Marauder Ramses by Aya Morningstar Page A

the slope. “But I don’t think they know for sure. A few pods landed around the area we did because they probably saw the hole in the ice left by our ship. It took us a few hours yesterday to reach the place where we camped, but they’ll be able to follow the path we left. I’d say we have around an hour and a half.”
    “An hour and a half to do what?” I ask.
    “It will be too easy for them to track us,” Ramses says. “But if we find a fortified position, we can overshoot it to leave false tracks, then double back and defend. Something like a flat platform above a raised mountain pass would be ideal. I expect they’ll have simple human guns, and if I can get the jump on them, I may be able to disarm one.”
    “Good thing we saved the stun rod, huh?” I ask. “You can use the rock, and I’ll use the –”
    “No,” Ramses says. “You’ll keep going while I defend. You know how to survive here now, and you’ll have the best chance of living through this if you go on without me.”
    We reach the end of the incline, and we’re now atop the ridge. I can see the frozen sea from high up behind us, and ahead of us is an incline much more gradual than the slope we just climbed, but it ends in jagged and harsh, rocky mountains after a few kilometers of empty snow.
    “Ramses,” I say. “Our best chance is to stand and fight together. You’re not going to get me to abandon you.”
    “I promised I’d protect you –”
    I put my gloved hand on his cheek and shake my head. “You are protecting me. Do you really think I can make it alone in the mountains? Especially if you don’t make it – and it sounds like you are planning on a suicide mission – how long until they track me down? If we both fight together, we may actually win. I am a cop, Ramses, even the murderous robot overlord saw that in me.”
    Ramses sighs. “I’ll think about it, come on.”
    We begin to climb across the barren snowy hill. The mountains seem so far in the distance, as if we will never reach them. After walking around twenty minutes, when I look back, I see just how far we travelled – and just how obvious a path we’ve left.
    “The good thing,” Ramses says, “is that we will see them coming from up there.” He points to the mountains. “They can track us, but we’ll be able to watch them coming for us, and react accordingly. Being up in the mountains like that and looking down at someone on this big, wide-open space...there’s nowhere for them to hide – no way for them to get up undetected.
    And then another light flares up in the sky, and it roars across our heads like a comet. I think it’s going to crash down directly on top of us – but instead it buzzes over our heads, leaving a thick smoke trail, and it slams down into the mountains.
    “Shit,” Ramses says.
    “So…,” I say, “there’s nowhere for us to hide, on this big, wide-open space.”
    “We run,” Ramses shouts. He ducks his head down and plows through the snow like a bull. I try to keep up with him, but even though he has to cut a path through the snow, I still can barely keep up with him.
    Even though I’d been exhausted and panting just from walking uphill so long, Ramses had seemed calm and collected, but after running for two or three minutes, he’s panting hard as he runs. The mountains seem close now, but the pod landed a while ago now, and assuming whoever was inside it survived and is armed, I don’t see how we’ll make it to a safe spot before –
    There’s a flash of light from up ahead, and Ramses grunts.
    Everything in front of me had been the brown of Ramses’s coat, and the white of the snow, but now there’s red.
    His blood is staining the snow, dripping out of his shoulder, but he’s still running forward.
    I stop dead, paralyzed by fear. My cop instincts are telling me to do something, but we’re in an impossible position. There are enemies on both sides of us, a sniper on the high ground, and we’re armed with