Excerpt: Answering the Call

Chapter Three: The Snow Queen's Tears

Atuka prided herself on being the first to leave. She woke early, padding over a chilled floor to her bath where she splashed herself awake with cold water and rubbed the sleep from her eyes while the rest of the village slumbered. She'd pulled on her clothes and her furs, checked over her gear, and opened her door before the rest of the other hunters had even stirred. Some times, when she was lucky, she could reach her shed and be out in the field, without ever seeing another soul.

The wind was bitter that day and it had snowed overnight. A gentle but long snow that had begun as the night was settling in and continued throughout the evening. Bundled against the cold, her senses still blurry, Atuka made her way to the outskirts of town. The first few days she'd stuck to her routine Atuka felt like a ghost slipping through a shadowy world. The sun had yet to rise and the streets were still dark and deserted. Her only companions were the foggy cloud of her breath and the icy sting of the night's lingering cold. The faint light of the evening's end painted her familiar village in altogether more sinister tones. She kept glancing behind her, expecting to catch some horror stalking after her and looking for the perfect moment to catch her unawares. As the days passed, the monsters faded back into the shadows as did Atuka's fear. She no longer watched each step, whispering prayers to avoid that stumble or clatter that might roust the entire town from their beds and raise them against her in anger. Today she was eager to start the day and she stomped relentlessly through the fresh snow towards the sheds where her skimmer waited.

Her own shed was nothing more than a metal box, with shelves and drawers for her tools and a formidable lock on the roll-up door. She punched in the code and the door chirped itself open. There was a heater just inside, but Atuka didn't bother to flick it on. She'd be gone before it would have warmed the air enough to make a difference. Instead, she busied herself with readying her skimmer, tending to it with fingers wrapped in layers to protect them from the biting cold. She checked over the battery and made sure she had power and examined the motor and made sure she had fuel. She was wasting her time, she knew, as the skimmer was brand new and in fine working order but Atuka was determined to keep it that way Her last snow skimmer had been run-down and falling apart before it had finally broken down, stranding her miles into the countryside, leaving her with only a long trek back to town and the mocking laughs of her fellow hunters. Atuka had decided that she would never go through that sort of embarrassment again. She'd junked her old skimmer and invested in this new one and performed her daily maintenance check with zealous precision. Her skimmer was only a Xihuo Cold Runner, a serviceable machine from a solid company known for its reliability more than its raw power, but it was going to be a well-maintained one. As the night turned into morning, she ran through her checklist. She tested the oil and the sparkplugs. Greased the wheels and waxed the sled. Turned on the glaring light, overpowering in the cramped space of her small shack. She twisted the handle this way and that to make sure its connections were properly aligned. Then she set its controls into diagnostic mode and waited to see if it determined that anything was wrong. In the meantime, she opened her handheld and scanned the early weather reports. She'd subscribed a regional weather service. It cost plenty for a barebones display, columns of numbers arranged in tidy rows without the smooth graphics of a polished news report. But that's exactly what Atuka paid for – a look at the raw data. Looking over those plain numbers and figuring out what the day would hold made her feel like a scientist reviewing a stack of results. And the brochure had said it was the same service that ship's captains preferred. Atuka determined that the service was telling her that it had snowed that night and would likely snow again later in the day. But that the morning would be glorious, clear and crisp with the sun shining bright.

Atuka shifted her display, the diagnostic wasn't finished yet. She'd set it to be thorough rather than fast but, even so, it didn't have much time left. It would give her enough time to go over her gear, though. Atuka started with her medical kit, making sure that it was fully stocked and none of its medicines indicated that they'd gone bad, and, satisfied, she'd stuffed it into her pack. Then, her emergency kit with its tools for field repairs, flares, and a powerful burst transmitter to call for help. Like most hunters, she'd thrown out the bulky self-contained emergency fire pack, everything you'd need to start a campfire from starter to blocks of fuel. It only added to her weight since out on the ice fields there was no way to keep a fire burning, anyway. The emergency kit went into her pack. A supply of chemical hand warmers was next. Her hated snow shoes, just in case. With snow on the way, Atuka was sure she'd be back in the village before she needed to eat but she packed some food along anyway. Cold noodles, nuts, and snap fruit. Emergency rations, foul condensed stuff that she'd rather burn that eat but which might be necessary some day. A canteen of water went into her pack. A back-up clipped to her belt. Her field glasses went around her neck. She strapped her knives on. Atuka had five. Three for skinning and two for defense. She'd never been attacked out in the field but she'd heard the stories. The delicate skinning knives along with an assortment of instruments and specimen bags went into her hunting kit and would rest at the top of her pack. But Atuka liked made sure her weapons were closer at hand. One went into a holster, the other she slipped into her boot. The countryside was full of dangers, desperate hunters least among them. She took her rifle and laid it out with care.

It was a hunting rifle, a Kemeki model from the Shiho Combine that was as sleek as it was deadly. It was strong enough to stop a charging Ice Bear dead from a distance of at least a hundred paces. That was something since their hide was thick enough to shrug off most hunting rounds. Atuka had heard stories about that, too, and decided that she didn't want to find herself in a situation where the only thing to do was to see if she couldn't jab a length of metal into the neck of a snarling beast that was charging straight at her before it could snap off one of her limbs. Figuring that she'd rather take her chances with trying to hit the snarl beast with lead bullets instead, she'd gone out and gotten the best weapon that she could. But her Kemeki was so beautiful that she couldn't think of it as a sound investment. It was made of polished steel finished in a menacing, glossy black. It had selective fire with an option for the bolt-action that Atuka mostly used, a rifled bore that could handle any type of military standard rifle cartridges, soft-recoil supressors and stealth-ejection, mounted with an adapted long distance scope. The Kemeki was only just under military grade. Shiho issued it to troops under the Tursakar brand, adding some better sights and removing the inhibitor to enable full automatic fire but, otherwise, it was the same. Atsuka knew how to knock out the inhibitor plate herself but she'd yet to find an excuse that would pass inspection.. It was hunting approved but just barely. Technically, she wasn't even supposed to have her rifle pieced together inside of the village borders but she had to, every now and then, just to admire it. She unscrewed the long barrel, disassembled the stock and the scope, made sure the chamber was secured against the cold and damp, and slid the pieces into a bag that she tied securely to the front of her snow skimmer. A pouch on her belt held different types of ammo from buckshot to the mushroom cored fat rounds she'd struggle to load if a snarl beast ever looked her way. She slipped some extra ammunition into her pack. She was just about to wonder what was taking the diagnostic when it chimed that it was done. A quick glance at the results showed a few flags – she was due for an overhaul, after all – but nothing outside of tolerance.

She hauled her skimmer onto the snow and slammed the door shut behind her, double-checked the lock, and, as she sped on her way, waved at the indistinct figure swaddled in coats who was just arriving at a distant shed. Atuka couldn't say who it was exactly but it was one of the larger sheds further into town so it must have been one of the more established hunters who was starting her day. Suspicious, Atuka slipped her handheld out and studied the diagnostic timer display. Going back over the past few days, it had been taking longer and longer each time. Atuka's first instinct was to pass it off as nothing, a software glitch, some kind of memory bloat or other issue that she'd never be able to comprehend, but her second thought was that she didn't want to have to hike her way back to town again. She resolved that she'd push up her scheduled overhaul, get it done and the problem looked at instead of waiting a few more weeks. She made a quick note and sent a service request to the town's mechanics. With luck, she'd be able to get her skimmer into the shop when she pulled back for the day. And with even more luck, it might be ready for her again by the next. She'd have to find out when she got back, though, since she'd gotten no reply from the wrenchtwisters before she'd gone far enough to drop off the local relays. Out in the countryside, she was out of touch and out of reach with only the tenuous thread of her burst transmitter and the passive receiver in her handheld keeping her connected to civilization. It was as close as you could get to being alone. Once she was outside of the village's restricted zone, Atuka was free to open up the throttle and really enjoy her solitude.