Cold Welcome

^{CHAPTER NINE}

“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.

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—”

“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.

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. “We’ll have to check regularly.”

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