Cold Welcome

^{CHAPTER SEVEN}

When the first dim light seeped through the canopy, the storm still raged. Ky felt bruised all over, and what little she could see of the others looked as bad as she felt. Her mouth was dry and tasted foul; she took a sip of water that did not help much, and watched the puddle slide back and forth and around—then wished she hadn’t. Her seasick meds must be wearing off. Staff Sergeant Kurin appeared to be asleep, curled on her side. Sergeant Cosper, who had the watch that hour, had fastened an elastic cord to one of the grabons and was exercising. Ky blinked; that would not have occurred to her.

He opened his mouth, said something she couldn’t hear for the howl of another gust of wind, then shrugged and went on with his exercises. Ky gave him points for initiative. Her implant dinged; it was her turn to take the watch again. Kurin moved, opened her eyes, and caught Ky’s gaze. Ky gave her a thumbs-up with one hand, the other still firmly holding the grabon. Sergeant Cosper, still exercising his free arm, looked at her and when she nodded at him, closed his eyes and went right on.

Ky thought of checking with the other raft, but Marek would call if he had a problem and needed her. She wondered how Jen was getting along with Marek. Surely he had had experience with difficult officers before. Her hour wore on, the light only slightly brighter and the violence of the storm unabated. She imagined the rafts being blown right past Miksland, around and around the empty ocean, stuck in the same storm until they froze or starved. Storms passed over ships drifting at sea; if they didn’t sink, they would live out the storm and be somewhere else.

Late in the day, the light already dimming, the wind’s roar eased, and though rain or spray still fell on the canopy, the seas were not as violent. Ky tried to speak; her mouth and throat were dry. She sipped more water from her suit tube and tried again. “Roll call.” Eyes opened, faces turned to look at her. “Report any injuries. Betange?”

“Present, no injuries, sir.”

One after another they answered, all present, no injuries to report.

“Good. I’m going to check with the other raft.” When she had unfastened the hatch and eased it open, they were in a trough, with what looked like great hills of dark water all around. The air felt colder but smelled fresh compared to the interior. The other raft was still there. She called out to Marek.

“Sir, just a moment—”

She could see the movement of the hatch as someone tried to unseal it, and then it opened a slit and Marek’s face looked out. “What’s your situation, Master Sergeant?”

“All present, Admiral.”

“Good. Same here. Maybe tonight we can get some sleep.”

“I wanted to ask you—about the deceased—”

“Yes?”

“They’re—one came loose of the lashings and was rolling around bumping into people in the storm. And hitting the spare life raft—there’s damage, and it bothers people. Very bad for morale, Admiral. Unless there’s a chance of rescue today—at least by tomorrow—wouldn’t it be better to give them burial at sea?”

“Who was it, Master Sergeant?”

“The pilot, Admiral.”

“Do you have him lashed down safely now?”

“We think so, but we thought so before. It’s that there’s too many of them. Six… it’s too many.”

“It’s almost dark; we can’t just throw them out like trash. Wait until tomorrow, Master Sergeant. If the storm’s past, maybe the sky will clear and someone will get a satellite image—or even a search plane. If not, we’ll have daylight to send them on.”

“Yes, Admiral.” He gave a crisp salute; Ky returned it, then refastened the canopy hatch.

“We still need to set a watch tonight,” she said to her raft. Her crew. “But I expect we’ll manage to sleep. First, though: congratulations.”

“For what?” asked Corporal Lakhani. “All we did was get seasick and scared…”

“You did more than that.” Ky shook her head at him. “You stayed alive. All of you—” She looked around. “You all did everything necessary to get through the emergency so far, and if you keep doing that, solving one problem at a time, doing the next necessary thing… we will make it.”

“You really think so?”

“I really think so.”

“What’s the next necessary thing?” asked Ennisay.

“Suits have limited waste-handling capacity,” Ky said. “We need to arrange a better solution.”

“In a raft?”

“In a raft. Do you want to perch on the sidewall half naked in the cold and fertilize the ocean?” She paused; no one said anything, and she went on. “In the meantime, how many people finished the rations handed out yesterday?” Five hands went up, including her own. “Dehydration and hunger will dull your wits; we should all drink and eat—slowly, with pauses—before sleeping tonight, and we’ll assess conditions tomorrow, when it’s light.”

Ky woke to the sound of voices.

“We could use the survival blankets for a kind of hood around it—”

“I don’t see why—”

“Because some of us have to get out of our survival suits and the clothes inside them to use it, that’s why.”

“It shouldn’t matter—”

“It matters to me!”

“And everyone has to strip for some functions.”

The raft’s motion up and down had eased even more; light inside the canopy was bright enough to recognize the speakers. Sergeant Cosper, Corporal Yamini, Corporal Inyatta. Others were still asleep. Ky sat up, felt water on her face, and looked up. Condensation had beaded on the inside of the canopy, and a small puddle had re-formed in the center of the raft, sliding around as the raft tilted on the waves.

“Good morning,” Ky said. “I see you’re working that first problem.”

“Morning, Admiral. We’ve got a can, a liner, a seal for the liner—”

“Good work. I see we’re also developing internal weather.” Ky pointed to the canopy overhead. “Fresh water, if we captured it before it puddled on the floor.”

“We have water in the raft supplies,” Cosper said.

“Yes, and if we get to land or are picked up in the next thirty days, that’s enough. But if we aren’t? At the least we should get busy with the desalinators.”

“You think it might be more than thirty days?”

“I don’t know. We should know more today—if it’s clear enough, we can tell how far we are from Miksland and try again to make contact with someone—a satellite, anyway.”

Ky slid over and unfastened the hatch, opening it far enough to put her head out. The two rafts were in a trough; on either side was a hill of water at least twice the height of the rafts, dark and smooth as glass. The raft and canopy immediately across from her limited her view to a sideways slice in either direction. When they rose on the next wave Ky could see beyond the crests of the nearest: endless rows of waves under high clouds like a flat pale-gray roof. Far off she saw a darker area, but could not distinguish anything; it looked more like a rain shower than land.

She heard voices inside the other raft, though she could not distinguish what they were saying. “Commander Bentik, what’s your situation?”

After a short wait, the other raft’s hatch opened and Jen peered out. “Admiral, you’re awake.”

“Yes, of course,” Ky said. “How’s your crew?”

“As well as can be expected after that horrible storm, when we don’t even know where we are, or if anyone is looking—”

“I’m certain they are,” Ky said. “Are there any new injuries?”

“No, Admiral, there are not. But one of the, uh, bodies came loose again and rolled right down on top of me—a dead man!—and—” Her eyes filled with tears and her voice shook. “I have never had to—to touch a—a dead person in my entire life, Admiral. It’s not—it’s not decent. Combat troops—they’re trained for things like that.”

“I’m certain it was a very hard shock for you,” Ky said, in what she hoped was a soothing voice. “You have done very well, Commander—”

“Don’t patronize me!” Jen went from what had seemed like panic to anger in an instant. “Just because you’re used to combat and death—” She stopped as suddenly as she’d started. “Admiral. That was unseemly. My apologies.”

“Accepted,” Ky said. She couldn’t think of anything else to say. What was Jen’s problem with dead bodies? These were not, after all, gory. They were just dead. Neatly, tidily dead, at that, enclosed in their survival suits. Was this something else about Cascadian habits that she didn’t know?

“But we really cannot keep them. Soon they will… you know… begin to… to become really offensive. And we have all of them in this raft. You don’t have to put up with it.”

There was no tactful way to ask if anyone else was as bothered by the bodies as Jen herself. And driving her only other officer to the edge of sanity—if that’s what was happening—by forcing her into proximity with the dead bodies endangered them all. She needed Jen to regain stability, to be an asset. The evidence the bodies contained would be lost, but the trade-off was worth it.

“I will need to speak with Master Sergeant Marek,” Ky said.

“But you’re in command—”

“Yes, but there is an appropriate ceremony,” Ky said. “And for that I need information from him.”

Jen disappeared from the gap in the hatch, and Marek replaced her. “Yes, Admiral.”

“I will be conducting a service when we consign the remains of those killed to the sea. It will be later today. The weather’s moderated; it is not an emergency, and we must honor those who died.”

“Yes, Admiral. Thank you; some individuals here were becoming upset. How may I assist?”

One by one, the bodies slipped into the cold dark water. Both raft canopies had been partly retracted, and the tether between the rafts lengthened, so everyone could see and hear. Ky spoke the words chosen to be inoffensive to any of the religions on Slotter Key, then named each person as Master Sergeant Marek made sure each descent over the edge of the raft was slow, entering the water with no unseemly splashing.

They had had nothing to weigh the bodies down with. The orange survival suits kept them just afloat, disturbingly like survivors who needed to be hauled in and revived. Ky was sure others had the same urge. It was hard to watch them bob in the waves as the wind caught the rafts’ partly open canopies and pushed them on faster than before. Her vision blurred—with the cold wind, she told herself, as the bodies were left behind in death, as they had left life behind.

With the canopies partly open, and the weather less violent, Ky could see Miksland clearly every time they came up from a trough. From the raft, it appeared a solid block of dark red rock rising straight from the sea. No place to land. Surely the whole coast wasn’t like that.

“We should paddle while the weather’s better,” Master Sergeant Marek said. “Get closer. There’s bound to be someplace—”

“If we get too close we could end up on the rocks,” Ky said. “These rafts wouldn’t stand dragging on rock. We need a wide enough gap that the inside’s likely to have a safe landing place. For now, we need to close up the canopies again, get out of this wind. And we need to start regular raft maintenance and inventory. Does your desalinator work?”

“We haven’t tried it yet. We still have plenty of water in the raft.”

“We need to know if it works,” Ky said. “And how’s your raft for weight distribution without the—”

“We’re light, but we were heavier than yours before.”

“I’m setting regular watches at night, and we’ll have a chore schedule starting today—”

“You’ll tell me what it is?”

“You and Commander Bentik can set up your own, as long as you keep track of resources and see how much fresh water you can produce with your desalinator. I’ll want a daily report.”

“Yes, Admiral. Should I lash the rafts together again?”

“Closer than they are now, but leave a meter of open water; we’ll be able to see better.”

A short time later, Marek reported that they could not find any desalinators in their raft.

“We have two,” Ky said. “Both are working.” She turned back to the others. “Staff Sergeant, pass me one of the desalinators; the other raft needs it.” As she handed it across to Marek, she said, “This is faster than the one my father had—produces about a liter in fifteen minutes. We should be able to provide all our own potable water with it, as long as the seas are this calm. The top of the spare raft packing case makes a good base.”

By evening, the wind was light, the swells even lower. Ky tried her skullphone’s satellite connection again, with no luck; nor did her separate comunit pick up any signal. So it could not have been the storm that interfered. She could not think of anything to do that would fix the unknown problem. So… what was something she could fix?

Supplies: with four rafts and only twenty-two people, they had rations enough left for 109 days, assuming the two unused rafts carried full rations. But if they couldn’t get out of the Oklandan’s southern gyre, 109 days didn’t really help. At least the two desalinators gave them plenty of capacity for making drinking water out of seawater.

What they didn’t have was any real cold-weather gear but the survival suits. The shipsuits the others wore under their survival suits were, she knew, meant for comfort in the even, pleasant temperature of a spaceship; her uniform was warmer, but not designed for severe cold. And the survival suits—though they were windproof and waterproof—had limited battery life for warming. They couldn’t even huddle together in anything but the lightest breeze, or the raft might blow over.