The Black Gate (The Messenger #11) - J.N. Chaney Page 0,86
vaguely toward the galactic core. “Shatter. The records are on Shatter, in cold storage.”
“Cold storage?” Dash asked.
“Shatter? Why?” Lomas asked. “Wait. Never mind. Do you know exactly where?”
Envaer gave a nod, his face suddenly sheened with nervous sweat.
Dash slapped his hands together. “Sounds like we’ve got a trip to make. Kai, Lomas? Shall we?”
“I will have to come along,” Envaer said, the anxious look on his face betraying how much he didn’t want to do that. “I keyed the door to my biosig. You told me to keep everything safe,” he said to Lomas. “So I did.”
Lomas sighed. “So I did, and so you did. And now we get to fly to a planet known for ice, gales, magnetic storms, and the Whistletops.”
“Let me guess, tall, dangerous mountains that the wind whistles around?” Dash asked.
Lomas smiled. “It’s almost like you were there when we named it.”
19
Dash had taken one look at the blizzard thundering around the Archetype, then stuffed himself into his vac-armor, with a warm thermal hood and face mask instead of a sealed helmet. The armor was more cumbersome than the insulated clothing Lomas had provided, but any regrets about the extra weight and bulk vanished as soon as Dash dismounted from the mech.
The wind slammed into him like a body blow that just went on and on, but he felt none of it. The armor was designed to protect against the hard vacuum and utter cold of space, so a frigid wind wasn’t going to affect it at all.
“I could get used to wearing this stuff all the time,” Dash shouted, joining Lomas, Envaer, and Kai at the head of the path leading up and away from the landing pad where the Archetype and the small League ship called a rover had set down. Snow had drifted across the pad. The blast-resistant hard crete had been scoured bare in some places, while in others, Dash had to push through waist-deep snowbanks. The trail, which climbed up the side of the nearest of the looming mountain peaks, was in no better shape.
“Definitely looks cozy!” Lomas yelled back. She started to say something else, but a sudden, mournful wail cut her off. Dash instinctively reached for his mag-pistol, but Lomas shook her head. “Whistletops, remember?”
Dash looked up, but the tops of the surrounding peaks were lost in blowing snow and wind-whipped clouds. He let go of his holster and nodded.
“Still a hell of a creepy sound,” he said.
Kai, who leaned on his staff, his back to the wind, merely smiled with the patience of an actual monk. “All places have voices. Sometimes, they are just more evident.”
Lomas gave him a quizzical smile, then looked at Dash, who smiled back. “Kai has a unique way of seeing the world.”
“We all have a unique way of seeing the world, Messenger,” the monk replied. “It is implicit in being a free-willed individual.”
“You know, much as I’d love to stand in a blizzard discussing philosophy, I think we’re here for a reason?” Dash said.
Lomas smiled and gestured up the trail. She led the way, Dash behind her, Envaer behind him, and Kai bringing up the rear. Dash hadn’t particularly planned to sandwich Envaer between his own armored bulk, and the fearsome martial-arts skills of Kai, but he wasn’t unhappy that was how it turned out. Something about the fawning little bureaucrat just grated at him, like a subtle, unwanted harmonic in a fusion reactor, but he couldn’t say just what.
Maybe it was because he’d just known too many Envaer’s in his time, all focused more on topping off their own fuel tanks at the expense of anyone else.
About halfway up the trail, a dazzling blue flash briefly lit the storm. A chest-rattling blast of noise immediately followed. Dash winced and looked around but saw nothing except blowing snow. “Sentinel,” he said. “What is —”
Another searing blue flash and another concussive pulse of sound swept over them.
“— that?”
“Lightning, and exceptional thunder,” Sentinel replied. “There is a large static-electric charge accumulating in the local atmosphere, resulting from the blowing snow. I would recommend avoiding large, open areas, where you might be the tallest feature present.”
Dash looked around at the bleak, empty talus slope they were climbing. “Thanks, I’ll take that under advisement.” He turned to Lomas. “Maybe we should hurry.”
She nodded and pressed on, pushing through a snowdrift, clambering down the other side, then starting up the next one. A cliff now loomed about fifteen meters ahead of them.