“There"s someone out there on the ice.” Her voice was strangely thin in the freezing air.
The low curve of the sun"s limb shone through a ragged hole in the fuselage, blinding her before the filters kicked in within her left eye. She was hanging upside-down by her seat-restraints, and she was still alive. How was she still alive? This time she"d lost conscious thought for a period of thirty-two seconds, the shock of the imminent crash-landing and the extreme deceleration of the impact too much for her biology. Telemetry streaming into her brain from the ruined lander"s systems and down from the array of orbital nanosensors allowed her to build up a view of what was happening. They"d crashed near the pole, brought down by the high-g harpoon strike. The weapon had been launched with no war
