Thaw

Nemuleki woke me up with a poke at my shoulder.

I was rather proud of myself for not being startled. A looming alien being the first thing to see after waking up still made me jump every now and then, even if it was Tasser.

Her mouth moved but I didn’t hear anything.

I tweaked a psionic dial in my mind and sound washed back over me.

“How could you possibly have fallen asleep?” Nemuleki asked, aghast.

“I did a psionic thing,” I mumbled. “Overrode my sense of hearing.”

“That’s possible?” she said.

“Evidently. Took me a few tries to get it right, but it’s not the most complicated thing. How long has it been?”

“A few hours,” Nemuleki said, “we’re breaking shelter now.”

“Is that safe? I don’t have the most experience with this kind of weather, but on Earth this kind of thing could last for days.”

“We might shelter again later, but the storm made landfall and threw most of its tantrum. Forecasters say we’re through the worst of it.”

“So how’d we do then?” I asked. “Because I’m not going to be sure how to feel if the building got leveled above us while I napped.”

“We haven't gotten the ground level doors open, so there’s a lot of ice outside. Nai already went upstairs and got out through a window.”

I was curious to see what exactly the aftermath of this ‘ending storm’ would look like, and according to my psionic clock, it was early morning once again. In a way, sheltering had wound up a bit like some alien party night. Everyone had run out of work to do, shoved themselves into one room, and occupied themselves.

But after party night came clean up. Everything I’d brought was more or less within arm’s reach of where I’d fallen asleep.

Though, my deck of cards was sitting on one of the shelving units that some of the Casti soldiers had decided would be their bunk. Letrin was not so much ‘asleep’ but resting on the second shelf off the ground.

Nemuleki and I walked over to the shelving unit where she gave a loud click with her mouth. It was strong enough to echo in the supply closet-turned-shelter.

Letrin and a handful of other Casti abruptly snapped awake and started taking orders from Nemuleki. I grabbed my deck, neatly packed up—and sorted, I found. The last time I remembered seeing the cards, the Casti had asked to take the stack and try to make or adapt their own game with them.

I was quietly pleased that one of them had been so diligent to make sure all the cards made it back into the sleeve. In order no less. I appreciated that.

My heart was pounding after a few seconds though, and I found myself short of breath. Oh. I was walking around the room without my mask. It was back with my air-barrier where I’d fallen asleep. I’d forgotten to put it on before leaving the barrier’s bubble.

I pulled on my mask and cleaned up my little corner before making the small move back toward my bunk.

The air-barrier was the heaviest thing I’d brought with me. It alone weighed more than my sparsely filled backpack. I didn’t think it was quite ten pounds, but it had to be close. Planet Yawhere had seriously screwed with my sense of weight.

Nemuleki dragged her charges kicking and screaming out into the halls, and I could have sworn I heard one of the grunts whisper the Starspeak equivalent of ‘five more minutes…’.

None of the windows had broken, which had been the largest concern. It was apparently a gamble for every storm whether to reinforce the windows and keep all the elements outside the building, or to strategically open some of them to alter how the wind pressed and pushed against the building.

I’d only seen videos of hurricanes, but watching whole structures just get peeled away from their foundations sent shivers down my spine.

But the Demon’s Pit Garrison had rolled the dice and won. Casti soldiers had worked almost round the clock the day before spraying every window until every inch was covered in rigid foam.

The covered windows gave the halls an eerie look despite the time of morning, but it was the large double metal doors at one of the garrison entrances that caught my gaze as we walked by it.

Several Casti, including Serral and his aide‒Dirdten, if I recalled‒all appeared to be idly standing around such a door.

“Hey, Nem,” I said, “you’re going to the roof, right?”

“Yeah, we’re getting outside to inspect the building.”

“Would you be willing to drop off my junk on your way? I want to see what’s going on here, I’ll catch up.”

“Sure,” she said. “Letrin, carry the human’s stuff.”

Letrin was still half asleep, but he took my backpack and the group disappeared into the garrison building’s hallways.

I walked over toward the door and knocked on the wall a few feet away from them. There were still a few Casti who reached for pistols out of habit when startled.

These aliens were all higher ranked, and therefore presumably more trained, so I was pleasantly surprised when none of their hands twitched for weapons.

“Mistar Caleb,” Serral said, “what are you doing?”

“Mistar?” I asked.

“Raho Tasser told me it was a respectful convention in your native language,” he said.

“Mis ter ,” I corrected him. “But I was going to ask you the same thing.” I nodded toward the set of doors they were all staring at.

“The doors are still buried in ice, As-“ the commander corrected himself, “Raho Nai is melting her way to this set and we’re going to work from there.”

“Why not just melt your way out, rather than have her go outside just to come back in?”

“The hinges swing outward,” one of the Casti officers said.

I frowned, but didn’t push the question further. It seemed to me like Nai should have been able to make her fire on the other side of the door, even without being able to directly see it.

“Well, since I usually spend mornings with Tasser, I was wondering what my day might look like with him in one of the other shelters, I’m either following Nemuleki around or being totally unsupervised.”

At the word ‘unsupervised,’ hackles rose on two of Serral’s subordinate officers. This was still a military base. And I was E.T. No matter how much Keys reconnected with his inner child, he was never going to let Elliot’s new friend go anywhere without at least a chaperone.

Serral let out a swear under his breath and closed his eyes to think for a moment.

Wasn’t that fun? Seems like in all the excitement around the storm, little old Caleb had slipped through the administrative cracks.

“…Alright, just stay with us until we can figure out what to do with you.” He said.

“You want I should take a crack at the door?” I’d fumbled the grammar a bit, but the message got across.

“…What did it say?” one of Tasser’s officers said.

“Idiom,” I dismissed.

Serral grabbed a bulky radio from under his poncho and pressed the button. “Raho Nai, respond.”

After only a moment, the radio crackled to life. “Yes Ase.””

“How much longer until you have this door open?”

“How much are you okay with your building getting scratched?”

“ Torabin… ” Serral growled reproachfully.

“Four minutes, Ase, ” Nai said. “At a certain point, it doesn’t matter how hot I make my fire. The surrounding ice is limiting how fast I can melt it. If I go too quickly, some of the ice could explosively evaporate.”

I motioned at Serral to see if he’d let me talk to Nai.

“ Raho, ” the commander said, “I have [Mister] Caleb here. Listen.”

He kept the button depressed and held the radio toward my face.

“Nai, I could make something like salt from this side. Would that speed things up?”

“…How well would you understand what you’re creating?”

“Pretty well,” I said, “it’s a simple molecule: elements eleven and seventeen. I know how it’s supposed to interact with most stuff, well enough to know why it melts ice.”

“…How much can you make? And how well could you distribute it?”

“A kilogram or two, and I think I could make it cover a few cubic feet.”

“Don’t try to create it in lumps,” she said. “Try to materialize it all at once and already spread out. Like you're trying to form a cloud of it instead of piles.”

“Alright. Stand back?” I warned hesitantly. New leaf or not, I didn’t want to push my luck.

“Obviously,” came her reply.

I put my hand on the door and shut my eyes. The reason I’d wanted to psionically experiment with my sense of hearing was to see how well I could connect psionic creations to my senses. I had the classical five, but being Adept had opened up some new ones.

The shape and form of the door itself came to life under my touch and I tried to aim my greater psionic construct at the sensation. As it stood, my tactile cascading was slow, but I felt like I was getting relatively clear pictures.

It wouldn’t do to rush, so I let it spread several seconds at a time, mapping out the texture and material of the door. Scratches in the steel, the thin layer of paint, and finally ice cemented to its surface on the other side. All that and more illuminated in my mind as the cascade spread.

Speed wasn’t my only limit though. Area was too. After a few seconds of spreading into the ice, the feedback I got from the sense dropped precipitously.

But that was fine. Even if I could only spread my touch through a liter of space, give or take, I had what I needed to create the salt. Namely, how thick the door and ice were.

I put my other hand on the door too, just to give myself a bit more reference for the space I was going to be materializing within.

Salt.

I forced the image and concept of the molecule to the forefront of my mind and tried my best to imagine a fine misting of salt simply appearing already diffused through the solid ice.

In the sections of ice I was tactilely-cascading, my awareness suddenly lit up. It was like my sense of touch had been suddenly washed in a different color, like how tinted lenses altered your sight. The moment my salt came forth, it felt like this touch-tint lit up the entire section of ice I’d affect, letting my cascade wash through several cubic meters all at once.

But in a heartbeat, the illumination was gone. But I still stayed in contact with the door, feeling the ice on the other side. Would it work? How quickly would it melt if it did?

Even stranger, I felt another wide effect wash over the area I was perceiving. But instead of a tint, this one felt like a sound, or maybe…a touch? A touch touching my sense of touch?

I was giving myself a headache trying to figure out what was happening.

“Uh, Nai?” I asked, still speaking into Serral’s radio.

“Yes, that’s me,” she said. “You’re feeling my cascade, see?”

The field pulled back and forth a few times, and it became obvious there was some intelligence behind how it was deployed, a bit like someone toggling a switch on and off.

“Yours spreads a lot faster than mine,” I observed.

“Covers aksi more area too,” she said tersely.

I made a conscious effort to ignore the jab. I could live with that level of tension in our interactions.

“How’d I do?”

“You turned the layer closest to the door almost entirely to effah. But the rest is still solid.”

“Don’t know that word,” I told her.

She didn’t respond right away, so Serral’s right-hand-Casti stepped in.

“It’s another word for snow. Wet, wet snow, waterlogged even.”

‘Slush’ then.

“Thanks,” I said. “Dirdten, right?”

“Yes,” he replied frostily.

Still, even if Serral’s staff had some reservations about me, I gave myself a mental pat on the back for remembering his name.

“Okay, should I try again?” I asked Nai.

“Fine, but don’t make it even this time. Can you concentrate it around the edges of the door? If the majority of the ice comes free of the door and building, I can melt it or just lever it aside.”

I think I got what she meant.

There were effectively two ways the ice was blocking the door, like a barricade, and like glue. If I used salt to melt the barricade portion free, then Nai could just do away with it entirely and we could focus on what little ice remained encrusted on the door gluing it shut.

I focused again and materialized ribbons of salt into the ice that I couldn’t see.

“There we go…” Nai said over the radio. A heavy crack sounded through the door and through my cascade, I felt some of the slushy ice suddenly become blistering hot.

I yanked my hand away on instinct of how hot it was, but after a second I realized my hand wasn’t actually the thing feeling the heat. A second later there was a violent hiss and my other hand felt a good portion of slush vanish from my cascade, suddenly turning to steam.

A loud thud and crack rang out before the roar of Nai’s teal fire washed over the outside of the door for a second, melting the ice still gluing the door.

The Farnata yanked open the door and showed her handiwork.

Serral and his officers casually walked through the hole in the ice Nai had melted, but my jaw dropped.

Inside the garrison, things were mostly unscathed. I’d seen pictures of snow-covered landscapes, imagined what it would be like to wade through waist-high snow like in Calvin and Hobbes comics.

But this put everything I’d ever imagined to shame.

There was more than four feet of snow covering everything. Everything in sight was completely whitewashed. The only kind of color anywhere was the faintest shade of purple sky behind the grey and overcast clouds.

The sheer depth of the snow was all the more shocking when it only came up to Nai’s waist where she stood instead of further up her torso. It was like she was standing on a platform.

Looking at the newly freed door, I could see why.

My tactile cascade had not reached the far surface of the ice, and so I’d underestimated how thick it actually was.

The door had been blocked by more than a foot of frozen water. Once I’d helped Nai cut it free from the door, she’d somehow hurled the mattress-sized chunk of ice away from the door where it had fallen into the snow and cracked into a few large pieces.

But the cut we’d made in the ice showed how thick it was underneath the picturesque snow.

As I came outside, I got to see the building itself.

Serral had said either the wind would tear the garrison away from the fortified reactor complex, or that the ice would encase the whole thing like a tomb.

The latter had come to pass.

Higher up the walls, the snow couldn’t stick on it’s own. But there had still been a buildup of ice and sleet to make a frozen shell over every inch above ground.

“Whoa…” was all I could say.

“If you’re eager to help, human,” Dirdten said, “there’s more than enough work to go around.”

“ Rahi… ” Serral warned. The commander’s tone fit the view: icy.

Even if he’d thought his aide was overstepping though, he turned to me, expertly hiding how badly he wanted me to say yes. “Would you be willing to help though?”

“Sure,” I told him, “Like I said, we didn’t have anything else planned for me today.”

·····

It was actually fascinating to watch the Casti go through the process of clearing the building.

Ase Serral pawned me and Nai off to a subordinate who was organizing the garrison’s cleanup before wading through the snow toward the garages to secure transport off base.

Doors and walkways were first. Nai and I cleared the ground floor doors with relative ease. She didn’t really need my help with them, but she didn’t want to try burning away the ice all at once in case she caught some of the building in the flames.

The teal plasma she created radiated enough heat to melt the ice and snow on the walls above its position. But like ordinary fire, its heat didn’t spread downward or outward as much.

Unlike ordinary fire though, she could make the flames float in midair. Ordinary fire also wasn’t so opaque. You could at least see images on the other side, however distorted.

But only at the very edges of Nai’s flame could I spy anything past her flames. It was uniquely frightening once you noticed it. It was also simultaneously fascinating. Once we finished the doors, we moved on to walkways, and I got to see Nai conjure a disc of fire. She slipped into the snowpack at ankle level, and snow started tumbling right into the disc beneath, letting out a frothing plume of steam.

The image of Nai cutting a straight line through the otherwise pristine snow reminded me a bit of a steam engine on a railroad. Nai, our Casti chaperone, and I were all walking in single-file along the path Nai was melting, with a column of steam rising in front of us before curling over our heads as we progressed through the snow.

My favorite part of getting outside sooner than most of the soldiers was getting to see how rapidly the base sprang back to life. Footpaths were carved through the snow and Casti quickly started shuffling between assignments, peeling sheets of ice off the walls, or affixing plows to their vehicles.

In just a few hours, almost every scrap of snow within a few yards of every building was gone, shoveled away or plowed into drifts. The same vehicle plows that had pushed the snow so easily were now being used to pry up sheets of ice thicker than my arms from the ground.

I was trying to help blast away some of the ice when Ase Serralinitus returned with Tasser and Dyn in tow.

I’d made a proper explosion instead of a flashbang only a few times before, and only once under pressure. But even with today’s relatively low stakes, I couldn’t get the boom to materialize under the ice like I wanted it to.

“There’s not room for you to fit any material,” Nai told me. “What you’re talking about is a bit like trying to push something into packed sand. There’s just no room for anything to appear.”

“What about the salt I made?” I asked her. “That was still ice, and I created salt where there was no room for it.”

“There’s a reason I told you to make it a diffuse cloud and not in lumps. Creating uniformly across an area like that will fit in the individual molecules you make wherever there’s a few unoccupied nanometers. And across a few meters, there’s going to be billions upon billions of tiny little spaces for stray molecules to materialize in. But to make the kind of kinetic explosive you have, you need at least a few cubic centimeters free, or at least not occupied by anything harder to displace than water.”

“Oh wow,” Tasser said as they approached. “You weren’t kidding, Ase . I was worried when you said you left them together, but look at you two!”

“Laugh it up,” I told him. “But I’ll put up with her if I can keep learning how to make explosives with my brain.”

The Casti Serral had left to chaperone me (and maybe Nai too, now that I thought about it) gave a glance toward the sky and I had to fight off laughter.

“How did the borough fare?” Nai asked.

“Quite well for how quickly the storm mounted,” Serral answered.

Nai narrowed her eyes at the commander, “But still something?”

“The shelters are clearing,” he said. “Residences are all intact, if buried for now. They’re counting heads, but one of the shelter’s hydraulics are failing, and they’re having trouble accessing it from the inside. The borough administrators are asking for Adepts to help get the shelter open.”

Nai put her hand on her face and gave an exhausted groan, “…alright, alright. Get me out there quick and let’s get it over with.”

“Well…” Tasser said, “It’s at least a two Adept job.”

“No…” Nai said, “Don’t tell me…”

Dyn nodded, “You two are the only Adepts in the borough right now. The local machinist decided to stay inland for the storm. “

“He’s quite old too,” Nai muttered. “I met him at the town hall, even if he were here, I’m not sure he could move around in the snow.”

“I agree, which is why I’m even considering this,” Serral said. “I’d sooner recommend he reach out to the Vorak than put Caleb in the middle of something like this, but he insisted I ask ‘every Adept’ that I’m in contact with.”

“Wait,” I said, bewildered, “I just spent hours helping out around here. Why say he should go to the Vorak before me?”

“Because the Vorak can be eager to earn back some public favor if they help out with these things,” Tasser explained.

“Caleb…it would be dangerous to help,” Serral added, looking me dead in the eyes.

“Look, I know I’m still new to the Adept stuff, but I can help. I can find people if need be, and I want to help however I can. Besides, we’re talking about ice and snow, it can’t be that dangerous.”

Dyn and Serral exchanged appalled glances, very different expressions on each of their species’ faces. “It’s not what you’d be doing or the conditions,” the Ase sighed. “It’s the visibility. If you’re helping in public, it will be impossible to keep you secret.”

I stared blankly at them. “Is that secret not already widely known?” I asked. “The Vorak attacked this base not days after I got here. I’m pretty sure they already know.”

“Yes, but they haven’t been telling everyone,” Serral explained. “And neither have we. It’s not in anyone’s interest, least of all yours.”

“I don’t get it,” I said. “You’ve actually been keeping my living here a secret?”

Serral gave a deliberate nod.

“Why?” I asked.

“Because we can always spread word about you when it’s ideal,” Dyn said. “But once you’re known, then the drink is tossed into the sea never to be reclaimed.”

“It’s risky,” Serral elaborated. “It might be that no great changes arise from revealing you, but it’s impossible to know that in advance, and the potential risks to you are… manifold. ”

“Like what?”

“Our First Contact procedure, such as it is, to start. Did Tasser teach you the first step?”

“Quarantine,” I said.

“So how do you think the colony public might react to learning about you? They could hear your story and be welcoming, or they might become hysterical about the potential biological disaster. And there’s no way to predict how that might develop.”

I frowned. Not even all the Casti on base were thrilled about me.

If Serralinitus wasn’t the alien in charge of Demon’s Pit, my stay here might look very different. I hadn’t thought much about the colony public, but that was only because I hadn’t really had much exposure to them.

The thought went through my mind, and I flinched. That was exactly what had led to my problems with Nai. A bad first impression had festered, and we’d both avoided each other until disaster inevitably arrived.

“Nai,” I said. “It sounds like you’re on board either way. What would you do in my position? How big are the risks?”

She examined my expression and found I was serious. We had a new deal after all.

“…The risks are quite large,” she said. “If crowds start panicking when they find out about you…worst case scenario, they could get deranged. Riot even.”

There was more, I could tell. She was taking excruciating care to formulate her thoughts.

“...But I think you should help,” she decided. “The risks surrounding you becoming public knowledge won’t go anywhere. You, specifically, are still a secret, but there’s rampant rumors about what exactly happened around Korbanok. I don’t think it’s in your interest to let those rumors keep developing and twisting into new things, because people are going to find out about you eventually. And this is about as ideal a circumstance as you can hope for. If people find out about you because you helped a shelter, I think that will matter.”

“Ase,” I said, “is this my choice? Or is this something your Coalition can’t afford to let me do?”

He looked at me grimly, and I saw his throat twitch like he started to speak only to bite back the response.

“…I cannot guarantee your safety if you choose to reveal yourself. But it is your choice.”

I gave a small smile behind my mask. “But Ase,” I said. “You can’t guarantee my safety even if I don't.”

If I’d been watching the Casti commander any less intently, I would have missed the subtle shift in his eyes and jaw. He had just realized or remembered something, and if my instinct was correct, the Ase ultimately agreed with me.

He gave a tiny click, as if to say ‘no, I can’t.’

“Tell the borough administrator I’ll help.”