Deluge

CHAPTER 6

MURKOWSKI GRUMBLED TO himself. He was tired too, and more than likely the storm would play out before his watch was up, so he’d have to help when the search resumed.

He paced himself to keep awake. He walked back to the fire and added another couple of logs from the pile near the pit. The smoke made a pewter haze that hung from the roof to just above the level of the floor. Several guys coughed and sneezed in their sleep. That storm had to break soon, or they’d all die of smoke inhalation. The wind sounded like it was trying to rip the roof off. What kind of a cold-blooded idiot would want to live in this freezer, anyway?

He slouched back to the door, and realized that in spite of the noise still coming from the roof, the storm seemed to have calmed a little. The door was flanked by two small windows, but each of them was black as space. He picked up the huge board toggle that barred the door, lifting it aside so he could see out.

He hoped the draft would wake up some of the other guys.

The door opened inward, which was a good thing since three feet of snow was now drifted against it outside. Was it his imagination or had the wind finally deafened him? Either way, he couldn’t hear it as well. He stuck his head and shoulders out over the snowdrift. Something landed on his back, forcing his face into the snow before he could yell for help.

YANA PATTED THE track cat, Orca, on the broad black flat place between his ears. The cat sat down on his prey, draping one paw casually over the side of the man’s face. The soldier’s snow-encrusted eyes opened as he struggled to turn his head. He took in the slow extension and retraction of three-inch-long claws covering his left ear and tickling his left cheek and the corner of his left eye. Yana put her mittened forefinger to the portion of her muffler masking her lips, indicating that he should be quiet, and he responded with a flick of his eyelids since he was too intimidated by the claws to make a larger gesture.

Meanwhile, Raj, Pet, Johnny, and Rick slipped past her and into the longhouse on padded mukluk feet.

Each of them was better trained than most of the sleeping troops. They silently removed the rifles and sidearms, then returned to the doorway and joined Yana while Pet and Johnny carried armloads of snow to dump on the fire. They scuttled back to the door as the hiss and steam and sudden cold woke some of the soldiers, who grabbed at the air where their weapons used to be.

Yana, Raj, and Rick kept weapons trained on the soldiers until their friends were clear, then stepped back and signaled Orca to release his prey. The cat stood up after a long lazy stretch and bounded over the fallen man and off toward the woods.

The man on the ground reached for Yana’s leg, but as soon as he used his body weight to support his reaching hand, he sank deeper into the snow and his mitten fell three inches short.

When he looked up, he found himself staring into the barrel of Raj’s weapon.

Yana pointed to the other soldiers, and Raj barked, “Crawl.”

When the man had backed through the snowdrift into the lodge, one of the soldiers called, “You folks are making things worse for yourselves. It’s not like we walked here on our own. There’s a ship full of more like us waiting behind. You can’t win this one. We just need to talk to the governors and straighten this thing out.”

“That’s not how we heard it,” Johnny said. “You came to haul them off to die in prison as you did Madame Marmion. We won’t allow you to murder these people.”

“You don’t want to go to war with the Company Corps, son,” the spokesman said.

“I’m not your son and at least two of us here outrank you,” Johnny told him, though he didn’t explain how.

“You got weapons trained on my people, you all outrank me,” the man said.

“You do as we say and you’ve got nothing to worry about,” Johnny told him. He beckoned Yana, Pet, and the others inside, near the doorway.

“One by one, step forward, you first,” Pet Chan said to the spokesman. The man obeyed. “Remove your parka and pants,” she told him.

“You’re going to let us freeze?”

“Just trading,” Johnny answered. He took off his own parka and snow pants, borrowed from Sean, and put on the surrendered garments, noting the stripes on the parka sleeve. “Thanks, Sarge.”

While he changed, Pet and Raj relieved the sergeant of his com, his knife, his ID tags, and his wallet.

When they’d finished searching him, they allowed him to put on Johnny’s clothing.

They searched the other soldiers in the same manner and forced two women in the party to trade with Yana and Pet, and two other men to swap with Raj and Rick.

Then they backed out, leaving the soldiers unharmed and unfettered, but unarmed as well. Johnny and Pet went to work constructing a bolt across the door, boarded up the windows, then called Sinead to come and stand guard, along with the villagers who’d insisted on coming with her.

The wind was gone, but it had blown all but a light skim of snow from the ice on the river, which had frozen solid enough to ski on. Yana and the others grabbed their skis, leaning against the wall of the longhouse, strapped them on, and headed upriver to where the ship was docked at the old Space Base.

The night was white with snow, and as they reached the head of the river, the wind rose up again, driving a horizontal wall of crystal darts across the snow-covered ice. The ship, the terminal, and everything beyond was invisible to them, just as they, Yana hoped, were invisible to the ship. From what she could recall, the Corps had no equipment capable of penetrating such a storm. A proposal to orbit a satellite around Petaybee to provide better communications and more conveniences was still on the table. If she, Sean, and the others had allowed the installation, they might have been able to foil the people who’d arrested Marmie. On the other hand, a satellite would have provided the company with better access to more-sophisticated equipment, including the kind that could have detected the presence of the five skiers approaching the ship.

Six of one, half a dozen of the other. Petaybeans lacked the technology that could cut both ways, working for or against them, but on the other hand, the planet’s active participation in promoting their and its own welfare gave them a considerable edge as long as they could keep their feet on Petaybean soil, snow, ice, or water.

Disguised in the soldiers’ winter clothing, they blundered through the storm to the ship under Rick O’Shay’s guidance. Although Rick hadn’t lived on Petaybee full-time since his youth, he had retained the Petaybean knack for navigating through the nastiest weather the planet dished up. They used the ID tag Johnny had taken from the sergeant to signal their desire to come aboard. Normally there would have been questions asked, but in the howling wind and knifing snow, using the com was impossible.

Once they were through the lock, where they brushed off their outer clothing but did not remove it, the sentry on the other end asked, “You five are it?”

Johnny nodded.

“I thought you were bringing back prisoners. What’s the matter? Couldn’t find them in the whiteout?”

Johnny nodded again.

“The rest of your guys are still searching for them?”

Another nod. Yana resisted the impulse to roll her eyes in exasperation. If she were this kid’s C.O., she’d have him on report as a security risk. Corps training and discipline-not to mention ethics-wasn’t what it had been in her day, if he was any example.

He used the com unit to report their return and said, “Captain wants to see you on the bridge.”

Unmolested, they walked past him into the belly of the beast.