Ices end, p.10
Ice's End, page 10
At least this “tournament” on Saturday would spare him another invite to Newloon.
“Roscoe, one of our two team MVPs!” Jen announced as he sat down. She pulled the XRF gun out of her backpack. “By picking this up, he and Hamza might’ve just won this thing for us.”
Met with baffled faces, Jen launched into an explanation. “StarCross is ramping up lunar mining. They don’t have people swinging pickaxes up there.” Roscoe realized Jen must have gotten the same tobacco-scented warning from Granite Gorge’s Engineering Fundamentals teacher. “But,” she continued, “they still need people with eyes for geology. So anyone who can tell one type of rock from another is someone they want up there.” She pointed at the ceiling—and, high above it, the mining and energy-relay station StarCross operated in the Marius Hills.
“What does that have to do with us?” Darren asked.
“Because more meteorites have been found on Antarctica than on any other continent,” Jen answered. “This isn’t space, but for geologists it’s the next best thing. A few years ago, the Residents up at Marius Hills started a midwinter geology tournament for Spigot interns. They gave it some fancy-ass name I don’t remember. Everyone here calls it the Crapshoot.”
“A geology tournament?” Ana asked, eyebrows raised.
“Mm-hmm. They get chunks of asteroids or moon rocks, one for each cohort. Then they fire clusters of them into different parts of the Dry Valleys. They try to pick a date around midwinter. Solstice isn’t for another two weeks, but between the weather forecasts and orbital trajectories, this Saturday looked best.”
“So they send down meteorites,” Roscoe said, “and we have to find them?”
“That’s right,” Jen said. “Each of the ten first-year intern cohorts gets a ten-gallon bucket. We fill it with rocks we think are meteorites, then bring it back. The cohort that finds the most actual meteorites, wins.”
Hamza wrinkled his nose—the first distaste Roscoe had seen on his face. “They send down meteorites and watch us run around in the cold looking for them?”
“Yeah, it’s weird,” Jen agreed. “But I’ll sure as hell do it for the prize they’re offering.”
She let them all stare at her in silence for a moment.
“Executive Status. On the Moon. As soon as your internship is up.”
Roscoe’s spirits surged. Off-world Executive Status. The prize that had eluded his parents—and so far, him. But then he remembered Spigot’s orientation video—the sea of ruddy rocks on the surface. “We’re supposed to tell meteorites apart from all the rocks out there? In the dark?”
Jen nodded. “StarCross doesn’t give spots off-world away. Lucky cohorts might get a few pebbles in a ten-gallon bucket. But”—she laid the XRF gun down on the table, then leaned back and cracked her knuckles—“I don’t think any of the other cohorts have a leader who knows what an XRF gun is.”
Roscoe vaguely remembered Granite Gorge offering an advanced-level Applied Geology class. Was that where Jen had learned about these tools? His StarCross Skills Assessments had tracked him away from that class, and the thought rekindled his old loathing of those tests.
“So you’re saying we’ll just go out to our site and scan rocks with this thing until we find meteorites?” Hamza asked.
Jen nodded, then pointed at him and Roscoe. “There’s a reason you guys are our MVPs.”
“Is … this allowed?” Roscoe asked.
She looked away. “It’s … not explicitly banned. A StarCross minder will drive us out to our site and stay with us until we say we’re ready to go back. We’ll just have to crouch low enough so that he doesn’t see us.” Jen paused, gauging the mood on the interns’ faces. “Everyone good with this?”
There was only one answer to the prospect of getting off-world, especially for Roscoe. “Yes,” they replied in unison.
Jen beamed, her eyes flashing as she stood. “Great! See y’all bright and early on Saturday.”
T T T
Friday was another twelve-hour day. “Thanks, weón,” Karla told him when they finally finished. She pulled out her wristband and sent Roscoe a bonus from her own salary. It wasn’t much, but it would cover a few beers at Newloon. “You doing that Crapshoot tournament thing tomorrow?”
Roscoe nodded.
“Mucha suerte. I’ll have mixed feelings if you win. I’d hate to lose the help, but they don’t offer many routes off-world for career-track employees like us.”
“Well, if I win, I’ll put in a good word for you.” He had never made an emptier promise, but Karla smiled anyway. “Much appreciated. In that case, go get some rest. We’ve both got a lot riding on you.”
Chapter 10
Island of Jersey
English Channel
November 1820
Retired Lieutenant John Yule always told his sons that this was the last time he would tell them the story. Without fail, John Jr. and Henry Braddick got him to tell it again.
“One by one, the sails appeared on the horizon,” he always began. “We got to thirty, and thought it better to stop counting.”
From one telling to the next, the details never changed: John Yule’s shock when he realized that his ship, H.M.S. Victory, would sail for miles exposed to Napoleon’s artillery as she approached his fleet from the side; the cheers when Nelson spelled out, with signal flags, “England expects that every man will do his duty”; the whistling as French and Spanish cannonballs flew straight into the Victory’s face, shredding her sails and sending deadly splinters through her gun decks; the scurry to mend the damage and replace fallen seamen as the ship drew nearer; the roar when the Victory finally slipped between the Redoutable and Bucentaure, unleashing a devastating fifty-two-gun broadside into each ship. Henry and John soon learned every detail of Trafalgar’s opening salvos by heart. But when their father reached the next part—when the Victory had locked rigging with the Redoutable—he always kept them rapt.
“The French cannons had stopped firing,” their father would say, his voice lowering as he leaned forward. “That could only mean one thing—they meant to board us. I raced past the guns to the officer’s quarters at the stern. As I went, I passed a wounded figure being carried down to the orlop deck, his face covered with a handkerchief, but I thought nothing of it. At that moment, we had to ensure every marine was on deck, ready to face the enemy.” His eyes darted as if scanning Victory’s deck all over again.
“So I was relieved when I reached the officer’s quarters and found them empty. But then, at that very moment—crash! A grapnel shattered the porthole, and when I reached the hole, I was face-to-face with a Frenchman! He was climbing down the hull.”
“What did you do?” John and Henry always asked together, despite knowing the answer.
“Grabbed him. I only managed to grab his one wrist, the one with the grappling hook. I could have finished him off then. But for some reason, I didn’t.”
“Why not?”
“For one instant, I was too shocked.” He smiled and shook his head. “In all my years fighting Napoleon, it was the first time I had looked my enemy in the eye with the battle still raging. But then, I saw he had a strange kit.”
“What was strange about it?”
“He had no musket or pistol. Just a sealskin bag around his neck, with one sphere inside, about yea big.” He made a fist. “A grenade. And where a marine would wear a cutlass on his belt, he had a hacksaw. And then I realized what a dreadful danger this man posed.”
“What did he mean to do?”
“Climb down the side of the ship, down to the waterline, and cut a hole large enough to throw his grenade in.”
“Why?”
“Because the ship’s powder magazine lay just below the waterline. If his grenade detonated at that level—boom!” John spread his hands apart. “Both our ships would be lost in an instant.”
“But wouldn’t he die too?” Henry asked.
Their father nodded, his expression grave. “It shows the wicked cunning of Napoleon’s navy. They meant to sacrifice that man—nay, sacrifice all the men on two ships—to take out our admiral. Perhaps he was told he could escape, perhaps the men on the Redoutable believed they could escape, but with our ships locked together there was no chance of that,” he said, brows furrowed and voice firm.
“He must have seen the shock on my face,” their father continued. “Before I could do anything, he raised his free hand, pulled off the bag with his grenade, and dropped it into the sea. Then he started shouting. With the roar of the muskets, I took a long moment to understand what he was saying. ‘Please! I help! I help!’” John Yule always said this with terror in his voice and uncertainty on his face.
“I don’t know why, but I believed him. Perhaps it was Providence. If another officer had seen me, I would have been court-martialed and probably hanged. But I heaved him onto the ship and told him to remove his shirt—most of the seamen were shirtless with the heat below decks. Then, I pulled him into the gundeck and pointed to a spot where the ship’s carpenters were mending a hole in the hull. He nodded and joined them. Everyone was covered in soot—no one wondered who this seaman was, they just took his help.”
Their father always spoke faster at this point. “Just then, another officer caught my eye and raced toward me. He grabbed my wrist and led me toward the orlop deck. I thought I had been found out. But when we reached the orlop deck, where the roar of the battle was dulled enough to trade words, he said, ‘It’s the Admiral. He’s been shot.’”
Henry and John indulged their father as he recounted the rest of the familiar tale once more: his shock of realizing that the shrouded figure he had seen earlier had been none other than their beloved Admiral; the moment he was handed the captured flag from the surrendered Redoutable to show Nelson, proof that victory was theirs; Nelson’s final words, “Thank God I have done my duty,” as he breathed his last; and the reminder of the example the admiral had set for all Englishmen. Through it all, they could barely hold back their excitement for the part of the story they loved most.
“I often wondered what became of that Frenchman,” their father said. “Perhaps he had been killed later in the battle, perhaps he had been found out and hanged. I thought I would never know. But ten years later, I received this letter.” This was the moment they had waited for, when their father would open the envelope and read the note that held their destiny.
“‘Dear Monsieur Yule,’ it began. ‘This is the sailor from the Redoutable you saved at Trafalgar. After the war, I escaped to Valparaiso and prospered from the sealing trade. Know that you have my undying gratitude for the kindness you showed that day. I cannot reveal my name nor meet in person, lest it bring shame or danger upon either of us, but I wish to repay you.’
“‘In my voyages around the southern seas, I called at an island far southeast of Cape Town, discovered by your countryman Cook. Ile de Kerguelen, it is called. There is an anchorage there, shaped like a horseshoe, with a great arched rock at its entrance. Three days’ walk south along the coast from that rock, there is a cave. In that cave, I have built a cairn. Walk twenty paces into the cave from that cairn, then seven paces to the left. There I have buried a sealskin bag filled with doubloons and escudos. I pray you or your family may find this bag and reap your rightful reward.’
“‘Regards, a grateful sailor.’”
“How did he know who you were?” Henry asked.
“We remained at sea for several weeks after the battle,” their father explained. “He must have seen me in conversation with the other officers. Not long after I got this letter,” their father said, “I heard some Nantucket sealers remark about this island, and they mentioned the bay with the arched rock.” His eyes crinkled. “A sailor knows to watch for omens. I’m too old to voyage to that part of the world, but perhaps one of you will someday. Something to remember if you ever do.”
Yule had believed the story less and less as the years went by. But when he bade his father farewell before leaving for Chatham, Lieutenant John Yule handed him the letter.
“I really did receive this, you know,” he said. “Not just something I made up to convince you and your brother to go to sea. Your voyage will take you past the Kerguelens.” He winked. “See if there’s something there.”
T T T
Once Yule had finished telling the story, McCormick ran a hand through his hair and rubbed the Saharan dust from his eyes. They both gazed down at the Erebus and Terror in the glittering bay. For a moment, Yule wondered if he had erred in sharing such a fanciful tale with a man of science. Then, McCormick spoke.
“That is how sealers trade messages on those islands,” he said. “They hide them a set distance from a cairn. And I’ve heard stranger sea stories that turned out to be true. When we reach the Kerguelens, it will be worth a look.”
T T T
Yule and McCormick returned to the ship and resumed their tasks, neither speaking further about the Kerguelens.
The expedition pressed south; the Southern Cross constellation climbed over the horizon. The tropical sun beat down harder on the ships as the days passed. The brass fittings on deck burned at the touch. Glass prisms, set into Erebus’s upper deck to channel sunlight below, were now covered with cloth to reduce the glare and ease the heat below deck. Even then, most men took to sleeping on deck soon after the ships sailed from Santiago. Two weeks out from that parched island, the Erebus and Terror crossed the equator.
Every man who had yet to cross into the Southern Hemisphere was subjected to a ritual shaving. Yule watched as sailors—dressed as King Neptune and his aides—sat the first “greenhorn,” a marine named Cunningham, naked in a chair on deck. The ship’s fire engine blasted a jet of water against his back as King Neptune reached into a bucket labeled “Lather.”
Neptune scooped out a handful of scum dredged from the bottom of the ship, mixed with spoil from the privy. The crowd cheered as he spread it across Cunningham’s cheeks and chin, then scraped it off with a razor. Yule, having crossed the equator and endured this ritual before, was only a spectator this time. He joined the applause when Cunningham, now “clean shaven,” stood and raised both fists in triumph.
The Erebus had dozens more greenhorns on her crew. Next up was Hooker. As Neptune’s aides pulled him forward and began to strip off his jacket, a shout rang out.
“No!”
Everyone turned to Ross, who was standing at the ship’s stern. “His father—his father knew of this custom. He insisted we not subject Hooker to it.”
The crewmen stared at one another. This ceremony was the Navy’s great equalizer, one no man—no matter his rank or education—could escape. Ross broke the silence.
“Come now, get on with it!” he barked. “There are plenty more greenhorns to shave!”
Neptune’s aides shoved Hooker back into the crowd as they brought forward another greenhorn, and the crew resumed its cheers.
Chapter 11
Ross Sea Coast
Antarctica
June 2123
The foyer was packed the next morning; Roscoe could see little above the heads of all fifty first-year interns, plus their Leadership Training Program cohort. He only found his group thanks to a glowing message, Jen’s Cohort Over Here, that his cohort leader was projecting from her wristband over her head. Rubbing his eyes, Roscoe threaded his way through the crowd. This tournament started before the galley opened, so he would miss breakfast and SynCoffee and probably lunch too. He was too tired to care much about the tournament’s prize, but not too tired to decide that “Crapshoot” wasn’t a profane enough nickname. Three “cohort activities” outside work hours in one week—just how many more would there be?
He was the last member of his cohort to arrive. “All right!” Jen said. The floating text vanished as she dropped her wrist. “Opening ceremony’s at 6:30 p.m. outside. “But first”—she lowered her voice and leaned in, prompting the cohort members to do the same—“I want to give you all something. Don’t take these until we’re out there.” She reached into her pocket and pulled out what looked like five shrink-wrapped breath mints.
“CoCaffs—cocaine and caffeine, formulated to keep you going in the cold. Shackleton used ’em.” She winked at Roscoe, Hamza, and no one else. “One compound StarCross hasn’t cracked down on yet.”
“You get these at Newloon?” Hamza asked.
“Yep. Don’t worry. You can trust my supplier.”
Grogginess kept Roscoe from asking more questions as Jen led them into the locker room. Suiting up didn’t help his mood. He discovered he hadn’t just drawn a roomy suit last time—these were all sized for people bigger than one meter, sixty centimeters, and forty-three kilos. It almost fit once he’d tightened the straps as much as he could.
“So do we have a plan for when we get there?” Kevin asked, giving his own straps several hard yanks.
“We’ll be given a grid where our meteorites are supposed to land.” Jen looked around, then continued in a hush. “Like I said, the usual strategy is for the cohort to line up and walk across it, picking up anything that looks out of place as they go. I was thinking we’d do that, but as soon as we see anything unusual, we’d scan it, and then compare it to the rocks nearby. If it has a different makeup, then we’ll know we’ve found a winner.”
Roscoe couldn’t think of anything better. Then he remembered there was another head intern who might also be able to buy an XRF gun. “Is Trent leading a cohort too? Do you think he bought one of these things?”
Jen shook her head. “Trent’s one of the Leadership Training Program people who isn’t leading a cohort. He wants to devote all his time to kissing Jahnford’s ass. Thinks that’s how he can maximize his chances of getting off-world.” She pulled the XRF gun from a knapsack she’d left in the locker, stuffed it into her suit, and zipped up the front. “I disagree.”
