Read Chapter 29: The Crevasse

The tether pulled taut between them, and the crevasse yawned below like the mouth of a dead world. Jack's boots skittered on the frost-crusted rock, and Elena watched him test the ice bridge with the butt of his torch before committing his weight to it.

"You sure about this?" she called, her voice thin inside her helmet.

"No," he said, not looking back. "But the clock's not asking."

The bridge was three meters of pale, fractured ice spanning a drop that swallowed the light of her helmet lamp before it could find bottom. Jack moved with a careful, rolling step, one hand on the tensioned line, the other outstretched for balance. Elena paid out slack from the anchored spool at her waist, watching his injured leg buckle slightly with each stride.

He was halfway across when the ice groaned.

It wasn't loud. That was the worst part. A low, settling sound, like a sleeping thing turning over. Jack froze. Elena saw his gloved fingers tighten on the line.

"Keep moving," she said. "Slowly."

He took another step. The bridge shuddered.

And then it fell.

Not all at once—one section of it tilted and slid sideways, a sheet of white folding into the dark like a trapdoor. Jack's legs went out from under him and he dropped, his body slamming against the crevasse wall before the tether caught him with a snap that vibrated up through Elena's spine.

She hit the deck immediately, driving her boots into the ice, bracing her weight against the anchor spool. The line jerked again as Jack swung, and she felt herself slide a full meter toward the edge before her crampons bit.

"Jack!"

His voice came back crackled, strained. "I'm here. I'm—" A pause, then a curse that the suit's filter rendered almost polite. "The bridge is gone. The whole span."

Elena peered over the rim. Jack hung maybe four meters down, his boots scrabbling uselessly against the smooth ice wall, one arm wrapped in the tether. The other hand was pressed flat against the rock, and she could see the tremor in it even from here.

"Can you climb?" she asked.

"Not with this leg." His voice was tight. Controlled. She'd heard that tone before—on Earth, in the dust storm that had killed her crew, when the others had spoken calmly right up until the moment they stopped speaking. "I need you to haul me up. Can the anchor hold?"

Elena checked the spool. The anchor was a carbide screw buried in clean ice two meters back from the lip. It would hold. The question was whether *she* could pull his weight plus the suit's mass back up a vertical wall without being dragged over herself.

"I can do it," she said. "Give me a moment." She looped the line around her waist and twisted, planting her heels against a rock outcropping. The harness bit into her thighs. She pulled.

The line moved a few centimeters, then stopped.

"Push off with your feet," she gasped. "Use the wall."

"I'm trying. My boot won't get purchase—the ice is polished smooth down here."

Elena pulled again. Her arms screamed. The line quivered, and she slipped another half meter, her heels scraping uselessly now. She felt the lip of the crevasse touch her back, cold radiating through the suit, and knew in that instant that she had two choices: let go of the line and watch him fall, or go over with him.

She chose.

The drop was fast and graceless. She hit the opposite wall of the crevasse shoulder-first, the impact jarring through her teeth, and then she was swinging beside him, connected by a single taut line that had somehow held both of them. Below, only black. Above, the rim of the world, impossibly distant.

Jack was staring at her through his faceplate. Even in the dim light, she could see his expression shift from shock to something harder to name.

"What the hell did you just do?"

"What I had to," she said. Her voice came out steadier than she felt. "The anchor will hold longer with two of us on it. The line won't slip back through the pulley now—the weight balances it."

"You came over the edge to *save the anchor*?"

"I came over the edge so you wouldn't die alone." The words hung between them in the silence of the void. She heard herself and almost didn't recognize the voice. "That's all."

Jack let out a breath that fogged his faceplate. He looked up at the rim, then down at the darkness beneath his boots, then back at her.

"You know," he said slowly, "when I first met you, I thought you were the coldest person I'd ever worked with. Everything by the book. No room for anyone else in your calculations."

"And I thought you were a cowboy," she said. "All instinct, no discipline. The kind of pilot who gets people killed because he trusts his gut over the instruments."

"And now?"

Elena looked at him. At the way he was holding his injured leg, the way his breath came in short, even bursts. The way he'd flown into a quarantine storm to reach them. The way he'd trusted her when she'd given him the evidence files, without asking for proof.

"Now I think I was wrong," she said. "About a lot of things."

Jack smiled—a real one, even through the strain. "Me too. I thought you'd leave a man behind if the numbers said to."

"I would have," she admitted. "Three months ago. I would have written you off as a liability and found another way." She swallowed. "Then I spent three days on the surface with you. And I learned that some things aren't in the book."

Above them, the anchor creaked. The line vibrated, and Elena realized what Jack was already doing—reaching up, feeling along the wall beside him, searching for purchase.

"There," he said. "An outcropping, about a meter above you. If we can both get to it, we can brace ourselves and climb back up hand-over-hand."

Elena twisted, spotting the ledge. It was narrow—a handspan, maybe—but it was something. She grabbed it, pulled herself up, and planted her boots against the wall. Then she reached down for him.

Their gloves met. His grip was strong despite the injury. She hauled, and he found a toehold, and together they began the slow, agonizing climb back toward the light.

The anchor held.

When they finally rolled over the rim, gasping, lying on their backs on the cold regolith, the silence stretched between them for a long moment. Then Jack laughed—a sharp, surprised sound.

"That was the worst idea I've ever had," he said.

"You've had worse."

"Have I?"

Elena turned her head to look at him. Their helmets were close enough to touch. "Yes. You landed a shuttle in a storm to save two people you barely knew. That was worse."

"Maybe," he said. "But this one hurt more."

She laughed despite herself. Then she looked past him, across the plain toward the distant ridge where Iris's shuttle sat waiting. And she saw the lights.

Multiple sets of them. Streaking down from the sky, burning bright against the black.

"They're here," she said. "The enforcement team. Iris said we had minutes." She scrambled to her feet, reaching down to help Jack up. His leg buckled, and he swore, but he got standing. "Can you run?"

"Define run," he said grimly.

"Fast walk. With a limp."

"Then yes."

They started moving, the tether still clipped between them, trailing loose across the ice. Behind them, somewhere in the dark, a light blinked from the base's service airlock—Kessler, watching, or moving. Elena didn't look back.

The shuttle's running lights blinked ahead, a steady rhythm against the chaos descending from the sky.

"Elena," Jack said, his voice tight. "If we don't make it—"

"We'll make it," she said.

But she kept his hand in hers, and didn't let go.