Osman's Haven

By theidiotmachine

The storm hit with the fury of a vengeful god.

The wind shrieked around the low buildings, rattling the windows and tearing rubbish from a bin that someone hadn't properly secured. The freed trash swirled around, delighted that it had been sprung from its prison. The sky was blank white and the blizzard blotted out the horizon, so all you could see was pale pink soil, concrete walls, beetle cages, and the dancing snow.

The human settlers had hunkered down into their storm shelter, a concrete bunker dug deep under the farm. There they sat, shivering, waiting for the weather's rage to abate.

'This is the worst storm I've ever seen,' said Harrak, He was chewing a strip of helek bark, and the delicate, citrusy scent hung on his breath. He scratched his stubbled cheek. 'Absolutely the worst.'

Myo nodded and tapped her terminal. 'All our sensors think that, too. The ones that are still working, anyway. There's no way the supply ship can land in this.'

Harrak yawned and stretched. 'It's just typical. What are the supplies like?'

'We have lots of water; we can tap the aquifer so that's basically unlimited. The generator is even deeper than we are and has fuel for a thousand sols. It's food that's the problem. We have maybe thirty sol's worth? More if we ration. How long will this storm last for?'

Harrak shrugged, his weariness showing through his slow movements.

'I don't know. This is completely unprecedented. It could be an hour or it could be years. I can't access the satellites, I have no idea what it looks like from above. But I'll use what I have and get you a better estimate.'

'OK. But get some sleep first, Osy. Who knows, maybe it will all be over when we wake up?'

She knew that was an empty hope, but it felt good saying it.

# # #

It wasn't over when she woke up. If anything, it was worse.

One of the cages had been torn open; and the tooth beetles, glittering red like winged rubies, had tumbled into the raging twilight, scattered on the roaring winds. The other cages were reporting that they were mostly OK, but although their wide, low sloping shapes were designed for the abuse that this hostile planet could unleash, they were at the edge of their tolerances and it was only a matter of time before they were ruptured.

Myo tapped her tablet absent mindedly, watching the numbers go up and down on the wind sensors.

All four of them were in the main meeting room. Osman Harrak, who had not slept; instead he'd worked through their night cycle to produce the best weather forecast he could. He was hollow eyed and sipping a stim tea. Henri Bochart, who frowned as he scrolled up and down Harrak's report, eyes darting from number to number. Ana Donici, who was eating something smoked and spicy; she had skimmed the data and put her pad down. And Myo Kkot who had read it already and knew how this ended.

Bochart looked up, finally admitting defeat.

'We have to leave, yes?', he said.

Myo nodded. 'The snow is much heavier than we've seen before. It will soon start settling, and drifting, and then we'll be buried. We won't be able to leave the shelter. We'll starve to death in here before we're rescued.'

'If we go, we lose the harvest,' said Donici. 'There are still thirty one cages of beetles.'

'I spoke to the town. They just want us to get out of here alive.'

'The storm is nowhere near as bad on the lowland,' said Harrak. 'It's just up here, on the plateau, that it's a killer. If we can get off, the supply ship can meet us and take us the rest of the way.'

'You look like shit, Osy baby,' said Donici. 'You didn't come to bed at all, did you?'

Harrak just smiled, wanly, and silently toasted her with his tea.

'It's night now. If we prep for half a cycle we can be moving through morning, and we can push as far as we can through daylight,' continued Myo.

'C'est simple comme bonjour,' said Bochart, shrugging.

Donici scowled. 'English, Henri, and don't be sarcastic.'

'This isn't the time to fight, guys. Ana, let's check the runners. Henri, Osy, you need to pack supplies. Let's be ready to go in four hours,' said Myo.

'For her, it's always time to fight,' muttered Bochart, but he did what he was told.

# # #

Bare concrete stairs lead up into the garage. Up here, the wind was much louder, and the huge metal doors shook with every gust, their mechanisms banging against the frame. One of the vents had been blown open, and snow was swirling in down the duct from the outside, dusting the tools in the corner. It was freezing cold.

Myo did what she could to help as Donici checked over the vehicles.

'Number three runner is giving me some slightly weird numbers,' she said. 'I replaced some coupling cables, but even so... I wonder if it needs a new battery.'

'How long will that take?'

'About an hour.'

'I don't think we have that, Ana.'

'Well, there's maybe three sol's worth of juice in each one,' she said. 'Should be enough. The plateau ends two sol's distance away.'

Harrak and then Bochart appeared behind them, lugging holdalls full of food and supplies up the steps. They split it up between them, and stared stowing it into the runner's holds.

'We'll eat like kings,' said Bochart, holding up a ration bar.

'I'll miss your Bechamel,' said Donici.

'When we get out of here, I'll make gratin for everyone,' he replied.

'It's just a few sols. We'll be fine. But, I'm looking forward to the gratin,' said Myo, smiling at Bochart.

The runners were low, almost teardrop shaped vehicles, anti-grav units underneath and a pair of small turbines at the rear. You didn't sit in them; you lay down, arms and legs straddling the seat, hands on controls, feet on pedals, face looking into a cushioned display with air and a water straw, your whole body cocooned within the outer carbon-fibre shell. They were difficult to get used to, and unpleasant to ride for long periods; but the low profile meant they were the safest way of travelling over the wind-blasted ground, and they were warm. They were painted bright red, brilliant drops of crimson on the white and pink landscape, designed to be as visible as possible.

Harrak was exhausted, making mistakes and forgetting things. Myo and Donici quietly repacked for him. Then, Donici tapped some buttons on Harrak's runner.

'You'll be on full auto, following me,' she said. 'You can sleep for a bit.'

Harrak smiled. 'Thanks, Ana.'

Before Harrak's runner's doors closed over him, Bochart slapped him on the shoulder.

'Enjoy your nap! You're like my sister's baby: she can only sleep in daylight one cycle and darkness on the other. She's completely used to this crazy world. My sister has to leave all the blinds open in the nursery to let the daylight in.'

A local day – or sol, as they called it – on this planet was forty three and a bit hours. So the human settlers split the day into two cycles, one from midnight to noon, and one from noon to midnight. They had all been pumped full of viruses and drugs to change their circadian rhythms, but the adults hadn't gotten properly used to it and probably never would.

And so it was early dawn when they opened the garage doors and rode their runners out. The winds had slightly eased off, but the snow was thicker now. It was settling on the pink soil, and starting to pile up against the low farm buildings. Myo had tapped a button, and opened the beetle cages; the beetles swarmed up into the sky, brilliant red shells visible against the pale clouds. There was no point trapping them any more; they would never be harvested, and it seemed unkind to leave them locked in.

The humans started coasting over the pale landscape at about twenty klicks, just getting the feel for the runners. The only person who had spent any serious time in them was Donici, and she had just used them to make sure they worked. They had other, more conventional transport systems for jobs around the farm. But these were the only things that had a chance of getting them away.

'These things are cosy,' said Bochart. They could hear each other through speakers in their head enclosure. 'It's like, what is the English for plongée sous-marine ? Scuba diving.'

'I think it's like putting your head in the toilet to be sick,' replied Donici.

'Oh you wild Eastern Europeans with your wild drinking!', said Bochart.

'Oh, you boring Western Europeans, who go to bed early!', countered Donici.

Harrak started gently snoring, the noise loud in their speakers. Donici and Bochart laughed, and started bantering about how to mute him; Myo smiled, glad that they were all getting along. It felt like an adventure rather than an emergency, and she was keen to keep that atmosphere going for as long as possible.

# # #

They travelled for some time, going as fast as they felt able to. Lidar didn't work because of the snow, and the radar was spotty, so really opening up the throttle didn't feel safe; they used the machine's compasses and maps to navigate as best as they could.

The wind buffeted them endlessly. Although the autopilot did its best to compensate, it was still like flying through nasty turbulence. The low hills on the plateau baffled the savage gusts somewhat, meaning the wind above them was even stronger. So they hugged the ground, kicking up huge plumes of snow and soil as their runners sped across the stark land.

They stopped twice for breaks, hurriedly stretching their limbs in the freezing cold. Both times, Myo had tried to figure out where they were; but the weather was interfering with their ability to talk to the satellites, and their position systems just drew huge circles on the map.

They all fell silent, lost in their own thoughts. Myo listened to music, cold curved precise music that fit the cold curved precise land, and watched as the endless pink and white roared past her, drifts of snow starting to build like sand dunes.

Eight hours of this later, the snow had abated somewhat; and suddenly their positioning systems started working.

Myo noticed it first.

'Guys, we have a problem,' she said. 'We're off course.'

'How do I look at it?', asked Harrak blearily.

'It's under the main menu, baby,' replied Donici. 'Kkot, you're right. How long have we been going the wrong way? What happened?'

Bochart swore in French. 'The compasses are wrong. We must be going over some weird magnetic anomaly. Look, the compass thinks we're pointing west, but we're actually going south west. It's because no one bothered to do a proper geological survey of this place.'

The autopilot had corrected her direction, but it was flashing warning signs at her; the computer was unable to reconcile her course with her facing, and were convinced something was broken.

'It actually moved then,' said Myo. 'I didn't turn, but the compass did. This is insane. Harrak, what's the weather going to do?'

'Let me find out,' he replied. 'I can talk to the satellite now, so it won't take long. Never done a forecast in a runner before, though.'

'Could the runner's compasses be broken, Ana?', asked Myo.

'One, sure. Not all four. I checked, and they are all saying the same thing. Mine swung when yours did.'

'Oh, no,' said Bochart. 'I think I might know what the problem is. Osman, is it safe to fly a bit higher?'

'Let me check what the wind speed is,' replied Harrak. 'Yes, we could probably go up to about half a klick. Any higher than that and we'll be knocked out of the sky.'

They all pitched up and roared into the air. It was exhilarating, feeling the vehicles kicking under them; they felt like horses allowed to gallop for the first time, and the glee was infectious.

'This is travelling,' said Donici.

They were pushed about as they got higher, the wind flexing its vast muscles on the little human vehicles. Myo took them to four hundred metres, and wouldn't let them go higher, despite Harrak's forecast. She didn't want any more emergencies.

'Look,' said Bochart. 'There. Up to the left, and another one down to the right. Tooth bugs.'

He was right. Passing them almost perpendicularly, there were two long rows of beetles, their red shells visible even through the sheets of falling snow. They were in huge, snaking lines, buffeted by the winds, but staying in formation nevertheless. The humans passed another three long flocks of the animals as they soared through the air.

'We can go down now,' said Bochart. 'I understand the problem. The tooth bugs are magnetic; the compass went crazy when we passed each line. Our computers think they are magnetic field lines and it's pulling us off course.'

'We've lost about two hours by going in the wrong direction,' said Myo. 'It's not the end of the world. But we've got to get it right from now on.'

'I've got more bad news,' said Harrak. 'This lull is just temporary. The storm hasn't even started properly here. It's going to catch us up very, very soon, and it's going to be brutal.'

'What does brutal mean, Osy?', asked Donici.

'Up to hour hundred klick gusts. I don't know if even runners can fly through that.'

They were all silent. Myo digested her options.

'Let's go as fast and as far as we can in the right direction,' said Myo, 'and then find somewhere to shelter as soon as it's too dangerous to fly. How long until then, Osy?'

'Maybe an hour. It's difficult to get an exact figure.'

'OK. Come on guys, let's rock.'

# # #

They flew for as long as they could, before the winds caught up with them, and the snow fell, thicker than they'd ever seen. They found a scarp, a great ridge of grey stone jutting a kilometre from the snow and the pink soil; they parked the runners as close to it as they dared, wanting shelter from the wind but worried about snow falling from the rock above.

Outside the vehicles it was incredibly cold, even in their thick gear. They shivered as they assembled their tents, hands shaking in their gloves. They had four tents, one for each person, but they all agreed that was a recipe for dying of cold, alone; so they decided to double up, Harrak with Donici, and Bochart with Myo.

Before they settled down for some sleep, the sun nearly directly above them, Donici leaned to Myo.

'We've used more battery than I'd like, Kkot,' said Donici.

'I noticed, Ana. Whys that?', replied Myo.

'The heating units in the runners are drawing more power than I thought they would. We might need to run cold tomorrow.'

'OK, thanks for letting me know. Good night, Ana.'

'Good night, Kkot.'

Myo ducked into her tent. It was warmer in there, a tiny heating unit slowly defrosting the air, the insulated fabric keeping in the heat as best as it could. Like everything else, it was red. The designers really hadn't considered the possibility of a pink planet, she thought, wryly.

Bochart was there already, sitting in his sleeping bag.

'It's funny that we say that,' he said.

'We say what?'

'Good night. It's not. It's day,' he said, gesturing to the red sunlight that filtered through their tent walls.

'No. It's not. I guess we hang onto these things. So you heard us talking, huh?'

'Yes. If we don't have a bit of heat when we're flying we'll freeze to death. It's cold out there and the wind chill from the speed makes it colder.'

'I know.'

Myo started getting her sleeping bag ready. She pulled it from its little bag, started arranging her stuff on the tent floor.

'We missed the vote,' said Bochart.

'Mmm?', said Myo, not really listening.

'We missed the vote on the planet name. It would have been this morning. I doubt my proposal for "Shithole" would have got much support, but it was worth a go.'

Myo laughed. 'I didn't know that was you, Henri.'

He shrugged and smiled. 'I'm a man of many talents.'

Myo climbed into her sleeping bag. 'Why are you here, Henri? You hate this planet.'

'It was my husband's dream. We were going to come here, set up, live a life with space and nature and freedom. Then he died on the journey over. He had some sort of stroke when he was in cryo; the systems on the ship couldn't save him. I kissed him bonne nuit before we left, and when I woke up he was gone forever. So, yes, I hate this planet. Coming here killed my love, and now I worry it will kill me.'

'I didn't know that. I'm very sorry.'

'I don't tell many people. It's OK. Every day it hurts a little less than it did the day before.' He shifted in his bag, started trying to get comfortable on the hard cold ground. 'What brings you here, Kkot?'

She smiled.

'I woke up one morning on Earth, and everything had broken down. My job, my relationships, my health, my life. I realised I'd been grinding everything down to dust, never stopping to look up at the stars. I spent a day in bed crying and eating junk food; and then I got up, applied for a place on the next ship, and left. I never even checked where I was going. And this is where I am. I like it here. I like the silence and the bright sunlight.'

She paused to crawl into her sleeping bag, and then continued.

'We're not going to die here, Henri. We'll get off the plateau soon enough. Just keep thinking of potato gratin.'

He lifted up a ration bar.

'Oh, Myo Kkott, that is all I can think of. Sleep well.'

'You too.'

# # #

They had to dig themselves out of their tents, the snow having fallen steadily through the afternoon. But, at least it was no longer as windy. Standing on a world of pristine snow, with everything in black and white in mid afternoon sun, Myo felt serene and strangely detached from her troubles.

They dug out the runners, and Donici started checking them to make sure they hadn't been damaged by the snow while the others broke camp. She came up to them as they were bundling the tents into their bags.

'There's something wrong with the battery in number three,' she said. 'Osy's runner is lower on juice than the others. I've set up some cables and I've moved a bit of power around, but...'

She left the rest of the sentence hanging in the cold air.

'We don't have enough power, do we?', asked Myo.

'Given we can't navigate very well, we're pulling more power than I thought because of the heating, and this... probably not. The problem is that there are mountains at the very edge of the plateau. We can't just walk the last few klicks.'

'Can we fix it?'

'Not without replacing the battery, no. And we don't have a spare. Or any way of charging it.'

Bochart pointed up into the sky, squinting into the snow.

'There they are. Petits salaudi. Maybe its their revenge.'

'English dammit, Henri,' growled Donici.

Myo followed his finger, and saw that he was pointing at the thin red lines strung through the clouds, beetles flying above them, oblivious of the humans below.

'Henri,' she said. 'You're the biologist. How do the tooth beetles survive in this cold? Where do they go?'

The Frenchman shrugged. 'No one knows. They have crazy chemistry, it's why they are so useful. But even they can't survive out in this cold for too long. We thought they just hibernated or something, but I guess not.'

'Is it worth following them?'

'Is it really that bad?'

Myo glanced at Donici.

'Yes,' she said.

They were huddled in a circle, faces covered with goggles and balaclavas, hoods up, gloves on; even so, the cold was biting, a constant presence reminding them of their predicament.

'What if we left someone behind?', asked Harrak. 'The others would be able to get away then?'

'We're not doing that,' said Myo, firmly. 'No one dies today. If those little beetles can live through this, so we can we.'

'The sun will set in about eight six hours,' said Donici. 'We've been riding through the day up until now. It's going to get really cold soon.'

'Not so bad if it keeps snowing,' said Harrak. 'But, yeah, it's not going to be exactly balmy.' His teeth were chattering so much that he had to take a couple of goes at the last word.

'If we threw everything out of the cargo compartments, could you fit someone in?', asked Bochart.

'I don't think so,' replied Donici. 'And, anyway, there's no heating there. Think how cold the tents where when we took them out. But if we got rid of everything we don't need, we'll use less power.'

'OK. Let's do that, and then get in the runners and get them started. It'll be warmer in there, even with the heating lower,' said Myo, as calmly as she could.

They packed and climbed in, limbs slow in the cold; they left the two spare tents, and as many other random parts as they could. Then they started the anti-grav, and floated gently above the snow. They formed strange vortices below the runners as the gravity was bent around them.

'I changed my mind; I think I agree with you about these runners, Ana,' said Bochart.

'I have an idea,' said Harrak. 'It's a risk, but it's better than dying here. Look, this might be where the bugs are going.' He sent them all a map with a pin on it. 'It was marked by the original survey as having possible geological activity. It might be warm.'

'It's possible,' said Bochart. 'Their biology could feasibly make use of something like that. It would be like creatures living around deep sea vents. But in the snow, not the sea.'

'We can charge the runners from ambient heat,' said Donici. 'But I'm hearing a lot of 'maybe', and just going to this weird place doesn't get us off the plateau. I think we should just go as fast and as cold as we can towards the mountains. We know what's there. '

'What's there is death, Ana,' said Myo, gently. 'I ran the numbers. We definitely can't make it.'

She sent them a map.

'With Osy's busted battery, the drift on the navigation and the over-consumption of power due to the cold, we make it to the near side of the foothills. We'd need to climb them. We'd be cold, and tired, and without the appropriate equipment. I don't know how to climb, do you?'

'I think we should vote,' said Donici. 'I vote for the mountains.'

'I vote for the geological thing,' said Harrak. 'Sorry, baby.'

Bochart thought for a moment. 'The biology checks out. I'm with Harrak.'

Myo wanted to scream. This wasn't fair. She was beginning to agree with Bochart, that this planet really was going to kill them. She closed her eyes, grateful that in the runners no one could see her face.

'I vote for Harrak's place. Sorry, Ana.'

Donici's voice was thick with sadness.

'I think that's where we die together. But, OK. I'd rather be with you guys than on my own.'

# # #

The next journey was tough. They were flying manually, following the streams of red beetles in the sky; because the autopilot was constantly pulling her away from her destination Myo had to concentrate on the sky, on the land, on the way the air twisted and shoved. It was gruelling but strangely liberating, this precise control of her final end, just another tumbling beetle in the sky. She wondered if the beetles saw the huge red runners and thought they were just giant members of their own species.

She could sense the tension between the team, Donici and Harrak, normally so close and loving and now tense and tearful, most of their chats on private channels. Bochart had completely shut down, although when she did speak to him he was strangely cheerful. That worried her more, because that might mean he had accepted some sort of fate.

I am not going to die here, she thought. Dammit, neither is he.

The cold was everywhere; the heaters were running on the very lowest setting they thought they could get away with. Concentrating on the flying was a mercy, because it helped take her mind from the cold, but even so, the little cockpit of the runner felt less comfortable than it ever had.

The others were suffering, too. Harrak, in particular, was struggling. Not as confident as Donici, as calm as Bocart or as determined as Myo, he was weaving, alternating between too low and too high.

'You OK, Osy?', she asked, on a private channel.

'I'm cold, Kkot, I can't keep this thing straight,' he said, voice shaking with cold and stress. 'My battery is nearly dead.'

She glanced at her reader. Harrak's battery was around ten percent, although Donici had warned them that the battery readings were not perfectly reliable.

'We only have another thirty klicks,' she said. 'That's less than half an hour at this speed. Can you cope that long?'

He gasped; she realised that he was weeping.

'We were going to marry, me and Ana,' he said. 'I don't know if we will now...'

'Osman Harrak,' replied Myo, amazed at the iron in her own voice. 'Pull your damn self together. You are going to fly this fucking runner. You are going to land it. You are going to find somewhere warm. And then you are going to get picked up by the supply ship and marry Ana and do whatever you please, because we. Are. Not. Going. To. Die. Today. Now. Go to your main menu. Find the follow command. I am in runner two. Click on me, and we are going to go like every devil from every hell is chasing us.'

'Yes boss,' he said and after a second, a light lit up on her display.

'Guys,' she said on the open channel. 'This is it. Try to keep up.'

And she opened her throttle to absolute maximum.

It was incredible, that feeling of speed, as she shot through the air. She went far faster than was safe, the engines whining in rage, the wind screaming back at her, punching her while she punched back. Even through the cold and despair, Donici whooped in happiness, and Bochart started singing some obscene French song.

Yes, she thought. This is it. Fuck you, planet without a name that wants to kill us. I am a human and we are tougher even than your shitty bugs.

Ahead, through the blizzard and the long rays of the setting sun, she could see a dark shape on the horizon. It was huge and grey, and reached up all the way from the ground to loom high into the sky. As they got closer, she saw that it was laced with red dots; billions of tooth bugs, tumbling in the air currents, dancing like angels in paradise. As she reached it, dozens of sensors all lit up at once, and she could feel the heat seep into her skin and bones.

'It's a huge hot lake,' said Bochart, tired but triumphant. 'Powered by massive geo thermal springs. It's bigger than anything I've ever seen before. This is all water vapour, steam from the hot water that's condensing in the cold air. Let's find somewhere to land.'

# # #

They were there for five cycles, camped between the steaming water and the ice. The food ran out after three, but Bochart figured a way to turn the pink algae in the soil into a barely palatable mush that they could live on; Donici charged the runner's batteries from cables run into the hot water.

And Myo swam every day, her face flushed with the heat, while the red beetles danced in the sky above her.

On the fifth cycle, with the sun high above her, a ship dropped through the steam, its engines roaring, tearing through the clouds as it descended; and Myo waved and shouted, and then they all joined in with her, whooping and hollering and laughing as they were bundled aboard.

'We're so glad we found you!', shouted the pilot over the thunder of the ship, as they tipped up into the sky. 'The whole planet has been worrying about you! You'll end up on the news feeds.'

'I'm glad you found us too!', shouted back Myo. 'Did it end up being "Shithole"?'

'No,' laughed the pilot. 'Our planet's now called "Kimya". It's Swahili for "silence". And I know you missed the vote; I think you should name this place that you found.'

'Oh,' replied Myo. 'That's easy. It's called Osman's Haven.'

And the ship flew away to the lowlands, with beds and heating and potato gratin.