Reyes nodded. “You’re right. It was my mistake, putting Ivar in that position.”
“To be honest, it would have saved a lot of trouble,” Eirik said. “It took some doing getting the priest here unseen. One of our agents in Normandy, a merchant named Olaf, brought him on a horse cart from Rouen. Olaf said Jarvik told him Gráttblaða was followed from Scotland by a ship of Castilian make.
“The Castilians have taken an interest in our mine?”
“Jarvik thought it was a privateer. It was the sort of ship preferred by Mediterranean pirates.”
“A long way from the Mediterranean.”
“The Saracens have been making it tough for pirates in the Mediterranean lately. An enterprising privateer might sail up the coast in search of easier spoils.”
“Or he might be a spy working for some Duke working for some Italian prince. Or someone even more powerful.”
“You mean the Church.”
“We did abscond with a priest. Did you debrief him?”
“I spoke to him on the ship, yes.”
“And?”
“He has the naïve sincerity characteristic of these rural priests.”
“Then you don’t think he’s a spy for Rome?”
“I think his intentions are religious, not political. That isn’t to say he isn’t being used by someone.”
“You think he told someone what he saw at the mine?”
“I don’t know. I think he’s hiding something.”
“You think he’s a security risk?”
“No more than anyone else at Höfn. He’s not going anywhere. If Gabe wants to talk to him, he knows where to find him.”
“Very good, Eirik. Thank you.”
*****
Gabe was in Hell, working on modifications to the magazines for the Winchesters, when a messenger arrived with a note from Reyes saying that she wanted to see him immediately. He met Eckart at the elevator.
“You too, huh?” he said, holding up the scrap of paper on which Reyes had scribbled her initials.
“Shit,” Eckart said. “This can’t be good.” Eckart, an engineer who was one of the first of Helena’s recruits, was filling in as Secretary of Resource Acquisition while O’Brien was overseas. The only reason he and Gabe would be called to meet with Reyes at the same time was a security breach at one of the satellite facilities. Their suspicions were confirmed by Reyes, who briefed them on what Eirik had told her.
“The priest is here?” Gabe asked.
“Höfn, yes,” Reyes said. “Do you want to talk to him?”
Gabe shook his head. “If Eirik couldn’t get anything from him, he’s not going to talk to me. Let him get comfortable. I’ve got plenty of informants at Höfn. Maybe he’ll let something slip.”
“And if he doesn’t?”
Gabe shrugged. “Then we treat him like any other recruit.”
“What about Camp Yeager?”
“My opinion hasn’t changed. The site is tainted. We need to shut it down.”
“Impossible,” Eckart said. “Yeager is our only source of coal.”
“We’ve got enough to get through the winter,” Reyes said.
“Barely, if we shut down all non-essential use immediately. And what about next winter?”
“The conversion to heating oil is already underway.”
“We’ve received no word from O’Brien’s expedition.”
“Nor did we expect to. The last word from Aengus is that O’Brien’s crew headed south on October first. O’Brien knows the plan. We have to assume the oil well will be producing by next fall.”
“O’Brien has no idea we’re shutting down Camp Yeager. We planned on having another year at least.”
“We don’t have another year,” Gabe said. “It may already be too late. The privateer we saw tailing Jarvik may not have been the first one. For all we know, they already know where we are.”
“Who?”
“The Pope. The Cho-ta’an. The Saxons. The Saracens. Who knows? That priest saw a steam shovel at Camp Yeager. No way he didn’t tell someone. I’ve been telling you for weeks, Chief. No matter how convoluted a route Eirik’s ships take, if we leave that mine open, we may as well leave a trail of bread crumbs right to Höfn.”
“Are there any other possible sites for a coal mine?” Reyes asked.
Eckart held up his hands. “Outside of Scotland? Northern Britain would be the best bet, but history is not on our side. We know Edward drives the Vikings out of Northumberland in 912.”
“So there’s no other coal-rich territory safely in the hands of Harald or one of his relatives?”
“I’m afraid not, chief. Even if there were, it would take months to negotiate for the mining rights, and then several weeks more to get the mine producing. Harald and Hrolfr can sense when we’re desperate, and we’re already maxed out on silver protection to meet our current obligations to them.”
“What other options do we have, heating-wise?”
“Our best bet at this point is vegetable oil. If we blend it right, it will burn just fine in the fuel oil furnaces. The conversion away from coal can continue, and we can make a seamless transition once we have a ready supply of petroleum. The problem is going to be getting our hands on enough vegetable oil. We don’t have time to build a large-scale production facility, and vegetable oil just isn’t produced in large quantities anywhere in Europe. I’m not sure we can buy enough, at any price, to keep Svartalfheim going for an entire winter.”
“Assume we can’t. Then what?”
“We all freeze to death?” Eckart offered. “I’m sorry, Chief. I don’t understand what you’re asking.”
“There’s no contingency plan in case we run out of heating fuel?”
“You know the plan,” Gabe said. “It’s the same plan we have for a major security breach at Svartalfheim. But there’s no coming back from it.”
“Evacuation,” Eckart said.
Gabe nodded. “High-value personnel would be extracted to satellite locations. The Operations Committee would be moved to the secondary location, currently Camp Glenn. Theoretically, Pleiades would continue, directed from the secondary location. Realistically, without radio communications, we’ve got no way to keep things going. This project runs on momentum. Eirik’s guys keep the ships moving, making sure everybody’s got the materials they need and nobody starves to death, but we’ve got no logistics management to speak of. You interrupt that flow, things are going to start to break down. People run out of supplies, people start to go hungry. Suddenly building spaceship components drops to dead last on everyone’s list of priorities. Once that sense of purpose disappears, it doesn’t come back.”
“If we had short wave radios and a fully operational secondary command location, we’d have a chance,” Eckart said. “But we’re a good five years away from either of those. To be honest, Gabe is being optimistic. Most of our satellite locations rely on coal for heating as well. If we run out of fuel, we’ve got nowhere to send anyone.”
“So that’s it, then,” Reyes said. “If we run out of fuel, we’re finished.”
“There is one other option,” Gabe said. “And I hesitate even to mention it.”
“What is it, Gabe?”
“Keep in mind this isn’t a recommendation,” Gabe said. “Just a sort of hail Mary possibility, to keep Pleiades running if all other options fail.”
“Understood, Gabe. What is it?”
“There’s enough room in Hell for two-hundred people to live. Not comfortably, but they’ll live. The temperature in the cave stays around fifty degrees Fahrenheit year-round. Warmer with a lot of hot bodies inside. Put the two hundred most valuable people in Hell. Stockpile enough food for them to last six months. Seal the doors.”
“Jesus Christ, Gabe. And let everybody else at Svartalfheim freeze to death?”
“Like I said, not a recommendation. But it is an option.”
“No, it isn’t,” Reyes replied.
Gabe shrugged. “If that
’s off the table, we need to start thinking about moving people to warmer climates, at least temporarily.”
Reyes shook her head. “You’re right about evacuation. If we start sending people away, we’re not going to get them back. And every person who leaves this place is a security risk.”
“Maybe we can move up the schedule on Camp Erhardt,” Gabe suggested. “At some point, we have to bite the bullet.” Camp Erhardt was the name an as-yes-nonexistent satellite facility in the Caribbean. It would serve as a stopover point for ships heading to Camp Hughes and act as a secondary command location in the case Svartalfheim was compromised. Up until now, it hadn’t been practical to maintain a permanent presence so far from their nexus of operations in northern Europe, but there was an unavoidable need for a southern location, in addition to convenience and redundancy: to escape Earth’s gravity, a spacecraft needed to reach a speed of 25,000 miles per hour. Some of that speed could be supplied by Earth’s own rotation, and the Iron Dragon was going to need all the help it could get. At the equator, the Earth spun about five hundred miles per hour faster than it did at the latitude of Iceland.
“We don’t have the manpower or the ships to start work on Camp Erhardt,” Reyes said. “And in the short term, it’s going to require even more centralization of resources at Svartalfheim.”
“In that case,” Eckart said, “we’re going to have some tough decisions to make when we run out of fuel.”
“We’re not going to run out,” Reyes said. “O’Brien is going to come through for us.”
“And if he doesn’t?” Gabe asked.
“If we can’t dig an oil well, this project is doomed anyway. I want this entire facility converted to fuel oil by next winter. Eckart, vegetable oil is your top priority. I want as much as you can possibly make, beg, borrow or steal. I’ll talk to Eirik about reassigning ships. Would more manpower help?”
“I think logistics is going to be the limiting factor,” Eckart said, “but I won’t say no if you’ve got men to spare. I’m sure I can find something for them to do.”
“Good, because we’ve got thirty coal miners who are going to be out of work soon.”
Chapter Seventeen
The morning Sjávarbotn was to depart, there was a strong, warm wind out of the southwest. This was a good omen: to reach the Gulf of Mexico, Sjávarbotn would first sail southeast toward Bermuda before catching the trade winds that blew west. As O’Brien stood on the bank of the river, waiting for the men to make last-minute preparations, Aengus emerged from the trail. Behind him was the Mi’kmaq warrior, Chegaoo. Over Chegaoo’s shoulder he carried a cloth rucksack. The two men paused near the trailhead. Aengus spoke a few words to Chegaoo, who nodded. Aengus continued down the bank to O’Brien.
“It occurred to me that you could use a guide,” Aengus said.
“You want to send Chegaoo along?” O’Brien asked, glancing at the Indian standing, stone-faced, on the bank. He could hardly able to believe what Aengus was proposing.
“He knows the coast, at least as far as far south as Connecticut, and he speaks the language of the Iroquois and the Sioux.”
“That might well prove useful, assuming he doesn’t cut our throats while we sleep.”
“Chegaoo is an honorable man,” Aengus said. “We have had our differences, but he would not join your expedition under false pretenses.”
“Whose idea is this, yours or his?”
Aengus hesitated. “After the feast last night, Chegaoo came to see me, asking about your expedition. Ordinarily I would not have been so candid, but… he’s Wakseka’s brother, you see. Sunow’s uncle.”
“What did you tell him?”
“You have to understand, the Mi’kmaq are an intuitive people. The Mi’kmaq understood almost immediately upon our arrival the apocalyptic nature of our mission. They knew we would not come to this strange land and undertake an endeavor like this unless we were desperate.”
“And you confirmed this belief last night.”
“I told him the survival of humanity—all of humanity—depends on your success.”
“Does he know that his people are doomed either way?”
“I have told him about many events in history—both past and future, from his perspective—but he does not know of the genocide of the Native Americans.”
“Nor does he know about LOKI, I would wager.”
“He suspects, I think. I have told him the Mi’kmaq people will still exist six hundred years from now, when Europeans return to this continent, but he is not fooled. He understands that our settlement exists in a bubble, and that bubbles eventually burst. That is why, I think, he wants to join your expedition. He wants to be part of something that will last, even if his deeds are never recorded in our books.”
“And even if his friends and family die here while he is gone.”
“We don’t know what will happen to Camp Orville. It will end at some point, yes, but so does everything. I’ve made a choice not to live in fear, and my people—both the Mi’kmaq and the Norse—respect that. It’s the same for all of us, O’Brien. We’ve chosen this cause despite the cost. Chegaoo deserves the chance to make that choice.”
O’Brien sighed. “If you trust him, then he is welcome. I will tell Fritjof.”
*****
Sjávarbotn and Norðurvindur set sail with O’Brien sitting in the prow of Sjávarbotn with Dorian, who was anxiously sucking ginger lozenges that Aengus had given him as a prophylactic for seasickness. Fritjof commanded the crew of Sjávarbotn, while Gudmund captained Norðurvindur. The newcomers, including the Mi’kmaq, had been divided more-or-less evenly between the two boats. Chegaoo had joined the oarsmen on Sjávarbotn.
The good weather held for three days, as Sjávarbotn rode the westerlies out until the ship was some three hundred miles east of the coast of New England. On the fourth day, a storm blew in from the north. This was good news and bad: the weather would make for rough sailing, but as long as the wind didn’t become so strong that it threatened to break the mast, they could ride it south until they hit the trade winds. They were about a hundred miles northwest of Bermuda when Fritjof ordered the sails furled. The crew of Norðurvindur, following at a distance of about two hundred yards, soon followed suit. The crew hunkered down as Sjávarbotn rode thirty-foot waves, buffeted by wind and rain that hit them like bullets. Dorian lay curled up in the prow, and Chegaoo, not looking much better, crouched next to him. O’Brien did his best to stay out of the way as some of the Vikings bailed water off the deck while others moved about in response to Fritjof’s commands, shifting their weight to keep Sjávarbotn upright.
As Sjávarbotn bobbed up and down on the swells, Norðurvindur frequently disappeared from view, and as the storm raged on, the two ships drifted farther and farther apart. Gudmund had a sextant and compass as well as a chart with rendezvous locations marked at the Bahamas and Florida, so if they lost contact, they could theoretically reconnect later. More worrisome was that the waves were crashing over the gunwales of the little ship, threatening to swamp it. It was all the crew of Sjávarbotn could do to keep their ship on top of the swells, and Norðurvindur was half its size. The storm went on unabated after the sun set and continued to rage all night, frequent flashes of lightning revealing that Norðurvindur was still with them. Then, about an hour before daybreak, O’Brien caught a glimpse of Norðurvindur’s prow jutting out of the ocean like a tower, its wolf’s head carving facing straight up as if howling at an unseen moon. When lightning flashed again, there was no sign of the karve. A glance at Fritjof’s face told him that he had seen it as well. O’Brien watched until well after morning but did not see it again.
There was nothing the crew of Sjávarbotn could do but hold on and hope they did not suffer the same fate. The storm raged for another day and night, before finally breaking on the morning of the third day. The winds died as if commanded by Thor himself, and soon the clouds cleared. The crew, exhausted, lay on the deck, baking in the sun.
After
the crew had rested for a few hours, Fritjof ordered them to take up their oars. The ocean was now dead calm, and they were still over a hundred miles from the trade winds that blew from the east. They could only row south and hope the wind picked up eventually.
A week later, the air remained still, and the men were sunburned and fatigued. They had enough food to last several weeks, but their fresh water would give out in less than a week. They had hoped to fill their barrels in Bermuda, but now that would mean rowing another two hundred miles out of their way. Fritjof had bet on the trade winds carrying them quickly to the islands of the Caribbean, but that now appeared to be a mistake. At this point they could row straight west to hit the Carolinas or continue south in the hopes of catching the trade winds. The former would require five days of rowing in the hot sun, at which point they would be stuck on the coast, with their destination opposite the prevailing winds. Fritjof opted to continue south.
Three days later, they still had no wind, and the men were growing desperate. The sextant told them they were now south of the Florida Keys. If the trade winds were blowing, they’d have hit them by now. Fritjof went to the prow to confer with O’Brien. Fritjof rarely asked for O’Brien’s advice; although O’Brien was in charge of the expedition, Fritjof’s command at sea was unquestioned. O’Brien had a sickening feeling he knew why Fritjof wanted to talk to him now.
“The mules require too much water,” Fritjof said, glancing back at the men rowing.
O’Brien nodded. “We can get by without them. Do what you need to do.”
Fritjof turned and ordered the men to stow their oars. The mules were brought onto the deck and slaughtered. As they had no way to cure or store the meat, the animals were thrown overboard. It was a tremendous waste, but it was better that the animals die painlessly now than they all succumb to thirst before they reached land.
When the mules had been disposed of, Fritjof ordered his men to change course to the east. At this point, it was unlikely they’d reach land before running out of water, but it was the only chance they had.
The Voyage of the Iron Dragon Page 14