She chopped herself off, staring at Honor in stark, simple appeal, and Honor nodded slowly. She understood Berczi's desperation now, and she supposed some people might have called it personal. Well, no doubt it was. But that made it no less valid, and Honor respected her no less for her determination to do something about it.
"I see, Major," she said, and her lips curled in what might have been called a smile. "I see indeed. We'll just have to see to it that they don't have to deal with that, won't we?"
"I don't know if I can, Ranjit," Susan said in a small voice. She hated herself for admitting it—more for admitting it to herself than for admitting it to him—but she couldn't help it. She knelt on the floor of the lift car, staring through the twisted opening which had once held a crystoplast window, and the hole she'd gouged out of the wall of snow beyond it with a salvaged ski pole looked back at her.
"I know it's scary, Sooze," Ranjit said, fighting to keep his growing pain and weakness out of his voice. "But it's the only way you can get out, and we don't have enough time to wait for them to find us." He managed not to add "If they find us," but from the way she turned her head to look at him, he knew she'd heard it anyway.
"I know," she said after a moment, and managed a weak smile. "I just wish I knew how stinking far down we are."
"I do too," he told her, trying to match her smile while his heart wept for the courage she clung to with both hands.
"Well, at least it's not packed as hard as it could be, I guess," she sighed. She knelt there a moment longer, then raised her voice. "Andrea?"
"Yes?" the older girl's strained voice floated up out of the shadows.
"You take good care of Ranjit while I'm gone, hear?" Susan called, trying to smile at her brother again. "He's a doof, but I kinda like him."
"I'll do my best," Andrea promised, and Ranjit blinked on tears as Susan nodded to him.
"Be back as soon as I can," she told him quietly, and climbed out through the window, taking her ski pole with her. She pushed herself up into the hole she'd already dug, and Ranjit turned his head as far as he could, watching more snow fall through the shattered window onto the lift car's floor. It fell quickly at first, then more slowly . . . and then not at all as Susan tunneled higher into the underbelly of the avalanche, burrowing her way through it, and the snow she excavated packed the tunnel behind her. He pictured her forcing her way through the cold, terrifying darkness, all alone in her tiny, moving airspace as she burrowed towards the sun like some small, blind creature, and he closed his eyes and prayed as he had never before prayed in his life.
* * *
"Don't be stupid, Commander!" Novaya Tyumen snapped. "Nothin' could possibly have survived over there!" He swept an angry arm at the area around the broken-off lift tower. "If we're goin' to find anyone alive, it'll be out there!" He jabbed an index finger at the zone in which he had concentrated his efforts.
"With all due respect, Sir, I disagree," Honor said. No one but her had to know how hard it was to keep her words level and dispassionate, but her eyes bored into Novaya Tyumen's. "We've already recovered one lift car that was in the area in question at the time the avalanche hit, and the majority of the people aboard it were still alive. On that basis, I don't believe we can ignore the possibility that others might have survived the initial disaster, as well. And—"
"You don't believe? You don't believe?!" Novaya Tyumen glared at her. "Well fortunately, Commander, it doesn't matter what you believe, because I happen to be in command here!"
"I have no desire to undermine your authority or the chain of command," Honor said. At least half of that statement is true, anyway, she reflected acidly. "My sole concern is to point out that there may be people alive in that area, and that they won't be alive for long if someone doesn't find them and dig them out."
"Which is also true out there!" Novaya Tyumen shot back, pointing once more at his chosen area of operations.
"No doubt, Sir, but you have people getting in one another's way `out there,' " Honor said coldly, pointing in turn at two squads of Marines who were crowded tightly enough together to hamper one another's efforts as they tried to dig out around the shell of one of the buildings which had not survived. The rescuers were restricted to shovels and only light tractors and pressers, because even with the tactical sensors from the pinnaces and the Marines' skinsuits, they could only see a couple of meters into the snow with any clarity. That meant they couldn't afford to use more efficient means of excavation for fear of killing the very people they were trying to rescue. "Under the circumstances, you should be able to detail more people to search operations so that civilians now en route will at least know where to dig when they get here!"
"And just how do you propose to search that area?" Novaya Tyumen demanded contemptuously, and shook a sheaf of hardcopy in her face. "These are your own tac readouts, Commander. There's so much junk and garbage—rocks and tree trunks and pieces of buildin's and God only knows what—buried out there even deep-imagin' radar can't see shit! So you tell me just how in hell we're supposed t' find anythin' out there even if we tried!"
"We can start by trying to identify some of the garbage as such so that we can then ignore it and concentrate on the rest of the targets, Sir." Honor's voice was still controlled, but it was also ice cold, and its very control made it a slap in the face after Novaya Tyumen's choleric outburst. "Certainly there's a lot of wreckage out there to confuse the DIR, but if we can at least locate the biggest pieces, we can use snow probes to find them and get microphones down there to listen for any sounds from trapped people. Human beings spent centuries finding avalanche victims before anyone ever thought of deep-imaging radar or sonar, Sir, and if we don't start looking soon—"
"I refuse to discuss this any further, Commander," Novaya Tyumen told her with chill, sneering precision. "I've made my decision, and I'm not squanderin' resources on some stupid, glory-grabbin' officer's quixotic lunacy when there are lives to save right here! Now stand aside and let me get on my with job before I file formal charges for insubordination."
" `Insubordination'?" Honor repeated. She didn't recognize her own voice. It was much too calm and reasonable to belong to her at that moment. She heard Nimitz's deep, sibilant hiss of disdain as the 'cat glared at Novaya Tyumen, and then she smiled a cold, dangerous smile. "You file whatever you want to file, Sir," she told him, and turned and walked away.
Novaya Tyumen glared after her, and his face went apoplectic purple as she pulled an ear bug and attached boom mike from her parka pocket, clipped it into place, and spoke briefly into the mike. She listened for a few seconds, her head cocked to one side, then said something else into the mike, turned on her heel, and strode directly to Major Stimson.
Novaya Tyumen's eyes blazed with fury as she headed for the Marine, for there could be no mistaking her purpose, whatever he might have ordered. He couldn't believe the sheer gall of her, and rage boiled within him as Stimson looked up at her approach. Ensign Haverty was saying something to the baron, but he waved the young woman aside and went stamping through the snow after Honor.
"—start right there," she was saying to the Marine when Novaya Tyumen reached them. She pointed at a corner of the crumpled lift tower. "From the tac system overlays, it looks like the main thrust of the avalanche must have been roughly in this direction," she turned, sweeping her arm to illustrate her sentence, "and that checks with where Major Berczi tells me the one recovered car was found, so we'll want to head northeast. We'll go with a half-klick DIR sweep by two of the pinnaces first, then follow up with your people's skinsuit sensors and snow probes on anything they turn up. If we get a solid hit, we'll—"