Trial by Ice (A Star Too Far Book 1) Page 2

  The man looked over at him and nodded before returning to the dressing in front of him. He walked over to William and squatted on his haunches.

  “How are you feeling?”

  “Not as bad as I could. What’s the toll?”

  The man snorted and sat back. His eyes were dark and deep set, bruising blotted across his neck like a paint smudge. Two collars sprouted around his neck, from the two jackets he was wearing.

  “Well, seeing as two thousand people were just scattered from LEO, not too bad,” he responded sourly. He sighed and rubbed his hands together in front of him.

  “Who’s in charge?” William asked.

  The man looked up at William with raised eyebrows. “You.”

  William nodded. “Well then, where’s everyone else?” He stood slowly and tenderly. His wounds were dressed and he felt stiff.

  “We’ve got another tent setup, so far there’s about forty survivors. Most though—” he waved an arm down the line of wounded, “—aren’t doing that well.”

  The pair walked out of the dim tent and into the crisp wind. William had to grasp onto the shoulder of the man for help. Around him were two more tents identical to the first. Small drifts built up like loaves of dough around the tents. Boxes and crates were scattered nearby. A group of men struggled to hammer in the last set of stakes.

  “What’s your name?” Willam called to the man.

  “Vito,” he called back, his head lowered to the wind.

  The two men walked into the nearest tent. Vito held open the flap and William stepped into the crowded space. Hunched shoulders and tight, cold faces turned to look at him. All around were faces angry, confused, hurt. Several of the men were uninjured, but most were haggard, beat, bruised, with some missing limbs or with arms in slings. The eyes that looked at him were of scared men.

  “I’m Midshipman Grace,” William said over the wind. “What’s our situation?”

  “We’re fucked,” a voice called from the back of the tent.

  William nodded. He should have expected that response. “Let’s try that again.”

  “Sir, we’ve got nearly two dozen survivors. Kwesi, Selim and Nur are out setting up another tent. I’m, um, Tero, sir. Engineers Mate Tero.” The man was plump in his face and his neck practically swam in the oversize heavy jacket.

  “Food? Water?” William asked. The wind slapped against the tent and the sides bowed in a bit.

  Another man responded, “Private Aleksandr, sir, we’ve found cases of drop rations, we’ve got about four so far.”

  William nodded. Each case was rations for fifty men for a day. So they had four days, and they hadn’t even combed the crash site.

  “Water?” he asked as he shifted his weight.

  Aleksandr shook his head. “We’re eating the snow, we’ve got no way to melt any water.”

  “How are we gonna get out of here?” a voice called out angrily from the back.

  William looked to the back of the tent. A man sat on the floor with his back against the wall. His shoulders were hunched forward but his head looked up defiantly. Both of his eyes were ringed with deep bruises. His nose was smashed across the bridge.

  “I think we’ll try to stay alive for a bit before we worry about rebuilding the ship, don’t you think?” William replied with a bit of a jest.

  The man simply glared back. William scanned the faces of the others, none were defiant, most were blank and still in shock.

  “Do we have any comms?” William asked.

  A thin man with almond eyes responded, “Comms Mate Xan, sir. There’s a dropcap about a kilometer away with, I think, an undamaged commset, but it has no power.”

  “Can we fix it?” William asked as he looked around the room.

  “Not unless we get juice,” Xan replied with frosted breath.

  William nodded slightly. The wind slapped and ripped with the intensity of a modest hurricane.

  “Can anyone get into one of the capsules and get us some power?” William looked to the group and saw only downcast eyes with a single defiant look back.

  “I can.” The man with defiant eyes stated.

  “And who is ‘I’?” William asked with a slight spit. His shoulder blades began to ache as the adrenaline picked up.

  “Grue. I’ll get your fucking power,” the man replied, with dark eyes.

  “Okay, Grue. Xan, go with him and help,” William said.

  “I don’t need any help,” Grue replied.

  “No one goes out alone.” William stared at Grue and saw nothing but anger.

  The wind rippled the walls like a billowed sail before settling back to a howl. The air bounced around them as the walls shook and quivered. Clouds of frost from there voices shook before them.

  Grue stood and pushed his way through the crowd. A few sets of eyes looked up as he passed. Xan stumbled and dropped to a knee before standing next to Grue by the door. The pair hesitated, looked back, and finally pushed through the flaps and outside. The wind slapped the flaps and the men stumbled with heads down out the door.

  Outside raged a wind that had built around most of a planet. The seas whipped and churned as the warm air rose from the south and finally chopped against the icy fringes of the north. It circled like a stabled stallion until finally smashing into the landmass that the survivors sat on. It was unrelenting and violent.

  * * *

  Corporal Berry clung to the mylar blanket and pulled it as tight as he could. His legs were thrashed and bruised and he could feel the warmth of the nanites sealing up the tear in his side. He was almost giddy with the painkillers and wanted to laugh out loud when the Midshipman had sparred with the Engineer.

  “Oh man, this is going to be good,” he said. Specks of light danced on the edge of his eyes. He could sleep, he could feel it coming, but he was afraid.

  An olive-skinned man shuddered next to him and struggled to get comfortable. One ear was missing. A ragged patch of dried blood was the only thing left.

  “Skinny up there, boy, lean against my back,” Berry said with a smile and slid himself back.

  The earless man turned and relaxed against his back. He was icy and tight. “You’re warm,” he said with slurred speech.

  “Private, you need a patch.”

  The man was silent and only shivered.

  “Lost ‘em, eh, Private? A private is as a Private does.” Berry turned his head slightly and gave a light jab with his elbow. “Now you just stick with Corporal Berry, I’ll take care of you, Private.” He dug out the box and flipped it onto the man’s lap.

  “I’m Nur.”

  “Nur. Well, my new friend, stick with the Berry and you’ll see things right.” Berry relaxed himself into Nur and made it a point to track down the Engineer, Grue, if he came back. He didn’t like the Navy—he didn’t like the Army much either, for that matter. But he especially didn’t like young, useless Officers. The Midshipman was the pinnacle of everything that was wrong with the new Military.

  “Oh god,” Nur whispered and relaxed into Berry as the nanites gripped.

  “That ain’t god, Nur, you remember now.” He looked up to the Midshipman and shook his head. That’s it, he thought, the problem with all of this. Take away the real professionals, the Americans, the Russians, Chinese, and let anyone who signed a piece of paper lead. A shame. A damned dirty shame. “You remember now.”

  * * *

  William looked to the group of broken, injured, fallen men before him. “We need supplies. NCOs?”

  A few eyes raised up. “Sir?” one asked, barely above the wind.

  “Names?” William asked.

  “Crow.” The man he met earlier said with a horse voice.

  “Leduc.”

  “Berry,” the last NCO answered loudly.

  “We need supplies. More gear. Food, whatever looks useful. Keep an eye out for survivors,” William said. He knew looking for more people alive was slim.

  “Sir, what about whatever shot us down?” Berry aske
d.

  “I don’t know, Corporal Berry.”

  “What if they come back?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “What do you know? A fucking Midshipman?” Berry called out to no one.

  No one looked up to him. Eyes were cast down to the frosted floor beneath. William shifted his feet and felt the bandages crackle like raw paper. It wasn’t the moment to call rank, no one would buy it. The people before him were one argument away from falling apart.

  “Yeah. A Midshipman. I didn’t see you doing anything when I came in.”

  “We…” Berry’s voice was lost in another gust that nearly buckled the wall. He stayed quiet when the wind stopped.

  “I’m with the first team. Let’s go for a stroll,” William said.

  “Sir.” The man named Leduc stood and walked to the edge of the door. He slid a mask from his pocket and smoothed it over his black stubble covered head.

  A Marine Private walked forward and stood dejectedly next to them. He didn’t speak. His face was bruised. A deep gash tinged with white arced across his cheeks and forehead.

  The trio walked out into the dimming light tinted with frost and wind. The chill immediately set in crackling the jackets and stiffening the gear. They walked single file into the harsh wind. The goal: a dropcap half a kilometer away. Scattered debris collected snow and grit around them. Bodies were already drifting over. The snow was coming in heavier and not just the windswept remnants of some lost storm.

  The capsule was crushed, blackened and split like an old tin can. The three worked in silence, stripping out the rations, another shelter, and what appeared to be a purifier. They ignored the white-cheeked wooden bodies frozen in the capsule.

  “What are we going to do, sir?” the man with the frost-touched cheeks asked.

  William licked his chapped lips. The air was dry and abrasive. “Wait for the fleet.”

  “What if they don’t come?” he asked with pleading eyes.

  William looked up at the technology around him. The capsule was dead. The tenuous reach of man into the void couldn’t do much to save them now. “They’ll come.”

  The air shimmered with motes of frost with each strike of wind. William took one last look at the gallery of souls staring down at them. There was no salvation in the snow.

  They walked through the cruel wind, buffeted and pushed until they reached the huts. They sat, chilled through, and watched as another group went out. The only constant was the wind and drifting snows. The groups came back, remarked on a find, and dreaded the next trip out. The greatest discovery was a black case of sleeping bags. The men draped them onto themselves like ermine cloaks.

  The sun dropped to a dim white disk on the horizon. The men feared the night. Each sat in his own way and huddled for heat, wary that no more would come other than from his own body.

  Grue stomped through the door and pushed himself through the crouched bodies. “You got your juice.”

  “Where’s Xan?”

  Grue hunched into a corner and grabbed a sleeping bag. He ignored William with an intense energy focused on getting comfortable.

  William stood and shed the cloak of the sleeping bag and made his way for the door. Vito came through the door and stumbled next to him.

  “William, we’re going to have a problem.”

  “Vito, can it wait? Xan is in the capsule, we’ve got power.”

  Vito nodded. “We can talk there.”

  “Sergeant Crow, detail a few men to tend to the wounded.” William slid the borrowed mask onto his face and stepped into the cold.

  The wind had dropped to just above a breeze but the temperature had dropped with it. The day was drawing closed as the horizon was dimly lit.

  “What’s on the horizon?” William asked.

  “Pardon?” Vito said.

  “Are you Army? Marine? Navy?”

  “Civilian. I’m with the Delegation.”

  “Oh, I didn’t know we used diplomats on drops, too.” William kicked through a waist high drift and tilted his head as Vito walked behind.

  “When the need arises,” Vito said.

  “What’s your specialty?”

  Vito stopped and slapped the gritty snow off of his pants. “Terraforming Technologies, Nanites, with a smattering of History.”

  William smiled and nodded. “A history professor?”

  Vito smiled with cracked lips. “And so much more.”

  “When I asked what was on the horizon, I meant what did you need to speak about?” William asked.

  “The patches, we’ll run out soon. Each is good for a few hours. They are stabilizers, not for long term use.”

  “What happens?”

  “Some will wake up, or some will just die. The anticoagulants and nanites are the only thing keeping some of them alive.”

  William nodded. The drop capsule was closer. “Anything to be done?”

  Vito shook his head. “Not unless the fleet arrives and we get a proper med-vac. Even if the Surgeon you’d shot was here we still couldn’t save them.”

  “That didn’t end like I thought it would.”

  “No, but I bet you didn’t think you’d be walking on the ground,” Vito replied.

  A slight hissing and an occasional pop rolled off of the capsule. Falling snow evaporated on the stained grayish white cooling fins. A ragged plastic sheet covered the hatch. Bodies lay roughly piled just out from the crooked entrance. The reality of the moment changed the tone of the walk. He had almost forgotten, just for a windless moment.

  They pushed through the plastic sheet and a hint of warm air rushed past them. The frost that had accumulated on them softened briefly before freezing again. The electronics around them had warmed the air ever so slightly.

  “Xan, what have you got?” William asked. He walked across the crushed and crumpled floor.

  Xan had a wire and conduit console draped across his lap like an old woman knitting. “Something, sir, but I think we need your ID code to get it.”

  “Got a keypad?”

  Xan nodded his chin at a crumpled numeric pad. “Watch the screen, some of the keys double-tap.”

  William tapped, corrected, tapped, and tried again. Finally the screen relented and text cascaded down.

  “What does it say?” Vito asked.

  The two men read in silence.

  “William?” Vito asked again as he scrambled over the seats.

  “They’re gone,” William replied.

  “Who?” Vito clambered closer, more frantic.

  “The fleet, they blinked out.” William sat down hard.

  The wind quickened and the plastic flapped. The brief solace of the sunset gave way to the chill night winds that brought nothing but ice and pain. The three men walked back in silence, buffeted with despair.

  CHAPTER TWO

  Walking Frozen

  The faces of the survivors wore a light coat of stubble flecked with gray frost. A dim light strip on the edge of the tent cast the only faint glow. Inside the tent heaps of sleeping bags were scattered in clumps. The tent took on the smell that any small enclosed space did when filled with fearful, injured men.

  William Grace pushed through the entry and into a cold space devoid of wind. A few of the sleeping bags moved and faces looked up from shadows. He hesitated, then turned to Vito.

  “Go get the others.”

  Vito nodded and walked outside.

  “You mind?” Xan asked, pointing to a pile of sleeping bags.

  William shook his head and waited in the chill air.

  Men began to stir. Whispers wandered through the room. William looked down at them and realized that they were now both his burden, and his salvation.

  Vito returned with another small group of men carrying sleeping bags in their arms. “I’ll go relieve the guys watching the wounded,” Vito said as he walked back outside.

  William waited. He tucked his chilled fingers into the dead man’s jacket and remembered he still carried the gun. The fr
ame felt cold even through the gloves. He turned it over in his hand idly feeling its weight. The rest came in.

  He cleared his voice and straightened his back. “Xan and Grue got one of the comm sets working.”

  Eager sounds and smiles broke out across the room. Men sat up and slid the sleeping bags off of their heads. William pulled his hands out of his jacket and made a placating motion.

  “They’re gone, left system, I doubt they think there are any survivors,” William said.

  Silence reigned with the only sound being the wind whipping the snow against the shelter. Eyes, white with fear, darted around the room all looking for one or another to speak, to question, to reassure. Only the wind spoke.

  William broke the silence. “We’re going to get out on our own.”

  “That’s fucking bullshit,” Grue called from the back.

  “Maybe, but they lost a heavy drop cruiser to a planet that was supposed to be unprotected. Would you blink the fleet in to something like that?” The crowd verged on angry but still maintained military discipline, for now.

  “What do we do?” a thin voice asked.

  “For now, collect supplies, tend to the wounded, and move our way south.”

  “But where are we going?” a man named Kwesi asked.

  “To the original objective. We’re going to complete the mission.” William looked around and let it sink in. “From what we can gather, we came down about a thousand miles north, we blinked in a polar orbit and down we came.” His mouth was dry. He rasped his lips with his tongue. “For now, everyone rest, there’s another wind coming in.”

  Men shifted and looked to each other. William looked back and waited for the mutiny, the questions, the anger. But all he was met with was silence. Only a few sets of eyes looked at him angrily—Grue especially.

  He settled in near the door, the coldest part of the tent. He stuck one sleeping bag behind him, another under, and crawled into a third. The cold was merely kept at bay, but not stopped.

  * * *

  The night was cold. Cold enough to brittle steel and destroy flesh. The tent was rimed with frost in the corners as the men slept a fitful sleep. Each was lost in his moment, alone, and without dream. The night drew on long, as all uncomfortable nights seem to do. Before the day was light the men stirred and waited, looking up to the lightband above them. The lights were dimmer than before, barely enough to throw a glow.