#ice queue

Nyota tried not to visibly bristle as Arjun followed her back through the cold room. Something about the air was wrong here. She couldn’t quite place it. It felt somehow less wrong when she was moving, and that felt like a clue, somehow. But that wasn’t an answer. And it did nothing to ease her growing—not fear, but apprehension.

“Huh, there’s grass,” Arjun said, drawing her out of her musings. “Guess there is enough light for it after all. Really makes you wonder.”

Nyota hummed in agreement, a habit she was picking up from Lumen. “Anything specific catch your wonder yet?”

Arjun snorted and waved broadly at the area. “You mean besides this whole place or including it? Give me a lifetime and a team of engineers and we still couldn’t get all its secrets. Hell, even a full Floran lifetime couldn’t pry it out. It’s a marvel.” He gestured at some of the closer creatures who had wandered over to watch them, a pair of sheeplike animals with curving, branched horns. “And biologists for that matter. Those capricoats there, never seen any with horns like those, outside of fossils. That’s an ancient throwback for sure. And all of them have that.”

“Then I will try not to cause too much damage,” Nyota told him. She closed her hand over her spear’s shaft and bared her fangs at the nearest capricoat. It backed off. “But we may have to fight them. That was not a friendly posture.”

“Right, right.” There was something almost wistful in his voice, a tone Nyota had heard only very rarely from the old man.

She offered a small smile. “When we can spare it, I can bring you on a survey or two on the planets I visited before. I was only able to give them a cursory examination before. It would be nice to see deeper.”

His eyes weren’t visible behind his visor, but he gave her a curt nod. “Buying my vote, ma’am? I’ll hold you to that.”

“I know.” Nyota spotted stealthy, hunting movement in the snow ahead. “I would have offered either way. But brace yourself. I see trouble.”

He almost snorted as he followed her gaze and readied his heavy wrench. “You’re a rare one if I’m to believe that. But I’ll take it.”

Nyota almost chuckled. A wispy creature that seemed made of air and snow popped out of the snow and spat a chunk of ice at her; she leaned aside and let it crack against the wall. “I know. Trust my deeds, not my words.”

Arjun ducked back behind her as she gestured for him to watch her back. “Wispers, huh? Nasty nuisance. All over on arctic worlds.”

Nyota nodded and braced herself, blocked a charging capricoat. Looks like they’d been waiting for any sign of weakness, distraction. “I remember. Father used to hunt them.”

There was no more time for talk. Two more wispers popped out of the snow.

Nyota ducked under a spat ice ball and swatted the next out of the air before it could crack against Arjun’s arm. He returned the favor with a sound crack over the capricoat’s head as it backed up to have another go at her. Its thick skull took most of the force, but it still staggered, caught off-guard.  

“Get on, you bastard,” he muttered, grabbing it by one horn and tossing it lightly into a snowdrift. It bleated at him, dazed, and wiggled its legs in what would’ve been a comical manner if it hadn’t been trying to take his legs off at the shins a few seconds ago.

Nyota gritted her teeth. Doubts held her back from striking at the wispers, even as they attacked her again. She couldn’t get the robed stranger’s words out of her head. You cherish life. It felt wrong to just kill something in this place, this vault that was meant to preserve life… If she could just stun them, or drive them off… Her spear was ill-suited to that task.

“But I cherish our lives too,” she snarled, and knocked away another frozen volley.

Something clicked. Isn’t that the way of it? Nyota realized. She lunged forward and spun her spear like a quarterstaff to knock one wisper for distance. The other was treated to an iceball from Arjun that sent its light body tumbling down a slope and out of sight.

“Well thrown,” Nyota told him, offering a hand as he walked gingerly over the icy floor to join her.

“Don’t mention it.” Arjun rotated his shoulder a bit. “Nothing like your cannon of an arm there, but it’ll do. What was that about? Couldn’t find an opening?”

Nyota hesitated before answering, struggling to find an answer. “I was not sure if it was right to kill them,” she admitted slowly. “But whoever built this Vault must have had that in mind.” She gestured around them at the ageless stone walls and the stars beyond. “These creatures are wild. They have been fighting, eating, coexisting for eons. We are just two more animals thrown in.”

Arjun gave her a funny look. “Did one of those snowballs catch your head or something? Should have Sonny take a look at it.”

She turned a glare on him before she realized he was just trying to get a rise out of her. There was a faint smirk visible under his visor.

The old man shook his head slowly, raising his hands in a peace gesture. “I almost get it, I think. It’s a weird place, weird rules. Like in the stories my grandmother would tell, the ones about little spirits in the rocks and woods. But I’ll follow your lead on that one. You’re the one who had the key. They let you in. Just don’t pause too much, ma’am. I’m not on the menu today.”