Thirst

by L. A. Larkin

  ‘Luke, do you hear me? The blizzard is right in your path. Get the tent up and wait it out. Over.’

  ‘Ah, to hell with it,’ Blue grumbled. ‘If we’re going on this suicide mission, let’s get on with it. But we’ve gotta go real slow. I don’t want to end up in an icy grave.’

  ‘You’re both out of your minds. But I can’t leave you in the shit now, can I?’ said Craig. Then he muttered, ‘Good fucking job this is my last season. Won’t get another posting.’

  ‘Thanks, guys. I owe you one.’

  ‘You owe me a hell of a lot more than that. I must be fucking mad,’ mumbled Blue. ‘And what are we going to tell the boss?’

  Luke pulled the radio close to his mouth. ‘Maddie, this is Luke. Weather looks fine here. We’re continuing to PIG 1, only another kay to go. Out.’ He dropped his radio back to his chest and revved the engine. He ignored Maddie’s remonstrations, knowing he’d be in deep shit when he returned. But he couldn’t let Mac and Dave down. ‘Keep really tight,’ he said.

  ‘Gotcha,’ replied Blue.

  ‘I ain’t losing you,’ said Craig.

  As the wind grew stronger, tiny particles of ice were whipped up into the air; it was like entering a cloud of shrapnel. Luke could no longer see the sky. At least it wasn’t a complete whiteout – at least he could see the front of his snowmobile. They slowed to a crawl.

  The adrenaline spread like fire through Luke’s body. He could feel the wind buffeting him and marvelled at the unstoppable force of nature. He felt alive, just as he had when monstrous waves had lunged at the giant ice-breaker that had transported him to Hope Station. He craned his neck to check on his team. Blue might be nervous but he was doing fine, and Craig was clearly unfazed.

  Luke accelerated gently, checking his GPR monitor. He’d be relying on it to get them there, since visibility was virtually nil. But it couldn’t detect surface boulders, so to avoid them he’d have to rely on memory alone. They were coming up to a large glacial ‘erratic’ – a boulder stuck for thousands of years in the ice.

  In the howling winds Luke pressed his radio close to his lips. ‘Craig, Blue, this is Luke. Moving right. Erratic ahead.’

  Neither man acknowledged the message. They probably couldn’t hear him above the winds. Luke repeated his warning, and first Craig and then Blue said they’d received it. They steered to the right. The boulder, as high as a house, appeared almost out of nowhere.

  ‘Luke, this is Blue. I can’t see you.’

  Luke braked. ‘Roger that. Just follow the rope. I’ve stopped moving.’

  ‘Luke, can you hear me? This is Blue. I can’t see you.’

  Shit. He hadn’t heard Luke’s response. Luke tried again. The rope didn’t move and Blue didn’t appear. The air was so thick with ice that it was like trying to see through cotton wool, but Luke could just make out the beam from Blue’s single headlight. He drove round in a narrow arc and found Blue crouched forward over his machine, his gloved hands rigidly gripping the handlebars.

  Luke pulled up parallel and stopped. ‘You all right?’

  ‘Not sure,’ Blue replied. ‘Feeling claustrophobic, like I can’t breathe. All this ice in the air. Can’t see a thing.’

  Luke hesitated. He knew he wasn’t good at looking after people. In fact, he hated it. Luke’s solitary childhood had taught him to simply get on with things, because nobody else was going to do it for him. His French father, a head chef, had been too busy running his kitchen, and his Australian mother too busy chasing new lovers. Luke had learned to look after himself but never anyone else. Why in God’s name had Maddie put him in charge?

  ‘You’ll be fine,’ he told Blue. ‘All you have to do is follow the rope. Real slow, I promise.’

  Luke led the way and, to his relief, Blue followed. They were approaching another rocky outcrop. This time, Blue stayed so close that his snowmobile might have been a dog sniffing another’s tail. The second boulder was much smaller, but still large enough to wreck a vehicle and seriously hurt the rider.

  For Luke, though, this was familiar territory, even in a blizzard. After five months monitoring the gashes opening up across the glacier, and the alarming acceleration of its flow towards the sea, he knew its features intimately. The Walgreen Crevasse was widening by a metre each week. He’d targeted another one for his summer research: the Fitzgerald, which ran parallel to the Walgreen but, at twenty kilometres, was much longer. The two crevasses were like train tracks, with a strip of solid glacier between them.

  Ahead, a narrow snow bridge over a crevasse separated the search party from PIG 1. Luke had crossed it many times and knew it was strong enough to support their snowmobiles. To the untrained eye, it looked solid, if slightly sunken. But a few metres below the snow bridge there was a deep void. Last year, a colleague had accidentally fallen into a crevasse like this because he’d strayed from an approved travel route. Luckily, he’d survived.

  Luke halted. Blue stopped and waited, then Craig arrived too. The wind speed was picking up – it was now around sixty, maybe even seventy kilometres per hour – and Luke had to lean into it as he shouted into his radio. ‘Luke to Craig and Blue. I’ll go first. It’s safe. I’ve used this bridge before. Over.’

  ‘This is Blue. Can’t we go around?’ His words were almost lost to the roaring winds.

  Luke held the radio as close to his mouth as possible. ‘Say again?’

  ‘Can’t we go around?’ Blue shouted into his radio.

  ‘Luke here. Take too long. Storm’s getting worse.’ Luke paused for a moment, considering what might go wrong. ‘It should be sound, but if the bridge collapses and I fall, you’ll have to brake and turn your snowmobile over to take my weight. Blue, you’re next in line – can you do that?’

  ‘Affirmative,’ said Blue, but Luke was worried he might panic again.

  ‘Craig, are you happy with that?’ Luke shouted, seeking reassurance from the more confident man.

  ‘Craig here. No worries, I’ve done this before.’

  Luke pulled away at a crawl. The snow bridge was twice the width of his vehicle, but with such poor visibility it felt to Luke as if he were crossing a knife’s edge. Buried beneath the thick layers of his clothing, his heart galloped. He was across in a few seconds but it felt like a lifetime. With his brake on, he radioed Blue. ‘Safely across. Your turn now.’

  The response was slow. ‘Blue to Luke. Will do.’ Was it the wind that made his voice sound weak?

  Luke couldn’t see across to the other side of the snow bridge but he could see the rope didn’t move. He waited. Still no movement. Then suddenly the rope zinged tight. His heart almost missed a beat. Had Blue fallen? Luke immediately turned his snowmobile on its side and dug his ice axe into the glacier surface. This would enable him to hold a snowmobile’s weight if necessary. ‘This is Luke,’ he radioed. ‘What’s up, Blue?’ He wouldn’t allow his voice to betray his agitation.

  No response.

  ‘Blue, can you hear me? This is Luke. Are you in trouble?’

  Still no response, but then the rope loosened. Luke released a breath he hadn’t realised he’d been holding. Through the swirling snow and ice, the red snowmobile and its orange-clad driver materialised like an apparition. He was across the bridge. Blue sped up and stopped behind Luke.

  ‘Blue, what happened?’ asked Luke, still clinging to his buried ice axe.

  ‘Nothing. Just taking my time.’ He nodded at Luke’s upended snowmobile. ‘Good to see you’re looking out for me.’

  Luke gave him the thumbs-up. He guessed that Blue had mistakenly reversed in a moment of fear, but he didn’t want to embarrass the good doctor. Craig appeared shortly afterwards. Luke righted his snowmobile and retrieved his ice axe.

  ‘Nearly there,’ said Luke. ‘Look out for the marker flags.’

  The field site was little more than a generator and two red, domed pods, with porthole windows. The apples were just big enough to house two scientists amongst the equipment and provide shelter,
food and emergency supplies. Radiating out from the apples were poles, dug into the ice at each of the four points of the compass, with red triangular flags that helped the scientists find their shelter in bad weather. Luke spotted the first flag and immediately felt a surge of relief.

  They stopped outside the first apple. The whole site was covered in a layer of snow. Even though visibility was improving as the storm began to subside, tracking footprints was impossible. Luke opened the hut door and stepped inside, hoping to find Mac and Dave sheltering inside. But the men weren’t there. Luke checked the second apple. Nobody.

  ‘Where could they be?’ asked Blue. They no longer needed to use their radios; the wind had died to a low whine.

  Luke looked around. There was no other shelter. The three men walked around the site, searching for clues, but found nothing. Mac’s and Dave’s snowmobiles were still parked next to the generator, packed with research equipment. Luke checked inside the pods again and realised their radios weren’t there. They must have them. Luke tried calling them but received no reply. In fact, he heard nothing at all. Not even a signal.

  ‘Craig, try your radio, will you? Mine’s gone dead.’

  Craig tried calling Luke. ‘Dead as a dodo.’

  ‘Mine too,’ said Blue. ‘What the hell is going on?’

  Luke’s heartbeat sped up. He removed his mask. He felt suffocated by it. The cold slapped him in the face and helped him focus. The radios were the least of his worries. Luke stared out into the never-ending whiteness. Where would they go without their snowmobiles? He grabbed the binoculars and scanned the ice sheet. If they were out there and hurt, they’d be buried under snow by now. He lowered the binoculars. No, it had to be an accident.

  His eyes moved apprehensively in the direction of the Walgreen Crevasse.

  T MINUS 4 DAYS, 21 HOURS, 35 MINUTES

  5 March, 2:25 pm (UTC-07)

  Robert admired himself on video at the Chinese Polar Institute’s indoor mountaineering centre. Hadn’t he surprised his instructor, who had mistakenly assumed his damaged hand would hold him back! He stood and stretched, knocking the remaining Hope Station two-way radio to the floor. He picked it up.

  ‘Mac to Hope. Receiving you weak and intermittent,’ he said in his best Australian accent, reliving the moment of his subterfuge.

  ‘Sir,’ interrupted Huang, ‘I can confirm the jammer is working. Their radio and satellite communications are down.’

  Robert leaned over the officer’s desk. ‘Are you absolutely certain?’

  ‘Yes, sir. Your contact must have fixed the jammer.’

  ‘Everybody has a price. The secret is to know what it is.’ Robert paused. ‘And the internet? No emails? No tweets?’

  ‘Already fixed. Hope Station cannot send a message to the outside world.’

  ‘How does it work? I know the Eye bypassed AARO’s firewall, unnoticed, some time ago. One of our many safeguards. Then what?’

  ‘On your command, he has gained domain admin rights over AARO’s headquarters in Kingston.’

  Robert’s thin brows frowned and the comms officer blinked nervously. ‘Drop the jargon and get on with it,’ Robert ordered.

  ‘Yes, sir. Once our hacker’s on the network he shuts down the routers at both Hope and at AARO’s headquarters by deleting the routers’ configuration and operating system.’ Robert frowned again. Huang sped up, ‘Both routers can be fixed – and we know at Kingston they have already done it – but they can’t fix Hope Station’s remotely. It can only be done by someone at Hope who knows what to do, and without their comms officer, they have no hope of fixing it.’

  ‘Are you sure there’s nobody who can?’

  ‘There are two who might try,’ replied Huang. ‘Maddie Wildman, who seems quite IT-savvy, and Luke Searle, who’s into computers. But if they don’t know where the IOS file is stored on the server, they can’t solve the problem.’

  ‘IOS?’

  ‘Internet Operation System. It makes the router work. They’d have to find the IOS file and then load it onto their switch hardware.’

  ‘So if the hacker has complete control, he should delete the IOS file off the station server so there’s no chance they’ll find it.’

  ‘He could do that, sir.’

  ‘But surely Hope will have hardware backup? Disks?’

  ‘General Zhao ordered King to remove them from the crate before it left Kingston. Hope Station has no backup.’

  Robert nodded approvingly. ‘Delete the software backup too.’

  While Huang issued instructions to the hacker, Robert checked his emails. One alerted him to a live video feed from Whalers Island. He clicked the link and saw a grey sandy beach, strewn far and wide with the bodies of penguins. Against the ashen backdrop, the strikingly crisp black and white of the dead Adelie penguins’ feathers dazzled him. He nodded as if he were appreciating one of the priceless masterpieces hanging in his Hong Kong office.

  ‘Whalers Island,’ he said aloud. ‘The secret haven of hunters in days gone by.’

  He clicked an icon and a three-dimensional map of the island appeared. He moved this new image to the top-right of the screen so he could still follow the live feed.

  The hidden interior bay was large enough to contain Pearl Harbor. It could only be entered through a narrow breach in the sea cliffs, which was hard to find; hence it had been christened Deception Point. Robert traced the entrance to the inner sea with a long slim finger. Once a ship was inside the hidden harbour, it would be shrouded in a rank cloud of sulphur-laced steam that seeped out through the rocks. His finger moved to the bay where the Australian Antarctic Research Organisation’s quarantine team had set up camp. He stabbed his finger at the words ‘Whalers Bay’.

  ‘A secret haven indeed.’

  Robert closed the map and returned to the video. He watched as the cameraman moved inland, following the valley the penguins had used to return to their nests. At regular intervals he saw large red signs in English, Spanish and Mandarin: ‘Quarantine. Do not enter.’ He laughed. Robert had always marvelled at how easily the masses obeyed orders, especially signs forbidding something.

  The cameraman spoke, complaining of the stench of ammonia from the pink penguin faeces that littered the thousands of nest sites. Nothing moved in this graveyard, except the feathers of the dead birds fluttering in the wind. The cameraman swore as he noticed movement, and Robert leaned forward in excitement. It was a penguin, barely alive, but unlike any other Adelie penguin. Instead of having a dazzling white chest, this bird was all black except for a small white patch around its beak. It was trying to walk but kept falling forward. Its mouth foamed.

  ‘A genetic anomaly: an Adelie without the white feathers,’ Robert said aloud. ‘Come on, my ugly duckling, you can do it.’ He clenched his right fist and cheered the penguin on. Terrified by the human closing in on it, the penguin, now on its belly, struggled to stand but was unable to. Blood filled its eyes, and its beak opened and closed, as if gasping for air. Some minutes passed until, finally, the bird died.

  ‘Weakling,’ Robert muttered. But, of course, it was hard to recover from strychnine poisoning.

  T MINUS 4 DAYS, 20 HOURS, 56 MINUTES

  5 March, 3:04 pm (UTC-07)

  The storm had subsided but the silence filled Luke with dread. Without speaking, he started to disgorge the contents of the recovery kit. Before he got close to the crevasse’s edge he had to anchor himself, and if either of their missing colleagues was in the chasm, he’d need to set up a pulley system to raise him. Luke was so desperate to get set up that it didn’t occur to him to tell the others what he was doing.

  ‘I’ll give you a hand,’ said Craig, who knew what Luke was up to.

  Luke looked up, remembering his companions.

  ‘You think they’re down there?’ asked Blue, nodding towards the Wal.

  ‘I hope not, but I’m going to take a look. If they’re not, we’ll do a line search, using that pod as the fixed point. Here, help me get t
he anchors in,’ he said, handing Craig the ice screws and ice axe.

  Luke calculated where the three screws – each the length of a standard hammer – should go. Craig cleared away the loose surface ice and screwed them into the solid stuff. Luke threaded ropes through the eyes of the screws and knotted them, using a three-pronged fork pattern.

  With the anchor system in place, Luke hooked his harness to it and switched on his head torch. He walked towards the lip of the crevasse, scanning the area for any sign of anchors that Mac and Dave may have used. Every AARO expeditioner received crevasse rescue training before leaving for Antarctica, Luke knew, so Mac and Dave would have followed these same procedures. Dave, in particular, as he was a keen mountaineer. He and Luke had often spent their time off abseiling into crevasses, which everybody else thought was utter madness.

  So, if either Mac or Dave had set about a rescue, why were there no anchors?

  Luke peered down into the darkness. The first few metres of icy walls shone blue, but the colour darkened until he couldn’t differentiate between the walls and the space between. The overcast sky made it difficult to see into the depths. He used his head torch to search the ledges, but it was like shining a light at multiple fractured mirrors. It was nigh on impossible to fathom the actual shape of the space without entering it. But Luke knew this part of the crevasse well. Despite his sense of foreboding, his mind flickered fleetingly to an image from a movie he’d watched with Jason, when Superman’s crystal fortress was destroyed. He pushed the mental image aside, annoyed at the distraction.

  As he shone his torch at a ledge to his right, he spied something orange. His head told him that it had to be one of his friends, but he didn’t want to believe it. He kneeled closer to the crevasse’s lip and moved the torch’s beam slowly over the orange shape. There was no doubt it was one of their men, and he wasn’t moving.

  ‘Dave! Mac! Are you down there? It’s Luke – I’m coming to get you.’ He waited for a cry, a moan, a banging, anything. ‘Oh, God,’ whispered Luke.

  ‘What can you see?’ called Blue, kneeling behind one of the anchors.