Ice Hunt

All she could manage was a groan.

He reached for her. She blacked out a moment. It had taken all her strength to utter even that small sound. When next she awoke, she found herself strapped into a bucket seat, harnessed in place with shoulder and belt straps. The world was a blur around her. She was flying.

Then enough awareness cut through the haze for her to recognize that she rode behind a soldier. He didn’t wear a parka, only a thick gray sweater. She realized she was wearing his coat. The fur-lined hood pulled almost over her head.

They were heading back to the drift station. A fire burned from the cratered ruins of an outbuilding.

It made no sense, so she simply passed out again.

She woke next to a world of pain. It flared over every inch of her body. It was as if someone were flaying her alive, as if acid streamed over every inch of her body, agonizing, stripping away her skin. She screamed, but no sound came out. She thrashed against the arms that held her.

“It’s all right, Miss Aratuk,” a gruff voice said behind her. “You’re safe.” The same voice spoke to someone else holding her. “Turn the water slightly warmer.”

Jenny snapped a bit more fully into awareness. She was naked in a shower, being held under the stream. She managed to free her tongue. “It…it burns.”

“The water’s only lukewarm. Blood is just returning to your skin. You have some patches of mild frostbite.” Something jabbed her arm. “We’ve given you a bit of morphine to dull the pain.”

She finally glanced back to the speaker. It was Lieutenant Commander Sewell. She sat on the fiberglass floor of a communal shower. A handful of Navy men were in the room, busy. Other showers steamed.

After a few moments, her agony dulled to simple torture. Tears flowed down her face, mixing with the shower’s water. Slowly her temperature rose. Her body began to shiver uncontrollably.

“M…mm…my father,” she chattered out.

“He’s being taken care of,” Sewell said. “He’s actually faring better than you. Already into towels. Tough old bastard, that one. Only a little frostbite on his nose. He must be made of ice.”

This raised a smile. Papa…

She allowed her body to shake and quake. Her core body temperature slowly struggled to normalcy. Sensory feeling awakened with a million pinpricks in her hands and feet. It was slow crucifixion.

Finally she was allowed to stand. She even warmed up enough to feel slightly ashamed by her nakedness. There were uniformed men all around. She was led out of the showers, passing by Kowalski, bare-assed and shivering under his own stream of water.

As hot towels were wrapped around her, she asked, “Fernandez?”

Sewell shook his head. “He was dead by the time the Russians reached you.”

Her heart heavy, she was walked over to chairs in front of space heaters. Her father was already there. He sipped from a mug of hot coffee. The morphine wobbled her feet, but she managed to reach the chairs.

“Jen,” her father said. “Welcome back to the living.”

“You call this living?” she asked dourly. As she sat there, she pictured Fernandez’s quirked smile. It was hard to believe someone so alive was now dead. Still, a dull buzz of relief seeped through her, perhaps partly due to the morphine, but mostly rising from her own heart.

She was alive.

As the space heater blew humid air in her face, a mug of coffee was pushed into her trembling hands.

“Drink it,” Sewell said. “We have to warm up your insides as much as your outsides. And caffeine’s a good stimulant, too.”

“You don’t have to sell me on the coffee, Commander.” She took a burning sip. She felt it slide all the way down. A shudder—half pleasure, half pain—shook through her.

With coffee warming her hands and belly, she glanced around. She was in some large dormitory room. Cots lined both walls. Tables and chairs in the center. Most here were civilians, scientists…but a few Navy personnel were mixed in.

She turned back to Sewell. “Tell me what happened.”

He eyed her. “The Russians. They commandeered the base.”

“I sort of figured that on my own. Why?”

He shook his head. “It has something to do with that Russian ice station we found. Something hidden over there. They’ve been systematically interviewing key personnel to see what we know. It was why you were rescued from the ice. They thought you might be escaping with something or someone, so they had you hauled back. I informed them of your noncom status.”

“What are they searching for?”

“I don’t know. Whatever is over at that other base is being kept under wraps. NTK only.”

“NTK?”

“Need-to-know.” His voice hardened. “And apparently I’m not one of those who needs to know.”

“So what now?”

“There’s not much we can do. We only had a small security force.” He waved an arm around the room. “The bastards killed five of my men. We were quickly subdued and corralled in here. So were the civilian personnel. They’re keeping us all under guard. We were told as long as we didn’t make any trouble that we’d be freed in forty-eight hours.”

Her father spoke from his wrap of blankets. “What about the other Sno-Cat? The one with Matt and Craig?”

Jenny found herself tensing, fearing the worst.

“As far as I know, they’re okay. I was able to contact them before being caught. I told them when they reached the ice station to raise the alarm.”

Jenny sipped from her coffee. Her hands trembled worse. For some reason, she had to fight back tears. “Everyone else is here?”

“Everyone still living.”

She glanced around the room, searching for a specific face. She didn’t find him. “Where’s Ensign Pomautuk?”

Sewell shook his head. “Not here. He’s among the missing, along with a handful of civilians. But I can’t say for sure. The Russians took some of the critically injured to the hospital wing. Maybe he’s over there. Details are still sketchy.”

Jenny stared over to her father. The tip of his nose was ashen, frost-nipped. His eyes read her fear. One hand slipped from his wrap and sought her own. She took his fingers. They were rough with old calluses, but still strong. He had faced so many hardships in his life and survived. Absorbing his strength, she faced Sewell again. “This forty-eight-hour deadline? Do you believe they’ll let us go?”

“I don’t know.”