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intention of standing still.
Short held a flashlight aloft, and it glinted off the crystalline drifts, making the jagged path of their
arrival easy to spot and easy to follow right back to the tiny low-flyer that he was bundled into. Short
looked at him for a second, then to the notebook he was holding.  Which way to their ship?
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The Slipstream Con
 I think we came in from that direction, Kellen said with a jerk of his chin, leaning forward to look at
the screen. The movement pulled the coat up over his hands, and he caught the hem, keeping his fingers
free as he leaned back.
 Strap him in. I don t want him trying anything while I m flying in all this fucking snow. Dumb did
as he was told, pulling the straps tight and crushing Kellen against the side of the flyer. His hands hidden,
he put them against the cold metal, stretching out for the faintest connection. When he found it, it was
almost too easy, a navigation line that ran from the main computer in the back of the craft to the stripped-
down driver s compartment. He was into the system in seconds, testing just how much sway he d have to
work with. It was within the limitations of the nanotech to read the navigation data while he was
manipulating it, and when he turned them ten degrees off course without Short noticing, Kellen figured it
was safe to try something a little more drastic.
The sensors were reading a rise in the landscape ahead, large enough that they d need to shift course
around it. Showing no outward sign of bracing for the impact, Kellen carefully edited the sensor data, the
pristine and flat landscape supposedly stretching out for miles ahead of them. Short never slowed the flyer,
and Dumb hadn t even sat down. Kellen wound his way up through the layers of the ship s systems, tilting
them down towards the hill as it lifted abruptly out of nowhere. Seconds after Short figured out they were
going to crash, Kellen cut the engine entirely, leaving them with no control over the craft whatsoever as it
skimmed in over the snow.
The belt held when they crashed. He knew, because he was thrown forward, and it felt like he was
being cut in half as it pinned him in place. He saw Short hit the console face first, but Dumb flew back past
him, hitting the wall with a crunching noise that Kellen never wanted to hear again. His own head slammed
back against the side of the flyer, and though he struggled against it, consciousness faded out.
The helpful connection with the now nearly defunct flyer computers told him that it had only been a
few minutes between passing out and waking back up. The situation around him was chaos, just as he
usually liked it, but he felt like some of the disarray had taken up a space in his head. It took him ages to
get the cuffs off, due in no small part to him first trying to use one of Dumb s fingers to tap in the code
before remembering that he could just unlock them by thinking about it. Or not, it seemed, but then he
remembered his grandmother telling him to ask nicely, and they fell away as he charmed the tiny chip that
made them work.
Dumb and Short were dead. Dead, dead, dead. He felt rather bad about it, really, since he abhorred
violence, but he hadn t killed them on purpose, and he hoped that counted in his karmic favor. Intent was
nine-tenths of the law, wasn t it?
Freed of the cuffs and the safety harness that had kept him alive in the crash, Kellen staggered to his
feet and towards the main flight computer. There was no way the flyer was getting off the ground again
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S. Reesa Herberth and Michelle Moore
without major repairs, but if he could access the communications system, he could contact Tal and Vanya.
He could hear it crackling, a voice barely audible over the speakers, but when he touched it the board
sparked, and the smell of burning electronics only got stronger. When the smoke started curling up from
under the console, he gave up, backing away from the flames.
Logic told him that he should find a fire extinguisher, but his eyes didn t lock onto one in all the mess.
Short was slumped over the console, his head twisted nearly backwards, and while he might have been
concealing one next to him, Kellen had absolutely no intention of touching him to find out. Dumb had
reached a messier end, impaled on something that Kellen thought might once have been a conduit for
coolant. There was a spreading puddle below him, and it stank of sweetness, urine and blood.
He turned away to retch, forcing down his gag reflex because if he gave in to his body at the moment,
he was going to sit down and never get up again. Freezing-cold air assaulted him, and he pulled Tal s stolen
coat more firmly around himself, his normally agile fingers fumbling the zipper twice before he got it
secured up to his chin. Pulling the hood up, he stepped lightly past Dumb, locking his hands over the edge
of the door that was half-unhinged and yanking until the space widened enough to let him slide out. He
wound up on his ass in the snow, the bulk of the flyer shielding him from the wind but not the smell of
smoke and flame that thankfully filled his nose, overtaking the stench of death.
The sun was rising over the landscape, the coral burn lighting up the snow in a way that conveyed
warmth where none actually existed. He wanted to paint it, a splash of obscene color bright against the
nearly virgin white, but there was the smoking hulk of a dead flyer in the way, and his hands were too cold
to move properly. Wincing, he pulled his arms back into the body of the coat, able to tuck his fingers into
his armpits as he staggered farther away. He couldn t imagine how this giant spinning ice cube could have [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]