James Axler – The Mars Arena

As the days had gone by, though, he’d discovered the adventure had taken on some aspects that he hadn’t quite counted on. Phaedra Lemon, for some unknown reason, had become more beautiful during the past week than any girl he’d seen at Nicholas Brody School or before. The past couple of nights had passed by probably as uncomfortably for him as they had for Calgary. He just couldn’t help wondering if Phaedra really did sleep naked.

Dean grew more irritable. “Cal, look. You have some choices here. You can stay out here tonight and sleep on the cold, wet ground and slip back into the school when the gardening shift comes out. Or you can join me in climbing those walls with this rope” he held up the coils of hemp, “sneak by Phaedra Lemon’s room long enough to find out if those stories are true and then get the rest of the night’s sleep in your own warm bed.”

Calgary sucked on his teeth and glanced up at the timber wall.

“Now, what’s it going to be?” Dean asked.

Chapter Eight

Ryan and J.B. found Jak and Mildred just after the teenager started to pull the dead man from the collapsed overhang of snow and rock. Mildred lowered her pistol when she recognized them.

“How’d you happen on him?” Ryan asked. Keeping the Steyr in one numbed hand, he wrapped his arms around himself in an attempt to hold in his escaping body heat.

“Didn’t chill him,” Jak said. “Found him. Arm sticking out. Saw it.”

The man wore a long coat, high boots and a thermal cap so furry the dead eyes under the bill looked like a taxidermist’s glassy marbles. A backpack remained strapped on his shoulders. Ryan guessed that the man was probably in his late fifties and had been in robust health, judging from the broad shoulders and leaned-out build.

A cottony pallor had set up under his skin, washing it of most of the pigmentation. When Ryan moved the man’s arm with his boot, just testing what he’d seen when Jak was moving the corpse, the limb moved fairly easily.

“Fresh dead,” Jak announced, squatting next to the deceased. “Broke neck.” He pulled down the man’s collar and exhibited the bruised throat, then twisted the head from side to side.

Ryan knelt, hopeful that the coat might fit, and started to pull the dead man from it. He noticed the curious tattoo on the inside of the man’s left forearm near the inner elbow.

A big dark blue dot was in the middle, echoed by concentric rings in lighter blue that got bigger and bigger around it, like the ripples made from a stone dropped into a pool. A double strand of orange bars and lines ran through it.

“Did you find the pass?” the Armorer asked as he put on his coat. Mildred had been carrying it for him.

“No,” Mildred said. “The ridge Jak and I were following petered out into a drop-off that we’d need climbing gear to get down.”

Chilled to the bone, Ryan shrugged into the coat, which cut some of the wind. When he spoke, his teeth still chattered. “Where’s Krysty and Doc?”

“Split up,” Jak answered. “Thought mebbe better chance two directions. Ain’t heard, though.”

“Are they supposed to meet you anywhere?”

“Back along the way you and J.B. probably come,” Mildred replied. “If they were there, you’d have seen them or they’d have seen you.” She stood close to the Armorer, one of her gloved hands in his. Though they were somewhat reticent about showing their relationship because of their respective taciturn natures, the commitment between them was deep.

Ryan turned up the coat collar. He thought he’d never be warm again. “When?”

“Overdue.” Jak flicked out one of his leaf-bladed knives and sliced through the backpack’s shoulder straps, then yanked it out from under the dead man.

“How long?”

“Eight minutes.” Jak opened the backpack and pulled out a largish bundle of foil-colored material. He turned it over in his hands, inspecting it.

“What do you have, Jak?” Ryan asked.

“Therm tent.” The albino shoved the bundle at Ryan, tapping the instructions printed on the foil surface. “Good for heat, good for cold. Got snap-together poles.” He flexed his hands around the material hard enough to show the skeletal rods. “Got self-heats, ring-pulls and maps in here, too.”