Kael Varren's Arc

Chapter 1 of 1

The mech's left knee locked at the worst moment, in a whiteout that hid the ground. Kael fought the stick, feeling the machine list. Ice packed the joints faster than he could burn it clear. He had kept this scrap of a war-mech running for six years, patch after patch, all to buy one thing: enough salvage to reach a settled town and quit the road for good. Freezing to death two ridges short of that was not the plan. "Vent the left leg, now," Kei said through the comm. She rode in the maintenance cradle behind his seat, tools already out. "If it seizes, we walk. And we don't survive the walk." Kael dumped heat into the joint. The knee groaned free. He pushed the mech forward through the storm until dark shapes rose ahead: rusted towers, buried roofs, a dead frontier settlement half-swallowed by snow. One building stood taller than the rest, a wide hangar with sealed bay doors. He drove the mech toward it. The bay ramp was clear of ice, oddly clear, ringed by a mat of dark red moss that gave off real warmth. Kei dropped from the cradle and pressed a bare hand to it. "Warm," she said. "This stuff throws heat. It's keeping the doors thawed." She looked up at the hangar. "We can shelter here. Fix the leg where our hands won't freeze." Kael forced the doors apart. The mech barely fit. Inside, the moss climbed the walls and floor, and the air held above freezing. He killed the engine and climbed down, legs shaking. For the first time in hours, he wasn't fighting to stay alive. Kei got to work on the knee joint. Kael scraped ice from the foot actuators beside her. The repairs went fast in the warmth. Within an hour the leg cycled clean, and the mech stood steady again. They would survive the night. Come morning, they could push on toward the towns, toward the end of all this. Then Kei went still. She crouched over a patch of the red moss near the far wall. Her fingers traced a torn edge. "Kael. Come look." He knelt beside her. The moss there was cut, not broken. Clean lines, whole sections lifted away. Not one patch. Several, spread across the floor. "Someone harvested this," Kei said. Her voice dropped. "Recently. The cuts haven't grown back." She stood and scanned the dark corners of the hangar, one hand drifting to her wrench. "This place isn't abandoned. Not really." Kael looked at the sealed side doors, the shadows between stacked crates. The mech was safe. The leg was fixed. But they were not alone, and whoever else lived off this warmth had been here first, and knew this shelter far better than they did.