Ann might not care for the military yahoos, but at least they thought they were doing the right thing. They were well-intentioned, if misguided. Those planet-killing bastards in the oil industry … they were a whole different breed of bad news. There were no good intentions in them at alclass="underline" just mindless greed, with no thought to long-term consequence.
Ann looked up at the shadowy form of the disk-shaped robot hanging from the end of the boat davit. Norton had provided the funding, and the engineers, and the facilities, but Ann had breathed life into the strange little machine. Mouse was the culmination of her very best ideas, and the product of the hardest work she had ever done.
She exhaled sharply, the freezing Siberian air turning her breath to vapor in front of her face. She had poured her soul into this project. No way would she do that for the oil companies. Never.
Ann felt a jarring thump through the soles of her feet, followed by a prolonged scraping noise and a groaning of metal that she felt more than heard. The ship seemed to shudder until the groaning died away.
She looked at the nearest Sailor. “What the hell was that?”
“Probably a growler,” the man said.
“A what?”
“A growler,” the Sailor said. “A chunk of sea ice. Smaller than an iceberg, or a bergy bit. Maybe the size of a refrigerator.”
“There are chunks of ice out here the size of refrigerators?” Ann asked. “And they’re not freaking icebergs?”
“That’s right,” the man said.
Ann couldn’t see his face properly in the darkness, but the Sailor had an older voice. He was probably one of the senior petty officers, or maybe a chief.
“We’re transiting through the Kuril islands,” he said. “Passing into the Sea of Okhotsk, which is mostly covered by ice. The plan is to skirt the southern edge of the ice pack. As long as we don’t get too close to the pack edge, we’ll mostly run into grease ice. That’s usually just slush — not fully frozen. We’ll get some growlers too, about like the one we just rubbed up against. If we’re lucky, we won’t run into any bergy bits.”
“What are those?” Sheldon asked.
“Baby icebergs,” the Sailor said. “Maybe the size of a house. Not big enough to qualify as real icebergs. You don’t get real bergs in the Sea of O.”
Ann’s mouth felt suddenly dry. She nodded, though the man probably couldn’t see her in the darkness. “No icebergs,” she said. “That’s good to know. At least we don’t have to worry about sinking.”
The man laughed, but there didn’t seem to be a lot of humor in it. “I didn’t say that.” He stomped on the deck, the sound of his boot audible in the darkness. “Our hull is steel,” he said. “But it’s only a little more than a half-inch thick. A decent sized bergy bit will go through us like a can opener.”
“Please tell me you’re joking,” Sheldon said.
“I wish I was. Even a good sized growler could do a number on us, if we hit it the wrong way.”
“What about that killer radar?” Ann asked. “No sparrow shall fall, and all that crap. You can see the ice with that, right?”
“We’re in EMCON,” the man said. “Stealth mode. The SPY radar could probably see most of the ice, but it would give away our position. We’re running without it.”
“So how do we avoid hitting one of those baby icebergs?” Sheldon asked.
“We’ve got lookouts posted,” the Navy man said. “They’re watching the water in front of the ship. If they see anything off the bow, they tell the bridge and we turn to avoid it. We should be okay.”
“Correct me if I’m wrong,” Ann said. ‘But didn’t the Titanic have lookouts posted too? That particular method of ice avoidance didn’t work out too well for those guys, as I recall.”
“You’ve got a point there,” the Navy man said. “But we have two advantages over the Titanic. Our watertight integrity systems and damage control technology are about a century more advanced.”
“Fine,” Ann said. “What’s the other advantage?”
The man laughed again. “We know we’re not unsinkable,” he said. “So we’re a lot more careful.”
“That’s comforting,” Ann said. “Now, we just…”
“Just a sec,” the man said. “I’m getting a call from the bridge.”
He paused for a couple of seconds, and then said, “Boat deck, aye!”
He snapped his fingers. “Peters! Shut off the deck lights. Everybody! Lights off—now!”
The amber lamps went off abruptly, plunging the deck into total darkness.
The Sailor spoke again. “Bridge — Boat deck, all lights are out. We are dark.”
“What’s going on?” Sheldon asked softly.
“Jets,” the Navy man said. “CIC can’t get a lock on the Bogies without lighting off our radar, but our Electronic Warfare guys are tracking emissions from at least four Zaslon S-800’s.”
“What does that mean?” Ann asked.
“It means there are at least four MiG-31 fighter jets out there, probably flying the edge of the ice pack to check for uninvited party guests.”
“Like us,” Sheldon said.
“Yeah,” the man said softly. “Like us. So we’re running quiet and dark, and generally hoping that they don’t detect us. There’s a good chance that they won’t. We’re pretty damned stealthy when we shut down all the toys.”
Ann stared up into the night sky, trying vainly to spot something moving against the backdrop of stars. “What happens if they find us?” she asked.
“Depends on who they belong to,” the Sailor said. “If they’re out of mainland Russia, they’ll more than likely just report our position back to their base. That will stir up some shit, because the Russians don’t like us up here, but it’ll be mostly be political. We probably won’t get shot at.”
“What if they’re not from mainland Russia?” Sheldon asked.
“Then they’re out of the Yelizovo air base on Kamchatka,” the man said. “Which means that they belong to our pal, Mr. Zhukov. If it’s those guys, they’ll shoot us between the eyes about ten seconds after they find out we’re here.”
“This is insane,” Ann said. “We’re dodging icebergs in the dark, and playing hide and seek with freaking fighter jets. What are we going to do for an encore? Juggle chainsaws?”
The Sailor chuckled. “You know what they say. It’s not just a job. It’s an adventure.”
“I’m not joking,” Ann snapped. “What the hell are we doing here? We’re practically asking to get killed.”
“This is what we do,” the man said. “This is our job. We’re kind of like Secret Service agents. We step in front of the bullet, so that our country doesn’t have to.”
“That’s crap,” Ann said. “That whole military-ethos/warrior-Zen thing is nothing but a load of self-aggrandizing macho bullshit.”
“It’s not bullshit, ma’am,” the Sailor said. “We’ve got a trigger-happy lunatic threatening to incinerate the Western United States. If he manages to unleash ten percent of the firepower at his command, he’ll kill more people than every war in history combined. Our job is to stop him any way we can. Even with our lives.”
The man sighed. “We don’t want to die, Ms. Roark. We want to go home to our families. We want to drink beer, and watch football on television, and barbecue hotdogs, and play catch in the back yard with our kids. But we will step into the path of the bullet, if that’s what it takes to stop the bad guys. Like I said — it’s what we do.”
Ann was about to reply, when the man spoke again. “Just a sec. The bridge is talking to me.”