CANAISIS ∞ Chronicle One: The Last Living Ship ∞ 1: A New Mission

39 ∞ Motivations

Day 00007 Mission Nilex and Long Ago

Awareness returned to Ayla. First the blackness, then the sensation of cold fingers and feet. This had happened before, she realized. The Memory was taking her now—she could hear the harsh, whistling wind.

Her vision cleared. She stood pressed against the base of a building. She'd stopped shivering from the cold a long time ago. The ash came in gusts, obscuring her sight at random. Rubbing ash from her helmet visor, she tried to see across the chasm before her and judge the distance to the other side.

«Captain, you must find another route,» the ship's voice sounded through her bone induction implant. «The radiation level is increasing—you're in danger.»

Ayla let her shoulders drop and looked back the way she'd come. The trail she'd made in the ash had almost disappeared. "I don't remember anything like this being here, Canaisis."

«It most likely wasn't. The trench ends in two craters, almost a kilometer across. I surmise some sort of weapon made this.»

She turned and looked down into the canyon, but she couldn't see its depth. Ash and grey twilight obscured it.

"What kind of weapon does this?"

«I suspect an electrical discharge of some kind, Captain. Two points of contact of opposite electrical potential would create a plasma current between the two points, a lightning bolt vaporizing everything it touches.»

"This is quite a few stories deep. How much energy does it take to carve a canyon that deep?"

«Captain, if you do not retreat, you won't survive the radiation exposure. I must insist you move.»

Ayla surveyed what she could of the area for a few moments longer, then forced her tired body to move. She turned around and took her rope line into her hands. Rolling it up as she went, she followed it back the long way she'd come. The hours took their toll before she made it back to her base point where a stake was driven into the ground. It had gotten so dark that she could only see what her helmet lights showed just before her.

She sheltered down behind a broken wall, pulled a tarp off of her sled, and secured it to the wall and sled, making a tent of sorts. Taking water, a nutrient pack, and a battery, she crawled under the tent and settled down.

The wind... It was the wind of a dying world. It cut through the sound of her own breath within the helmet. She fumbled with numb fingers until she attached the water bag to her suit. The sipping straw within her helmet extended, and she drank. The water had no flavor, and that suited her. She did not look forward to making herself eat the nutrient paste. The idea of food held no joy for her, but she needed to keep going a little longer at least. Then she could let go.

She reached for her wrist controls and put her suit into shutdown mode. Her Heads-Up Display went dark, along with her outside lights. In the darkness, she sat and tried to think of nothing. The tent flapping and scrape of wind-driven ash was all she heard—it was all that there was to hear...

Ayla jumped awake at the sound of Canaisis' voice. "Captain, your suit battery has depleted, and your body temperature is dangerously low."

She looked around her, trying to focus and make sense of the words. Then she remembered. Automatically, with her body complaining at being forced to move, she felt around for the battery that rested next to her outstretched legs. She had trouble finding it because her fingers had no feeling. Dutifully, without emotion, she removed the old battery from her suit and saw a red light lit up inside her helmet. She couldn't even resent the light. But when she inserted the new battery into her suit, and the light turned green, she found an emotion.