(Happy New Year! And a confession: somewhere in my many stories about these three characters, I got Lisel (or Lisil as he was in the first story) mixed up with Krisin. I also forgot to check what my Catchin character looked like. I am just going to let it go for now. I'll get it all sorted out when I put them together in a book. Sorry! Now on with the adventure!)
"Stopping by the woods on a snowy evening," Krisin suddenly mumbled, shaking snow from his fur.
"He's delirious," Tana decided.
"Barbarian," Krisin countered. "It's a famous poem by Frost written in the early 1900s. It suits us."
"Why? Was he lost in a frozen hell, too?" Tana asked.
"We're not lost," Ret replied.
"You may not be lost," Lisel countered, looking back at Tom, who still followed behind them. Tana wasn't sure if she wanted him there or not. "Tana and I are lost, though I don't know where Krisin thinks he is --"
"Ha. I am not lost," the Catchin replied. Then he lifted his head. "I think."
Tom spoke from behind them.
"The sun that brief December day
Rose cheerless over hills of gray,
And, darkly circled, gave at noon
A sadder light than waning moon."
"Ah! Snow-Bound, John Greenleaf Whittier!" Krisin said with delight.
"They've both gone crazy," Lisel decided.
Tana didn't argue. She stumbled on through the snow that sometimes came up to her knees. Chaos continued to spread behind them, and she didn't think it came any closer, though anyone with half a brain would be able to track them --
Or maybe not. Tana was aware of others, most of them panicked and yelling, charging through the snow nearby. Medtech Ret would stop them with a lifted hand sometimes. Tana began to realize that he'd spent a reasonable amount of time in the military. She recognized the signs, and she trusted him all the more for it.
They'd clamored over some huge boulders, and Ret stopped. "Sit down here. We'll let people get ahead of us and follow in their footprints, making it harder to tell us from them. We'll have to try to obscure any prints from Krisin."
The Catchin nodded. He didn't wear boots, but at least he had on sandals. Tana would follow and make certain she covered his tracks.
"Don't these people have DNA trackers?" Lisel asked. "I would think they wouldn't have trouble following Krisin with one."
"They don't work well in the cold, and especially not with snow and other people in the same area. They're going to be checking every footprint they find, which will slow them down. They might get lucky -- but I'm betting even if they find a track, they'll lose it. I purposely took us in different directions and followed more than one set of people. From here, though, where we won't leave tracks over the rock and where they won't expect us to go, we are going to head away from everyone else."
"You have done this before," Tana said.
"Something like it," he agreed. "I was in the Earth Force for fifteen long years. I don't think a lot of colonists realize how much trouble we can find right here on Mother Earth."
"I'm starting to get an idea of it," Tana admitted.
He gave a little bark of a laugh and then signaled them to silence. A few people were coming far too close.
"Zealots," a woman said in disgust.
A man grunted in agreement. Tana could see shadows moving through the fall of snow, but no one came any closer to them.
Somewhere behind them, she could hear more sounds of trouble, but even it moved away. They stayed where they were with the snow blowing over them and the day growing colder.
Ret checked Krisin and gave a nod. "No problem. "We'll keep med pads on it so you aren't slowed down by pain, but don't believe that means you can be careless."
"Keep Tana from landing on me, and I should be alright," he replied.
If he hadn't been shot, she would have tackled him. He knew it, too, and gave one of those big-teeth grins that scared the hell out of others. Even Ret looked worried.
And Lisel threw a snowball that hit Tana in the side of the head. She yelped, but at least not very loudly. She thought about escalating the war, but Ret already looked like he might abandon them for being so crazy. He might be right.
"Nothing personal, Ret, but I really didn't want to come to earth," Lisel admitted. "We've met Earthers before, and too many of them are more like Sally than like you and Tom."
"Just so you know, Sally and people like her drive most Earthers crazy, too," Tom admitted. "We send them off-world whenever we can. Unfortunately, you guys keep sending them back."
"They don't seem worth starting a war over," Krisin replied, shifting slightly to ease an ache. "Ret --"
"I know. Time to move. I've marked out our path."
"I wish the storm would move on," Tana said, pulling the coat up around her.
"No, you really don't," Ret replied. "If those clouds disappear, the temperature is going to take a dramatic drop."
"Drop as in colder," she said with a disbelieving shake of her head.
"Much colder. We're holding at about 20f right now, and if those clouds disappear, negative 20 would not be out of the question."
"Forty degrees colder? Are you people crazy? Why does anyone live here?"
"Most of them like to ski."
"Throw themselves down the sides of mountains and hope to survive to reach the bottom," Tana replied.
"More or less."
"That's crazy."
"Why are you three a fighter crew?"
Tana started to say something, stopped, and then sighed as she went to help Krisin.
"I suspected you would understand," Ret said and looked over the rocks. It had been quiet. "Let's go. The military will be here soon, and we need to be under some cover by then."
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