The clinic lulled to a calm as the newly appointed Dunestriders were released to go to their homes to rest. Sio was left alone in the far side of the med bay. She watched the hallway from the window, mentally preparing for the conversation she was to have with Ikima's family. As far as she knew, Ikima had her father, brother, and grandmother to survive her. Her mother, as she recalled, died of illness when Ikima was just a small child.
Their family was not unfamiliar with loss, but it still stung this thing called death. Even in the promise of reuniting in the Grand Symphony, the pain was true. Sio waited to see the faces of crestfallen souls. What met her gaze was a mixture of anger, peace, and confusion.
Anger greeted her first in the form of Ikima's brother. He entered the room proudly. His was a loud sort of silence. His eyes spoke for him as he met Sio's. What Sio saw most, however, was hurt. Following him was peace from the grandmother who met Sio with a warm hello. Sio's last encounter was with the father, who questioned everything, perhaps even his own existence. His eyes darted across the room, glazed over with sight that did not really see what was in front of them.
"Greetings, Sio." Said the wizened woman. She opened her palms outward and bowed. Sio returned her greeting in kind. It seems Sio would be dealing with peace first.
"Greetings Revered Elder," she said as she bowed.
"Please, call me Mebuki, or aunty if you prefer."
"Aunty, I wish we were meeting joyfully," Sio said giving a meaningful look to each person.
"Would that we were, indeed. But who's to say joy cannot be found even now?" Said the woman.
"Hard to find joy, Grandmother, when it is stolen," muttered the young man. He was about four years Sio's senior.
"Please," said the older man to his son. "We've not come to accost."
"No, it seems we have come for the truth. You were the Dunemaster of this company, how is it that one so revered by her peers can show little remorse for the lost?" he accused. It took Sio a good amount of patience not to remark at his words. She bit her tongue. Responding in kind would do no good. She breathed and replied.
"I am deeply grieved. While I cannot say I knew her as you did, I still thought of her as my own kin."
The brother remained silent, not quelled, surely, but to defer the reply to his grandmother.
"As any good Dunemaster would." The older woman placed a hand on her grandson's back, a difficult thing for she was around two heads shorter than him. "Well, Sio, you know what we came here for."
"Yes, aunty. Please, sit." The family sat on the nearby cots and chairs. The father led his mother to a chair while he sat on the cot. The brother decided to stand back against a wall, staring straight at Sio. "It was dawn–"
—
Red sunlight peeked through the tent flaps as Sio plotted the route toward the salt pools from which they were to take a sample. The geography data given to them by the Dunestrider Elders suggested the pools would be a month out at best. The scouting party sent north of the camp was to be returning sometime soon to see what were the best routes to take. Orbital scans taken from their local satellite didn't have the mapping capabilities of ground scanners for things like underground fissures, valleys, or natural paths taken by wildlife. Scouts were sent out in four teams from a base camp, but only two teams at one time were out this time around.
Ikima was part of the north team with Kindle and Fjord. Ikima was the eldest of the trio by a few months, and therefore took responsibility for them. They were expected to be only a few days out taking one day to scout ahead, one night to rest, and the third day to return and report their findings. This was the morning of their third day out. They were expected in the evening. It came as a surprise when Fjord had returned in the morning and alone.
"Dunemaster, there has been a dreadful accident." He said as he gasped for air. His mask was cracked on the side letting out clouds of steam as he breathed. Sio shot to her feet and motioned for him to sit while she took a look over him for any injuries. His shellsuit was worse for wear and had several gashes showing his undersuit, but there was no sign of blood.
"What happened to you, Fjord? Where are the others?" asked Sio.
"Just over the hill are glaciers pocketed with pitfalls, Ikima and Kindle–they're stuck at the bottom of one of these. I came as fast as I could to get help."
"You did the right thing, let me gather a team and supplies, rest up as much as you can before we head out."
Sio called out to everyone to rise, and they responded quickly. It must have been something in her voice that inspired urgency. The others gathered around her and Fjord. She gathered two others, Ahnah and Cade, two of the elder Dunestriders in the camp who had most experience with glacier scaling and then together they started gathering pitons, rope, and pulleys. Sio placed Nobu, a boy of 19 in charge of basecamp while the team of four set out.
They were lead to a basin whose surroundings were formed by flat glaciers compacted together. Fjord did what he could to retrace his steps. On the flat surface there seemed to be a fracture in the ice. He called out.
"Kindle! Ikima! Are you alright?" His voice echoed into the crevice. He was met with the voice of Kindle.
"Ikima's hurt bad, Fjord!" At this Fjord cursed and waved over Sio who told the other two to begin unpacking the climbing supplies. Sio went over to the edge and tried to get a layout of how best to extract them. It did not look good. The walls were too wide apart and icy. They were slick. Sio caught sight of her Dunestriders. They were on a ledge just next to another pitfall that seemed to be about three hundred feet down. Sio estimated them to be only twenty feet away from the surface. If she could plan it just right, they might get Kindle and Ikima out before the glaciers shift again.
"Get the pulley ready!" Sio demanded. Ahnah and Cade moved quickly to get a system in place. They secured it and strapped rope around their waists as well as Fjord's at surface while they lowered the rope to Kindle and Ikima. "Kindle, you're going to have to hold onto Ikima as we pull you both up, is that clear?"
"Yes, Dunemaster!" They lowered the rope to him and watched as he began tying around his own waist and Ikima's. "Ready!" He called.
"Ready!" Responded Ahnah and Cade at the back of the pulley. Sio gave the signal for them to start pulling. The rope became taut, and Sio felt the weight of two people begin to weigh her down, but with the work distributed across four people, it was not as difficult to pull them up. Sio heard a crack to her left and she felt the color drain from her face. The piton they were using as the pulley was beginning to loosen.
"Quickly, everyone!" She yelled. With a final lurch, Kindle's hand grabbed at the edge of the fissure. Sio ran to the ledge and grabbed Kindle's hand while the others pulled with all their might to lift both Ikima and Kindle from the edge. Just as they did so another large crack sounded from below Sio and the piton went flying causing the team to stumble forward toward the breach. Sio nearly lost her footing on the edge, but was able to hold onto Kindle's hand when the weight dropped. Cade, Ahnah, and Fjord grabbed onto Sio and Kindle and with a final heave, snatched them from the fissure.
Sio urged the others to help her move Kindle and Ikima away from the ledge and so they did with urgency. When at a safe distance, Sio began looking over Ikima and Kindle. Kindle was awake and aware, telling Sio how they had fallen into the crevice. It had broken beneath them as they attempted to cross, taking all three of them by surprise. Ikima fell hard on her shoulder and head and hadn't responded since. Sio unmasked Ikima and undid the top most layer of her shellsuit to ascertain the damage. What she saw made her heart sink.
Ikima was badly bruised all along her face and shoulder, and Sio was certain she had broken her collarbone. Sio checked her vitals with a quick scan from her holo-band and found them erratic. Shallow breathing, elevated heart rate, and lack of response to external stimuli didn't bode well for Ikima. Sio looked closer at Ikima's head and found a concussed area. She didn't have the equipment with her to treat Ikima, and they were already a few weeks away from the village. Sio cursed under her breath. She didn't know what to do.
Deciding the best place for Ikima was at basecamp rather than out in the open, Sio asked Cade to carry Ikima and to be wary of her shoulder and head. It took a few hours, but they made it to camp. Sio got to work setting up a cot for Ikima in the makeshift medical tent her and Lee had made. They fortunately didn't require it, until then.
Sio called Lee over immediately. Lee was the better trained in first aid, and adiminstered to Ikima swiftly. Like clockwork, Lee began his work looking after Ikima, treating her collarbone first by setting it and slinging it. Sio decided to make herself useful by looking over Kindle, who also suffered bruising and a sprained ankle.
It worried Sio that Ikima was not responding.
"How is she?" Asked Kindle. Sio did not respond, but looked to Lee. Lee shook his head at them.
"She's been stabilized, but the fact that she is unconscious, and has been for hours, is worrisome." Lee said.
"Is there anything we can do?" Asked Sio.
"For now, we let her rest. I'll keep a monitor on her vitals." Said Lee.
"Notify me as soon as anything changes," Sio commanded. Lee nodded. It sank like a stone, the feeling of helplessness as they stared at Ikima's prone figure. Sio left the tent, needing something to do. She went to the beacon her team had set up and tuned to the village frequency.
"This is Dunemaster Sio, requesting medical assistance," Sio spoke into the reciever, "Dr. Tausidi, please respond."
"This is Dr. Tausidi, please state the nature of medical assistance needed."
"One of our Dunestriders, Ikima, took a nasty fall and has been unconscious for at least half a day. She has a broken collarbone and is believed to be concussed in the parietal region."
"This is troubling… Sio has she been moved at all?"
"Yes, she was lifted from a crevice and brought to basecamp a few hours ago. We needed to move her here for treatment."
"Understood, how are her vitals?"
"Stable, for now."
"We will send an evac team, what is your current position?"
Sio told them. She prayed they would arrive soon.
"Sit tight, a team is on their way, Sio."
Still, Sio was worried.
It was an hour into the night that things went from bad to worse. Ikima seized up and began bleeding from her nose. Lee and Sio watched helplessly as they knew Ikima needed surgery desperately, but neither of them were trained to do so. Her vitals were all over the place. Lee advised against any painkillers, as Ikima showed signs of internal bleeding. She became paler and paler by the minute.
A few hours later, Sio heard the sound of a shuttle above the clouds and exited her tent to see it descending. The evac team dispatched immediately upon landing, quickly moving to where Lee was waving them down. They moved Ikima over to a portable cot and rushed her to the shuttle. They hooked her up to a monitoring machine.
But it was too late.
Sio saw from the sidelines the I-CT scan from the monitor inside the shuttle. It was dark, and the monitor was bleached red, indicating trauma to the brain.
She wasn't going to make it home.
Ikima was dead.