by Ginger Booth
She hauled on the sunken rope to the lone windward pole. Soon Clay joined her in the effort. It didn’t take long to realize it didn’t reach the pole anymore. She found its end, and a familiar pattern. Three thick strands, two neatly cut, and the third frayed.
On the other side, tugging the rope somehow freed the top half of its pole, which soon floated toward the shore.
Darren rejoined them from his inspection on the far end. “The fenders are shredded to splinters. I think the platform hammered the poles down. You can see them on the lake bottom.”
“Did you check the ropes?” Sass asked. “I think only the carbon cables held.” Though the ropes to the remaining anchor posts still held strong, they weren’t much challenged with the stronger carbon cables bearing the load.
Darren shook his head. “Doesn’t matter, cap. The platform is too much for the poles in rough water. We’re too far up the lever. We’d need four times as many, maybe more, to withstand storms like this. And this was a summer storm. God knows what a winter blizzard is like, hammering into ice.”
She presented the sliced rope end for his inspection. “Sabotage.”
“We brought the same crew of hunters we had the other day,” Clay said. They spoke on a channel they shared just between themselves. Anyone could join it if they figured out which channel, but Sass signaled 53 to her two companions just before they jumped from the door airlock, with no one in view.
“Plus Zan,” Sass noted. She glanced around to see if a camera dot had surfaced, but she couldn’t spot one. “He affixed the cameras to the poles.”
“Doesn’t mean anything,” Clay argued. “Storm, snow. The wind must have been fierce here, with only that headland to break it.” Indeed, a number of new trees, not yet bleached, piled on the shore behind them. “How do you want to play this?”
Sass envisioned inviting one hunter at a time down to the platform and asking if he did it, until one looked shifty. In her experience, that tended to forewarn the guilty and make the innocent look nervous. She shook her head. “Let’s just bring the boat down, see if it floats. This mooring is sound. Needs more, but.”
Zan’s piloting skills were first rate, tutored by Ben, the finest pilot in Aloha space. He came around the platform again slowly, then lowered until the net just touched the water, and held there. The hunters hopped from the ship’s ramp to the platform. One of the ropes to the carrying net detached from the ship above – probably Nico – and sailed across the platform.
The hunters grabbed the lead and pulled it taut, the boat’s prow turning toward them. Once this was established, Zan lowered Thrive further, inching down until the water bore the boat’s weight. Darren walked to their corner to take pictures. Sass and Clay wandered along behind him.
Sass was impressed. The boat sat lower in the water than the pure resin version would have. But that made it extra stable.
Clay folded his arms, more critical. “Those boards should be caulked on the outside. That’s a lot of resistance to the water.”
“It’s an imperfect world,” Darren growled.
“The wooden part was the mold,” Sass explained. But her eye was caught on shore. “Look. Switching to hunter channel. Look! On shore!”
All of her companions glanced that way, then stood arrested. Deer, smurfs, squirrels, and many unknown creatures emerged from the woods and lined up along the driftwood-stacked shore.
“Why would they do that?” Sass meant this question rhetorically.
But a hunter replied. “Overwatch! Check for forest fire!”
Thrive dropped the remaining ropes, for the hunters below to retrieve from the boat. He climbed, then reported back. “No fire. Report from Sylvan One. Minor earthquake. Animals exited woods.” After a few moments of silence, he added, “Zelda correction. Light earthquake, not minor, 4.3 on a Richter scale. They felt it. No damage.”
“That’s a relief,” Darren noted, still on channel 53.
Clay seemed less relieved. “Zan, epicenter location?”
Zelda got on the comms. “Please be advised, epicenter likely 500 klicks north of Sylvan One. That was a big quake. Correction, new quake beginning at Sylvan One… Sass!” That last was a cry of anguish.
“Into the boat!” Sass yelled, and started running for it.
“Why?” Darren began. But Clay grabbed his arm to get him moving.
Sass took a running leap onto the boat, and fouled her landing on a seat and oars. She felt the crack as the smaller bone in her shin broke, and one of the long bones in her foot. She didn’t care. Her frantic example got the message home to the hunters, who piled in except for a couple waiting on the other two officers. Sass set an example by picking up the dropped harness ropes and casting them overboard.
Clay arrived. He picked Darren up under the armpits and swung him toward the boat. His feet hit the side. But hunters within caught hold and drew him aboard, plus a few gallons of water from the gunwale dipping in. The boat was too small to bunch up on one side without tipping.
But the hunters were quick studies, dragging Darren to the other side. Clay followed quickly, then the final two. They held onto the lead rope, now simply looped around a cleat on the platform.
Sass worked her way toward them, limping along the centerline. One of the Denali, Nora of smurf-harnessing fame, she nudged to the side of the boat because she blocked the middle. “Zelda? How much time we got?”
“None,” the meteorologist replied. “The wave front –”
Sass quit listening to her as she heard the roar approaching. Dammit, they were beside the platform. “Fend off! Off the platform!”
The two hunters in the bow instead jumped onto the platform, to give a mighty shove and hop back aboard, the released lead line in the boat with them.
“Hold on!” Clay yelled over the approaching roar.
Most grabbed the boat’s rim. Sass set an example by sliding her legs under a seat, and holding onto it with both arms. “Hold on harder!” But she doubted anyone could hear her.
Because just then the oncoming wave over-topped the headland blocking their view of the pretty glacier at the head of Melt Lake. The wave, a veritable tsunami, broke into swirling chaos, which at least granted them a gentler slope. But the boat was still only a few meters from the platform, which began to buck and twist.
Please hold on, just a little longer, Sass begged the cables and the two stout poles that held Sylvan Two through the blizzard. That platform would travel with them, without a doubt. But if only they got a little more distance, it wouldn’t crash on top of them.
Though that wave just might.
“Clay?” she begged. Because her lover was moving. He pulled an oar out from under the seats instead of holding on for dear life like a sensible person.
But as the rising water hill caught them, he did jamb his knee under the seat to anchor himself.
The boat heaved upward, spinning on the breast of the churning wave. Sass heard a massive crack as the first of the poles split. The platform swung away from them on a single cable, opening their distance before it cut loose.
Sass whipped her head around to look for shore, then realized the forest was already below her. A smurf surfaced, and madly splashed toward them for safety. A deer appeared maybe 5 meters farther, snorting out water and bellowing in terror. But that creature couldn’t close the distance.
The smurf was determined.
Sass heard another resounding crack of wood and looked to see the platform break into large pieces, its surface crumpling to the uneven waters. Maybe its shards would save some wildlife, maybe not. She turned back to see Clay trying to push off the smurf with an oar, while the boat was still turning and jumping up and down like a live thing itself. “Clay, don’t! Just hold on!”
But the smurf had already gotten a good hold of the oar and tried to climb it onto the boat. One of the hunters yanked it out of Clay’s hands and set it free with the smurf. Sass watched with wondering eyes as they parted, the smurf clinging to its
new oar float.
She broke her reverie as she noticed the tops of trees were beginning to break through the churning water. Their Nantucket sleigh ride was drawing to a close. “How do we fall through the trees safely?” she yelled.
The boat wasn’t jerking around as much anymore. Clay and a couple of the guys struggled to emancipate more oars. Sass scuttled around and pushed oars with her feet to help. Huddling awash, pinned under the seat, was no longer doing her much good. She clambered out to straddle the bench, holding on tight with her knees. Her broken leg was agony, but she knew how to ignore pain.
Darren started to follow her lead, but his dexterity was marginal. “Darren, stay down!” There seemed to be fewer hunters, but it wasn’t time to count. “We still have the lead line!”
They were between a few trees now, going nowhere except jouncing back and forth between them. Clay and a couple hunters stabbed at them with the oars. But apparently her yell gave one of the bow hunters an idea. He formed a lasso and swung it to catch at a minor branch. This broke, but apparently that was his intent.
I get it. They’re just trying to level our…fall!
“All hands! Hang on and zero out your grav generator!”
Darren objected, “But captain –!”
“It’ll help!” Sass assured him. Well, it would either help or burn out their grav generators. Her own generator’s contribution appeared to do nothing at all.
“Jump!” one of the hunters countered, Eon perhaps. He used his grav skills to leap to a tree. The boat already crashed through its branches on this side, leaving him clear access to the trunk, with foot-holds.
“Jump is good,” she conceded.
But then the boat finally broke through the weaker, sun-starved branches below, the stern crashing down first, then the whole thing falling on end. And voila, she had six people hanging in mid-air, and one hanging on a tree. Another hunter, Nora, bounded back up, having stomped against the boat as she belatedly set her generator. Sass snagged her and used her superior grav skills to get their rotation and momentum canceled, while the sun disappeared above.
“Sorry I’m late,” Nico said, presumably from the shuttle.
32
“Glad you could make it!” Sass assured Nico, hovering in the shuttle above them. “Got a rope ladder?”
“You’re twenty meters below the canopy,” Nico replied. “We’re gonna try a rope and a spool.”
“Gotta cable?” Sass asked hopefully. She’d seen too many cut ropes lately.
“It’s a spool of carbon cable,” Nico clarified. “And a winch. Eli and Zelda are securing it.”
At a nod from Sass, her engineer Darren took over the conversation, quizzing the botanist and meteorologist on how they planned to attach this cable to a spool and a winch. But his queries didn’t yield a better tool for the task. Nico had fishing harpoons, a rope ladder far too short, blasters, and a spool of cable. The shuttle also had grav grapples, of course. But using those on a human body was like picking up an egg with a dump truck. Oops. They hadn’t even risked the grapples to carry the boat.
At last Darren was satisfied, and the spool on its way down.
“Why don’t we just grav jump up?” Eon asked.
Sass eyed the challenge. “I could do it. So could Clay. The rest of you, no. It’s harder than it looks. And we don’t go up without you. Speaking of which.”
“Don,” Nora replied. “Is missing.” Her nose was bleeding red as well as orange now.
Sass nodded and smiled gently at her. “We haven’t given up yet. Don, can you hear me?”
Instead Nico reported, “I have a beacon, back at the lake.”
The spool arrived, an arm span across. Sass loaded Darren, Nora, and two other hunters for the first load.
“Test heave,” Darren requested. “Just a few centimeters.” He and Eli got technical for a minute. They concluded they should keep their generators at zero g, and all grab on and come up at once.
At the top, Sass waived the bio-lock procedures. The shuttle wasn’t hard to decontaminate, and a hunter’s life was still in question. They piled in, then shut the airlock. Clay and Eli set to triage while the captain slipped into the copilot seat briefly. “Zan?” she inquired.
Nico was already flying them to Don’s beacon. “Emergency return to Sylvan One.”
“Do I need to know yet?”
He shook his head, mouth grim. “Don first.”
Sass glanced around at the injury status. Half her people had their suits half-off. Her own broken shin and foot seemed walkable again by now. “Eon, if you’re not injured, you’re with me on retrieval.”
They cycled the lock, clamped on, and opened the outer door. By now they hovered over the lake again. The wave hadn’t carried them far into the forest.
“A few meters offset for visibility,” Nico said. He lowered within a man’s height of the water.
“Watch for aftershocks, another wave,” Sass warned him.
“There!” Eon pointed to a helmet bobbing. Stirred-up silt rendered the usually crystalline waters a milky green.
“Nico, we have visual. Get us as close as possible to the beacon.” He fired tiny thrusters. Unlike the bulk of Thrive, the shuttle could inch into position. She got the rope ladder extended and tested. Then she clambered onto it first and climbed down.
“I should take the lower, for weight,” Eon objected.
Sass eyed his newfangled suit, and simply shook her head. Her gear was more temperature-proof. And if she wasn’t mistaken, the white-and-blue flotsam floating around were shards of iceberg. The glacier front collapsed, and the resulting wave carried the ice to this end of the lake instead of it melting far north of them.
She reached the bottom rung, and asked Nico to bring her another meter down, worried by how low that helmet floated in the water. When the bottom rung reached the light chop of the waves, she reached out and caught the helmet rack of the suit and heaved. The man wasn’t moving inside the suit, another low-insulation model. He inched through the water in response to her tugs, as the rope ladder swung away from him. “Eon, come down partway. Bring some bungees.”
But she couldn’t lift the body and hold onto the rope ladder at the same time. She gave up and slipped into the lake herself, a little scary with the visibility so murky. But a lifesaver’s hold across his chest perforce popped him out of the water, because her suit was so buoyant with air beneath him. The usual side-kicks that went with this maneuver failed. Space boots made lousy flippers. But she only needed a few swooping arm strokes to move him centered under the rope ladder. Eon dropped her the bungees on request, and she affixed them under the body’s armpits. Once Eon gained hold, she took a moment to check his suit telltales, to no avail. Something smashed the life sign and air level readouts, and possibly cracked the air tank. Obviously the suit was leaking.
“Eli. Too much water and too little air in his suit. Can’t tell whether he’s alive. Likely hypothermic.”
“Could be saving his life,” Eli acknowledged. “Don’t drain the suit until he’s in standard nitrox.”
“Will do.” The water in the suit made him truly massive. But on her request, Eon hooked the bungees as far up the rope ladder as they’d go. The elastic ties provided backup so she wouldn’t lose any progress if she slipped or needed to shift. “Eon, hand me your grav generator.”
She affixed the second generator next to her own and got under the body again, aligning the centers of mass by feel. “Shift the bungees up as you can. Lifting now.”
Using her own body as grav lifter, while swimming in icy waters bearing a heavy slippery person proved tricky. She lost two more precious minutes heaving Don’s torso out of the lake. But from there it went quickly, Eon pulling from above and shifting the bungees, and Sass pushing from below. Suddenly Eon heaved Don into the airlock and Sass flew upward. She sheepishly managed to cancel that before she was too far above the shuttle, and drifted back down. Eon leaned out from the door, arm extended, to snag her
in.
In a few deft gestures, she handed back his grav, retracted the rope ladder, toed Don’s boots inside, shut the outer door, and cycled for standard pressure. She was on her knees with the first aid kit before the door sealed. Splayed against a corner, Eon looked cramped. But Sass got used to multiple people working in these tight confines during her fishing expedition with Ben. “C’mon, c’mon…”
She had one hand on the top release of his suit, the other on a vitals sensor from the first aid kit, when the red light blinked thrice at the 75% nitrox level. Close enough, in this case. She peeled open just the top of his suit and got the sensor in there. “Alive!”
Over the comms, Eli reminded her, “For God’s sake, don’t thaw him. Get him air, but keep his head cold. Any injuries?”
Sass grimaced. How exactly would she tell that when she couldn’t peel the suit? But she got Don’s helmet off and affixed air cannula. She probed his skull under a purpling bruise, and felt squish instead of firm bone. “Brain injury,” she reported.
“OK, stay put. You’re first off. We’re almost there.”
She got a spare air cannister rigged to the oxygen feed and lay it by his head, then gentled the helmet back on and resealed the suit, to the extent it would seal. “Nico, can we latch onto Thrive and get Don straight into the auto-doc?” He agreed, and she and Eon plotted how to get the water-bag body from the shuttle dock to med-bay.
But Tikka Gena hailed her. “I’ll meet you at shuttle airlock on a grav lifter with gurney.”
And it was that simple. Once docked, Sass and Eon heaved the leaking Don onto the gurney, and Tikka Gena retracted to the floor. Eon hopped down after her to help with the heavy lifting. Clay and Eli would handle decontamination and herd the rest of the hunters.
Sass hopped down to the hold, and discarded her wet p-suit below to limit the contamination area. “Zan, I’m back. Status?”
