Zodiac Station (2 page)

The mechanism clicked on a spent shell. He’d forgotten to chamber the next round. He pawed at the pump, ejected the shell and slammed in another round. Pulled the trigger.

It was a lousy shot. His finger wouldn’t bend, so he had to jerk the trigger with his whole arm, pulling the shotgun wide. Did he miss? The bear was still coming at him. He fumbled with the pump again, but his hand was so cold he couldn’t work the action.
Fuck.

He looked up to see if he was going to die. The cloud shifted, like someone opening the drapes, and just like that he saw it clearly. Not a bear, or a deer. It was a man. Skiing over the ice in jerky, broken movements: lunging up, shuffling forward, then slumping down again, using the ski poles like crutches. He wore a red coat and black ski pants; a red fur-trimmed hood was zipped up over his face.

I nearly shot Santa Claus.

It must be one of the geeks gone off the reservation, lost his way in the fog. But the geeks didn’t ski. And they wore red pants, not black.

The man stopped as if he’d skied into a brick wall, almost falling over in his bindings. He threw out his arms and flailed his ski poles frantically; maybe he tried to say something, but either his hood muffled it or his voice was too weak. Without the poles to hold him up, he lost his balance and toppled smack into the snow.

Aaron laid down the gun and ran over. There was a name badge sewn on the jacket,
Torell
, and under it an insignia he didn’t recognise. A twelve-pointed star with a roaring polar bear in the middle. Next to it, blood leaked out from a nickel-sized hole punched through the fabric, crystallising almost as soon as it hit the snow.

Oh shit.

Footsteps floundered through the snow behind him. Lieutenant Commander Santiago, the ops officer, still in his ODU pants and a jacket he’d pulled on in a hurry. He stared at the figure on the ground.

‘Where in this godless white fucking hell did he come from?’

The man stirred; feeble clouds of air puffed off his lips as he tried to speak. Aaron put his head close. The fur tickled his cheek.

‘What’d he say?’ Santiago demanded.

Aaron looked up.

‘It sounded like
Zodiac
.’

USCGC
Terra Nova

The
Terra Nova
had the biggest sickbay in the Coast Guard fleet, but no doctor. Just a physician’s assistant, the PA, Lieutenant (JG) Carolyn Parsons. For most of the crew’s problems – splinters, scalds, sprains and sore heads – that was fine. For more serious cases, she could patch in the district surgeon on the video link. If that didn’t work, it was the helicopter or – worst case – a body bag and the cold-storage reefer.

But the video link was down, the helicopter had nowhere to go, and she was damned if she was going to lose her first major trauma. Even if it was more complicated than anything she’d been trained for. The manuals didn’t say how to treat someone for a gunshot wound and hypothermia at the same time. Lucky the slug had gone wide, taking a bite out of his arm but missing the bone.

He lay in a steaming-hot bath she’d rigged in the corner of the sickbay; a thermometer clipped to the side read 104˚ Fahrenheit. A saline drip snaked down from the ceiling and fed into his arm, just below the blood-soaked gauze pad strapped to his bicep. His clothes lay in a plastic basket on the floor where she’d cut them off him, together with a few things she’d found in his pockets.

He was a big man, even bigger than Commander Santiago. He couldn’t have eaten much on the ice – the only trace of food in his pockets was a Mars bar wrapper – but he was still in great shape. She’d needed two crewmen to help her hoist him into the tub. He didn’t fit full stretch, but lay on his side, his knees tucked up like a baby. A folded towel cushioned his head. His eyes were closed; the heat had thawed the ice in his hair and matted it flat, revealing a small scar behind his left ear. She guessed he must be about thirty.

‘What’s up, Doc?’ Santiago ducked through the sickbay door and leaned against the cream-painted bulkhead. ‘Is he gonna live?’

‘Most of him.’ She pointed to the patient’s right foot, where hard black boils blistered the skin. ‘Might need to take off a couple of toes. Too early to say just yet.’

‘He’ll walk funny for the rest of his life.’

‘He’s lucky to be alive.’ She checked the thermometer and ran more hot water. ‘Frostbite, hypothermia, exposure and a slug … Did he really ski all the way from Zodiac Station?’

‘Unless he got the jacket mail order.’ Santiago crossed the room and pulled down the jacket from the peg she’d hung it on. ‘Imagine, you come all that way and then a Coastie puts a slug in you.’

‘
Semper Paratus
.’

‘To fuck you up.’ He wiggled his finger through the hole in the fabric – then stiffened.

‘How many times did you say he got shot?’

‘Once was enough.’

‘Take a look at this.’ He brought the coat over and stretched it out between his hands. Just below the Zodiac Station badge, his finger poked through another hole. A broad patch stained the fabric around it a darker shade of red.

‘I did a tour in Umm Qasr. If I didn’t know better, I’d say that looks like the entry point for a thirty-calibre bullet.’

‘Then where’s the wound? If that was a bullet, it would have gone right through his heart.’ Parsons pointed to the man’s chest. ‘No damage. Plus, there can’t be anyone out there inside of a hundred miles from here.’

‘Maybe the polar bears got pissed off.’

A scream, like something from a horror movie, tore through the sickbay. The man in the bath was sitting up, legs tucked against his chest and eyes wide open. Water sheeted down his bare skin, as if the ice inside him had finally melted and was flooding out through his pores.

Parsons rushed over and tried to ease him back down into the bath. ‘You need to keep down, sir. If your extremities heat too fast, there’s a risk of heart failure.’

He resisted. Water splashed over the side and pooled on the floor. He was too strong; even half dead he couldn’t be moved against his will. Santiago came over, but she waved him back. You couldn’t force this.

‘Sir, if you don’t stay in the water, the warm blood in your extremities will flood back to your core and stop your heart. In your condition, it probably won’t start again.’

He stopped struggling. ‘It hurts,’ he groaned.

‘Hurts like a motherfucker,’ she agreed. ‘That’s a good thing. It means you’re alive.’

She pushed his shoulders down. He didn’t fight her this time; through clenched teeth, he let her add more hot water. His eyes followed the line of the IV drip up to the bag, then scanned the room. ‘Where am I?’

‘Aboard the Coast Guard cutter
Terra Nova
.’ It didn’t seem to register. She poured a cup of hot water from a flask and handed it to him. ‘You’re safe, Mr Torell.’

‘Anderson.’ His mouth could barely make the word.

‘I’m sorry?’

‘Anderson.’ He sipped from the cup. Blood from his cracked lips clouded the water. ‘My name is Thomas Anderson.’

‘Your coat – we assumed …’

‘The zip on mine broke.’

‘Whoever Torell is, I hope he has a spare,’ said Santiago.

The man called Thomas Anderson looked up over the rim of the cup. ‘He’s dead.’

Santiago exchanged a look with Parsons. ‘You want to tell us …?’

‘They all are.’

‘
They
?’

‘Everyone at Zodiac.’ He slumped back down into the bath so that the water covered his chin. Santiago reached for the phone.

‘I think you need to speak to the Captain.’

Franklin met Parsons in the corridor. They’d moved the patient out of the sickbay, into one of the empty staterooms reserved for scientists.

‘How’s he doing, Doc?’

‘Stable, sir. Temperature’s back up to ninety-eight, fluids good. As long as he keeps warm, he’ll be fine. He’s a survivor.’

‘Yes he is.’ Franklin reached for the door handle, but didn’t open it. ‘Is there something else, Lieutenant?’

‘His psychological condition, sir. I’m not qualified to assess it, but he seems pretty locked down. Experiences like what he’s had, sir, it’s got to screw with your mind.’

‘No argument with that.’

‘Chief Bondurant has CISM training, sir.’
Critical Incident Stress Management
. ‘I could ask him to speak to the patient.’

Franklin turned the handle. ‘When I’m done.’

Anderson lay on the bed under a small mountain of pink blankets. They’d dried him off and dressed him in regulation-issue pants and sweater; Franklin was surprised they’d found any big enough. He sat propped up on a couple of pillows, eyes open, staring unblinking at the mirror over the washstand opposite.

Franklin rapped on the open door. The gaze switched on to him like a light coming on.

As captain, he was used to commanding nearly a hundred men for months at a time, in some of the toughest waters on the planet. He didn’t get many situations that made him feel uncomfortable on his own ship. But the intensity of those dark eyes, clear as a child’s, was hard to take. As if the ice had distilled them down to their coldest core.

He pulled a chair from under the desk and set it next to the bed. He looked over the report that Santiago had typed up.

‘How’re you doing?’

‘Fine.’ A soft voice, hard to match with the physique. Almost shy.

‘Your name’s Thomas Anderson.’

‘Yes.’

‘Are you a US citizen?’

‘English.’

‘You’re a long way from home.’

‘We’re both a long way from anywhere.’

Franklin accepted that. ‘You want to tell me how you got here?’

‘I was a research assistant. At Zodiac Station. It’s a scientific base on the island of Utgard.’

‘I know where it is. What happened?’

‘An explosion. I don’t know why. I was out checking instruments – there was nothing I could do.’

‘When was that?’

‘What day is it today?’

‘Wednesday, ninth April.’

‘It happened on Saturday. Four days ago.’

‘You skied a hundred miles over the ice in four days? By yourself?’

‘I came to get help.’

Franklin looked at Santiago’s report again. ‘You stated to the operations officer that all other Zodiac Station personnel are dead.’

Anderson’s eyes locked on Franklin’s – and, again, Franklin found he had to look away. He glanced out the porthole, but there were no answers in the grey world out there.

‘You’re British. You want a cup of tea?’

Anderson’s face thawed into a smile. ‘Love one.’

Franklin went out into the corridor. Santiago was waiting for him.

‘We can’t raise Zodiac Station, sir. Iridium, UHF, they’re not answering.’

‘Who owns that place? Did you try them?’

‘The Brits run it out of some place called Norwich. As in Connecticut, but in England. We put in a call – they haven’t heard from Zodiac since Saturday. They said Zodiac reported comms problems a few days ago and were taking their satellite link offline for maintenance.’

‘Page the XO. Rig the flight deck, and get the helo out to Zodiac ASAP to take a look around.’

Santiago hesitated. ‘That’s right on the edge of its range.’

‘I know how far it is.’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘It doesn’t add up. This guy Anderson skis out of the middle of nowhere with nothing but the clothes he’s wearing. He says he’s been out there four days, nearly died, but did you notice his beard?’

‘Can’t say I did.’

‘Doesn’t have one. You think he found a bucket of hot water to shave out there?’

‘Maybe he wanted to leave a good-looking corpse.’

‘Then there’s this explosion at Zodiac. We need to get eyes on the ground.’

‘Yes, sir.’

Santiago headed for the wheelhouse. Franklin went to the galley and fetched a cup of tea and a mug of black coffee. Back in the cabin, Anderson was sitting up in bed, exactly where Franklin had left him, eyes fixed on the door like a dog waiting for its owner.

Franklin switched his pager to vibrate and sat down in the chair.

‘Why don’t you start from the beginning.’

Anderson

For as long as I can remember, I’ve dreamed of the north. I suppose a lot of people do. That feeling you get with the first snowfall of winter, something like a cross between Christmas morning and the start of the holidays. The world’s new, the rules are suspended.

I was always a solitary child. Back then, those white deserts at the top of the globe fired my sense of adventure. I read Willard Price, Jack London, Alistair MacLean. Other boys could reel off every player who ever scored for Liverpool; I could tell you about Peary and Cook, Nansen and Amundsen. I grew up, a lot of things changed but my dreams didn’t. If anything, they were more urgent. The Arctic wasn’t a place to prove myself, but to lose myself. Somewhere to escape to.

You know what the two most seductive words in the English language are, Captain?
New beginning
. The north’s a blank page,
tabula rasa
, white space on our own private maps we can fill in all over again. Snow gives us hope that the world can be different. A glimpse of perfection.

I’d applied for a post at Zodiac twice before, but I didn’t make it past the selection boards. I thought I’d missed my chance. I was working as a technician in the Sanger lab at Cambridge – not high-status work, but I was glad to have it. I have an eight-year-old son, Luke; my wife died and I look after him alone. Between him and the job I kept busy enough. But every time it snowed, I felt that familiar tug, my internal compass swinging north again.

Then I got the email from Martin Hagger. You’ve heard of him? Ask some of your scientists – the biologists. He’s a big gun. Everyone thinks life began in the so-called primordial soup, a warm broth slopping around the tropics. Hagger’s theory was that it actually evolved at the poles: that the freezing and melting of the sea ice every year acted like a giant chemistry set to turbocharge the evolution of DNA. He found some pretty convincing evidence, made the papers and everything.

I’d studied with Hagger for my master’s, and the first year of my doctorate, before we parted ways. Since then, I’d kept up with his research, but we hadn’t spoken in eight years. Then, one day, there it was: an email from Hagger, inviting me to come to Zodiac as his research assistant. His previous assistant had had a wisdom tooth go wrong and needed to be evacuated. His loss, my gain. I had no idea why he’d chosen me of all people, after all that time, but I didn’t care. There aren’t many thirty-year-old lab technicians with a PhD. This was my shot.
Tabula rasa
.