Ice War (7 page)

The Bzadians recovered quickly. The Vaza was halfway down the hatch when she stopped at an order from Nokz’z.

“No,” Nokz’z said. “Stay here, Vaza. I would not want to lose you.”

“They will get away,” the Vaza said.

“Away to where?” Nokz’z asked. “They have no thermals and no helmets. They have no weapons apart from one grenade. Let them go. We might recover the bodies later.” He gave a small shrug. “Or not.”

[MISSION DAY 1, FEBRUARY 16, 2033. 1325 HOURS LOCAL TIME]

[BERING STRAIT, SOUTH-WEST OF LITTLE DIOMEDE ISLAND]

Monster ran into the teeth of the gale. Emile ran just in front of him. It was a stumbling, drunken lurch, fighting for every footstep. Two Bzadians had been standing guard outside the entrance to the tunnel, but they had been looking the wrong way. Emile had burst past them, ducking and dodging off into the snowstorm. They had raised their weapons to fire, but then Monster had been on them, bashing their helmets together and leaving them stunned, lying on the ice.

Now Monster and Emile ran. The cold was ferocious; ice crystals beat against their unheated armour and cut their unprotected faces.

The cuts did not worry Monster. The cold here was a better bandage than any gauze. The blood froze, sealing the cut as soon as it was made. He saw Emile wiping ice from his face, and grabbed his hand to stop him.

The ice was painful, but it was also protection, forming a solid barrier that shielded his face from more of the sharp flying particles.

Monster instinctively kept his head down and a hand in front of his face to protect his eyes. Without goggles or a mask, it was impossible to see and he blinked constantly to prevent the fluids around his eyeballs from freezing.

Even the body armour offered scant protection. It blocked the wind but not the cold. The thermal lining inside was supposed to do that, but unpowered it offered no more warmth than a thin blanket.

Monster ignored the cold, concentrating instead on the greater danger, which would come from behind. Already, he heard the crack of coil-gun fire, but in this blizzard, he knew they were shooting at shadows.

Emile turned and pulled the pin on the grenade, hurling it in the direction of the gunfire. A moment later came the thump of an explosion, but the firing from behind them intensified.

A waste of a grenade, Monster thought, but he understood why Emile had done it. He was running for his life, and getting shot at. It wasn’t a nice feeling the first time someone was shooting at you, trying to kill you.

Come to think of it, it was never a nice feeling getting shot at. Anyway, the grenade didn’t worry him. What worried him was running out on his friends. Had he made the right decision? He had seen the question in Emile’s eyes. Seen the brief nod from Price. He had understood what Price wanted Emile to do. But it was an act of desperation.

There was a plan to the universe. He truly believed that. Ever since Uluru. There had to be, otherwise none of this made any kind of sense. And even if he couldn’t see the plan, couldn’t understand the plan, if his part in that plan ended here, then that was just how things were. But not Price. Please, not Price. She would die too, after torture by the PGZ. That was like a kick to the stomach, because there was nothing at all he could do about it.

Around him the landscape was flat and featureless, except for the dome-like hills that were Bzadian tanks.

He steered them on a diagonal course, which was easier than heading straight into the wind.

The first fifty metres were the hardest. Every step was a scream of pain, both from tortured muscles, fighting their way into the blizzard, and from the burn of ice on the skin of his face.

Worse was the cold that seeped through his combat suit. Not the sharp bite of the wind, but a constant ache that became an intense throbbing before it began to fade.

That was a relief, but it meant his skin was going numb. Frostnip could quickly turn to frostbite. That would lead to the gradual lowering of his core body temperature, leading to hypothermia. Violent shivering would be followed by stumbling and mental confusion, leading to a stupor that was the first stage of death.

He ignored the cold. He ignored the pain. He ignored the fear. He knew that as bad as it was for him, for Emile it must be much worse. He was younger and smaller. Yet there was no bleat of a complaint.

The lights of Little Diomede, the smaller of the two islands, were a beacon in the white desert. When Monster looked up, which wasn’t often, it was to make sure that those lights were still ahead of him.

He was concentrating so intently on the simple act of putting one foot in front of the other that he almost fell into the crevasse.

It was Emile, behind him, who saw it first and grabbed his arm. Monster stopped with one foot out over the void.

It was a fissure in the ice. Not as wide as the crevasse they had crossed earlier, but wide nevertheless. It ran from north to south, separating the two islands.

Emile was saying something to him, but he couldn’t hear it. The words were caught by the wind and swept away into the storm.

He bent down so Emile could put his lips next to his ear.

“We gotta go back,” Emile said.

“We can’t go back,” Monster said.

“We gotta!” Emile said. “We gotta go back for the others.”

“We cannot,” Monster said. “The Pukes will be looking for us. Must keep going.”

“I didn’t escape just to save my own skin!” Emile shouted. “I’m not running out on the others.”

Monster grasped him by the arm, so tightly that Emile winced, even though he wore a combat suit. Monster eased his grip and took a deep breath.

“We not running out,” Monster said. “We go back; we all die.”

“We can’t leave them,” Emile cried. “It’s my fault we got caught!”

Monster shook his head. “Not your fault.”

“I had the scope,” Emile said. “I should have seen the Pukes coming.”

“Were you watching the scope?” Monster asked.

“Yes. I mean, I think so.”

“Then not your fault,” Monster said. “Scope not work too good in these conditions.”

“But still …”

“Not your fault,” Monster said for a third time. “If we can make it to Little Diomede, we can alert ACOG, then try to save others.”

“Little Diomede?” Emile asked. “You think we can make it that far?”

“I think we can try,” Monster said.

Their options were extremely limited. Little Diomede was their only chance and that was hundreds of metres away, across a rugged landscape that would be challenging even in good weather. In this blizzard it was next to impossible. And what if the station had been taken over by Bzadians? He put that thought out of his mind. Little Diomede had to be a place of safety. It had to be.

He looked down into the fissure. It was not deep, little more than a metre, and the ice at the bottom seemed solid. Better still, the drop on their side although steep, was not sheer.

Monster pointed down into the fissure and, although Emile looked doubtful, he nodded.

If they broke through the thin ice at the bottom into the sea below, at least the end would be swift.

Emile, being lighter, went first, slithering over the edge and sliding down into the cleft. When the ice took Emile’s weight, Monster followed suit. The ice cracked as he landed, but did not break. They crouched out of the wind.

“Which way?” Emile asked and Monster realised that here, out of the wind, they could hear each other without shouting.

“To the north,” Monster said, hoping that was the right direction. With the random zigzag patterns of the fissures, either way could be the right way to go. Or neither.

He slapped at the ice on his face, feeling it crack, then break into pieces and fall away. Emile did the same and kept pummelling at his face even after all the ice was gone, slapping at the skin until it was red and raw, unable to feel the blows through numb, dead skin.

Monster stopped him. “You got it all,” he said.

The depth of the channel shielded them from the wind, but it had its own hazards, not the least of which was the movement of the walls. This was not a pathway through the ice, but a gap between two constantly moving icefloes. At times the walls ground closer, threatening to crush them, and at other times, for no obvious reason, they shifted further away, exposing black seawater a few centimetres below their feet.

“Talk to me,” Monster said, when Emile stumbled on a perfectly smooth patch of ice. The sound of the wind above them seemed to be easing and, when he looked up, the skies were starting to clear. That was good, but it was also bad. The snowstorm, as painful as it was, was their ally, hiding them from their pursuers. If the Bzadians found them in this trench, they would have nowhere to run. Nowhere to hide.

“Talk about what?” Emile asked. His voice was unsteady and the words had to find their way out through a rigid jaw.

“Anything,” Monster said. “Monster want to hear your voice.”

“I didn’t know you cared,” Emile said.

“Why you join Angels?” Monster asked.

“I’m starting to wonder that myself,” Emile said.

“But really,” Monster said.

There was a silence for a moment. Silence except for the noises of the ice shifting and cracking. It was a bizarre sound: a mixture of creaks, hollow booms and something else that sounded like laser gun sound effects from a science fiction movie.

“My parents didn’t want me to,” Emile said eventually, reluctantly.

“Parents?” Monster asked.

“Yup,” Emile said. “It’s when a man and a woman love each other very much and the man …”

“Ha-ha, funny guy,” Monster said. “You know mostly Angels are orphans.”

“I must have annoyed them so much that they let me in anyway,” Emile said. “I wanted to be an Angel ever since I heard about them.”

“You want to be Angel?” Monster asked.

“Yup,” Emile said. “Didn’t you?”

“Cheese and Rice, my dude, no,” Monster said. “I was picked out of paintball team. That’s how most of us are chosen. I don’t even know it is test, until recruiter showed up at my home.”

“Well, I knew,” Emile said. “There was a guy in my refugee camp who was selected but didn’t make the grade. He told me all about it. I joined a paintball team the next day and made sure I was the star player.”

“You have death wish?” Monster asked.

“Just wanted to do something to help,” Emile said. “And I thought it would be cool. Refugee camp was kinda boring.”

“This is true,” Monster said.

“How many Angel missions have you been on?” Emile asked.

“Too many,” Monster said.
And too many friends had not come home
.

“What were they like?” Emile asked.

“Warm,” Monster said.

“No kidding,” Emile said. “You served with Ryan Chisnall, didn’t you?”

Monster waited a while before answering. “Ryan was my friend,” he said.

“The other Angels talk about him as if he was some kind of superhero,” Emile said.

“Not true,” Monster said. “He is just regular guy. If not for war, he wouldn’t even make captain of football team, or class president. War brings out best in some people.”

“You miss him, don’t you?” Emile asked.

Monster didn’t answer. All Angel missions were voluntary, and he had volunteered for this one. Part of it was Price, of course. But there was something more. On some deep level, he wanted revenge, for Chisnall and Hunter, and everyone else who had suffered at the hands of the aliens. Revenge, as someone once said, was like biting a dog because the dog bit you, but that didn’t stop him from wanting to hurt those that had caused such pain.

Emile stumbled and fell again, and was slow getting up. Monster grabbed him by an arm and helped him to his feet. “Sing,” Monster said.

“Nah,” Emile said. “It’s hard enough talking.”

“Sing, and that is order,” Monster said. “So I know you not hypothermic.”

“Yeah, and if I’m getting hypothermic, what are you going to do about it, Sergeant Monster?” Emile asked. “Give me a nice warm bath, or a hot cup of tea and put me to bed?”

“No, Emile,” Monster said. “We keep walking.”

“Pity. I like warm baths,” Emile said. “And hot tea.”

“So sing,” Monster said.

“Sing what?”

“You choose.”

It took a few moments, and his voice was quavering with the cold, but he did. He sang in Lebanese, in a soft, high melodic voice, a song with strange warbling notes. It reminded Monster of a young Bzadian they had once met in the sands of the Australian desert.

They came to a gap in the ice. A place where an undersea current bubbled up through the ice, creating a kind of blow hole and preventing the water from freezing. They stopped while they tried to work out how to get past it.

It wasn’t wide, but with stiff, frozen muscles, there was no way to leap across. They were already reduced to a hobbling shuffle.

In the end they managed to sidle past it, although the blasts of water soaked their boots and their armour up to their knees. The water quickly froze, creating a clear sheet of armour that weighed them down and made it even more difficult to walk.