CLIMBING OLYMPUS by Kevin J. Anderson

Author:Kevin J. Anderson
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Tags: Kevin J. Anderson, science fiction, climbing olympus, climbing, olympus
Publisher: WordFire Press
Published: 2013-06-24T04:00:00+00:00

Nastasia

In darkness the adins used tough cables and harsh white spotlights to reach the bottom of the chasm. The rover lay like a wounded beast on its side, its masses of telescoping legs flailing for purchase against the toppled rocks.

Nastasia knew it was a machine, but still she felt sorry for the thing, fallen so far below. She wondered if it had hurt when it struck bottom. She wondered if she would hurt if she jumped that far. She decided not to find out.

Stroganov took the equipment from the final cache of supplies the adins had brought with them when they abandoned the Martian lowlands. Nastasia thought Stroganov was very smart to remember the cables. Boris had wanted to abandon everything, and only a few of the adin refugees had hauled the equipment piled on their broad shoulders, balanced on the humps of their secondary lungs. But in the intervening years, Boris had grown angry each time the adins were forced to use the old UNSA equipment. She didn’t see Boris around here, though, and she wondered if he would be angry now. Nastasia knew to hide whenever Boris was angry.

She watched the cables snake down into the darkness, and visions flickered in her imagination, blurring reality again. Ropes used by assassins to scale the Kremlin walls? Were enemies of the monarchy coming to get her again, even here on Mars? She had to run!

She was at the top of a chasm, fleeing before the Bolsheviks came for them again. She and her family had been under house arrest in the country dacha—her father Tsar Nicholas, her mother Tsarina Alexandra, all her brothers and sisters. The Bolsheviks were coming to murder them all! She had to get away! So sad…

“Nastasia,” Stroganov said in his warm, gentle voice, holding out one of the ropes to her. “I need your help. We must get down to Dr. Dycek’s vehicle. It is the only way we can save Cora’s baby.”

Cora’s baby. Oh, yes, they had to rescue the child. She had forgotten. Nastasia saw Cora waiting by the edge of the crevasse, silent in her dread as she stared down at the wounded vehicle. Cora huddled over her swollen belly, as if trying to hold the infant inside of her where it would be safe and warm. Nastasia wanted to go hug her—but she couldn’t. Stroganov needed her help. Where was Boris?

The human doctor in the environment suit paced up and down the rim of the chasm, as if trying to decide what to do. She looked so strange in the muffling garment and fishbowl helmet. Nastasia and Stroganov were the only able-bodied adins in sight.

Boris was nowhere to be found. Had he done something? And where was Nikolas? It seemed so long since Nastasia had seen him. Maybe the two of them should come help save Cora’s baby. The adins had to stick together, as Boris said so often. She opened her mouth to shout his name.

“Nastasia,” Stroganov repeated, jarring her thoughts, “please take this rope.

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