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  “So we should start by looking for spare membranes. So can the other raft.” She called across and explained what they were looking for.

  “What about fishing?” Marek said. “This is as good weather as we’re likely to see.”

  “Open both canopies halfway, so we can see what we’re doing. And we don’t want to catch any hooks in the flotation.”

  With the canopies partway up, the light breeze moved them just faster than the current. Everyone seemed to cheer up with the fresh air and sunlight; those who had fished before unpacked the lines, hooks, and packets of bait, and then—two at a time—let their lines out into the water.

  Ky took the opportunity to get an even better look at the coast. Behind, to the west, the long line of cliffs faded into the distance. Ahead, the cliffs marched on, high, forbidding, with no welcoming bays. She squinted east, her back to the wind. Were the cliffs a little lower that direction, or was it just the way things looked smaller in the distance?

  She looked over at the other raft. Two designated fishers were braced on what was now the trailing edge of the Goose, just as on Lucky Ducky, watching their lines in the water. Corporal Lanca, to one side, pumped slowly at the desalinator, just as Corporal Inyatta was doing in her raft. The others were farther under the canopy, with Commander Bentik almost out of sight, and Master Sergeant Marek beside her. She looked pinched and pale. Marek caught Ky’s glance and spoke to Bentik. She looked over at Ky.

  “When can we close the canopies again, Admiral? It’s so cold.”

  “I hope we can catch some fish,” Ky said. “To extend our rations.”

  “Rations? You mean to eat? Animals out of the ocean?”

  “You eat fish, Commander.”

  “Raised in clean circumstances. Not like this. And how will we cook them?”

  They would eat fish raw, of course. And they had the little SafStov cans, for heating rations if they had to. She was spared having to explain this to Jen by a shout from one of Goose’s fishers. “Got one I think. See over there?”

  A blur under the water, surprisingly large. And behind it, on the next swell, another rose to the surface, a fin slicing the water’s surface. The fisher’s line went slack. “Lost him. Drat.”

  But the blur came on, faster than they were moving, as if seeking refuge under the rafts. Over a meter long, spotted on the upper surface. Behind it the fin came faster, and soon Ky recognized the familiar steel-blue back of a very large shark. The fleeing fish vanished under Goose, then bumped against the bottom as the shark followed.

  The raft’s floor bulged up; the fishers and Lanca, who had stopped pumping to watch, lost their balance. To Ky’s horror, something below poked up the raft floor as if the tines of a giant fork were trying to spear it. Dozens of them. Another fish—the shark?—shoved against the raft; the tail thrashed between the two rafts. “What is that?” someone yelled. Corporal Lanca grabbed the desalinator and started beating on the points as the raft fabric stretched, thinning enough that they could see the outline of spines.

  “Lanca! Stop!” Ky and Marek both yelled at him; Sergeant Chok dropped his fishing gear and tackled Lanca, rolling him away from the spike. But one had already poked through the rubbery floor—a dark spine. Memory hit Ky. Aside from being much larger, it looked like the spine of a puffer—a reef fish a little longer than her hand that could swell into a mass of toxic spines the length of her thumb to repel predators.

  Over a meter long and with spines that could pierce the raft’s floor? Even as she thought of it, two more poked through. The raft floor sagged over the fish as water entered the space between the layers, and more spikes outlined its size. It wasn’t maneuverable in its bloated form, but it didn’t have to be, to do damage. “Get patches,” Ky said. “Don’t touch the spines; they’re toxic. When the fish swims away you’ll need to mend it when the spikes come out. All fishers, get your lines back in; we need to get the rafts snug again.”

  Could they patch the raft before it sank? If it did—“Master Sergeant!” He looked over at her. “Start transferring essentials over here and prepare your spare raft.” In her mind the sequence unfolded; Marek spoke to Jen, then turned to the others, telling them to transfer rations and water to Ky’s raft beforehand, just in case—

  Ky saw the spines withdraw a little; water welled up beside each, and then the shark struck at the puffer, pushing it up into the raft floor as the spines erected again. Everyone in Goose was down now, struggling to the sidewalls, away from the violent struggle below and the growing leaks in the middle of the floor. Vispersen grabbed Jen’s briefcase and slung it wildly in the direction of Ky’s raft; it bounced off the canopy and into the ocean. Lanca, with a howl, grabbed the sidewall and wallowed over it into the raft with Ky. Some of the others were yanking open the storage bags along the sides. Suddenly the spines vanished, only to reappear a meter away.

  In the chaos that ensued, Ky called out “Marek! Inflate the spare raft! Throw all the rations and water you can into it! The desalinator—”

  “Admiral! What can I do?” Jen’s call ended in a shriek as the shark’s snout broke through the weakened center of the raft and its razor teeth ripped a bigger hole. Marek, struggling with the spare raft’s case latches, was instantly up to his waist in water; others had a good hold on the grabons of the wall, but everything that had been on the raft floor slid inexorably toward the center and down into the gap.

  Ky threw the rescue rings she’d left stored near the canopy opening. Sergeant Chok caught one and handed it to Jen. The cover of the raft pack finally snapped back, and Marek pulled the inflation cord. The raft whooshed open, tilted up on one end by the sidewall of the Goose, and the canopy popped up automatically, blocking most of the Goose’s passengers from access to its interior.

  Sergeant Chok caught one of the grab-lines and worked his way to the hatch opening, got in, and lowered the canopy so others could throw things over the sides. “Get the rations from the side pockets, throw them in here!”

  Kurin, now beside Ky, had hold of the lines connecting the two rafts and pulled them snugly together. Marek made it to the entrance ladder of the spare raft. It tilted more. “We’ll have to puncture flotation on this side,” Ky said. “So it can float out.” She looked around; Corporal Lanca was crouched on the other side of their raft. “Get back over there, Lanca; they need the weight in Ounce.”

  “But I’ll get wet—”

  “GO! Now!”

  Lanca scrambled back across to the entrance and heaved himself into Ounce, muttering.

  In the scramble to free the Ounce from the Goose and get everyone aboard, only some of the supplies made it.

  “Get a line on your raft!” Ky yelled. “We’re linked to Goose, not to you.”

  Chok threw a line, and finally Ounce was linked to Ducky and free of the Goose. Ky and Kurin worked together, hands stiffening in the cold water, to free the line to the Goose.

  By the time they had everything that could be salvaged from Goose in Ounce, the wind had picked up, ruffling the swells with miniature waves. Another shelf of dark cloud neared. Looking toward the wind, Ky could see a blur of fog or rain in the distance. “Close canopies,” she said. “Might be more squalls.”

  When the squall hit, a mix of rain and sleet soon turned to wind-driven snow. The foul weather lasted all night.

  DAY 7

  Ky woke to the sound of the storm and in dim light saw Kurin bracing herself on their spare raft’s case and poking at the canopy with the desalinator.

  “What’s wrong?”

  “Ventilation flap frozen down. I got the other one open this way—it’s—a matter of—timing.”

  Ky could see that, with the raft pitching and rolling on the heavy seas. With a last jab at it, the flap popped up and a few chunks of ice fell in. Kurin sank down on the raft case, breathing hard, then slid the desalinator into one of the storage pockets, leaving enough sticking out to identify.

  “Good thing it was your watch,” Ky said. “W
e’ll have to check regularly.”

  “I hope this storm doesn’t last as long as the last one,” Kurin said.

  CHAPTER TEN

  SLOTTER KEY SEARCH AND RESCUE, PINGAT BASE

  DAY 7

  The Long Range Recovery Team’s aircraft could stay up in the huge oval designated as the target area for hours. Long enough to make finding survivors possible, though not certain. SAR-One joined the crew that had brought the plane out. “The more eyes, the better,” Commander Depeche said from the pilot’s seat. “The Rector’s got her undies in a wad over this. Says it’s about the Commandant, but I figure it’s more about her niece or whatever—a Vatta aboard.”

  “It’s a hit to Slotter Key’s reputation, too,” McCoy said. “Especially sabotage. The inner worlds have been snooty about us out on the margins for a long time.”

  “There’s that,” Depeche said. “Ula, let McCoy have your seat for a while. Take a nap or something.”

  “Fine with me.” Ula Maillor grabbed her hot-cup out of its stand on the way out of the cockpit. “I slept the last third of the way to Pingats last night. But don’t think I don’t know you just want to talk politics with McCoy.”

  “I live for talking politics with McCoy,” Depeche said.

  “Gossip,” McCoy said. “Not politics. You just like the down and dirty.”

  Depeche raised an eyebrow. “And you don’t?”

  “You know I do. So who’s sleeping with whom that’s new and interesting? Any tagged dirty money?”

  “No sex, but there’s a rumor that Vatta Transport is going to reorganize and move its headquarters to the Moscoe Confederation. Slotter Key will just be a regional hub for them.”

  “Already heard that. Blondie coming here was public.”

  “And the admiral. Between those two and the Rector, they hold the most shares.” Depeche glanced over at McCoy. “And someone I know knows someone who claims the old lady is sure who bombed their headquarters back when.”

  “I thought it was the wicked cousin. Whatsisname…Osmar or Osmin or something—”

  “Osman. No, not him. He was with that pirate bunch, all right, but he’d been banned from Slotter Key permanently decades ago. They’re thinking the construction firm did it, put the bombs in place in one of the expansions.”

  “Paid to do it, or their idea?”

  “Guy I know thinks someone hired ’em. Maybe just a foreman or something, maybe the head. But if the Rector thinks it was the head…then heads will likely roll.”

  “Can’t blame her for that,” McCoy said.

  “No. But it makes life too interesting for the rest of us, her being head of Defense and all our lives in her hand. Made Orniakos furious when she called up and reamed him out for doing his job.”

  “I hadn’t heard that.”

  “That Space Defense Force ship Admiral Vatta came with sent their shuttle after the one that went down, when it changed course. Came right down into our airspace without asking permission, live weapons and all, and Orniakos told them to get out and stay out. Rector wanted them left alone on her say-so.”

  “Sounds…like a mess.”

  “It was. Is. Admiral Hicks is mad at Orniakos for making the Rector mad, and mad at the Rector for not informing him first, and there are rumors all over Region V headquarters about it. At least she asked Hicks to send us, so here we are. I get flight hours, so I’m happy, if no one else is.”

  McCoy laughed. “In-law trouble again?”

  “No. Kids. Kory’s turning out too much like me, and the school’s nagging at us about him and my so-called parenting style. I just need some time away.”

  “Lost prime signal,” Jamie said from the station behind them. “Right on schedule.”

  “What’s happened?” Depeche said. He twiddled some controls, scowling at the displays.

  “It’s all right,” McCoy said. “We won’t have satellite contact for the duration, but Jamie’s a great navigator. Besides, in this weather it’s dead simple. Miksland to port on the way out and Miksland to starboard on the way back. Just stay in sight of the coast.”

  “But what happened to the satellite?”

  McCoy shrugged. “Something about Miksland, they told us. Sounded like a lot of hand waving to me, but after all—it is a terraforming failure. For all I know it’s made out of giant magnets or something, but unless you’re way, way high, nothing works right. Jamie, are you running the nav string? What’s the weather and fuel situation?”

  “Yes, sir. Tailwind now, and headwind coming back,” Jamie said. “You want sixty-three percent of the fuel for the return trip, or we have to cut overland, and we don’t like that.”

  “Why not?” Depeche glanced back over his shoulder.

  “Instruments don’t just fail to connect to anything, they go crazy,” Jamie said. “If there’s ground fog or clouds, you can get mixed up easily. Some of the mountains are high.”

  “You’d think someone would put a landing strip on that place, even just an emergency one,” Depeche said. “I’d feel a lot safer if they had.”

  “Floater!” Seth called from the starboard side. “Debris.”

  LRR’s recorder, Van, brought it up on the screen. “Code matches what you found before. Different piece?”

  “Looks like,” Seth said.

  “I’ll do a circle,” Depeche said. They spotted seventeen pieces of debris, none that looked like a body or a part of a raft, and recorded every marking on them.

  “Back on original course,” Jamie said finally. They flew on another hour. This time, Lili Vela saw something first.

  “Floater. Orange. Could be a body.”

  When Van brought the image up on the screen they could see that it was, at least, an orange survival suit. Missing part of one arm.

  “Floater Two,” Seth said, from the other side of the plane. “Appears intact…no…foot missing.” In the next half hour, they found two more bodies. All were clearly dead, all in survival suits, all damaged by either the shuttle crash or sea creatures, and without retrieval capability they could not tell which.

  “I don’t suppose there’s much reason to keep going,” Commander Depeche said.

  “Do we have enough fuel?” McCoy peered out the cockpit window.

  “Yeah, for another hour, about, but why? We’re not going to find anyone alive.”

  “We don’t know what happened yet. If there’s more debris—a raft, even empty or damaged—it shows some might have made it down, deployed the rafts.”

  “Sure. Fine.” They flew on in silence.

  “Floater. Orange. Might be a raft.” Seth pointed; Van zoomed in on it. Oval, the right shape for a raft as they came nearer. Flotation chambers mostly full. Canopy down, water sloshing—he felt cold to the bone suddenly. That water sloshing inside the raft wasn’t a layer over the raft floor; the floor hung down in two ragged—partly ragged—pieces, as if someone had sliced through it.

  “Debris got it,” Lili said, peering at the screen. “Puncture marks—shrapnel from an explosion maybe—and then something sharp, some part of the shuttle or personnel module—some of that may be sea life, too—it’s a wonder it’s still afloat.”

  “If they had only one raft in the water, that would explain the bodies—whatever did this would’ve killed some, knocked others overboard. The cold would’ve done the rest.”

  As the plane circled, Van recorded every detail he could.

  “Time to go,” Depeche said. “Have you got what you need?”

  “Got it,” Van said. And under his breath, to those in the rear compartment, “I hate this kind of flight.”

  “Do you mostly get the bad ones?” Seth asked.

  “We’ve had some saves. Found people in rafts, then could tell a ship where they were. But this—without the proper navigational aids—nobody takes a ship through here, do they?”

  “Not in my lifetime,” Seth said. He leaned back against the hard seat. “No nav help, no satellite contact, and the water’s cold enough to k
ill you in less than an hour, even in summer. Ice on it in winter—solid off toward the pole, windblown chunks of it here. Shipping all stays north of Pingat Base, and mostly north of Miksland altogether.”

  “And you actually run SAR out here?”

  “Practice runs,” Seth said. “This is the first emergency—nobody’s crashed while I’ve been stationed here. So our usual routes are north and west of Miksland. We come here to practice navigation without modern instruments in case we need it somewhere else.”

  —

  “You found bodies? How many? Who?” Grace felt her heart skip a beat, start again.

  “We don’t know.” Admiral Hicks sounded depressed. “They saw five, and the remains of one raft. This was the Long Range Recovery plane—it can’t land on water and can’t hover; there’s no way to retrieve anything. The bodies had damage; they filmed everything but there are no facial features and we can’t tell if injuries preceded the crash or not.”

  “And the total number on the shuttle when it left the station?” She had been told that, but she’d gone blank on it.

  “Twenty-eight, Rector. If they were alive and able when the passenger module landed, I’m sure they’d have tried to launch two rafts. If they were all in one, it would be overloaded; the storm that hit the area shortly after they went down could have caused it to fail.” He cleared his throat. “We must consider it likely that no one survived. The weather, the water temperature—no one could survive in it for more than an hour at most. Five bodies—others could have sunk, been taken by sea life—”

  “Fish?”

  “Most likely, yes. Or cetaceans. If the crew or passengers survived, if they made it into more than one life raft, we would still expect some communication, some transponder signal.”

  “And there’s nothing.”

  “Nothing at all. I know your particular interest—”