Cold Welcome

  “If we’re out of communication long enough, they’ll likely think we all died in the crash. And if whatever has kept people’s skullphones from working affects aircraft communications, they may not fly over the continent.”

  “Yeah, I can see that. Well, if we take to the sea again, we’d better do it soon, and figure out a better way to steer. It’s going to get colder—this bay may freeze over and then we’re really stuck.”

  “Better here than out at sea.”

  “Yes, sir. Absolutely. Except there’s nothing much to eat. How many days’ food do we have now?”

  “Not enough to get through the winter. We have to have another source, and right now the sea is it. You said your family farmed fish?”

  “Yes, sir, but we can’t do that here. We don’t have any way to net off the bay, or make cages for them, so predators don’t eat them. And unless we move everyone into one raft and use the other one, we’ll have to fish from shore.”

  “Where would be the best place?”

  “Out along one of the arms, toward the open sea. Should be deeper water close in there.” He pointed into the snow. “Dangerous getting there and coming back, though, with tides and current and wind. Easy to get blown back out to sea.” A pause. “I wouldn’t advise it, sir, but I’ll try if you want.”

  “Maybe when it’s not snowing and the wind’s still,” Ky said. “We should go back inside now. Get some lunch.” Meager as it was, she wanted that little lump of protein.

  Chok followed her into the active raft. Kurin looked up. “Two more for lunch?”

  “Such as it is.” Ky identified the speaker as Corporal Lanca, dark like her but beak-nosed and round-shouldered. He had been in the other raft with Commander Bentik. “It’s not enough.”

  “It’s the same for everyone, Corporal,” Kurin said. She handed the little packet to Ky and another to Chok.

  “I’m going to take a nap,” Lanca said. He unfastened the hatch, stepped over the sidewall, and made a sloppy job of fastening the hatch again.

  “Typical,” muttered Kurin.

  “Got it,” Chok said, and snugged the flap down.

  “Problem there?” Ky asked.

  “He has a certain reputation,” Chok said. Kurin nodded. “I’d heard of him from time to time. Lazy Lanca, they call him.”

  “Should never have made corporal,” Kurin said, lowering her voice. “Should have washed out in Basic.”

  Chok shrugged. “We need all the hands we have.”

  “But not all the mouths.”

  Ky gave her a sharp look. Kurin spread her hands.

  “He tried to talk me out of more food—said he had a metabolic problem. I know—and I know you heard the same story, Gus—he’s got a reputation for that, too, cadging extra rations and then trying to skip out on physicals.”

  “Any other problems I should know about? Or just background on the others in your raft, Sergeant Chok?”

  Chok looked wary. “Well…we had Master Sergeant Marek with us; he was a big help. I think—I think Commander Bentik thought I was a bit young to take charge. And she’s not from here.”

  Ky already knew Jen had been difficult at first. “The commander’s culture is much more formal,” Ky said. “But I was wondering how the other personnel were—any problems I should know about? Anyone you think deserves a commendation?”

  Chok relaxed. “The rest—this is just my first impression, and they may be different now we’re on land.” He looked at her; Ky nodded again. “Barash is a stickler for regulations, likes to correct people. I think she’s just scared and that’s her way of coping. Riyahn’s a motormouth, yammers on and on, and he can panic—you saw his reactions the day our first raft was holed. He’s Miznarii, too, if that matters.”

  Ky shrugged. “Not to me, if he can do his job. Do you know his training?”

  “Yes; electrical systems, what in a civilian would be installation and maintenance electrician.”

  “What about Tech Lundin?”

  “Steady as stone. I guess most medics are. She said she worked for a field trauma team before she joined Spaceforce.”

  “Good person to have along,” Ky said, and Chok nodded his agreement.

  “Now Tech Hazarika, he’s weapons maintenance with a secondary in communications. More an indoor type; he’s had a rough time. Seasick a lot, and I don’t think he’s up to hard physical work. And…” Chok paused long enough that Ky gestured to him. “Well…he’s crazy about Drosh—Tech Droshinski. Who if you ask me, and you did, is a drama queen right out of vid programs. Smart enough, but the kind of woman who makes trouble.”

  “Um. Sleeps around?”

  “Not on this trip, so far. Just—everything is drama with her.”

  “Did she start trouble with Commander Bentik?” Ky could easily imagine that happening. Offense taken, reproofs resented. She would have to be on the lookout for trouble in that direction.

  “Not that I saw, Admiral, but Master Sergeant Marek was keeping close watch on the commander.” After a moment, Chok said, “I hope I didn’t rattle on too much, Admiral.”

  “No, you didn’t. That was fine. I’ll be talking to everyone again myself, making my own assessments, but it helps to have something to start with.”

  Everyone gathered for the evening meal—a single ration bar—as it grew dark, and then returned to their usual raft for the night. Ky thought about scrambling the crew, but put it aside for another day. Snow fell all night; the night watches had to brush it off the canopies every hour or two.

  DAY 12

  In the morning the snow still fell, though more lightly. When it stopped, the temperature dropped; the wind picked up, rattling the canopy fabric. Nobody wanted to go outside, but Ky insisted.

  “Master Sergeant, we need work parties to gather seaweed and shellfish; Staff Sergeant Gossin should take several along the margins of the bay to find the best place to fish. The waste buckets from inside go to the latrine. Someone needs to use the desalinator pump to refill all the water containers with fresh water. And we need some kind of windbreak to protect our shelter. I wonder if we could pile up rocks.”

  Marek looked at her as if she were crazy. “Build a rock shelter? Do you know how to do that? With round rocks?”

  “No, but rock is what we’ve got.” She picked up a rock, carried it over, set it down. Another two. Another. Another three. “I’d rather have lumber and tools, but I don’t see any.”

  “Very well, Admiral. I’ll get the work parties moving.”

  That day, twelve of the crew carried rocks and dropped them into a long curving pile along the outside of one raft. It didn’t reach the top of the flotation walls, but it was a start, and it felt like doing something. They took turns, two by two, with those pumping the desalinators on the far side of the bay from the latrine. The others searched the rock pools and shallows for food. They came back with two small fish, sixteen of the black bivalves, and more seaweed.

  Seaweed was more palatable, Ky decided, when people had worked hard all day. The daily ration, which had seemed just adequate on the rafts, left them hungry here; the seaweed and individual bites of fish with one or two scallops or pieces of clam stilled the hunger pangs for only a few hours. And the cold never let up.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  NEXUS II, HEADQUARTERS OF ISC

  DAYS 9–12

  Rafe Dunbarger looked up when his office door opened. His sister Penny had dressed in the exact shade of blue that best suited her, a flowered scarf at her neck. She closed the door behind her, thumbed the lock, and walked across the carpet to stand on the other side of his desk, a challenging look on her face.

  “I’m busy,” Rafe said. He knew he had been scowling, glaring even, before she came in, and hoped he’d adjusted his expression quickly enough.

  “Is it Ky?” Penny asked. Rafe looked at her, but staring his sister down did not work these days. “I saw the latest news reports,” she went on. “They’ve ended all searches; they’re saying survi
val is highly unlikely.”

  “Stella told me not to come,” Rafe said. He unclenched his hands deliberately. “I could have gone—”

  “And done what?” Penny shook her head. “You know what your old friend Gary said—”

  Rafe snorted.

  “He told you that you lacked the skills to rescue us. Why do you think you could do anything for Ky, on a planet you’ve never visited, a foreign state, where you have no connections—?”

  “Stella’s there,” Rafe said.

  “And do you think she and Ky’s family are doing nothing? Her aunt or great-aunt or whoever she is, that’s head of their military?”

  Rafe took in a long breath and shoved all he wanted to say back down. Penny meant to be helpful. She was his little sister. She couldn’t possibly understand.

  Except she could, and he knew it, and the unfortunate effect of being Ky’s—whatever he was—had been a contamination of his insouciant attitude toward truth with her absolute white-hot honesty. At least in some things. At least where it mattered.

  “They are. I’m sure they are. But there’s something they don’t know, and you don’t know, about Ky and me. And I can’t tell you; it’s too dangerous.”

  “If you mean the implant ansible, I do know.”

  “What?” Terror and outrage met. “You can’t possibly—”

  “I saw you use it, remember? You tried all sorts of ways to hide what you were doing, but that’s all it could be—”

  “Penny, never talk about that. Never.” He felt cold sweat trickling down his backbone. “It could be fatal. For me, for Ky—”

  “Of course I won’t. You were the prototype, right? And somehow she got hold of one—”

  “The less you know, the better.” He scrubbed his face with one hand. “I shouldn’t even—the thing is—I know she’s alive. I can’t communicate, but I can tell if the implant’s still working. Which it wouldn’t be if she were dead.”

  “Well, then?” She folded her arms.

  “So—I need to be in range to get a heading from it. I can’t do that from here. And the report says her skullphone’s blocked—no signal they can detect—so either there’s some solid jamming going on, or she’s dead, but she can’t be dead because the implant’s still on.” He looked up at her. “I check every day. I have to know, Penny.”

  Her expression this time was tender, more motherly than sisterly. “There’s only one way you can go, you know.”

  “Go? What do you mean?”

  She sat down in the chair across from him, leaning forward a little. “Arrange for someone to run ISC while you’re gone. That would be me, the only one who should be running this monster, other than you. Just step down, name me as your successor—”

  “You!”

  “You’re the one who told me once I had more head for the business than you.”

  “Yes, but—but you’re—”

  “Younger. Prettier. And have more friends on the Board than you do. They won’t worry about me falling in love with Stella or Ky Vatta, for instance.”

  “But are you ready? After all that—”

  “Shall we ask my therapist? Rafe, I know you started me working here as a kind of therapy—but you also know I’m long past that now. I haven’t been to my therapist for over a year now; we sometimes run into each other socially, but that’s all. You’re not stuck here anymore, Rafe, if you don’t want to be.”

  “And you think I should go.”

  Penny shrugged. “I think you should decide whether running ISC is the life you want. You’ve said before you hated it; you took it when no one else could have, and you saved both ISC—to the extent anyone could—and Nexus itself. But I don’t see you inhabiting the big office with the big windows forever, and I’ve seen you looking more and more dour these last months. You enjoyed your freedom before. I expect you’d like it again.”

  “But Mother—”

  “She’s doing well enough in Port Bergson. She has her friends and we talk several times a week. She doesn’t want to move back to the north, she says. So—if you want to go, go.” She tilted her head. “I would never push you out—”

  Rafe laughed in spite of himself, a bubble of unreasonable joy rising through his chest. “But you are, Pennyluck. That’s exactly what you’re doing. And—you’re probably right. No, you are right. I never liked this job, even when I did it well—”

  “Which you did, brother mine.” She smiled at him, the smile he’d seen her use on others: approval of his cooperation.

  “And just the thought of getting off this stuffy planet—but what about the house?” The house their parents had given them, when they moved.

  “We sell it. You sell it and take the money—I’ve got plenty, and I like my apartment. We’ll visit it one last time together, pick out anything we want. I’ll send Mother that damned potted tree she was crazy about; in Port Bergson it can grow outside.”

  “Penny—it’s none of my business, but will you ever marry again, do you think?”

  She flushed a little. “Maybe. But not for another two years. Frieda said I should wait five years before marrying. I am, as I think you know, seeing someone, but casually.”

  Nothing would be casual with the heir to ISC’s CEO, but Penny knew that already.

  “So,” she went on, “how about it? What’s on your schedule the rest of the day? We could go out to the house now, after asking Emil to call a Board meeting for…let’s see…two days from now? Three?”

  Rafe raised his brows with intent. “You don’t waste time, do you?”

  “No. I learned not to wait,” Penny said. For a moment memory darkened her gaze; then it lightened again. “Besides—I do want to be the boss. This office will suit me.” Her glance around it was somewhere between predatory and proprietary.

  And Ky was somewhere—surely still alive—and if not, if she died before he could find her, he would have the whole wide universe again, anywhere he wanted to go anytime he felt like going.

  “All right,” he said. “Let’s do it. I’ve nothing on today that can’t wait a day; I finished the quarterlies last night.” He signaled Emil in the outer office and leaned back in his chair. He felt lighter already.

  That lasted only until he was once more in his room at their house with all the things his parents had saved. Clothes. Books. That fateful sword with which his eleven-year-old self had killed a man. He came out of the room after a few minutes only to meet Penny coming out of hers, hands as empty as his.

  “Maybe we should just—” she began.

  “Burn the whole thing down?”

  “No. Not the musical instruments. Not the library. But there’s nothing of mine from up here that I want.”

  “Me neither, and yet I don’t want strangers digging through it.” He called up a business directory. “Documents destruction first.”

  Within a few days the house was empty, put up for sale; the real estate agent would have it professionally cleaned and prepped under Penny’s supervision. The Board had agreed to let Penny take over for the time being, and granted Rafe a leave of absence with pay for six months. He didn’t explain why, but “the strain of the past months” covered it. Penny agreed not to announce the change in her title until he reported from Slotter Key. “But must you go in disguise?” she asked, watching him prep for departure.

  “It’s safer,” Rafe said. “You don’t want ISC involved in whatever trouble has hit Vatta again; neither would the Board. And if I have to transfer through some of the places I’ve been, there might be legal complications.”

  “You were in trouble,” Penny said.

  “Let’s just say I wasn’t always a perfect citizen,” Rafe said. “And not all the bodies stayed buried.”

  She laughed. “I’m not as tame as you think, Rafe. I think I’d have liked knowing you then.”

  “I’m glad you didn’t.” He kissed her forehead. “I hope you enjoy running ISC as much as I expect to enjoy being free of it.”

  CHAPTER
THIRTEEN

  SLOTTER KEY, MIKSLAND

  DAYS 13–25

  The camp settled into a routine: fishing, gathering seafood from the rocks they could reach, desalinating water from the bay, emptying the honey buckets, moving rocks to piles around the base of the raft-shelters. The piles grew slowly, but now reached the top of the flotation chambers of one raft, with a gap matched to the canopy hatch. They all slept in that one now, crammed in uncomfortably, but slightly warmer. Work on the next windbreak pile went on.

  If shelter had been the only lack, Ky was sure they could overcome it in time. Thanks to the desalinators, they had ample water from the sea. Slotter Key’s tides were not large, but Ky hoped the movement of water in and out of the bay would prevent dangerous contamination from their cesspit.

  But day by day, hunger and deepening cold took their toll, sapped everyone’s energy. Their initial inventory of rations, after landing, revealed that only thirty-six portions of the original six hundred in the lost raft remained. They still had 600 each from the Ounce and Stitch, and 479 left in Ducky, but it wasn’t enough. Seventy-seven days from now, at one pack per person a day, it would all be gone. And winter would last longer than that.

  She herself was hungry and cold all the time; she knew the others were as well, including the ones who never complained. It was harder to walk over the rocks to the water, harder to pile rocks up, harder even to think. Hardest on those who foraged in the water, their hands so stiff they could not unclench from the bucket handle. Rations calculated for warmer conditions and less exertion were not nearly enough in this cold. She looked at the total calories on the ration pack and asked Tech Lundin, as their resident medic, how many were really needed.

  “Three and a half to four thousand, in this kind of cold, without heated shelter. Almost double what these packs contain. And before you ask, I’m having to guess what the bay can supply. If it was all fish and shellfish—plenty of it—it might be enough, but so far each person’s getting only a few hundred calories more per day than the ration packet.” Lundin leaned closer. “Admiral, I hate to ask this, but have you considered that some people may be stealing food already? Not everyone is losing condition as fast as the others.”