by Peter Telep
"No. No. Just stab a couple," Shane suggested. "See if you can at least secure us a little better. After that, break out the ice ax."
"Aye-aye. Here I go."
"Hurry up, Coop," Damphousse said. "I'm losing it here."
Though the situation could, at any moment, deteriorate into an unplanned freefall, Shane ignored that and focused on making her ideas congeal. "While he's doing that, 'Phousse, I want you to do something. You're not gonna like it, but it might work. Pop your helmet and detach the hose on your rebreather."
"What?"
"Detach the hose and max out your warmer. Aim it at where the rope's meeting the ice."
"You want me to melt the ice?"
"Yeah. If you get that rope in deep enough, it'll put me and 404 closer to the wall. We might be able to swing to it and plant a few temp anchors. Then we'll detach from the tow line and climb out that way. The pitch isn't too bad. Maybe one belay and we'll be up top."
"I got two snowstakes in, and I think they're gonna hold," Cooper said.
"Good," Shane answered. "Get your shoes off and get your boots on those, then hammer a couple more home."
"Copy that. And everybody hang on a sec," Cooper said. "All right. I'm secured. 'Phousse, you wanna pop your helmet, go ahead."
Gingerly, Damphousse removed a gloved hand from the ice. Seeing that she wasn't going to plunge over the edge, she popped the lock on her helmet and used two hands to remove it. She detached the rebreather tube and pointed it at the ice. "Who said this place wasn't cold?"
Shane grinned mildly. "Well, it wasn't Hawkes." Then she actually marveled at herself to be able to smile at the moment. It all went back to the notion that she somehow knew she wouldn't die here. And so she could feel better that the situation wasn't out of hand. It would never get out of hand. Or would it?
"Captain," the silicate called from below. "I repacked the mini-chute attached to my rucksack. I could remove it, detach myself from the line, and make the drop. The chute should break my fall enough to prevent damage, and with my weight gone, the others should be able to haul you back up."
"Then what about you?"
"I'll double-time across the bottom of the crater, then scale the other side."
"Negative. That'll cost us too much time."
He looked up at her, blinking snow out of his eyes. "In this case, I believe the extra time is worth it."
Jarred a bit, Shane saw that Damphousse was making progress melting the ice. While the line was getting closer to the crater wall, Shane and Mister 404 were simultaneously being lowered. "I think this plan's going to work. We'll call yours plan B."
"Yes, Captain."
"I'm anchored," Wang announced. "Now we're cooking."
"I'm detecting incoming enemy aircraft," Mister 404 reported. "From the west, altitude approximately one thousand feet. Two patrols. Nine fighters."
"Forget 'em," Shane said. "We ain't about to seek cover anyway. They aren't running any scans, are they?"
"None detected. Judging from the fluctuations of their thrusters, they're having trouble negotiating in the storm."
And as if on cue, an explosion came from the sky, an explosion which sounded thunderous even though Shane wore her helmet. She could only imagine what Damphousse must have heard.
Then, a high-pitched tone followed and grew louder. Out of the corner of her eye, Shane spotted twin flashes. She craned her head to watch two Chig fighters plummet out of control, trails of black smoke growing in their wakes. They slammed into the crater's floor and sent up twin columns of fire surrounded by fountaining mists of displaced snow.
"It can't suck any more than this," Cooper yelled. "Chigs are gonna send out a search and rescue for their buds, and they're gonna spot us."
"Then you'd better move it!" Shane shot back. Abruptly, she dropped about six inches and noted that she was about three, three and a half meters from the wall. "Mister 404. Snowshoes off. And let's swing to the wall."
"Yes. Captain."
Feeling like a ten year old in gym class, Shane began to rock herself back and forth until, finally, she and the silicate moved in sync. Then, while still rocking, she reached into her pack and withdrew a temporary anchor. On a particularly close pass to the wall, she slipped the anchor's knobby, metal head into an expansion crack in the rock. It appeared that an ounce of luck was in her pocket, for the anchor held. The silicate performed the same action, and he, too, was able to create a bit of good purchase for himself. Two more swings and they both gripped the nylon loops of their anchors and found fairly decent foot holds.
"Captain, if they're secured up top, I'll detach now. They can haul you up, then drop a line down for me." Shane hadn't thought of that, and it was, she had to admit, a good idea. "Do it. And hey, Hawkes? You in tight enough to turn around and start dragging me up?"
He grunted under a strain, then said, "Let's stop talking about it. Chiggie rescue's under way."
And he wasn't kidding. A quartet of fighters appeared in the north, their xenon search beams cutting lines in the snowstorm. They banked right and began to descend.
Then Cooper added, "All right, Paul, 'Phousse. On three. One, two—"
They gave a collective groan as they hauled Shane up. The three meters of rope between her and Damphousse quickly disappeared, and it was with a great sigh that she slapped a glove on the ice edge, then she was dragged up and over to come to a rest on her stomach. She allowed herself only a second's breather, then detached from the rope. "Here it comes," she told the silicate.
With one boot stuffed into a shallow foot hold and his hand locked around a temporary anchor, Mister 404 leaned forward to catch the rope. His anchor broke free, and he plunged into the crater.
"Ohmygod," Damphousse said, her voice shivery and accompanied by the wind.
Shane stared hard into the crater. After a second, a tiny flash of white erupted and faded into the billions of snowflakes plunging away from her.
Then her attention was caught by two Chig fighters coming in for landings on the opposite side of the crater. "He's gone." She looked at Damphousse. "And so are we. Come on."
twelve
Nathan had slipped on his extra helmet liner for warmth and had tied a T-shirt over his nose and mouth. Then he had donned his white combat helmet and night vision goggles. The temperature gauge on his environment suit read seventy-one, yet he still felt chilled. He had wanted very badly to find his rucksack, but now, after trudging over a klick through the blizzard with the dead weight strapped to his shoulders, he realized that wanting was truly better than having.
Dinner had been quite disappointing. Nathan had, indeed, chosen the Pasta Italiano MRE, an instaheat dish that was incredibly tasty according to the fifty-first MEU's mascot, a two-year-old bulldog named Sweet Lips. All MREs were tested out on Sweet Lips first since the dog was a connoisseur of military cuisine. And the droopy-eyed driveler had given the Pasta Italiano his bark of approval. However, the heartburn Nathan was presently experiencing argued against Sweet Lips's judgment. Upon returning to the Saratoga, Nathan would accuse the dog of lying to a superior officer and have the little shit thrown in the brig. Justice would be served.
Swallowing back the burn, Nathan kept on. He had packed an extra pair of gloves and had replaced the one he had lost during his drop, so he didn't feel the cold metal of the M-590 rifle in his grip. He wasn't happy about fingering the trigger with a glove on, but he would live with the decreased sensitivity. He paused to glance down at his digital compass and saw that he hadn't veered from his course. He had pinpointed the location of the aqueduct and his relationship to it. A klick-and-a-half hike south would get him close enough to pull intel.
Yes, he was still on course, but there was also a directional signal coming in on his compass, very weak, yet there. Nathan tapped in the command for statistics on the beacon and read them. He had finally picked up Shane's signal. The DZ lay a depressing sixteen klicks away. He couldn't believe he was so far from the zone, but then he r
emembered that he had opened his chute way too early. With the directional beacon's coordinates and the location of the duct now programmed into the compass, Nathan was able to calculate that he had landed on the north side of the aqueduct, while the DZ lay to the south. He breathed a heavy sigh and thought about how he would meet up with the rest of the squadron. They were coming in from the south. He would have to circle around the aqueduct to join them, passing through what were, according to the instructors aboard the Haldeman, some of the most treacherous mountain passes this side of Mars. A ten-hour crash course in climbing, belaying, and rappelling wasn't going to be enough to challenge the passes, Nathan suspected. He would attempt to find another route.
Though he had been standing for only a mike or so, the snow had collected around his boots and completely covered them. With gusts of wind coming out of nowhere like bogeys, and the snow steadily decreasing visibility, Nathan thought he might just find a good place to pop his little tent and wait out the storm. He had come into what could be a valley, but he wasn't sure. To his left was a great wall of rock maybe half a klick away, but to his right was a blur of white. What he needed to find was a large outcrop with an overhang under which he would settle down. He set off in search of a bivouac, and within an hour, he found a darling little spot beneath a jagged sword of rock. Lucky for him, the vacancy sign was lit. With accommodations like this, what more does a man need? he thought, as he dropped his sack and began to unpack his tent.
Nathan had parachuted in unconscious, so his body had been limp when he had hit the snow, saving him from serious injury. But he had unknowingly pulled a few muscles, and when he abruptly awoke after only a brief, two-hour slumber, his neck, arms, and hips had joined together to mutiny against him. Besides that pain, he was mad at himself for drifting off. At least he had set up a Motion Tracker with a twenty-yard range so that the Chiggies couldn't sneak up on him. He peered outside the tent to see that the blizzard still raged. How many hours could it last? Could it go on for days? How long should he wait?
Deciding that he could definitely use a little more sleep and that the Chigs weren't stupid enough to be out in the blizzard, Nathan sprawled out, set his watch phone's alarm, turned up his suit's heater a few degrees, then closed his eyes.
Sometimes when he ate food that didn't agree with him, he had very intense dreams. He worried that Master Sergeant Bougus might show up again with a knife and the ghost of Nathan's dead brother. Clutching where he thought his liver was, Nathan rolled onto his side and tried to think only of the darkness.
He awoke five hours later, cleaned and lubricated his weapons, then got back on the trail. The sky wore the same platinum sheen, and it seemed to Nathan that time had stopped or the sky had been waiting for him. What had changed was the storm. The blizzard's full fury lay behind, leaving him to contend with only her supplementary winds and trailing flakes. It was good to see the stars once more.
A particularly pockmarked wall of rock that rose just about five meters stood in his way. He slung his rifle over his shoulder and mounted the wall, finding many good foot and hand holds. He decided he wouldn't bother using any temporary anchors to aid his climb. When he neared the top, he removed his NVGs and switched them for a pair of binoculars. He peeked above the rock and took in the view.
To the southeast lay the enemy airfield, less than half a klick away, only a small portion of it visible. Nathan wasn't surprised to find that the field was hemmed in on three sides by ivory-colored mountains, and the open side faced the east end of the aqueduct. Maybe the Chigs had chosen the location because a mother lode of the liquid lay below the ground, but they had also been fortunate in that the locale provided one hell of a good defense against a ground assault. He zoomed in with the binocs to see a pair of fighters parked upright, a Chig guard posted between them. Then he shifted his view to the duct itself.
With their sentry satellite net protecting the heavens, the Chigs didn't care about keeping the duct shrouded in darkness, and Nathan was able to switch off the night vision option on the binocs. The massive, black conduit had to be at least a kilometer long and fifty meters in diameter. An access way had been constructed above it that provided passage for many small, wedge-shaped vehicles. The railings of the access way bore strings of lights that reminded Nathan of the many bridges over which he had driven back home. If a depressed Chig decided to take a drop off one of the railings, it would plunge about two hundred feet to the rocks and snow below. For a few moments, Nathan watched the traffic above the pipe, wondering if he might be able to slip under the aqueduct instead of circling around it. With all that traffic up there, he thought, the chances of being spotted are incredibly high. He lowered the binocs. And then he heard a clatter, rocks falling, something. He looked down. His boots were locked into place; he hadn't dislodged anything.
Spooked, Nathan hauled himself quickly over the wall and lowered himself down the other side so quickly that he slipped and fell the remaining ten feet. Yes, he landed on his butt, and yes, he made a lot of noise. Swearing under his breath, he got to his feet and whirled around to come face to face with a Chig foot soldier.
Why the alien hadn't already fired upon him he couldn't be sure, but he exploited the delay by taking a step back and drawing his pistol.
The alien swung its big rifle to bear, and in doing so, utilized the muzzle to knock Nathan's firearm out of his hand. Does it want to take me prisoner? Nathan thought.
As the alien attempted to resume its aim on Nathan, he seized the barrel of the gun and used it to drive the Chig back toward a chessboard of ice and stones behind it.
And with its footing unsure, the Chig went down and lost its grip on the rifle.
Nathan tossed the gun aside, withdrew his K-bar, and stabbed the Chig until the putrid gas hissed and jetted from the thing. He rolled off the soldier to look down the barrel of another alien's rifle.
It was just his luck that the last thing he was going to see before death was the radiator face of a Chig.
Then the second alien collapsed. No warning. Nothing. It just dropped.
"Bulldog!" an unfamiliar voice shouted.
Despite hearing a human voice, Nathan, still wired, grabbed his rifle and took aim. He looked through his scope to see an armed figure clad in a white environment suit. The person stood atop the wall he had climbed. "Chesty!" he called back. "Who are you?"
"First Lieutenant Kyoko Iwata, twenty-first squadron. United States Marine Corps," the woman said.
"Nathan West. I'm with the fifty-eighth," he informed her, then rose and crossed to the wall. It was too dark and she was too high up for him to see her face. He looked to the dead Chig. "You drop him? I didn't hear anything."
Without answering, she began her descent of the wall, and she was followed by another Marine. When both reached the ground, they removed their helmets.
Kyoko brushed away a stray wisp of her long, black hair, which she kept wrapped in a bun behind her head. Her eyes lit when she smiled. "West. This is Lieutenant Penny Navarone."
With a grin as wide as Kyoko's, the taller woman with the blond spike cut took Nathan's hand and shook it vigorously. "I'm looking at you, and I'm getting chills." Nathan didn't know how to react to that, and he saw that Kyoko sensed this. The Japanese woman explained, "We didn't think they would send anyone. Anyway, we have to police up these bodies."
"Where's the rest of your squadron?" Nathan asked.
"That'll have to wait," Kyoko said. "Come on."
Nathan raised his voice. "Negative. Where's the rest of the squad?"
"You wanna bring 'em all here?" Penny asked, her smile quickly fading. "Shut up, and we'll tell you everything later."
They silently hid the alien bodies in a fairly deep chimney within the wall, and when they were finished, Kyoko put a finger to her lips and led them along a path which ended in a great ledge overlooking the entire airfield. "Our lookout," she said.
Nathan dropped his rucksack, sat on it, and said, "I don't think hiding
those Chigs back there will matter. The others will discover them missing."
"Yes and no," Kyoko said. "From what we've observed, they're experiencing major communications problems. Solar disturbances are wreaking havoc even with short-range, local frequencies. Our own links cut off after only about fifty yards. For a while at least, the Chiggies will think they just lost contact with their buddies."
"Hey, West. You pack along any peanut butter?" Penny asked.
He frowned. "What?"
She came to him and hunkered down. "Peanut butter. You got any? I've been craving peanut butter for three days now. Crunchy style. I need some."
"And do you got the Mexican MRE?" Kyoko asked. "I've been craving that one."
Nathan moved off his pack and opened up the pouch that held his rations. He pulled out the rectangular can, which was the Mexican MRE, and a peanut butter and chocolate candy bar. "Only deal is a trade."
Penny spent some time hunting through her sack and finally produced a caramel candy bar which Nathan happily took.
"I got this Pasta Italiano MRE," Kyoko said.
"Forget it," Nathan said passionately. "You ever try one of those?"
Kyoko went back to her pack, and as she did, Nathan studied the way the cold had reddened her nose and highlighted her already high cheekbones. She moved slowly, steadily, gracefully through her pack and finally withdrew the classic Hot Dogs and Beans MRE. "What do you say?"
Nathan nodded and exchanged meals. "Now, if you don't mind me asking, what the hell happened here?"
thirteen
Shane had led Cooper, Damphousse, and Wang about a quarter of a klick along the perimeter of the crater to an area where a series of long, parallel snow ridges had been formed by the wind. The sastrugas, as the Russians called them, provided excellent temporary cover in which to retreat should the squadron be spotted by the two Chig fighters which she now observed hovering in the crater. The aliens focused searchlights on the still-smoldering wreckage of the two ships which had crashed.
