Free The Frozen Sky by Jeff Carlson Page B

could hear her thoughts, she knew that, but at the ravine they'd run straight to her hiding place despite three decoys.
    She had to learn if she was going to live.
    This rock shelf seemed defensible when she stumbled over it, nowhere to retreat but only one approach to cover, and there was a spongework of holes overhead where she could dump her waste heat before leaving.  Vonnie was on her belly now facing outward, trying to eat and trying to rest, trying to ignore the ugly, anesthetized pressure of the med beetles slithering in and out of her temple, her cheek, her eye socket.
    Both eyes were damaged but she'd elected to deal with one at a time in case something went wrong, in case the nanotech needed to scavenge one to fix the other.  Lam's idea.  He'd also agreed that her helmet would retain integrity if she broke off the gear block completely and stripped it for parts.  What else would he have tried?
    The plastisteel of her suit should contain all sound but there was another risk in talking, a risk she ignored just to be with someone even for a moment.  Even a ghost. 
    "You still there?" she whispered.
    — Von, listen, don't close me down again, please .
    "Tell me what Lam would do.  Am I safe here?  I need to rest.  I laid down a false trail like you said."
    — They'll catch us.  But listen .
    "Did you check my map?  I made it almost three klicks."
    — They will.  Eighty-plus percent probability.  But I can talk to them, we have enough data now.  With temporary control of the suit I could at least establish ...
    "No."
    — Vonnie, most of their language is shapes, postures, I can't tell you fast enough how to move .
    "No.  Self-scan and correct."
    — Von, wait .
    "I said scan for glitches and correct.  Off."
    Could a ghost be crazy?  If so, it was her fault.  This ghost was the first she’d ever made and she'd rushed the process, and she had been angry with him.  The real him.  So she let him remember how he died and it made him erratic.  Maybe he’d never doubted himself before.
    Bauman would have been a better friend.  Bauman was older, calmer, another woman, but she was a geneticist and Lam's biology/ecology skills were too valuable.  The choice had been obvious.  Vonnie just didn't have the resources to pull them apart, build an overlay with Bauman's personality and Lam's education.
    She waited alone.  She itched her fingertips inside her rigid glove and did not know it.  Too soon she prompted her clock again and was disappointed.  Five minutes until her skull was repaired, thirty before she regained her optic nerve...
    Something was coming.

4.
    Europa's great ocean encased a solid rock core, and volcanic activity contributed to the chaos in the ice.  Below many of the “stack” and “melt” environments, in fact, sub-surface peaks of lava had proved common, long bulges and spindles that could not have existed if this moon had more than a tenth of Earth's gravity.  The tides distributed the rock everywhere, and it was a small problem for the mecha.  It damaged blades and claws.  It jammed in pipes.  Even dust would make a site unattractive, and ESA Rover 011 was quick to give up on a wide area of the southern plain when it brought up contaminants in its drill cylinder.
    Still, the rover was well-engineered.  Belatedly, it noticed the consistency of shape among the debris.  Then its telemetry jumped as it linked with a tanker overhead, using the ship’s larger brain to analyze the smattering of solids.
    Finally the rover moved again, sacrificing two forearms and a spine flexor to embrace its prize, insulating the sample against the near-vacuum of the surface.
    Impossible as this seemed, given the preposterous cold and the depth from which the sample came, the contaminants were organic lifeforms, long dead, long preserved: tiny, albino bugs with no more nervous system than an earthworm.

5.
    Vonnie opened her blind eyes to nothing and her ears were empty, too.  But she