Cold Welcome Page 11

  “Good work. I see we’re also developing internal weather.” Ky pointed to the canopy overhead. “Fresh water, if we captured it before it puddled on the floor.”

  “We have water in the raft supplies,” Cosper said.

  “Yes, and if we get to land or are picked up in the next thirty days, that’s enough. But if we aren’t? At the least we should get busy with the desalinators.”

  “You think it might be more than thirty days?”

  “I don’t know. We should know more today—if it’s clear enough, we can tell how far we are from Miksland and try again to make contact with someone—a satellite, anyway.”

  Ky slid over and unfastened the hatch, opening it far enough to put her head out. The two rafts were in a trough; on either side was a hill of water at least twice the height of the rafts, dark and smooth as glass. The raft and canopy immediately across from her limited her view to a sideways slice in either direction. When they rose on the next wave Ky could see beyond the crests of the nearest: endless rows of waves under high clouds like a flat pale-gray roof. Far off she saw a darker area, but could not distinguish anything; it looked more like a rain shower than land.

  She heard voices inside the other raft, though she could not distinguish what they were saying. “Commander Bentik, what’s your situation?”

  After a short wait, the other raft’s hatch opened and Jen peered out. “Admiral, you’re awake.”

  “Yes, of course,” Ky said. “How’s your crew?”

  “As well as can be expected after that horrible storm, when we don’t even know where we are, or if anyone is looking—”

  “I’m certain they are,” Ky said. “Are there any new injuries?”

  “No, Admiral, there are not. But one of the, uh, bodies came loose again and rolled right down on top of me—a dead man!—and—” Her eyes filled with tears and her voice shook. “I have never had to—to touch a—a dead person in my entire life, Admiral. It’s not—it’s not decent. Combat troops—they’re trained for things like that.”

  “I’m certain it was a very hard shock for you,” Ky said, in what she hoped was a soothing voice. “You have done very well, Commander—”

  “Don’t patronize me!” Jen went from what had seemed like panic to anger in an instant. “Just because you’re used to combat and death—” She stopped as suddenly as she’d started. “Admiral. That was unseemly. My apologies.”

  “Accepted,” Ky said. She couldn’t think of anything else to say. What was Jen’s problem with dead bodies? These were not, after all, gory. They were just dead. Neatly, tidily dead, at that, enclosed in their survival suits. Was this something else about Cascadian habits that she didn’t know?

  “But we really cannot keep them. Soon they will…you know…begin to…to become really offensive. And we have all of them in this raft. You don’t have to put up with it.”

  There was no tactful way to ask if anyone else was as bothered by the bodies as Jen herself. And driving her only other officer to the edge of sanity—if that’s what was happening—by forcing her into proximity with the dead bodies endangered them all. She needed Jen to regain stability, to be an asset. The evidence the bodies contained would be lost, but the trade-off was worth it.

  “I will need to speak with Master Sergeant Marek,” Ky said.

  “But you’re in command—”

  “Yes, but there is an appropriate ceremony,” Ky said. “And for that I need information from him.”

  Jen disappeared from the gap in the hatch, and Marek replaced her. “Yes, Admiral.”

  “I will be conducting a service when we consign the remains of those killed to the sea. It will be later today. The weather’s moderated; it is not an emergency, and we must honor those who died.”

  “Yes, Admiral. Thank you; some individuals here were becoming upset. How may I assist?”

  —

  One by one, the bodies slipped into the cold dark water. Both raft canopies had been partly retracted, and the tether between the rafts lengthened, so everyone could see and hear. Ky spoke the words chosen to be inoffensive to any of the religions on Slotter Key, then named each person as Master Sergeant Marek made sure each descent over the edge of the raft was slow, entering the water with no unseemly splashing.

  They had had nothing to weigh the bodies down with. The orange survival suits kept them just afloat, disturbingly like survivors who needed to be hauled in and revived. Ky was sure others had the same urge. It was hard to watch them bob in the waves as the wind caught the rafts’ partly open canopies and pushed them on faster than before. Her vision blurred—with the cold wind, she told herself, as the bodies were left behind in death, as they had left life behind.

  With the canopies partly open, and the weather less violent, Ky could see Miksland clearly every time they came up from a trough. From the raft, it appeared a solid block of dark red rock rising straight from the sea. No place to land. Surely the whole coast wasn’t like that.

  “We should paddle while the weather’s better,” Master Sergeant Marek said. “Get closer. There’s bound to be someplace—”

  “If we get too close we could end up on the rocks,” Ky said. “These rafts wouldn’t stand dragging on rock. We need a wide enough gap that the inside’s likely to have a safe landing place. For now, we need to close up the canopies again, get out of this wind. And we need to start regular raft maintenance and inventory. Does your desalinator work?”

  “We haven’t tried it yet. We still have plenty of water in the raft.”

  “We need to know if it works,” Ky said. “And how’s your raft for weight distribution without the—”

  “We’re light, but we were heavier than yours before.”

  “I’m setting regular watches at night, and we’ll have a chore schedule starting today—”

  “You’ll tell me what it is?”

  “You and Commander Bentik can set up your own, as long as you keep track of resources and see how much fresh water you can produce with your desalinator. I’ll want a daily report.”

  “Yes, Admiral. Should I lash the rafts together again?”

  “Closer than they are now, but leave a meter of open water; we’ll be able to see better.”

  A short time later, Marek reported that they could not find any desalinators in their raft.

  “We have two,” Ky said. “Both are working.” She turned back to the others. “Staff Sergeant, pass me one of the desalinators; the other raft needs it.” As she handed it across to Marek, she said, “This is faster than the one my father had—produces about a liter in fifteen minutes. We should be able to provide all our own potable water with it, as long as the seas are this calm. The top of the spare raft packing case makes a good base.”

  By evening, the wind was light, the swells even lower. Ky tried her skullphone’s satellite connection again, with no luck; nor did her separate comunit pick up any signal. So it could not have been the storm that interfered. She could not think of anything to do that would fix the unknown problem. So…what was something she could fix?

  Supplies: with four rafts and only twenty-two people, they had rations enough left for 109 days, assuming the two unused rafts carried full rations. But if they couldn’t get out of the Oklandan’s southern gyre, 109 days didn’t really help. At least the two desalinators gave them plenty of capacity for making drinking water out of seawater.

  What they didn’t have was any real cold-weather gear but the survival suits. The shipsuits the others wore under their survival suits were, she knew, meant for comfort in the even, pleasant temperature of a spaceship; her uniform was warmer, but not designed for severe cold. And the survival suits—though they were windproof and waterproof—had limited battery life for warming. They couldn’t even huddle together in anything but the lightest breeze, or the raft might blow over.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  PINGAT ISLANDS SEARCH AND RESCUE

  DAY 3

  Pingat Islands Base had gone on alert as soon as t
hey received word the shuttle was in trouble. SAR-One, the active rescue crew, waited for the order to go, and then—when the weather in the suspected landing zone was downgraded—waited for better information and orders. They didn’t have another briefing until the third day after the shuttle went down.

  “They’ll still be in that storm, most likely,” the base exec said. “But you might find something—from the rest of the shuttle. The passenger module would have been blown east of where the shuttle body went down.”

  “And been moving east ever since, assuming they made it out of the raft. When is that long-range aircraft coming in?” Arvi McCoy, pilot of SAR-One, looked at the chart display with a sinking feeling. Everything was at the limit of his craft’s range.

  “Not until tomorrow or the day after. So go as far as you can safely, but don’t push your luck unless you see something definite.”

  The crew of SAR-One moved out to their aircraft, not saying much. McCoy and his copilot Jamie Sonder went through their preflight while data recorder Seth Lockhart and hoist techs Benji and Caleb Reston checked their own equipment. All were well aware of the difficulties inherent in finding anyone south of Miksland. Impossible in the frequent storms, improbable at the best of times, which autumn-shading-to-winter was not.

  Four hours out, Lockhart spotted something—white lumps floating in the water.

  McCoy circled over the debris; Lockhart zoomed in on it. A line of numbers…a few letters. “Could be part of the shuttle itself. If it disintegrated before it hit—”

  “There’s another,” Cal Reston said. “Bigger piece.”

  “Got it.” Lockhart increased magnification. “E-code for Spaceforce. We can run it in the system when we get back.”

  “Ten minutes more, then we have to go back,” McCoy said. “I’ll fly an arc.”

  They saw nothing more but dark sea with dark land rising out of it. On the way back, no one spoke. Their instruments told them water temperature was one degree Celsius, with survival in the water measured in minutes.

  —

  “Code’s right,” Tech Larson said, in the forensic laboratory at Pingat Base. “Spaceforce shuttle, the one that went down. You found its debris, not something else.”

  “So…”

  “So that’s all. This is coded for the starboard aileron. Your scan gives the right density, the right shape—here’s the overlay. It’s not the whole thing, just a part, but it fits.”

  “Shuttle, not passenger module.”

  “Yes. Nothing from the passenger module.”

  “We went as far as we could—how far could the module be from the shuttle?”

  “You need somebody else for that,” Larson said. “Those things come down with parachutes, don’t they?”

  “They’re supposed to.”

  —

  Grace Lane Vatta glared at the man shown on the screen. “We already knew the shuttle went down there.”

  “We didn’t know for sure exactly where.”

  “But the debris tells us nothing about the passengers.”

  “It gives us a westernmost point to search, Rector. The shuttle was ballistic at the time: engines had failed, and the pilots were ejected with the passenger module. The module, descending more slowly under parachutes, would have been more affected by the prevailing wind; it must have come down farther east. Survivors in rafts would also be affected by the wind and the currents, carrying them still farther east—beyond range of the SAR craft usually based at Pingats.”

  “What craft do you have that can search farther?”

  “The Long Range Recon and Search squadrons; the nearest operational is up on the northwest coast.”

  “There’s nothing closer?”

  “Closer, yes, but there’s a typhoon at Gerrault; all aircraft are grounded. They expect at least a three-day delay before they can get out again; storm surge made it over the seawall and they won’t know the damage to the runways until they get the water off.”

  “I see. So another three to four days?”

  “That’s our best estimate. It would be better to get the northern squadron down to Pingats, in case the Gerrault runway needs major repair. The LRRCs aren’t the fastest aircraft we’ve got, but nothing else has their range at low altitude.”

  “Do it then, Admiral. All those people deserve our best efforts.”

  “I’ll see that you’re kept informed of progress, Rector.”

  Grace called Helen and explained the status of the search. “I’m concerned that the eastward drift will take them out of even that aircraft’s range, but there’s nothing else we can get, this time of year.”

  “I don’t know what to do about the legal situation,” Helen said. “Should Stella just move into the CEO’s office here, for the duration? She’s met all the department heads, now.”

  “How critical is it that Ky appear in person?”

  “Unless she’s been declared dead, or been missing without communication for two planetary years, very. That’s what the law says.”

  “See if there’s any leeway for cases like this. Yes, there’s a chance she might show up later, but she wasn’t contending with Stella. She had signed over her proxy before. This just makes it permanent.”

  “I’ll see what we can do,” Helen said.

  Grace looked at her status list. Yet more people wanted to talk to her about the shuttle, its disappearance, the personnel who’d been on it. She knew the questions already: who had done it, had she known, why hadn’t she known, when would she know, what was she doing…she read through that list and then the list of the passengers once again. Betange, compassionate leave. Parents killed, siblings…She called in her assistant.

  “Find out who is taking care of Tech Betange’s siblings, and when it’s a decent time in their zone, put a call through for me. I need to know what their situation is.”

  Waiting for an answer gave her an excuse to ignore the other demands for a time. Finding out what the caregivers needed—besides Betange himself—would give her something she could accomplish.

  CHAPTER NINE

  SOUTHERN OKLANDAN

  DAY 4

  “We ought to name these things,” Corporal Yamini said the next morning. Only a thin skim of cloud covered the sky, though darker ones edged the west.

  “What?” asked Cosper.

  “These rafts. They saved our lives, and clearly we’re going to be in them for a long time. They should have names, just like boats.”

  Ky grinned. “That’s a good idea, Corporal. We should have a contest. Everyone think up a name—I’ll tell the other raft.” Cold as it was, the increased light and calmer sea had made a change in everyone’s mood—everyone but Betange, maybe. She called over to the other raft and suggested the name contest to Master Sergeant Marek.

  “How long have we got? And who decides?”

  “Two hours, two names: one for your raft and one for the spare.” Ky said. “And make it a vote.”

  By the deadline, each raft had a name, including the two spares. Several variations on “Duck” had been offered, with Lucky Ducky as the winner, for Ky’s raft; the spare was Stitch in Time. The other raft’s crew combined two suggested names, “Gratitude” and “Goose,” to become Grateful Goose, and its spare had another combined name: Bouncing Ounce from “Ounce of Prevention.”

  Ky declared a feast to celebrate the naming, and the rest of that day was spent checking all the equipment and cleaning out rafts, including the honey buckets. So far, they were all healthy—tired, cold, and worried, to be sure, but recovered from the violent seasickness during the storm. Despite the cold and uncertainty, she lay down that night and did not wake until her turn at watch.

  A faint, strange sound came from outside. When she looked out the hatch, she could see snowflakes falling, one after another, into the dark water, and lightly frosting the upper sidewall of the raft. She shivered, sealed the hatch opening again, and tried to think how they could improvise another desalinator. She knew they had some
kind of filter or membrane or something. Surely it was related to the recyclers on spaceships that took in human waste and turned it into potable water and fertilizer for the ’ponics.

  DAY 5

  She lay down to sleep still thinking about their water supply and woke in the morning to find that it was lighter, the sky almost clear. Sunlight hit the canopy and the interior warmed up. Outside, it seemed warmer as well. No snow remained on the canopy or sidewalls; the seas were still gentle compared with those earlier. And the view of Miksland was much clearer, the red rocks rising straight up from the sea with a fringe of surf below.

  Roll call, the morning chores, a pause for rations. Everyone ate quickly; Ky suspected they felt hungry, as she did. The daily rations—in four separate packets—were supposed to supply ample nutrition, so perhaps it was just recovery from seasickness and return of appetite that made them seem meager.

  Ennisay looked up from his ration bar. “They’re not going to find us, are they? We haven’t seen or heard any searchers at all.”

  “Ennisay!” Kurin glared at him. “Don’t talk like that.”

  “We need to think about what we can do,” Ky said. “We don’t know how long to plan for, but we can plan. The rations we have in the rafts won’t last us the whole winter, for instance, so we’ll need to find other food.”

  “You think we’ll be out here that long?” Kamat widened her eyes. “Even if we catch enough fish, can we even survive in the cold?”

  “We can,” Ky said. “If we work together and make good decisions. And with that in mind—do any of you know exactly how desalinators work, how to make one?”

  “Isn’t ours working?” Kurin asked.

  “Yes, but I’m trying to think ahead. We will be careful not to drop it overboard, I know that, but I don’t know what conditions might make it quit. If someone knows how to fix it—”

  “I know the theory,” Betange said. It was the first time he’d spoken, except to answer to roll call. “They’re pretty sturdy, but the membranes they use do wear out, and we can’t make the kind of membrane needed for the hand-powered ones. If they stocked spare membranes, though, we could maybe make something—probably slower—”