“Admiral, I think I should stay in camp,” Marek said. “No offense to Staff Sergeant Kurin, but Commander Bentik should be backed up by the most senior NCO.”
Ky glanced at her aide. “I would prefer that arrangement,” Jen said. “No insult to Staff Sergeant Kurin, of course.”
“Of course,” Ky said. “Fine, then. Staff Sergeant, come along with us.”
When they were well out of earshot, Ky said, “You have any problems with Commander Bentik, Staff?”
“No, sir—Admiral—I haven’t. I think she just feels comfortable with Master Sergeant Marek. Maybe because he’s older, more her age. And they were in the same raft.”
“Possibly.” It was something to think about, along with why she herself hadn’t considered asking her aide along on this trek.
They found both men lying crumpled among the stones, stinking of vomit, with the carcass of a fish, mostly consumed, and a single SafStov can between them. A section of fishing rod with several chunks of fish still on it made it clear how they’d cooked the meat; the rest of the rod lay under Vispersen. The skin and spines to one side showed it was a puffer fish as long as Ky’s arm, a smaller relative of the one that had speared the raft.
Tight-lipped, Ky bent over to check. Both were dead, their bodies cold. She looked in the pockets of Vispersen’s suit and found two ration bars. Lanca’s pockets had three of them. She handed them to Kurin for safekeeping and collected their ID tags.
“How fast does it kill?” Gossin asked.
“It varies with the dose,” Kurin said. “And the particular species, and what it fed on. I don’t know why the terraformers imported such a horrible fish.”
Ky looked in the foraging bucket. Nothing. They had come out, caught their big fish, and then instead of eating their hoarded ration bars, decided to eat the fish. “I told people when the other one was being hauled in—they had to know it was poisonous.”
“It’s my fault,” Kurin said. “I—I said we could eat them where I lived, and then you said it wasn’t safe to trust these. But Lanca asked me later—after we got here—how to tell. I said I didn’t know, but ours were blue-green on top, no spots. But that the location made a difference, too. If the water has the right bacteria in it, they’re all toxic. He must not have paid attention to that.”
“Would you have eaten one?” Ky asked.
“No! Only at home, because they’re farmed and checked carefully.”
“Their carelessness,” Gossin said. “Their greed.” She shook her head. “Unmilitary. Both of them.”
“We need to get back,” Ky said. “It’s almost dark. They’re well above the tide line, and it’s cold; we’ll tell the others and retrieve the bodies tomorrow; I should have brought rope but I didn’t think they’d be dead. Nothing’s out here to bother them.”
Next morning a working party went to retrieve them, only to find nothing at all but the little red SafStov can. Even the puffer fish skin was gone.
They had nothing to bury, so McLenard picked up the SafStov can and they went back to camp. No more rations went missing, but everyone was hungrier as the cold deepened. Ky recalculated how long they could last: the loss of two extended their survival another seven days. She didn’t tell the others. Soon a fringe of ice collared the shore, thickening as high tides left layers on it.
On the twentieth day since the crash, Ky woke to a strange sound outside, not the usual sounds of waves lapping. She left the shelter, peering into the dim predawn light. Something about the water looked strange, though she couldn’t define it. As the light grew, she could see that the water looked thick, not clear as it had been. She could feel the wind at her back; she should have seen the familiar feather-look of ripples, but the water didn’t show anything but heavy low swells, thick and sullen. She could hear that strange sound, as if the water were almost full of something—sand? Gravel?—and had as much as it could hold. Her mind groped for words to describe the sound, the sight.
In the distance, the waves that had broken in normal fashion the day before heaved up slowly, thick and gelid. They fell with a plop, like very wet mud, not like water.
“It’s freeze-up.”
Ky looked around. Others had come out to stare at the strange water. “Freeze-up?”
“Yeah. It’s cold enough for ice crystals to form in it. Opposite of melting snow but the same kind of slush.” Sergeant McLenard kicked a chunk of the ice on shore into the water. “It gets like this before it actually freezes, but from here on it can freeze really fast.”
“What about gathering food?”
“Much harder. Until the ice is thick enough to walk on—and even then, all you can do is cut a hole and drop a line through.”
“Do you think the sea will freeze?”
“Yes, certainly right here. See that patchy bit out there? At least the ice isn’t as salty as seawater, which is good because the desalinators can’t handle slushy water.”
And they had no fuel for melting quantities of ice or snow for water. Just the few SafStovs.
“We have to move,” Ky said. “We have to find someplace where there’s better shelter and fuel for fires.” And another food source.
“There isn’t anyplace,” Marek said. “I’ve seen reports on Miksland. Scans.” I told you so seemed to be hanging over his head, but he didn’t say it.
“Are we just going to starve? You have to do something!” Jen sounded on the edge of hysteria. The others looked away from her.
“I intend to,” Ky said, trying for a confidence she did not feel. “But first, we eat breakfast.”
“That’s not what I meant!” Jen said. “You got us into this; you said to land here—”
Marek touched her shoulder and gave Ky a sympathetic glance. “It’s not the admiral’s fault,” he said. “There’s nothing she can do; once the shuttle was sabotaged, once we landed where we did… even if we’d stayed at sea, there’s no guarantee we’d be found before the rafts sank or the food ran out.”
“Breakfast,” Ky said again. “Everybody back inside.”
Inside was only a little warmer. Breakfast was a meager cube of biscuit and a small protein bar. Everyone was looking down, away from others. Ky finished hers and waited until everyone had eaten.
“Here’s what I know,” she said. “Our food will not last the winter, and we won’t last without more food and better shelter. Our best chance is to look for more resources somewhere else.”
“But we don’t even have a map!” Corporal Riyahn said. “We can’t just wander around without knowing where we are.” He glanced at Marek, as if for support.
“Actually we can,” Ky said. “And we do know, in a way, where we are. I’m going to take a small party up to the top and see what’s there.”
“It’ll take a long time to get through all that tumbled rock—and it’s dangerous; someone could fall…” Riyahn again.
“It’s the chance we have,” Ky said. “If we don’t move, we’ll freeze or starve, one or the other or both.” Several flinched, as if she’d struck them. “If we explore we might find something we can use to live longer.”
“I’ll go with you,” Betange said.
“Good,” Ky said. “We won’t leave today. We need good weather and there’s clearly some bad on the way. Today, before the next weather hits, I’m going up to the rock tumble and see how bad it really is in there.”
“Looks impassable,” Marek said, though he smiled at her. “But I imagine you’ll find a way.”