In his elite unit, Burkhart’s skills had leaped above the highest bar. It was as if he were born possessing them. But he’d accepted recognition from his superiors and comrades with indifference. His competitiveness came from old angers of the soul, and he’d worn his decorations as emblems of a secret spite. For the child of the moon, every medal pinned to his chest was a reminder of some beautiful shining face that had once looked scornfully at him under the sun, left further in the past as he flogged himself toward new levels of accomplishment.

At last, though, it was restlessness as much as anything else that had sent him along the path of the mercenary. His prowess had seemed wasted against cardboard soldiers. What pluck was there in mock combat against an enemy that bled red dye? Games had not demanded enough of him. And so he had moved on to find a profitable and satisfying alternative.

Since then Burkhart had only improved upon his innate abilities, refining his tactical know-how, his situational adaptability. He had actualized a vision of his own potential, made it hard as steel, and found a kind of chambered peace within it.

Now Burkhart took a sinuous curve around a glacial edge and urged his bike over a series of jarring bumps into the downhill channel he had reconnoitered before the storm. A final glissading run, his flaps threshing up a wake of powder, gravity squeezing the ribs around his heart, and then he was on a smooth flat field of ice, headed across the basin between the mountains and frozen shore.

Dimly visible through the snow, just a handful of miles seaward, lay the UpLink base.

Cold Corners Base

“Pete.”

Nimec turned his head from the window in the empty corridor. It was oval and not much larger than a porthole, its fixed pane reinforced with a shatter-resistant polymer coating. He had stood there alone staring at the thick pulsing snow outside, listening to the freight-train roar of the wind, once pressing his hand against the glass to feel its buffet. He could see neither land nor sky, only the close, incursive whiteness.

“Meg,” he said. He had not noticed her approaching. “Figured I’d take a look at the thousand-pound giant.”

“And maybe stare him down?”

“Maybe.”

She stood beside him awhile.

“I’ve been trying to find you,” she said. “Ron Waylon told me he’d taken you on the grand tour, then left you at your workstation after you two went poking around the utilidors.”

“How’d you know I’d be here?”

“I didn’t exactly. Just had a hunch you might be where everyone else wasn’t, and wandered around until I hit the spot.”

“It would’ve been faster and easier to have me paged.”

“But absent the intimate touch for which we strive at this lodge.”

Nimec looked at her another moment, then moved his somber eyes back to the window.