Trial by Ice (11 page)

Aleksandr stood and looked out to the sea. “We should have shot them,” he said in his slow Russian drawl.

William turned back to the sea and looked down the shore. The smaller boat sat like a worn out mule. It lacked a single square edge. Every wave made it wriggle and move in a fluid motion. The cords holding it together had already stretched. They needed to weld. To weld they needed a reactor.

William found Eduardo sitting next to Von Hess.

“Eduardo, where did you get the reactor?”

“Eh? Well, I stripped it out of one of the striders.”

Selim walked up with Xan and stood silently to the side.

“Is there more?” William asked.

Eduardo hunched forward and ran his hand through his greasy hair. He looked at Von Hess who returned a simple shrug. “Maybe. It looked rough last time we were there. That harrier smucked it good, eh?”

William nodded and thought. Two days. No, four days. Two each way. He looked at the men around him. Everyone moved slower and was sluggish—well, everyone except Leduc and Sebastien, but everyone had a breaking point, even those two.  

Selim spoke up. “It’s going to take a few days. The boat isn’t big enough.”

Xan nodded. “We can try lashing, but it’s not holding up well. The cable is stretching.”

“I thought it was looking rather floppy,” Eduardo said.

“Eduardo, are you in any condition to make a trip back to the striders?”

“Alone?”

“No, we’ll send a squad,” William replied.

Eduardo nodded and looked tense. “Yes, I will try.”

William thought for a moment and realized he couldn’t go. His leg was too weak. He could hardly walk a few hundred yards without the muscles cramping and rebelling. He would be ordering men north, back to the snow and ice, to recover something that shouldn’t have been lost to begin with. Men might die because of his stupidity.

“Selim, who’s in good enough shape to go with Eduardo?” William asked.

“I will go. Maybe Sebastien, or Leduc, Aleksandr, Avi, hmm, Crow too.”

“Leduc and Avi, too. Take whatever supplies you need, full rations,” William said.

Selim nodded. “Tent?”

“I’m open to ideas.”

The group stood in silence for a moment before William finally walked away. Selim could handle it, he had no interest in saddling him with bad advice. The NCO knew more about moving overland than he did, but he worried.

He found Crow squatting near the shore.

Crow rocked back on his haunches and nodded to William. “Someone was hit about here. There was some blood under the gravel.”

William watched him. Crow was like a hunter following a trail as he squatted low and poked at various rocks. William followed behind as he silently pointed out details and moved towards the water.

“About here they stopped.” Crow pointed to a large boulder with red algae on the back side.

“Then?” William asked.

Crow stood and gestured out to sea.

“How do you know?”

Crow smiled slightly and rested his back against the boulder. “I would have done the same if I were in his shoes.”

“Selim, Leduc and Avi are going out with Eduardo for another reactor.”

Crow nodded.

“Because I fucked up.”

“Follow back far enough and you could blame Jesus,” Crow said.

“Who?”

“Never mind. It doesn’t matter.”

William turned and started to walk away.

“Someone’s got to take the blame, someone has to lead the way, someone has to fuck up.”

“But people might die.”

“That’s our business, people always die.” Crow turned and walked a few steps down the rocky beach. “Your job is to keep that count as low as possible.”

“And what’s yours?”

“To help you in your goal.” Crow turned, smiling. “And to shoot the other people.”

William smiled and turned away.

* * *

The tent was slit once more and stitched with an electrical cord. The piece that remained near the shore was propped up with bent tubing while the piece heading north still had the inflatable rib to give it form. A single sled was loaded and lashed. Tense conversation preceded a brief goodbye. Everyone stood in the cool wind and watched them pull north.

They stood and watched as Selim led them over the rise. One of them turned, too far away to distinguish, and gave a wave before disappearing. The crew on the shore stood for a moment before returning to the task before them.

William found the other boat to be a poorly designed and ramshackle affair. He doubted Berry had ever intended on launching it. The electrical cord had in some places only been wrapped and not lashed. It was not big enough and that was the first obstacle.

The earlier scouring had found the low hanging fruit, the easy stuff, the close stuff. Now they had to range farther and search harder for less. The pace that they ranged was slow and ponderous. The calorie deficit was particularly difficult.

Kwesi found a pair of oxygen tanks that required the entire crew to toil back. Even Sebastien, with his augmentation, was sluggish. They had turned from the masters of the stars to plowman without a crop, forever tilling salted soil.

The pile of salvage slowly grew. Von Hess had an eye for organization and broke down each recovery into what was useful. Tik wrapped strands of wire into a coarse rope. An occasional odd item would sit out of the organized areas. A carbon fiber barber chair. The door from an oven with a smiley face sticker on it. Goggles from a microscope. And the favorite of the locals: a poster warning against venereal diseases.

On the fourth day, William walked slowly, though faster than before, with Sebastien and Vito up to the rise. They had made as much progress as they could without a power source for more arc welding. Now they needed a reactor.

As soon as they crested the rise, the wind attacked. Just the slight elevation gain was enough to focus it. It was humid and soaked them right through their coats. The color of their clothing was now an off shade of brown and red.

They squinted and huddled behind a potato-shaped boulder. They could see to the south and watched the sea while sneaking glances north. Nothing came but the wind.

The following day they did the same. And the day after that. Seven days was the cut off. If they hadn’t returned by then, the remaining group would begin lashing the boat together as best they could.

They huddled once more behind the mist soaked potato and watched the rain fall in sheets over the sea. Below them, eyes gazed upwards. They waited ‘til the end of the day and trudged downwards in the waning light.

* * *

The following morning they sat around the dwindling pile of ration bars and ate in silence. William had slept, as best he could, with an aching leg. The mist had crept in through the night and they were all cold and wet.

“At least it’s not the Hun,” Sebastien said absentmindedly.

“You fought the Hun?” Kwesi asked in awe.

Sebastien nodded. “Before the last treaty, they hit Ebony and we came down into the streets. Never thought they’d shell the town. But they did.” He tapped his left shoulder. “Got a left shoulder, lung, and alloy spine on that adventure.”

Kwesi wasn’t the only one staring. Augments were rare. With the advent of more effective killing machines came the rise of more effective medical treatment. Coupled with advanced hospitals in orbit, there was a plethora of maimed battle-hardened soldiers. The Covenant would not allow for unwilling cyborgs, but men missing limbs were willing indeed.

“They’re not actually Hun,” Vito said.

“How do you know?” Kwesi asked.

“The Hun attacked the Roman Empire, I assure you, these are not the same people. They are Chinese, Burmese, Indo, some Phillipino. Chinese couldn't lift ‘em fast enough on the elevators to ease the pressure.”

Kwesi sat in silence, chastened and slightly embarrassed.

“What exactly do you do?” Xan asked Vito.

“I was with the delegate,” Vito replied. “To assist the diplomats, well, I guess I was a diplomat, but not
the
diplomat.”

“Why’d you drop?” Crow asked.

“They always send diplomats in with the contacts like this. These people shouldn’t have seen any outsiders for eighty years. Things can be touchy.”

“Shouldn’t? Well someone’s here,” Xan said.

Vito replied with a thin smile, holding his palms upwards.

A mechanical sound of clicking steel on rocks caught everyone off guard. Sebastien slid lower and drew his weapon from his sleeping bag. Crow nudged the flap up with the barrel of his gun.

William felt his heartbeat rise as he strained to listen. Nothing clicked here. Had they sent drones north to finish what the VTOL started? He had heard stories of when the striders fell upon infantry. It was horrible, the precision at which a drone could kill.

“It’s them!” Crow called out as he ran out into the open.

A half assembled strider was hitched to the sled. Leduc stood with Selim. A large bundle lay on top of the sled. Leduc’s eyes were hollow and the tip of his nose black. Selim wavered like a ghost.

The men from the tent rushed outside past the idle strider and carried the weary men inside. Eduardo was light like a bundle of sticks. His tattoos were almost totally gone. His core temperature was low while his earlobes were a horrid shade of black.

Avi tried to smile as best he could. The tip of his nose was frostbitten hard while his earlobes would surely fall off soon. His fingertips were tinged black and ringed with white.

The men were given a fresh ration bar and water. They ate in rapid motion not taking their eyes off the bar until it was totally gone. They looked worn like a mineshaft mule.

Leduc said, “We made it on the third day, it went quick.”

Eduardo continued in his rapid pace. “I stripped a few down and was able to get the little bull together. They were rough. Just rough. The crash busted so much…” His eyes fluttered. “I figured, why pull a sled when a strider could?”

“We knew it would set us back a day, but we still expected to get back earlier,” Leduc said.

“Then it blew,” Avi said.

Leduc nodded with Eduardo. Both men wore vacant looks.

“The wind hit us and we were out. It smashed the sled, and dragged the strider with it for a few hundred meters. The tent was still on it but everything else was gone,” Leduc said.

The trio took a brief rest as the camp descended on the strider. The once sleek beast of war was torn down and the reactor stripped out. The welding began immediately.

* * *

The race was on once more as the dwindling stockpile of food demanded that they finish. Xinhu clutched the carbon rods, hovering above each joint and folding the beads of molten alloy together into a cohesive band. Every joint had to be perfect, strong, and free of inclusions. Any weakness could lead to a total structural failure.

The boat took shape as the tanks were added and struts welded on. A convenient deck, like the previous boat had, was not to be found so they lashed sheets of vacuum insulation onto the deck. This time a single man stood watch over the hull as it slept alone in the dark. Days passed of nothing but arc flashes and hammer blows.

They awoke the morning of the launch and moved the last of the gear into place. Kerry lugged the reactor with Kwesi holding the other side. Hands passed the critical piece up until it was locked into the boat.

Vito ran up excitedly. “We need a name!” His hands were hidden behind his back and he had a wide smile across his face.

William looked around to the blank faces around him. “
Second Chance,
” he blurted out. A few heads nodded.

Vito hauled out a small delicate looking bottle. “I christen thee,
Second Chance!
” He crashed the bottle against a stout strut where it showered bits of green liquid and glass.

“That better not have been alcohol,” Crow said in a serious voice.

“I think not, it was a flask of algae concentrates,” Vito smiled.

They all climbed aboard. William gave the signal. Sebastien levered a pipe against the hull and with the next swell it broke free of the rocky shore and moved. Sebastien hopped up. Tero pulled on a light conducting line and the sail was up.

William looked north as the boat rose on the light swells. They had made it. Against mutiny, tragedy, and the cold, they had gotten off the rock. He said a silent goodbye to the dead and turned his face south. The sea stretched on before them with no hints beyond what they could see.

CHAPTER SEVEN

No Shore too Far

The first morning on the oily sea came in a hiss of mist and slicing of waves. The ramshackle craft heeled and rose with each wave before cresting and halting a moment as if unsure which way to face before relenting and grazing down the backside. The slight sail was enough to maintain forward motion but not enough to keep the ship turned in an orderly fashion.

Then came the vomit.

Few things are as horrible, as miserable, as soul wrenching as being sea sick. William could feel a knot of muscle inside of him ball up with each roll of the boat. His cold fingers squeezed the support bar next to him as he fought to keep the bile down. The last of the food was gone from his stomach—now it was a sickly yellow bile the color of a rotten lemon.

“Pump it, just pump the damn thing,” Crow yelled. He was wrapped in a damp sleeping bag and perched on the edge of one of the tanks.

“It won’t pump,” Avi replied as he locked his arms and fought with the stubborn water filter. The orange unit was wedged into the support struts at a crooked angle. The inlet line hung limply beneath.

William looked up slowly, deliberately, and in a fog of exhaustion. “Don’t.” He paused, vomited, turned his head and watched as a stream of yellow bile disappeared into the surf. He spat the horrible taste. “Red button, popped, clog filter,” he coughed out before retching once more.

Vito clambered across the uneven rolling surface of the boat and squatted near Grace. “Grace, I know you don’t want to hear it, but Squire is dead.”

William had wondered how long the last unconscious survivor would last. Squire had been without a patch for weeks but stubbornly held on. His face tightened with starvation. A few sips of water was all they could manage at a time. A sea burial. He nodded to Vito and focused on holding down his stomach.

Vito turned and began to crawl away over the bucking sea.

“Hold on,” William called. “I’m going to say something.”

Vito turned and gave him a funny look. “Like that? You’re nearly green.”

“Help me.” William crawled across the deck.

Vito grasped William by the arm and tugged him to the center of the small boat. Before him was wrapped a sleeping bag with a slender rise in the center. William hadn’t known the man. No one had. He fought back the urge to vomit. “Listen up.”

The boat was small enough to speak at a normal tone. Around him men popped out of sleeping bags or sat up with mist streaked faces.

William cleared his throat and strained to remember the old protocol. He had read of it, but he had only seen burial in space before. He hadn’t had a chance to give any of his meager command a proper burial. “Xan, dip the sail.”

Xan scurried over to the base of the mast and unlashed the electrical cord, sliding down the sail until William nodded. It was only down a foot or so—anymore would have been dangerous.

“Warrant Officer Villeneuve, prepare your weapon for burial salute.”

Eyes looked around and suddenly the feeling of a proper unit flowed onto the boat. Sebastien sat up with a rigid back and hopped next to the mast. He latched an arm onto the slender pole and slapped a slab of ammunition into his boxy weapon.

William felt the ship roll and the bile rise with it. He gritted his teeth and forced it down.
Not now dammit, not now.
He paused, were they a company? A platoon? A squad? “Crew, we commit this man to the sea. Though none of us knew him he is yet what any of us could have been. Let us remember those still north.”

The wind teased the tips of the sea around them before settling for a moment.

“Crew, salute!” William commanded.

Arms snapped out from beneath soiled sleeping bag and tattered jackets.

“Warrant Officer, fire!”

Sebastien brought the weapon to his shoulder and with a crisp movement slid the action backwards. He released the slide and it pushed almost effortlessly forward. He fired. The echo drifted quickly into the wind and was gone. He dropped the weapon down with a snap.

“Fire.”

Sebastien brought the weapon to his shoulder once again and fired off a second round. Again, back down.

“Fire.”

The final round was lost into the wind as were the others.

“Commit Private First Class Squire to the deep.”

Sergeant Selim and Private Kerry crawled to the sleeping bag. Each gripped a side of the forlorn looking sleeping bag and slid it into the sea. It paused a moment, rolled into the surf, and disappeared into the inky depths.

“At ease,” William commanded. He slid down into the edge of exhaustion once more.

Salutes were dropped. Sebastien released the slab of ammunition and racked out the round in the chamber. Once more William was reminded of the loneliness of his command. Squire never awoke, but he was one of William’s men. Finally unable to hold it any longer, he fell to the uneven deck and continued to vomit into the unrelenting sea.

* * *

By evening the mist had dropped as the air temperature more closely matched the water. For a short while the fog had smoothed itself onto the sea and glowed an off tint shade of orange. Then it cleared out altogether, showing nothing but darkness.

The first light winked on the horizon. It seemed the same as the one they had seen a week before. It moved along in the distance before winking out once more. The second light was closer.

“Grace!” Crow hissed. “Wake up!”

William opened his eyes and felt strangely well. His stomach had settled as he slept. He feared to move, to budge, to do anything to trigger the sickness again. “What?”

“There’s a light.”

William sat up and scanned the horizon. He couldn’t see Crow, he couldn’t see much of anything. Stars gave the only clue to where the horizon actually was. Then he saw the light in the distance. It shook and moved as if buoyed by the waves.

“Any ideas?” William asked.

“Nothing, sir.”

“Hmm, well, no use worrying about it now. If it gets closer we’ll wake everyone—pass word to your relief.” William turned over in the sleeping bag and felt oddly relieved to finally feel well.

* * *

The final box of rations was cracked open at dawn. The daily ration was passed around with deliberate transfers. The only sound was the purifier thrumming as it strained to process the algae clouded water.

“Vito, you’re the terraforming expert, yes? Could the lights be part of that program?”

Vito finished chewing and nodded slowly. “Well, it could be, this was a private colony, so we didn’t have a full manifest.” He thought for a moment and nodded. “Maybe a system to monitor the algae, oxygen content, carbon dioxide, nanite load, maybe?”

“Private colony? Who the hell can afford to pay for a private colony?” Kwesi spoke with a mouth full of ration bar.

“Zack Redmond,” Vito replied.

“The nanite guy?” Kerry stuttered out.

“The nanite guy, you say, that’s like calling Jesus just a carpenter,” Vito said.

“But he was,” Eduardo said quietly.

Vito dismissed him with a wave of his hand. “So he had all the money, and people were worried that we needed to get out, and fast. This fear gripped entire nations that another meteor would strike, like the one that blapped Tampa.”

“And then the Haydn drive came on the scene, right?” William said.

“Right!” Vito said. “But you just can’t move people fast enough on rockets, so the elevators went up. First in Arizona, the next in Spain, and then after that, the next seven went up in China.” He paused for a sip of the stale tasting water. “Everyone wanted to get out, so Redmond funds his own colonies, pays for the ships, and just shotguns probes out. Anywhere that came back halfway decent he sent a terraforming ship followed by colonists.”

“And we didn’t know where?” Aleksandr asked.

Vito shook his head. “He was a bit of a kook—he wanted them to survive, to thrive.” He cleared his throat. “To live without the heel of man,” he said, in a baritone pitch, as if mocking the man. “There’s his clock in Seattle, it rings eighty years after the ships depart and gives us the destination. Where are you from, anyhow?”

Aleksandr looked around defensively. “Ukraine.”

“Oh.” Vito turned to the sea and was silent, as if embarrassed.

“So why’d we start to give a shit?” Avi said as he scooted himself closer to the pump.

“Well, the Chinese colonies got big, and fast. Then they ran into the Gracelle. First contact and it was Mongol exiles. Imagine that kind of embarrassment. And we thought
Sputnik
was bad,” Vito said with a knowing smile.

“What’s
Sputnik?
” Aleksandr asked.

“You’re kidding me, right?” Vito asked with a sigh.

“What?” Aleksandr replied, offended. “I’m not here for the history, okay.”

Vito shook his head and sat, sulking in silence.

“Filter’s clogged again,” Avi said as he poked at the purifier.

* * *

The rest of the day was spent slowly pulling apart the purifier. The internals were coated in a stringy red-green algae that slipped past the coarse filter and firmly lodged itself in the fine filter. Every pumping session began with a prayer, halted in the middle for a cleaning, and finished in one more sticky cleaning.

The sea warmed in a sudden shift of current. A dim band, barely discernible, edged and eddied before them. The small boat crossed into the stream. The bow tipped and the whole thing had a sensation of being dragged. The crew all looked about before settling back into the routine. The air was warmer, not pleasant, but not nearly as bone-chilling and wet as before.

“Eh! Eh! Look, I see something!” Tik called out. She pointed into the swells before the boat.

The entire crew perked up and scanned the walls of the wave. Something appeared. They strained their eyes and watched in silence as they slowly came upon it.

“Nur,” Crow spat.

A corpse with a soapy white face bobbed on the edge of the surface. Nur looked much as he had in life. He passed within ten meters of the boat. No one made an effort to secure the body.

“Was it Nur you hit?” William asked Crow.

Crow kept his eyes locked on the drifting corpse. “Couldn’t say. I was hoping it was Grue.”

William nodded. He had hoped it was Berry.

“Did they sink?” Avi asked.

“We can only hope,” Sebastien replied as he lay with his eyes closed.

* * *

The following morning the last of the ration bars were savored. Crow latched the empty case on his lap and gave it a slight pat.

The swells were long and slow like empty hills. The clouds were tinged with white. A chill dropped down from the north. They ate in silence with backs to the wind.

“Xinhu, Tero, check the welds. Kerry, Leduc, check the lashings. Everyone else secure what you can,” Selim called.

“The welds will hold,” Xinhu said simply.

Selim raised an eyebrow to the civilian. “And how many welds have you done?”

Xinhu cocked his head. “None.”

The inspection work stopped as the crew all turned to look to the man who was responsible for every single weld on the small craft.

“What do you mean, ‘none’?” William asked.

“I program EV welding robots, I’ve never actually welded myself. But I’ve followed enough beads, and poked enough slag, to know how to make a good weld. Trust me, they’ll hold.”

Selim sighed. “Check them, anyway.”

Xinhu glared back for a moment. “Fine, fine. But they’re all fine.”

“I believe you, so prove me right.”

William reached down and ran his prune tipped finger over one of the welds. It was smooth and slightly rippled like the edge of a dull file. He watched the crew—
his
crew—inspect the boat. Lashings were tightened, knots retied, but not a single weld was retouched.

Eduardo strained with the reactor lashings. O’Toole sat alongside and tucked the knot the opposite way when, with a hiss, the insulation parted from the wire. He rocked backwards into the surf.

“Eek!” O’Toole squealed before splashing into the water.

“He’s in the water!” Eduardo yelled.

William scrambled along the uneven plate insulation and gripped a coiled bundle of conducting wire. His fingers fumbled as he fought to untie the lashing. His fingernails painfully fought to get a grip.

O’Toole popped up and treaded water slowly. Strings of red algae were stuck in his hair and on his face. “Get me out!” He coughed and sputtered as his jacket sagged around him.

“Throw it!” Vito called.

The crew leaped and scrambled to the edge where O’Toole had fallen. William felt the shift as the entire crew was all on one pontoon. He turned his head and caught Sebastien’s eye.