They were traveling with the gusting wind, Massarra had explained, and may as well make the most of it. The spinnaker inflated and bloomed like a giant kite ahead of them, and it felt like they were being pulled up into the air each time they crested and surfed down the face of growing swells. The wind howled, but Massarra said she could handle it.
The rest of them went below deck.
Ufuk was constantly crouched over his tablet, often by himself in the tiny cabin in the front of the boat. He had a backpack filled with gadgets. Jess wondered if one of them was filled with compressed hydrogen, the fuel source he said his drones worked from. She didn’t ask. She didn’t want to know. Hector took to spending a lot of time with Ufuk, watching him play with the dots on the screen. Ufuk loaded some games onto Hector’s laptop, and played them with the boy. Jess liked that. He didn’t need to play with Hector, but he took the time to, at least a few times a day.
That night Jess went to find Raffa, curled up next to him, and tried to console him. She told him that maybe Lucca made it out. Abbie had come for them, and she’d been close with Lucca. There was a chance, and Lucca was smart and strong. She wasn’t sure how much Raffa understood, but she cradled him, held him like he was her son. And for her, then, he was.
“Jessica, wake up.”
She opened her eyes. It was Ufuk.
“What? Is everything okay?”
“I have someone on the radio, on an encrypted channel.” He deposited a small metal box next to her in the bunk, a small high-tech radio he’d brought from the snowcat. A wire snaked from the box into the hallway. The antenna.
A thin, tinny voice echoed from the speaker: “Jessica?”
Hector jumped up. “Ain Salah!” he squeaked.
Jess smiled an appreciative grin at Ufuk and took tablet. “How are things in Africa?” she said into it.
“Winter is coming, but still not freezing yet. More refugees are now camped south of the main town, but we can accommodate them. Things go well here. What about you? Are you well? Is my little Hector well?”
In the days and weeks after Nomad, Ain Salah had been one of the most frequent contacts on the radio. Hector took to speaking with him. He'd said he had a son about his age.
“Yes, Ain Salah, I am here,” Hector replied. “Jess teaches me more English.”
“I can hear that. You are becoming very good. Very good. Perhaps a story tonight? Just you and I my little Bedouin? Tales of adventure with roguish men who take to the seas to seek their fortune and the mysterious and beautiful princesses they must rescue. What do you think of that?”
“I want to hear more about Sinbad the sailor.”
Jess took Ufuk to one side. “You’re sure this is secure?”
“As I said, I have drones spreading encrypted signals over half of Western Europe. They won’t be able to decode it, and can’t triangulate us. Let the boy have his fun. I can tell you what Ain Salah has already told me.”
A laugh from the radio, and then came Ain Salah’s soft voice again. “I think I can find something to take us both on a wild adventure.”
Jess followed Ufuk into the main cabin, to leave Ain Salah to thrill with a swashbuckling tale of Arabian nights and stolen treasure carried by thieves on flying carpets.
The third morning, Jess woke up and got the coffee again as usual. It had been heartening to hear Ain Salah’s voice, to hear him tell them it was still warm in the south, but when she exited the hatch, something even more amazing greeted her.
Sunrise.
Reds and pinks. A beautiful pastel of colors rimmed the horizon to the east, with an orange blob glowing in the center. Jess realized she hadn’t seen the sun in weeks. Not as an actual thing.
“Beautiful, yes?” Massarra was behind the wheel. She took one of the coffees.
“Were you out here all night?” Jess slumped onto the bench to admire the sun over the bow.
“Nobody else was good enough to pilot that storm. We made over 450 kilometers yesterday.”
Jess triangulated in her head. They seemed to be heading toward the sunrise.
“We have turned for Africa,” Massarra said, sensing what she was thinking.
“Already?”
“A thousand kilometers or so straight ahead. We can’t miss a whole continent.”
“I guess not.”
“And it seems the clouds are thinning further in the south.” As Massarra said this, the thin line of clear weather closed up and extinguished the sun.
But she was right. And it did seem warmer. So they were just past the western tip of Sicily. Jess had always wanted to go there, but right now wasn’t the time, she thought giddily. The biting wind and spray suddenly seemed invigorating. This plan wasn’t insanity. They would make it. Somewhere that wasn’t frozen.
“I never asked you,” Jess said. “But how did you get a yacht into a frozen marina alone?”
Massarra’s face widened to accommodate the biggest smile Jess had ever seen on her. “Big marinas have cranes for lifting boats out of the water and putting them back in again. I knew the area at Monte Argentino had boats stored a few hundred meters above the water in the hills. I found a truck-crane that would start, loaded one of the boats onto it, and rolled it down the hillside into the water and onto the ice. The trucks have big tires, excellent for deep snow. The ice broke eventually under the weight. The truck-crane sank beneath the boat, leaving it floating.”
“But you were in the truck when it sank?”
“As I said, it wasn’t easy.”
“What if the boat had capsized?”
“The keel would have righted it.”
“And you did this alone, in those conditions?”
Massarra wagged her head to one side.
“When we were leaving Sanctuary,” Jess said, her voice going quiet, “why did you tell me not to trust Abbie Barnes?”
The wide smile slid away from Massarra’s face, replaced with a blank-faced mask. “Her last name is Marshall, yes?”
“I think the General was her father. He came to see me in the prison. A nice man.”
“Salman told me that a Marshall person was one of the ones involved with Müller.”
“And you believed him?”
“Why would he lie?”
“And you think it was the General?”
Massarra remained silent, her eyes straight ahead.
“Wait, you think he meant Abbie?” The thought seemed impossible to Jess.
“I don’t know. I just know the name Marshall.”
“She risked her life to come back to the jail complex for me,” Jess pointed out.
“So did I,” Massarra replied.
The wind whistled. The sky darkened.
“And why did you do that?”
“Because I believe you are important, Jessica. People know who you are. You are a part of the truth, and I fight for the truth.” The smallest of smiles worried the corners of her mouth. “And for my friends. We are friends, no? Is that not enough?”
“And you are friends with Ufuk?”
Again the blank mask. “That is more complicated.”
“Did you destroy Sanctuary? You and Ufuk? If we are friends, then tell me the truth.”
“I did not.”
“Did Ufuk?”
Massarra hesitated. “Not as far as I know, and nothing in his preparations indicated he knew. This was a surprise for him, a very bad one.”
“And why are you so loyal to him?”
“He was a large benefactor to our cause. And we are friends. And I am tired. Can you take over?”
The next morning presented no sunrise, just an endless expanse of gray that opened up from the darkness. Ufuk took the helm around noon, and instead of going below, Jess spent a lot of time at the bow by herself, watching the boat cut a white ribbon into the dark water. When she was alone and had time to think away from the others, her thoughts returned to images of the people escaping from Sanctuary, of the fire and flames and of Ballie Booker crus
hed beneath the rocks.
Her smiling friend Ballie Booker.
In Sanctuary she’d thought of how lucky Ballie was to be attached to her, to be rescued from his boat in the middle of this same sea. Instead, if he hadn’t been plucked from his boat, he’d probably still be alive, and so would all of this crew and the people they’d rescued. They were dead because they knew her. Because of her.
In the freezing air she used the physical pain of the cold to push away thoughts of everyone who’d been near to her and died, and the countless millions she didn’t know who were gone. Their pain had ended, but she felt like hers was only just beginning.
Giovanni approached and offered to keep her company. She had asked him what he thought about what had happened in Switzerland.
“I try not to think about it.” He took the binoculars from her and peered through them.
“I can’t stop thinking about it.”
“It’s not good to dwell on it. Easy to say, I know.”
“We can’t let them get away with it.”
“And who exactly would that be?”
“That place was supposed to be an ark for humanity. Why destroy it? As bad as it was, at least it was some semblance of what existed before. Why do people need to keep killing after all this death? What’s the point? It’s not right.”
“No judges and juries anymore.”
“So you’re saying there’s no right and wrong anymore either.”
“I didn’t say that.”
“But you meant it.”
“I just mean that all that’s important, is us surviving.”
Jess took the binoculars from him. “And I bet whoever destroyed Sanctuary, they were thinking the same thing. When will it end?”
“Not soon, I hope.” Giovanni wrapped his arms around her and kissed her neck. “I mean, I hope we have more time together.”
“Quit it.” She pushed him away.
Nothing more was said about it. She opted to spend most of her time alone on deck after that. The air wasn’t as cold anymore. The ice wasn’t forming from the spray. And the boat was too cramped to carry on any sort of conversation without being overheard.
By the sixth day, the initial excitement of turning toward Africa had passed. They’d almost run out of food. The red dot on Ufuk’s tablet said they’d already reached the coast, and they slowed to half sail, but saw nothing.
Somewhere in the distance, a seagull squawked.
Everyone made their way up onto deck, their tentative expectancy tempered by uncertainty. A mist lingered, a quiet wind whispered over the bow of the boat. Apart from the wash of the waves and the creaking mast, there was an eerie calm.
“That was a bird, right?” Jess said excitedly. She hadn’t even seen a living animal outside in weeks.
“I can’t see anything,” Giovanni said.
“We have to be close to land,” Massarra said. “Everyone spread out and take a side of the boat. Keep your eyes open.”
It was Raffa who saw it first, the debris scattered in the water. Massarra gave Jess the wheel and, with Giovanni’s help, took down the mainsail and reefed the genoa. The boat rocked, momentum the only thing now carrying it forward. A thick mist rolled in clumps of slate-gray smoke.
Massarra took the wheel again and spun the boat about. “Take some of the fenders from the port side,” she instructed Raffa, “and hang them over to starboard. Keep them between us and whatever we approach.”
“Everyone hang onto something,” Giovanni shouted.
A structure loomed from the darkness. The impact was harder than Jess expected. Massarra had not wanted to turn the engine on, preferring to save diesel for the dingy instead. They seemed to be surrounded by waterlogged buildings that were half-submerged.
“What now?”
“Now we get ourselves and as much as we can carry into the inflatable,” Jess said. “No way we can get through that with the sailboat. Pack rucksacks with all your personal gear, sleeping bags, and clothing, everything you think you’ll need. We’ll take whatever else we can in the duffle bags from the boat.”
Ufuk had one of his tiny drones fly off the deck and scan the immediate area with imaging. Of the fleet of hundreds of drones he had in Italy, only four had survived from a small contingent he’d pushed south well ahead of them. He didn’t give a lot of detail about how they did it, but the tiny craft appeared from the darkness and hovered to land on the bow of the boat as they neared land. They only had an hour or two each of fuel, he said. Once the drone was airborne, they followed a path on his tablet toward what appeared to be solid ground.
“Can you slow down?” Jess shouted over the engine noise. “I think I can see something.”
Shapes began to form. Vague, hunched outlines of low structures. Irregular and twisted. As they approached the first, Jess saw it was the roof of building, with heavy chunks gouged from the concrete, steel rebar twisted and exposed. Massarra throttled the boat back to low and allowed it to drift. Broken buildings appeared through the mist.
Giovanni shook his head. “I don’t understand. What is this?”
“Sabkhat Ghuzayyil, the basin next to the coast, is fifty meters below sea level,” Ufuk said. “It must have flooded.”
They ran aground on a sandy shore. It surprised them, because the landscape was so flat and barren that it could barely be seen in the light of their headlamps.
“What do we do with the boat?” Jess had unpacked all the gear and stood, staring at the beached inflatable.
“Leave it here,” Massarra said. “Turn it over, cover it with sand. You never know when we might need it.”
“I suggest we get used to the terrain a little,” Giovanni said. “Walk in a few miles and then make camp for the night.”
They each strapped one of the small drones to their backpack, stowed the boat, and began walking. When they finally did make camp in a shallow basin, after a few hours of walking across sand crusted with fine crystals of ice that formed as night fell and glistened in the light thrown by their head torches, Jess didn’t argue when Massarra insisted again she take watch. She lay down on her sleeping mat, pulling her down bag tightly around her, and sleep came as a sweet, dark relief.
She had no idea how long she had been asleep when a growing light woke her.
Outside, a low wind growled and played with the folds of the tent.
It took a supreme effort of will to pull herself out of the sleeping bag and into the cold. She realized as she pulled on her boots, barely noticing the fog billowing from her mouth or the crystals of ice that had formed across the skin of the tent, that it was already morning.
She went outside and found herself surprised at how light it was. Not bright, like pure unhindered sunlight, but filtered through high flat clouds. It lent the place a washed-out, watery look. Sand the color of river clay.
She shivered and zipped her coat. Giovanni stood atop a nearby dune.
She joined him. “You didn’t wake me.”
“You needed the sleep.” He put his arm around her.
For a moment they stood in silence, surveying the featureless landscape.
“I expected it to be warmer,” she said.
“It is. Not even freezing.”
“Close to it.”
“Tropical.” He forced a small laugh. “We should eat and get moving.”
“We don’t need to rush. Let them rest.”
RESISTANCE
PART THREE
Mars First Mission
Deep Interplanetary Space
For two hours, the crew of Mars First worked on the ship until enough systems were green-lining, and life support was stabilized, so they weren’t in a critical emergency. Cuijpers managed to bootstrap the Mars First artificial intelligence system. It was entering the final stages of its internal diagnostics.
Everything was coming back online. The ship was literally coming back to life.
Rankin called his three surviving crew into the communal area and ordered them a
ll to eat something. Once he’d watched them stuff enough into their mouths to sustain them for the next few hours, he relaxed enough to open a packet stamped “eggs and bacon.” In his other hand was a foil container of chicken curry, but he thought better of it. What he would have done for good coffee, not the weak pretender he sipped on now—but it was better than nothing, and the caffeine would help.
“Status reports,” he said. “Keep it brief for now.”
“I was wrong about the hull,” Cuijpers said. “Two sections have been depressurized and are uninhabitable. There’s physical damage to other parts of the hull, but not macro-structural. Looks like we had a fight with a swarm of micrometeorites. And no comms at all from Earth. Total radio silence.”
They all took a moment to digest that.
“ECLS is functioning adequately throughout the rest of the ship,” Shouang said. “Got the hydrogen cells and main reactor back. Not at optimal levels, but that may be damage to the cooling systems. Nothing we can do right now without an EVA to take a closer look.”
“Once Mars First comes back online, it’ll be able to tell us in more detail,” Cuijpers added.
“Siegel? Anything?”
The small German shrugged. “I mean, if we cut away everything but the main engines, we could vector a long swinging trajectory back to Earth, but…it would be two, maybe three years out here. And even then, who’s left back on—”
“This was always a mission of destiny,” Rankin interrupted, holding out one hand to excuse himself. “Seems it’s become a different one than we imagined. This was designed to be almost a year in deep space, so maybe we can handle two or three.”
Resistance (Nomad Book 3) Page 12