness meant to exist as many reeling, an individual left behind.
One desperate decision cascading into oblivion- A sea dragon ramming an undersea laboratory. Explosives collapsing an ice tunnel. A crash landing with no way out.
“You sure he ain’t changed something round in your head while hitchin’ a ride?”
“Yes, Marge. I’m sure. Are you sure you want to stay here? Alterra-”
“Ha. Damn sure. Alterra got nothin’ on me, and neither do these seas. After all this time, I think I know where I belong. And I reckon you know well and good where to find me, if you’re ever back in these parts.”
A hand on her shoulder, and the closest she’d ever get to a smile from Marge. Preston nuzzling against her leg. A bento box of greens shoved in her hands on the way out the door. Not a goodbye, but the refusal of one.
There had been one more locker to dispose of. The volcanic region beyond Marge’s base had been largely ignored by Alterra, far too resource poor to justify the damage to equipment from the combination of extreme temperature and hostile neighbors.
She chose an unassuming, medium sized crater roiling with black smoke and sulfur, the scan showed it went deep, magma at its deepest point, no useful mineral signatures in abundance. With no witnesses but the bacterial matting and tube worms, she threw everything she hadn't been able to shred into the searing undersea vent where, with a little luck, it would never again be disturbed. The less she left for Alterra to piece together when they came back, the better. She didn’t need to ask to know that Al-an had done the same with the Architect remnants.
And Alterra would be back. There was nothing she could do to stop it. Nothing that Sam had done would ever be enough to stop it.
She’d thrown Sam’s logs in first. Her sister’s last words, and the most damning evidence against her. The answers Robin had risked her life for out in the frigid wilderness. She had listened to it on repeat until she was certain she would always know them by heart, long nights spent sobbing into the sheets with the tablet crushed to her chest.
A tablet that could be tracked. A cloud that would upload automatically the minute an Alterra satellite got put back in orbit. A liability.
Every PDA went into the vents. The security cameras she’d torn from the walls of the leviathan site. Storage drives taken from the bacterial research labs. All went down, down, down into the boiling water. Then there was only one item left in the locker. The spy pengwing stared up- innocent, artificial eyes blinking in sync as its programming demanded. Tiny wings flapping from tinier gears. Sam’s magnum opus, the culmination of a life’s work in robotics. The one that had hidden her serum away and the one Robin had used to retrieve it.
She pulled the little bird from the storage, ran a hand over its plastic beak as its voicebox chirped, the sound distorted and staticky. Its treads whirred, trying to find purchase as its systems started to fail from the water. Her thumb traced the “PHI ROBOTICS” emblazoned along a welded seam.
Robin couldn’t protect Sam. Not from Alterra, and not from herself.
But she could protect Al-an, and Marguerit, and everything she’d done since she landed out in the shallows. She cast the bot into the scalding water, watched it sink out of view in the silted darkness. And as her seaglide carried her away from the geothermal field, she never looked back.
Above the water she watched a real pengwing chick, made of flesh and blood and love, bounce from its huddle at the sight of its parent surfacing near their flow. It slid on its belly until it bumped into the adult, chirping wildly as it snuggled up into the feathers of its stomach. To the chick’s delight, the adult dropped a half-chewed boomerang into the snow as it bent down to run its beak across the young one’s back, grooming out a snag in the feathers. The rest of the chicks soon followed as more adults returned from the hunt, the flock lighting up with a cacophony of excited squawking and beating wings.
Beyond the ice a glow whale breached the surface in a victorious leap, bioluminescence outshining the sun in a glittery arch before its body crashed backwards into the water. The family pod circled around, water spouting as they surfaced in turn, singing to each other while their matriarch danced. A younger female copied her elder and bounded from the water, ethereal fins flaring out as she reached for the sky.
It could have been a lifetime later when Robin finally brought herself to stand, swing the pack over her shoulder and stretch out her stiffened joints. To climb down from the roof and walk to the edge of the rocky ridge. Retrieved a delicate bouquet carefully packed at the very top of her bag, dried flowers and foliage she’d gathered from every corner of Sector Zero and tied together with a slip of ribbon pilfered from a sea monkey’s nest. She took a deep breath to steady herself, then turned and flung the bundle from the cliff in one smooth motion, staring as it drifted into the foamy sea below. It floated for just a moment, then was snatched away by the churning waves and lost from her view. She kept staring at the empty spot, as if the sea might deign to give it back.
A strong wind blew in off the ocean, whipping her hair and pushing her back with the force of it. Almost strong enough to knock her off her feet into the soft snowbank behind her. She stumbled, then reached a hand up into it, letting herself marvel at the alien wind as it flowed through her fingers. An atmosphere so similar to Earth’s, breathable and perfect. And here she was, one of the few dozen humans who had ever gotten to see it, to breathe it in. One of the fewer who was still alive to relish it.
In a moment of impulse, Robin ripped the gloves of her suit free and reached for the snow. She buried her hands in the fluffy powder, ignoring the chill as she packed it into a ball, then crushed it in her palm. It was just snow. The same as any snow on Earth, and yet more, because it was here. Part of an entirely different planet’s water cycle halfway across the galactic arm.
She could practically hear the snide comment Al-an would have made echoing in her mind, something about encouraging hypothermia in her extremities etcetera etcetera. It was almost strange, to be alone in her own mind after so much time spent as one with him. The joints of her fingers cracked as she flexed them, ignoring the burning cold as she made another snowball and tossed it with all her strength, watching it arc up high into the blue, blue sky before diving back towards the sea.
In another life a matching snowball smacked the back of her head. Giddy laughter from behind a makeshift fort, Sam running away in a pink puffer coat. Gaudy Christmas ribbons on the streetlights. Mom calling them for dinner from the doorway.
She was alone in a derelict base millions of light years away, panted breath freezing in the air, snowball vanished into the alien sea. There was no return fire from the ghost standing behind her.
Robin sucked in a breath, letting the icy air fill her lungs until it stung. She wiped at her eyes with trembling hands, frozen eyelashes threatening to glue together with every blink. She retrieved her dropped gloves, tugging them back into place as the tech of her suit worked automatically to stabilize her temperature. Grabbed her helmet from where it lay forgotten nearby and looked at her own reflection staring back from the gleam of the visor.
A slot canyon loomed just beyond the path, the ping of the coordinates Al-an had sent her persistent on her radar. The sun glared down overhead, the white of the ice near blinding. Somewhere up there, they were waiting.
Robin took a couple steps forward and paused. Turned back to look out over the glacier, watched the waves crash into the rocky shoreline. Then she laughed, smiled up into the sunshine and took off running up the trail into the unknown future.
Let the dead of 4546B rest.
With her departure a skyray landed, perched on a half-broken antenna jutting out of the side of the decrepit greenhouse. It hopped its way down the steel rod to an inconspicuous crevice between two torn panels at the base, filled with sprigs of scrub brush and stalker down. Close enough the thermal lily tilted its gaze, and the ray fluttered its bright feathers joyously into the heat.
It raised its beak to the sky and began to sing.