Lastly comes Magda. Her suit, already half in pieces, falls apart the moment she lands. One side of her head is bloodied, but the rest of her is intact. Our eyes meet for a brief moment before her gaze slides to the body. She doesn’t look up at me again.

I clear my throat and gather the power source into my arms.

“Objective secure. Let’s get out of here before they send more troops.”

Sverre and Magda attempt to bury Ivennie’s body while I place the power source in a more secure bag and take stock of the damage. Daniil dons the coat I returned to him and tries to warm up, silent and shivering. By the time I’ve determined that each of our exosuits is too badly damaged to make the flight back to the outpost, the others have given up trying to dig through the hard ground, and snow has started to fall. An ugly storm is brewing, thick, dark clouds clustering directly above us. Titan weather is like nothing else in the system, calm one moment and a howling blizzard the next. Somehow these storms are impossible to track and predict by weather radar, which means too often that we end up in situations like this. At least we’re properly geared out for the elements. Hundreds of Titan citizens die from the harsh weather conditions every year.

I crouch next to the last broken exosuit, tapping my gloved fingers against the metal. Much as I don’t like it, there’s only one answer.

“We’ll have to walk back to the outpost.” I straighten up, adjusting the strap of the bag over my shoulder. The power source rests inside, still giving off faint warmth through the bag’s thick, waterproof fabric. “We’ll return for the damaged exosuits with the spider tank.”

“We’re walking through the storm?” Magda asks, her voice cross. Normally, neither she nor the others would question me in a situation like this. But we’re all cold and tired and hungry, and one of our own lies frozen on the ice, so I choose to ignore it.

“We have no choice. We can’t stay here.” I glance back at the alien ship. Tempting as it is to try to plug in the power source and hide from the storm, by the time it blows over we could be trapped by the snowfall. And the Isolationists will undoubtedly return, either for revenge or scavenging or both.

My team says nothing, their eyes cast downward.

“If we hurry, we can beat the storm,” I say, though I know that we won’t. The wind is already picking up around us, whipping the snow into painful shards, but there’s nothing else to do. “Come on.”

One by one, we set off across the ice, as the snow begins to bury the bodies we left behind.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

Responsibility

Scorpia