Gravity's Embrace: Now with chapters!

[huinesoron]

31,932 words. I'm still topping 1667 almost every day.

I've also gone back and put in chapter divides, roughly matching them up with changes in location. Hey, a chapter heading is words too, right? While I was doing that, I tweaked some things in the last scene I posted (but not in the post) - instead of having the field generator create freefall conditions, I've changed it to do what it should: freeze things in space. This is not only more accurate, but also opens up a path to the end of the story.

If you want to guess where they are at the end of this chapter, the map is still right here.

Prologue: Scene 1
Chapters 1 & 2: Scene 2, Scenes 3-5, Scene 6, Scene 7
Chapter 3: Scene 8, Scenes 9-10
Chapter 4: Scene 11, Scenes 12-13
Chapter 5: Scenes 14-15
Chapter 6: Scenes 16-17, Scenes 18-20

Chapter 7 (Scenes 21-24)

Scene 21

"Ow."

I lay on my back, staring up at a gaping rent in Pumpkin Spice's flank. Given that I wasn't dead, and could feel a full gravity pulling me down against the deck, I had to be back on Earth - but I hadn't a clue how I'd ended up there.

I didn't try to move right then; I spent the next few minutes watching my scrambled mind piece together the events of the last few minutes. I remembered plummeting through the atmosphere, wreathed in flames, Carol wrestling with the controls. But that couldn't be right - Areatha had been flying the ship, through her transmitters.

Oh, no, that was it: the field had been down when we hit atmosphere. She'd been struggling to get it back up before we burnt to a crisp. I had a flash of memory of the view on the screen turning black, Carol yelling that she couldn't land if she couldn't see…

And we'd been crashing because… yes, because the Imperial Liechtenstein electrical bolt had fired right through the field as if it wasn't there. Worse, the field itself had proven to be electrically conductive, carrying the shot straight into the heart of the generator. Only Carol's foresight in installing redundant breakers had saved it, but even then it had taken Areatha almost too long to get it back up.

The field had effortlessly fended off every other attack from the massed fleet, though. The final tweaks had even blocked almost all the radiation from the nukes being lobbed at us by League ships. Areatha had taken us through like a dancer, skimming over the hulls of warships the size of skyscrapers with ease - right up to that final, fatal shot.

Of course, we probably wouldn't have been attacked if we'd come in at a sensible speed, instead of burning into orbit at 15 Gs. It was no wonder the European fleet had been nervous, considering what the Dutch had done the previous month - and the fact that Areatha had repurposed the S/CPS Pumpkin Spice's radio to take signals from her modules meant we couldn't even talk them down.

Right, I was all caught up. With another groan, I pushed myself upright and looked around.

The ship was a mess. It would certainly never fly again, and I wasn't at all sure it would stay in one piece to be salvaged. I could see three tears in the hull, every control console was smashed, and there was a strong smell of smoke. That meant getting out was number one priority - we didn't have much fuel left, but it didn't take much.

I could see both women from where I was. Carol had been thrown forward over her console, and she had a cut on her forehead that gushed blood, but she was stirring, and conscious enough to make eye contact. Areatha, on the other hand, had been flung the length of the ship, and lay in a crumpled heap against the wall, unmoving.

I staggered upright and headed for her. Rather than try to remember my first aid training through my splitting headache, I simply plucked a module off her spine and clamped it to my wrist. The modified League transmitter reported that its primary user was unconscious - which meant she wasn't dead, and hadn't severed her spinal cord either.

I stared at my companion blankly, wondering exactly how I was meant to get her off the ship. There was a clattering behind me, and Carol picked her way through the wreckage to my side.

"We could just leave her," she said.

I shook my head, not looking round. "I can't do that."

Carol hissed in pain, clutching her side. "I could just kill both of you," she suggested. "No-one would know."

I did turn that time, meeting her gaze. "You wouldn't do that."

She sighed and shook her head. "I really wish I would." She looked down dubiously at Areatha. "Can you move her? Safely, I mean."

"I think so." I knelt down next to my friend, trying to remember my training on lifting under gravity. "If I get her… no, if you get her arm, and throw it…"

Together, we managed to get Areatha slung over my shoulders. She was lighter than I expected, and I found myself wondering about bone thinning in low gravity, and exactly how long she'd spent in space. I shook myself - I was wasting time, trying to put off the struggle ahead. I braced myself, gestured for Carol to lead - Areatha was lighter than I'd thought, but still not particularly light, so I wasn't inclined to waste breath on talking - and began the long scramble to get out of the Pumpkin Spice.

It took half an hour, pulling myself over torn metal, working around shattered bulkheads, always conscious of the woman laid over my shoulders. Carol did her best to help, but she was injured herself, and couldn't take my weight without gasping in agony. We had to go halfway around the ship before we found a breach large enough to climb out through - with the power gone, none of the hatches responded to input - and actually getting through the sharp-edged tear took at least ten of those thirty minutes.

I stumbled down to solid ground at last with my hands and knees cut to ribbons, the plasticky coverall torn in a hundred places. I knew I'd bashed Areatha against enough obstacles to leave bruises, too, though there was nothing I could have done about that. I stumbled out of the smoking crater our ship had made when it came down, and finally - finally - I was able to lower my burden to the mossy ground and collapse beside her.

"You can't stop now," Carol said, hobbling over. "We have to get to civilisation."

I groaned and looked up at her, haloed against the sun. "I'd rather sleep."

The scientist's face was pale, her lips set, and she held one hand pressed to her side. "If the Pumpkin Spice goes up, you'll sleep forever."

I squeezed my eyes shut, willing my headache to subside. "Don't really care right now."

"But I do," Carol said, "and I'll kick you in the… ribs if you don't start helping."

Her voice suggested she would, too. I rolled onto my side and pushed up to my knees, taking my first look around. "Where are we?"

Carol shrugged. "I should know? I just aimed for dry land. A couple of big islands off the coast of a decent-sized landmass, that's all I know."

"And you didn't recognise them from a map?" I asked. "Think back - I know they were probably the wrong way up, but-"

"Yeah, I'm not very good with geography," Carol admitted. "They weren't North and South America, but that's the best I can do."

I covered my face with one hand and considered whether she really would kick me in the ellipsis if I just curled up where I was. "How big is 'big'?"

"Visible from orbit," she said. "Big enough that the sea's probably over the horizon. I don't know, Exeter; I'm a physicist, not a cartographer."

I rolled my eyes and clambered to my feet. A sudden thought struck me. "Would you recognise the Atlantic Archipelago if you saw it?"

Carol blinked. "I don't even know what that is."

Hope blossomed. "Then this could well be the League," I murmured, looking around. We had come down in (and blasted a hole through the middle of) a forest. The ground was covered with ferns and moss, and the trees were normal-looking trees, not some weird tropical kind. It could very easily be somewhere in the middle of Wales, for all that it wasn't raining. "I might be…" Home, I didn't say, remembering that the other two would be far from it.

I turned back to Carol. "Did you see anything when we came down?" I demanded. "Is there a city nearby? A river?" We weren't in an obviously mountainous area, which could only be a good thing.

"Um." Carol pursed her lips. "I remember flying over the coast, and I think there was a city." She pointed along the scorched track we'd made on landing. "So we should go back that way?"

"Maybe. I guess." I wasn't exactly an expert in outdoorsmanship myself. "It's probably the easiest path, at least." I glanced down at Areatha, envying her her sleep. "Which is an advantage."

"Then we should probably get going," Carol said in a suddenly assertive voice. "None of us are going to heal out in the sticks, we don't have any food, and I don't trust the noises the ship's been making." She turned back towards our downed escape vessel. "Not that I blame it, poor thing."

"I take your point." I knelt back down next to my friend and heaved her onto my shoulders again. "Lead the way."

Scene 22

The first hour was easy enough, picking our way along the edge of the debris trail the Pumpkin Spice had left. There were no animals to bother us, not when the ground was still smouldering from our flight.

Just about the time we reached the point where our crash-dive had first struck the treetops, there was a deep, drawn-out explosion behind us. Carol turned to look, one hand over her ribs, the other shading her eyes. "I think the really volatile fuels must have leaked out," she mused. "That was barely worth calling an explosion."

I didn't say anything. I was too busy panting for breath under Areatha's body, which I was sure by that time must be made of solid titanium.

Carol looked at me and sighed. "All right, we'll rest for a while. Maybe you can make a stretcher or something."

I dropped my friend onto the moss as gently as I could (which was not very gently), and Carol sank down next to her. I staggered off into the trees, wondering vaguely if there was such a thing as a stretcher plant.

There wasn't, but over the course of forty minutes or so I managed to build something that would serve. I was becoming a bit more dubious about the prospect that this was Wales, or anywhere else in the Celtic League - the vines I used in lieu of rope were a bit too tropical for the Archipelago. But even if we'd ended up in the Empire of Japan, the mathematics of our situation hadn't changed: find people, or starve.

With Areatha tied onto the stretcher (by way of the top half of my coverall - the woman had a disturbing habit of going through all my clothes), we staggered onwards. The trees around us were widely-spaced, with none of the protruding roots that could have made the hike impossible, but the ferns grew to neck-height, and I found myself sinking to the ankles in the damp moss. Every few steps, Areatha's stretcher caught on something, and I had to bump it over.

Carol, dressed as she was in actual clothes with shoes and all, had a far easier time of things. For all that she was much older than me, and walking wounded to boot, she had enough energy to clamber over fallen logs that I had to trudge around, and to dart off on side excursions to scout our path. "There's some sort of ground-nesting bird around here," she reported after one such trip. "Big eggs, too. If we end up stuck for long enough, we might try catching one, or raiding the nests."

"Probably pheasants or something," I said. "Do you know how to light a fire?"

"Um." The scientist chewed on the inside of her cheek. "Have you got a laser handy?"

"So we'll leave that on the back-burner," I muttered. Then, shouldering the stretcher again, I took another dragging step. "Onwards."

Some time later, Carol looked up. "Oh, damn."

I blinked; swearing wasn't at all like her. "What's wrong?"

She looked back at me, and seemed in the dim light - when had that happened, anyway? - to be blushing. "I forgot about night," she said sheepishly.

I stared. "You forgot. About night?"

"I live on the moon!" she exclaimed. "We don't have this ridiculous 'surprise, now it's dark' business that Earth does. You can't exactly blame me."

"I guess not." I looked around - it really had gotten dark, without my noticing it. But from what I could make out, the spot we were in would be just as good as any other to make camp. "Have you seen any water nearby?"

"There's a stream just back there." Carol pointed vaguely. "You can take… um. I guess we'll have to drink directly from it."

"Unless this fabric holds water," I said, pulling at the remains of my coverall. "I'll go and try."

Surprisingly (or perhaps not, given how uncomfortable the stuff was), it did. I sacrificed both legs as carriers, leaving myself running around in shorts, and headed back with enough for both of us to drink our fill. I tried dribbling some water into Areatha's mouth, but it just sat there, and I had no intention of accidentally drowning her.

By this time it was fully dark, save for a thin crescent moon visible through the trees. I shivered. "Not looking forward to this."

"At least you've still got some clothes," Carol pointed out, nodding at Areatha. "She's liable to freeze, with only her hair to keep her warm."

"Uh." I tugged at a fern frond. "You're supposed to cover yourself in bracken, I think."

"I don't know what that means," Carol said, "but if you're planning to use wet leaves to keep warm, then I fear for your grasp of thermodynamics."

I let the fern go. "What happened to 'the legendary Exeter St. David'?"

Carol folded her arms. "He kidnapped me and crashed me into a forest. No."

"Fair enough." I looked down at Areatha again. She looked very small and vulnerable, lying there. "I guess there's always body heat."

Silence. I looked up to find Carol staring at me. "If this is a plan to get me to take my clothes off-" she began.

"No, no," I said hastily, holding up a hand. "I just meant, if we all pile up together - dressed - then we should be able to keep her warm enough."

"... I suppose." Carol looked around, as if hoping to find a hotel hidden behind a tree. "Fine. I guess."

Scene 23

I was woken in what I could only assume was the middle of the night by a startled gasp, a scrabble of limbs that jarred my already-injured knee, and then Areatha's aggrieved voice saying, "Would someone mind explaining to me why I'm tied up and buried under the two of you?" A moment's silence, and then, "It's kind of kinky."

"Uh." I tried to wake my brain the rest of the way up. "You were unconscious. We crashed. We had to get away. In the League."

"Probably the League." Carol sounded even fuzzier than I was.

"Right, that. Uh. It was cold."

"So you decided you needed to leech my body heat to keep yourself warm?" Areatha asked. "Bless; I always knew you thought I was hot."

"What is it with you?" Carol again, exasperated. "At first I thought you were sleeping with him-"

"Not my fault I'm not," Areatha put in quickly.

"-but now it seems like you just flirt with him, I don't even know, on instinct." The scientist shifted, pulling away from the 'bed'. "Can't you take anything seriously?"

"I imagine I'm going to," Areatha said. "Until five minutes ago I was having a lovely dream about a huge roast dinner - one that didn't taste at all of coffee, mark you - but now I wake up to find myself trapped in the middle of nowhere, with a whole catalogue of aches and pains that I haven't yet had time to… um, catalogue." She shrugged, her shoulder bumping against my chest. "I either take it seriously, or get my Exy boy to finally play along. Or both." She chuckled. "I'd happily go for both."

"Ugh." Carol completed her withdrawal, clambering to her feet with a hiss of pain. "It's obvious I won't get any more sleep here. You two kids have fun; come get me in the morning." And - carefully, so as not to trip over anything in the moonlight - she stalked off to find another resting place.

I watched her go. Then I turned back to Areatha, barely able to see her face in the gloom. "So."

"So," she repeated, shifting slightly. "Are we going for 'so, now I have you tied down and at my mercy, it's time for me to have my way with you'?"

"No."

"'So, in case you're wondering, there's a reason I'm lying on top of you'?"

"No." I rolled to the side and pushed myself into a sitting position, then reached over and fumbled with the strips of material I'd used to secure Areatha to the stretcher. Luckily, the plasticky fabric hadn't tied particularly tightly to start with. "There."

Areatha sat up, rubbing her wrists. "Ow," she said. "Just sort of… ow." She exhaled, stretched, and turned to me. "So. Out in the Celtic backwoods, huh?"

"That's right," I said, absently plucking a fern frond from its stem. "Which means we shouldn't be more than a day or two from civilisation. The advantage of having a small, overpopulated nation."

Areatha snorted. "Yay, I get to visit a Celtic League city in naught but my natural magnificence. Bet that'll go down a treat." She tugged on her hair distractedly. "And… then what?"

I rubbed my eyes, which had decided it was still sleep-time. "Then what what?"

"Once we reach the city, what's the plan?" she elaborated. "Your ship's still missing. We've lost all the date from your testing-"

"We've still got Carol," I pointed out. "Between us, I think we can reassemble most of it."

"But the ship's still gone," Areatha repeated. "Worse, I've failed spectacularly at guarding you. I…" She bit her lip, teeth white in the dark. "I don't know that New Etruria will have me back, after this."

"Hm." I considered offering her asylum - if that's even the right term when the country she'd be fleeing from was still our ally - but it occured to me that 'the man who lost his ship and helped Cascadia rip off our tech' might not be all that welcome in the Celtic League, either. "What if we get it back?"

Areatha frowned at me. "We don't know where it is."

"We know where it was last," I said, "and none of our allies would've talked to Cascadia, so they won't. If we can sneak into the Russian Empire - maybe pretend to be on their side - we could find the information from that end." I nodded in the direction our third companion had gone. "And if we leave Carol in the League-"

"I can hear you," said the elderly scientist's distant voice. "You've got another thing coming if you thing you can turn me over to your government."

"Well, never mind that," I said, and lowered my voice. "When we bring the generator back - and present it to both our governments jointly, as allies - they'll have to welcome us back."

Areatha wrapped her arms around her chest. "There are holes in your logic the size of the Fourth Rome," she said, "but right now I'm too cold to care." She was shivering, and I felt immediately guilty that I hadn't noticed. "Seriously, I think my boobs are about to freeze and fall off."

"Uh." I glanced after Carol again, wishing belatedly that she hadn't left. "We don't really have any blankets, or anything."

"I figured." Areatha pulled her hair around her as best she could, lay down on the stretcher, and held out her arms. "I'm afraid it's going to have to be body heat again."

"Uh," I said again. "I could look for some dry ferns?"

"The whole place is lousy with moisture," Areatha said, almost gently. "Come on; you already know it's the only option. And don't worry - I won't bite." Her mouth opened in a positively wicked grin. "Unless, of course, you want me to…"

"No."

Scene 24

I woke up, rather surprised that I'd actually gone back to sleep, under the combined weight of one gravity and one naked woman. Somehow, despite the fact that she'd been curled up with me pressed against her back when I drifted off, Areatha had managed to drape herself entirely over me. Somewhat vindictively, I contemplated the best place to prod her to get her to move. I thought her ribs might do nicely.

Carol deprived me of the chance. She picked her way over the forest floor, looking far more rested than I felt, and held out a trouserleg of water. "Since they're your clothes, I guess you deserve a drink."

Areatha's eyes snapped open. "Don't mind if I do," she said cheerfully, grabbing the bag and gulping the water down. "God, I needed that."

She'd had to move off me to get to the water, and I took the opportunity to sit up myself. "Is there any left for me?"

Areatha glanced over her shoulder at me. "You didn't keep me warm enough last night," she said, gulping down the last of the water. "So no, there isn't."

Carol quirked an eyebrow at me. "I take it you two didn't-?"

"No." I clambered to my feet and plucked the empty bag from Areatha's hand. "Can we get moving? Between you, you're driving me completely up the… tree, I guess."

Areatha looked down at the forest floor. She reached down and picked up one of the innumerable twigs which coated it. "Tell me we have shoes handy," she said.

Carol snorted. "Exeter managed all of yesterday without them, and dragging you to boot."

I winced at the reminder of how battered my feet were feeling. "Yeah, I'm going to get some water," I muttered. "You two be good, now."

Areatha didn't even look at me, just waved vaguely. "I bet there's all sorts of horrible burrowing bugs here," she said morosely.

Carol rolled her eyes, and brushed a leaf off her jacket. "You should've thought of that before you came to the forest naked."

"When I chose to go naked, I wasn't in a forest…"

I shook my head and headed off, leaving them to squabble behind me. When I found the stream again, I drank my fill, then did my best to clean out my more egregious injuries. I didn't do a spectacular job, but my broad-spectrum vaccination was up to date, and even if something did slip through, I'd be back in reach of modern medicine pretty soon. Probably. Or at least maybe.

When I got back, Areatha and Carol were still arguing, though they'd moved onto the details of navigation. "We need to follow the sun," Areatha insisted. "The cities in Wales are on the west coast, which means we have to head away from the sunrise."

"Which would be right back the way we came," Carol said with exaggerated precision. "Are you suggesting I don't know what flying over the coast looks like?"

"That's one interpretation," Areatha said. "I can think of others."

I rolled my eyes and stepped into the fray. "Areatha. Carol. I know we're all tense and tired-"

"Because someone interrupted my sleep," Carol muttered.

"-but we need to get moving." I looked at Areatha. "We're going to keep heading in the same direction, okay? I think I felt like we were going downhill yesterday, which can only be a good thing."

My companion huffed and rolled her eyes. "Fine," she said. "But don't come crying to me when we get loster." She nudged the stretcher with her toe and sighed. "I wish I'd stayed asleep; I was having the most wonderful dreams…"

And so the day went: Areatha complaining about everything (and occasionally randomly flirting), Carol sniping at her (and occasionally fawning over me, for no reason other than to annoy Areatha), and me switching between getting between them and staying away from them.

We made better progress than we had the previous day, but the forest seemed endless. The sun climbed to its height and began to sink down behind us, and I started watching out for somewhere to make camp.

Then, with shocking suddenness, the woods ended. Practically in mid-step, we emerged from the tree-cover onto a gently-sloping hillside, covered in rich green grass. Below us, a river valley stretched towards the sea, water glinting like crystal in its depths - and at its mouth, a city rose, white towers piled on top of each other, a fantasy citadel in marble and steel.

I stared at it, open-mouthed. "That," I managed, "is not a Celtic city."

"Hail!" The voice came from off to the side, and all three of us turned to stare at the man in what could only be called a rough brown tunic. He swung his axe one more time, embedding it in the log by his feet, then strolled towards us. "Well met!" he called. "A star shines on the hour of our meeting. What brings thee from the depths of the Greenwood? Perchance the vessel of the upper air, that fell yonder yester-morn?"

I gaped at him. Then, pivoting, I looked back at the city - at Carol's bewilderment - and finally at Areatha's equally-horrified comprehension. "No," she whispered. "We can't be."

"We are," I confirmed, turning back to the man. "Oh, Cardiff."