“So you simulate conditions a little closer to what’s happening outside,” Lilia realized.
“Bingo,” said Wagner. He veered off a step to the right, with the Dogs of War a step behind. He brought them to a tiny, sealed glass booth. At the stomp of a foot pedal, the inside of the box lit up bright. It contained five rows of full body, pull-on survival suits. Kalus wasn’t the only one among the Dogs to cringe at the thought of pulling an additional suit on over the ones they already wore. The only consolation was the protection of another layer against the ravenous wind. Wagner slid the front panel of the booth open. “Everyone grab one. Without it, you’re as good as a sta
tue,” he said.
The Dogs scrambled around one another to claim a survival suit. They stepped in, hoisted the heavy-belted pants up to their waists, and hooked the shoulder straps over their shoulders. Their boots magnetized to the steel bridge instantly. Each of them shrugged on the dense, gray-green jacket counterpart. They hooked the bottoms of deployable helmets to their collars and snapped them over their faces. The radio transmitter built into the collar kept them as connected as if they weren’t about to step out into winds ten times what would be extreme on Earth. The Dogs followed Wagner’s lead of wiggling fingers into the insulated padding of their gloves.
“Ready to feel real cold?” Wagner’s voice came through the speaker of his suit. Kalus, Lilia, Sophia and Captain Demi each bobbed their heads in their helmets. They each knew they had no idea what they had agreed to. They each knew there was no other choice. “If you find yourself more than two foot away from anyone else, scream.”
With this, Wagner began forward again into the swirling blue. Kalus, who happened to be next in line behind him, watched him vanish behind an invisible barrier. The storm consumed him instantly. Knowing hesitation would put them all too far behind, he forced himself through the same wall, the terradome.
The raw, unfiltered winds of Neptune rushed around Kalus with such ferocity, his feet lifted off the steel plank bridge. He almost screamed, until the magnet plates in the bottoms of his built-in boots snapped back down against the bridge. He had to yank each one up to step. Eyes fixed in Wagner’s shadow, which was almost unfindable only two feet away. Sophia did the same at Kalus’ back, with Lilia and Demi on either side of them. None of them could actually tell who was who anymore, aside from shadows in the blizzard. All they could do was keep tight and follow their guide. That was, until Wagner turned back to scream:
“It’s too thick! We have to turn back and wait for the storm to die down! Don’t want to lose you four on your first mission!” The scream of wind filled the horrified, frozen space between them for a hesitant second. In that time, Captain Demi made a decision. He clasped a hand on Wagner’s shoulder.
“We can handle it,” said Demi, with such resolve that Wagner almost took him at his word. If not for the gusts rattling steel slats beneath them, he would have.
“How?” Wagner asked.
“How were you going to? What benchmarks do you use to help people cross?” Demi asked.
“Short rods welded to the bridge. They stick up about three feet high from the center of the bridge. I can’t find a damn one!” Wagner told him. With this, Demi turned to his shaking Dogs, gathered close. Each of their faces was the same, petrified gray mask.
“Whatever’s going through your heads right now, swallow it and shit it out later!” Demi stomped. Kalus, Sophia and Lilia twitched upright, instantly focused at the sound of absolute authority. Captain Demi hadn’t had to do that since the beginning of their training. “We’re not tourists here for a show around the Outerworlds! We’re the Dogs of War, and we’re here on assignment! Marcus’ orders were to group up with the researcher in Marre in five days. It’s the fifth day! So what do we do?”
“We…” Lilia cleared her throat when she saw Kalus and Sophia were too stuck. “We go find him.” Demo gave her a hard nod and a clasp on the shoulder. The definitive pat of the heavy survival suits snapped Kalus awake.
“Good. Now tell me how, before we freeze to death. Let’s hear it. Wagner’s an innocent man. Are we going to kill him, getting stuck out here?” Demi demanded. His urgency shook Sophia from her cold stasis with a desperate idea. In her Captain’s experience, those were often the best or worst. He listened for which it was.
“I’ve got an echoscope here. I…might be able to find the rods, but it’s inside my suit,” Sophia rattled.
“The pocket on the front of your suit is a transfer pouch. You can put something in it from inside your suit, seal it, then open it from the outside,” Wagner jumped in.
“Good, it’s a start. Let’s get it,” Demi said. He bit his tongue to fight the urge to walk them through it any more. None of them looked blue quite yet, so he watched to see how the three would fare on their own.
“I can’t… My hands are stuck inside the sleeves of the suit,” Sophia panicked. An icy torrent rocked them all back and forth while she wrestled with it. Demi waited until her breathing got labored to say anything. He was silenced, instantly, however, when Sophia’s eyes deadened to a flat, adrenaline-fueled focus. “Kalus, grab my hand,” she said, without a hint of malice. Kalus squeezed Sophia’s gloved fingers in his own.
“Go on, pull them out,” he said, a drive in his eyes Demi had seen but once before. There was even a newborn glint of respect. Lilia seized her other hand, which allowed Sophia to slip her arms free inside the suit. In a few fidgeting seconds, she had her hands back in the suit sleeves to pull the echoscope from her transfer pocket.
“Okay,” Sophia chanted while she fixed the two-inch strip of metal to the side of her helmet. Before her eyes, the scope projected an image rendered from thermal and sonar data. It took Sophia only seconds of searching to pinpoint the guide-rods. The problem was where they were. “I’ve got them… They’re…left. By a lot. Maybe thirty feet.”
“That’s too far to make up for in this kind of wind,” Wagner interjected, “The terradomes tend to funnel the wind between them, across the bridges. We try to walk diagonal or hook into the rods with chain in a storm to account for it. There’s no way all five of us will make it, if we’re already so far off course.”
“What if there was just one of us?” Kalus asked, his eyes alight with an idea.
“I don’t follow,” Wagner countered. Each new pulse of confidence through the Dogs of War seemed to chase some out of him. He looked like he might turn tail and run any second.
“Lilia, Soph, grab my hands,” Kalus said. Demi watched with a wince, until he saw Sophia completely missed the misnomer. Kalus had said it automatically, without malice. Sophia grasped his hand the same way - automatically. Lilia took the other. A few deft wiggles later, Kalus’ hands were back in his sleeves and he had something in his transfer pocket. Kalus unzipped it to draw a steel rod an inch longer than his hand was wide. “Blast shield. We get behind this and move together, we might just be heavy enough to ford through the storm.”
“Blast shield? We’re not being shot at-”
“Kalus is my Arms Master.” Demi stopped the fabric guide with a hand on his chest, “If he thinks it’ll work, it will.”
“You’ve never seen a shield exactly like this one,” Kalus assured Wagner. With a problem on one hand and a custom-crafted tool to solve it in the other, he was a different man. Focus replaced his usual sarcasm, stemmed from boredom. He twisted the rod in his hand, which snapped open to triple its original length. “Cap’, help me brace it.”
“On it,” answered Demi. He grasped the far end of the rod before the wind could wrench it from Kalus’ hands. That gave Kalus the chance to click in a switch. Antennas popped up and down from both ends of the rod, creating the long shape of an H. Kalus flipped yet another switch, which electrified the device. Waves of light jumped between the antennas, then focused into solid sheets of pure Chrysum. Fully active, there was one above and one below the bracer bar in Kalus and Demi’s grip.
“Feel that pull?” Kalus asked his Captain. He nodded; the rod seemed twice as heavy the second the Chrysum shields deployed. “The rod’s magnetized. I designed it to lock against metal for portable, durable cover. I’m going to adjust it until it’s tight but movable. Hold it steady and let me know when you can push it forward.” Kalus slid a panel back from the surface of the rod. In a single motion, he unveiled a range of knobs and buttons Demi couldn’t have guessed it had.