“Dorian, Dorian,” she pleaded, keeping her voice to a whisper. “Are you all right?”

I am unhurt, he told her, voice coming from the display, not transmitted into her mind.

Regardless, Althea felt a powerful surge of joy again, hearing the voice – warm and certain – and his!

Are you injured? I could not reach you.

The damage could only be her’s then. She ran her hand through matted hair, wincing.

“I’m recovering, but I have a head injury; it must have damaged my internal transceiver.”

Damage that could not possibly be repaired on a planet like Makan.

I’m so sorry,” she continued, not holding in the agony she felt. “I should have never brought us here. I should have extended the life of the portal.”

Criminally stupid, her actions been. Still, he refused to blame her.

Extending the life of the portal would have risked the safety of all Palmyr, he reminded her. You could not have anticipated the effect of the power surge.

Althea, there are always risks.

She grimaced at her own words thrown back at her, then realized he had not intended to be cruel. “I said it would be better. That could have been the end. I–”

It wasn’t. You survived. It is passed. You must think of the future.

A future, where she was effectively starved and crippled, trapped on Makan – which wouldn’t have had what she needed, even before the fall. But he was right. She could only go forwards from where she was.

Althea looked over the thinness of her fingers, the loss of flesh on her arms. She must look gaunt, ghastly. She felt… insubstantial. Setting his case on her lap, she examined the ampoules for what would be needed to speed her recovery, broke their seals, swallowed the contents.

“What of those two?” she asked him after she’d finished. “Traejan. Kyso.”

They saved your life.

And she’d responded with anger, violence.

They have been waiting for the return of the Consortia.

She understood all too well. They could be manipulated, enlisted in her cause, help her destroy the planet’s Macro, then help her find an operable mirror port to escape this frozen world. Makan had been a tourist attraction; there should have been many…

“What do you think I should tell them?”

What you need to.

Repeat the lies, half-truths she’d used before? What other choice was there? She doubted that they’d be very eager if they knew who and what she was – a wanted criminal in the Palmyr, hardly a success out here.

Althea brushed away those bitter thoughts, put his case on the bed beside her then looked over what she had left, the minimal tech she still had to work with and… Her heart sank.

She had allowed herself one thing, one offering for the dead of Elysium. Her dead.

Bits of the zuthra atzu leaves had survived, but they crumbled between her fingers. She remembered…

The green surrounded her. Lichen hugging the stones beneath her bare feet, fingers of ferns brushing her arms, vines and leaves hanging down from the branches above.

The holographs amongst the roots, of her parents, her brother and sister, the best she could remember them. Her family. Gone.

Althea shook her head, checked the remaining tools she had with her. Most were intact – but not the most important one.

Her Maran multiplexing transceiver, the single tool that she had to provide her a direct codestream interface, was in pieces. So much for its advertised – ‘practically indestructible’ – she had paid so much for. Althea cradled the crystals in her hand – examined the striations on their surfaces. Cracks were visible. Cracks.

That meant that nines of thousands of code channels would be, at the very least, misaligned, if not cut.

The multiplexer could be repaired; but like her personal nanotech – not here, not now.

She put the crystals away, picked up Dorian’s case, folded its display fields. The left side of her head began to throb.

How can I possibly succeed - with all this damage?

How am I ever going to get off this planet?

She lay back on the bed – sank into the mattress, closed her eyes – held Dorian’s case tightly to her chest. There were few options left to her, all… now involving direct contact with a Macro corpore. She would need help, a kind of help that would get people killed – some, many – depending on which she chose. Oneness, the last thing she wanted was more blood on her hands.