Hamartia

Hamartia - Part 7

Mikaela jumped half out of her skin when a loud rumble ripped through the air. She looked up to the sky, expecting one of the massive flying creatures she'd spotted earlier to be bearing down on them, eager for an easy snack. She found Ty doing the same when her gaze fell sideways.

"What was that?" she asked warily.

He started to answer when another loud crackling BOOM! echoed through the air. There had been a heaviness to the atmosphere all day, water vapor thick as sludge, but now a sharp cool wind cut through the flora. The foliis and flos whipped wildly through the air.

"I think we need to find cover!" Ty yelled.

Mikaela jumped into his chest when a huge chunk of a nearby arboribus came crashing to the ground, splintering on impact.

"It's a storm!" she yelled back, realization hitting her as another round of rolling explosions pealed overhead. She clamped her hands over her ears. "But what's that noise?"

Ty shook his head, dumbfounded, as he grabbed her hand and ran. Cold liquid water rained down from the sky. It came all at once, drenching their hair and clothes, soaking them down to the bone. Like a thick grey curtain had been pulled down over the landscape, visibility dropped to near zero.

Another loud boom echoed around them just as a massive coruscatio tore across the skyline. Coruscatio, she knew, was a phenomenon created when ice particles separated from water droplets by the process of convection, building a charge, which was then discharged. But all the accounts her people had ever witnessed were through telescope lenses and autonomous bots studying planets 1B and 2B. She couldn't relate those facts she'd learned so long ago in Academy to these bright white writhing monsters dancing through the clouds, much less the horrendous grumbles and growls left in their wake.

"Here!" Ty shouted, jerking her into a protected spot between two massive boulders leaning against each other. The space was roughly the size of a sleeping pod aboard the Hamartia.

The M.U.L.E. took up a protective stance just outside. Having already shielded its more sensitive components from the water within its outer hull, the bot sunk lower to the ground, powering down into hibernation mode. It would remain in that state until the storm passed. Mikaela fell back against the smooth rock and exhaled the breath she'd been holding in one giant huff.

"I remember studying about tonitrus," Ty said, his voice deep and raspy, out of breath from the run.

Tonitrus. That was the word lurking in the back of Mikaela's mind. Tonitrus was created from the rapid expansion of air surrounding a bolt of coruscatio.

He shook his head. "But the Academy boiled it down to numbers on a page, sound waves and atmospheric pressure," he yelled over the din of the storm. "They failed to mention how loud it is!"

He was standing, squinting through the thick sheet of water pouring over their hiding spot. He stuck a hand into the water's current, splitting it.

"They probably don't know anything beyond the theoretical," she commented as she stepped next to him and ran her hand through the water too.

It was colder than she expected considering the ambient temperature of the planet. It tugged at her hand, heavier than she expected too. Ty brought his hand back to his face and sniffed the water, then carefully licked a fingertip.

"This is freshwater. It might not be clean, biologically speaking, but it wouldn't have to be processed through the desalination plants."

"Why do you think the government has us hauling salty ice from Enceladus when they know this is available? For that matter, why don't we have more information about 3A?"