Cold Welcome

^{CHAPTER FIVE}

Ky slithered over to the canopy opening, unfastened it, and looked out; cold rain stung her face. Her aide was staring out a narrow opening in the other raft’s canopy. “Admiral! What am I supposed to do? I don’t know any of these people and—and I don’t have the right training for this! They’re just—just sitting there, staring at me and there’s water in the bottom of the raft, and—”

“You’ve got some good people there, Commander Bentik. Tech Lundin—is she caring for the injured?” Best to be formal when a Cascadian was upset. Jen did not look any less upset.

“I don’t know what to do,” she said again, her voice rising to a wail. Behind her, Ky caught a glimpse of another face, looking worried. With Bentik acting and sounding terrified, no wonder.

“Maybe I can calm things,” Marek said from behind her. “Would you like me to switch to that raft and help her out? She is a stranger to Slotter Key, after all.”

Ky managed not to snap I know that at him; it was a good idea if he could manage it, but she didn’t want to risk his falling into the water again. “Thank you, Master Sergeant, that’s a good idea. Get someone to tape up your suit, and we’ll hook in a safety line for you.” To her aide she said, “I’ll send you Master Sergeant Marek; he’s been through the training and will help you out. I still think it’s important to have an officer in each raft.”

“Of course it is,” Jen said, scowling now. “It would be even better if I were in their chain of command. Tell me when he’s coming over and I’ll open the canopy for him.” She jerked it closed before Ky could answer. Ky sighed and looked around. Marek was taping up the rip in the arm, and Kurin was taping the one in the leg. In a few minutes, as Marek wrung out his wet uniform and put it back on, wincing at the damp chill, Kurin finished taping all the gashes. Marek kept one of the blankets, folding it around him as he worked his way into the survival suit and fastened it. Then he scooted over to the hatch and unfastened it. Ky clipped him in to the safety line she’d left attached to the outer cleat, and he called across to the other raft.

“Commander Bentik—I’m ready to board now.”

The other hatch opened, this time with Staff Sergeant Vispersen’s face visible. Vispersen reached out; he and Marek clasped arms and Marek slid from raft to raft with only one foot hitting the water as another wave passed beneath them. Marek turned around and looked at Ky as he unclipped the safety line and tossed it back to her. “Don’t worry, Admiral; I can handle the situation over here. Call if you need me.” He gave her a brief, tight smile then fastened the canopy hatch again; Ky did the same on her side.

Everyone in her raft was watching her now. Kurin put the mending tape back in its case, sealed the case, and put it away.

“Orders, sir?” Kurin said.

“For now,” Ky said, “all we have to do is keep the rafts afloat.” Tentative grins from some; others—Kurin, Cosper, McLenard, Yamini, Inyatta—nodded, clearly focused on what she was saying. “Let’s finish the introductions while it’s still light enough to see faces. Then Staff Sergeant Kurin and I will set up a schedule for meals, raft maintenance and hygiene, and a regular on–off watch rotation. I’m sure Master Sergeant Marek and Commander Bentik will do the same in the other raft.”

“Yes, sir.”

Tech Betange spoke next, in a monotone, looking down. “Space drive technician. I’m—my parents were killed—I’m going home to arrange something for my brothers and sisters. I’m the oldest. I—I need to be there!” He looked up for a moment. “If I—if we die, they’ll have nobody.”

“We will survive,” Ky said. “You will get back to them. We just have to be smart and careful.”

“You’re sure?”

“We’re breathing air and not water, we have supplies, and nobody’s shooting at us. To me, that says survival is possible. I intend all of us to make it home.”

He relaxed a little, sagging back against the side of the raft.

“Specialist Gurton?”

Gurton looked older than most of them, a broad-faced woman with a slightly crooked smile. “Twelve years, started in shuttle maintenance but switched to food service. If you can find us a stove, Admiral, I’ll cook anything we can eat.”

“Fish?”

“Yes, sir. But I do need a stove.”

“When we get to land,” Ky said. “Specialist Kamat?”

Kamat had green eyes, startling against her dark face. “Six years in, Admiral, space drive maintenance, rated for every class of deep-space ship Spaceforce has. I have an engineering degree from Arland University, too. Family’s been in some tech field for several generations, so it comes naturally, but they’re nearly all civilians. My aunties kept saying, What’s a pretty girl like you doing going into the military?”

“I had an aunt like that,” Ky said. “But she didn’t call me pretty. I have a cousin who is the family beauty.”

“My family does that,” Corporal Inyatta said. She had seemed quiet, almost withdrawn, but now looked interested. “Everyone’s got a role: the smart one, the quick one, the athletic one. We’re farmers; we grow rice, vegetables, fruit trees, and we have chickens and pigs. By the time I was seven, they’d decided my gift was with chickens. I didn’t want to spend my life with chickens.”

Private Ennisay was the last to speak. Just out of recruit training, only eighteen years old, he was the youngest and least experienced, but the most eager to talk. And talk. Finally, as he was extending his family tree in all directions, Ky broke in.

“Save some stories for later, Private. We’ve got a long way to go and there will be time.” She looked over at Kurin. “Staff Sergeant, issue a ration pack and water to everyone. If you’re hungry, eat a few bites now. Then—did the first-aid kit have seasick patches or pills?”

“I’ll check,” Yamini said.

“Fit people with a good mental attitude do not become seasick,” Sergeant Cosper said. He was sitting as bolt-upright as anyone could in a raft in high seas.

“If Medical agreed with you, they wouldn’t issue meds to prevent it,” Ky said. His attitude was not going to help.

“Here they are, sir,” Yamini said, holding up a packet. “Twelve patches in this one, and there are more packets.”

“Everyone who hasn’t had a patch since we undocked, apply one now,” Ky said. “Whether you think you need it or not—what if we get worse weather?”

Cosper opened his mouth, but shut it again and applied a patch when the packet came around to him.

In another hour, by her implant, her raft’s occupants were all looking more comfortable, and each had a day’s ration of food and water in hand or tucked in one of the side pockets. Kurin had set up a rotation for pumping out the puddle, and the raft was as dry as it could be in the circumstances. All the gear had been either returned to the storage pockets or lashed down safely. Ky wished they had a way to communicate with the other raft that didn’t require opening the canopy hatches and letting in more spray and rain, but with both Lundin the medical tech and Master Sergeant Marek over there, they should do as well as her raft was.

“Do you know where we are?” Tech Betange asked.

“Generally, yes. But not an exact location. I’d need to be able to tag a satellite for that, and my skullphone’s as dead as anyone else’s. I had a message on it during descent, but it cut off suddenly.”

“Message from Spaceforce?”

“No, from my flagship. When they saw a severe course deviation, they launched a shuttle to come to our aid. But since they probably lost the signal as we went into the cloud cover and neared the surface, they wouldn’t have had eyes on us when we landed.”

He nodded, eyes downcast.

“But knowing Captain Pordre—my flag captain—he won’t quit.” She looked around at the others. They were all watching her. “Spaceforce will be looking for us. Space Defense Force—my flagship—will be looking for us. But we’ll improve the odds by getting ourselves to land, feeding ourselves from the sea, making shelter. We won’t be lounging around like drunken sailors on holiday until they find us.” A few grinned; most did not.

“But there’s nothing nearby but Miksland and it’s nothing but rock and ice,” Ennisay said. “It’s a—”

“Terraforming failure. I know. That’s what I was taught in school. Barren and worthless. On the other hand, it’s not as barren as deep space. Land has advantages over ocean.”

Someone laughed. “The raft can’t sink?”

“Among other things.” Ky realized she could not see faces clearly now; it was getting dark already. “Staff Sergeant, it’s been a long day already. You had me first on the watch-list, didn’t you?”

“Yes, sir. My implant has it ten ticks to the hour. Start then?”

“Right.” Ky waited until her implant hit the mark then formally took on the watch. The others settled down to rest as best they could.

Twelve minutes into her watch, she heard a roar from outside. Her first panicked thought was a ship bearing down on them, but then the squall hit, the wind shoving the two rafts into a sickening whirl. It was almost night-dark inside the canopy; Ky could not see the others, or hear them for the noise outside. Rain and spray both pounded on the canopy, a tattoo almost as loud as the wind. Someone let out a yelp.

Then she heard Kurin yelling: “Lie beside the sidewall—beside! Hold it down!”

Ky twisted, stretching herself along the sidewall as best she could. The raft tilted on a steeper wave, and her legs slid downslope. At the bottom of the trough, it tilted up again, pushing her back against the sidewall. The raft pinwheeled when it came into the wind again; she wondered how the other raft fared, but it would have been stupid to open the canopy hatch and look.

After a few minutes that squall passed, but the seas were higher, steeper. In the relative silence, Ky shouted across to the other raft. “All right?”

“All right!” came back in Marek’s deep voice.

Then the main storm hit. Howling wind, spray battering the canopy, steep irregular seas. Ky hung on to the grabons, trying to convince herself that these rafts had been rated for such situations, trying not to imagine what the seas really looked like. When her watch ended, and Betange took over, she could not rest, and was sure no one else could. Through the dark hours, each one feeling longer than the one before, the watch changed as Kurin kept them to the original schedule. Ky was thankful for Kurin’s initiative and steadiness; she was sure to need that help in the days to come.