"Boss? We're iced in!"

I want nothing more than to pull my sleeping bag over my head and make it all go away. I turn my face into my pillow. "Fuck."

And then I'm up and speed-dressing, because it's cold as our shower in here and I didn't mean to oversleep. I usually wake up long before this.

Krüger is in the common room, his face grim. With the low-level lighting, thick ice on the windows, and already-pitiful sunrise outside, the space feels more like a cave than anything. I move to the nearest window to try to assess the extent of our predicament. The ice coating the station is at least an inch thick.

"Did you check the greenhouse windows?"

"It's all over the Pod. There's snow riding up the sides, too."

Mahaha has sealed over the station, a first step before burial if I ever saw one. This is happening. And no amount of anticipating it is going to make it any better.

The ice distorts the view outside, but I can just make out the squiggly outlines of snow hills around us. We're not on the highest ground anymore. But we're not sunk yet. If we play this right, we might get one more move in before the Pod goes down, giving us another week or so to prepare. That will keep strain off the internal systems, too. It could save our lives if we don't resurface for the next few months; the tech I had installed is state-of-the-art, but the station it services isn't. I just hope to god this new carapace doesn't make the station too heavy for Samson to move. I hope we can even get to Samson to move it.

"Get the defroster and start on the airlock door," I say. "We're going to need someone inside so it doesn't ice up on us again while we're out; I doubt we'll be able to melt it open again from outside." I take a breath and call up the hallway, "Liu?"

She appears from her room, her face pale and peaked.

"Has Kwon shown you how to use the snow guns and open the garage door?"

She nods.

"Good. I want you on that when we go out. I'm taking Kwon with me."

"What?" says Krüger.

"There's equipment out there that can take a shot from a heat cannon, and equipment that can't. She knows the difference. I need you in the airlock."

His stormy look tells me he thinks there's more to my reasoning, and he's absolutely right. But another fight is the last thing I need right now. I give him a pointed look, and he stalks off to the entryway.

Kwon is not as experienced with working outdoors in extreme environments as Krüger is, but she's done enough to know the ropes. We help each other suit up, then join Krüger in the airlock as he gives the defroster a last sweep around the exterior door. He and Kwon shoulder-check it together, and it pops open. The wind outside pauses. It stays paused as Kwon and I navigate the knee-deep fringes of the drifts to the back of the Pod.

The snow guns at least are still working. Liu blasts away a good chunk of the drifts blocking the garage door, revealing that the door itself is frozen shut. I scale the Pod's ice shell and get to work. Kwon alternately directs me around heat-sensitive panels and wires, and keeps an eye on the shifting snow.

I pull back with a surge of relief when the garage door finally moves. It breaks the last of the ice on its own and thumps open. Kwon goes in and starts Samson's engines. She backs down the ramp as I jump down from the Pod's side, just in time to see the snow rear behind the vehicle.

"Dea, look out!"

Samson pitches forwards as the ground beneath it gives way. Snow lunges for my teammate. It moves like a water wave loaded with ice, and both vanish under the surge.

I run at the last place I saw Kwon, defroster already activated. I swing it like a bat as another wave rises. It scatters, regroups, and scatters again. Another targeted blow uncovers Samson's back antenna. The rover is at least three feet deep.

New snow balks at the defroster, so I jam it upright on top of the pile before throwing myself at the side where Kwon is buried. Ice chunks chafe my gloves as I rip them loose and carve out the snow around them. I don't have time to get a shovel. With a hit like that, Kwon's oxygen mask was almost certainly done in. I count the seconds like a mantra, muscles screaming as I push the limits of my own oxygen supply. The snow is leaden.

Something sinks into the pile beside me, and I leap back on instinct. Krüger wrenches the shovel out and carves a chunk off the side of the pit I'm making. Then he tosses me the shovel and snatches the defroster back. He brandishes it at something behind me. I don't look.

Another thirty seconds. I pray that Kwon had the wherewithal to take a deep breath before she was buried.

On the next stroke, my shovel glances off the hard shell of a helmet. I drop it and claw into the snow, uncovering Kwon's head, then face. She managed to clamp a hand over her mask before she went under, but its tube is torn clean in two. I grab her wrist, and the two of us wrench her arm free. I take a deep breath, pull off my own mask, and pass it to her. She gulps breathable air while I continue to uncover her, my own lungs aching. When I can't hold my breath any longer, she passes the mask back. We continue to trade until she's free to the waist.

Krüger is holding off a second snow wave hovering like a wall of ice behind us. I grab the back of his jacket and spin him around, swapping our places. He's the only one with the height leverage to pull Kwon out. He catches on immediately. The next moment, ice pellets cascade over my boots as our teammate is freed. He and Kwon swap his mask as we stagger back to the airlock together, me covering us from behind.

The airlock is wedged open with a chunk of ice, which I kick loose as we tumble inside. It's another thirty excruciating seconds before the inner door's ping tells us we can all drop our masks. Liu pulls the door open immediately and helps Krüger get Kwon inside.

The next hour passes in a whirlwind. Liu closes the garage door and seals off everything she can while Krüger and I see to Kwon. She's badly bruised, but somehow managed not to break anything. She even evaded a concussion. I once again thank the powers that be that I fought the Hub for the quality of equipment we have here.

I'm midway to the kitchen for more first-aid supplies when the power goes out.

I stop in the hallway, one hand on the wall in the near-complete darkness. Alarm bells reach a deafening pitch in my head, stark against the deathly silence of the station. Even the emergency lights are dead. This was an internal circuit failure.

The next ten seconds last longer than the entire rescue outside. I can hardly believe this is actually happening, and not part of some very long, very bad dream. I hear Liu tapping screens and typing furiously in the comms room, swearing under her breath in Cantonese. A drawer slams. There's a click and squeak as our electrical panel swings open, then a morse-code clicking of switches. The power whirrs on again.

Liu plops back in her chair and goes back to the keyboards. There's still no lighting at the gym end of the hallway, but everything else seems functional again. She's isolated the failure.

I remember where I'm going, get the supplies, and return to Kwon's room—set up by her to double as a medical bay.

"Was that a power outage?" says Kwon the moment I walk in the door.

"Liu's got it under control."

Her face breaks into a broad, proud smile. "Oh, good."

I would double-check Liu's work myself if I knew what I was doing, but the only other one with those technical skills is Kwon. She at least seems to have complete faith in her student. I envy that trust.

Liu shows up maybe half an hour later. None of us have left Kwon's room, so she comes in, too, and plops down on the bed. She jams her hands under her knees. Kwon holds out her mug of hot apple cider.

"It was ice in the circuitry." Liu gratefully warms her cold-stiff fingers on the mug. "I don't know how it got there yet, but it wasn't through the garage. It's found another way in." She glances at Krüger, who gives the ghost of a nod.

"Good work," I say. "I didn't know you were so proficient around the station systems."

"Dea's been training me."

I was aware of that much, but I didn't know Liu had progressed so far already. I wonder how many real tasks Kwon has been letting her tackle without my knowledge.

"Well, it is good to know this station would not have fallen apart if these two had not gotten me out of the snow today," says Kwon, beaming much too brightly for the morbid joke. "I think it is time to move you on to the actual mechanics."

That brings a smile to Liu's face, half-lifting the haggard look that still haunts her pale cheeks. "I can't wait."

I get the distinct sense that there's an undertone to that statement. I mentally replay it, searching for the other emotion Liu is hiding, but I can't put my finger on it, no matter how hard I try.