The Kingmaker

by Ryan, Kennedy

  The captain searches the sky crowded with ominous clouds and looks up at the stars imploringly, like they might pose a solution where there apparently is none. He says the words we all hoped we’d never have to hear.

  “We’ve been hit.”

  28

  Lennix

  “Don’t leave a street unturned,” I tell the volunteers sitting around the cheap wooden table in Nighthorse campaign headquarters. “We need to get as many eligible voters to vote early as possible. Inclement weather, long lines, voter suppression tricks onsite the day of—all well-documented barriers for our demographic on voting day. Let’s get as many of them to vote in advance as possible.” I pause to smile. “Vote for us, of course.”

  The small team comprised mostly of student and elderly volunteers laughs at my tiny joke. I try to keep morale high. Have to. We are in the fight of our lives with a strong incumbent still in the lead, according to every poll.

  Last week, Mr. Nighthorse asked me to help with our voter drive. We’re about six weeks away from the election, and we may be behind, but we gain ground every week. By election day, I believe we can not only eliminate the sitting congressman’s lead, but overtake him.

  “Okay,” I say once the laughter and chatter die down. “Let’s get out there.”

  Everyone has their assignments and grabs clipboards already loaded with absentee ballot forms so if people want to complete them onsite, we’ll literally take the forms and mail them in for them.

  I’m grabbing a clipboard, too, ready to hit my assigned streets when Kimba walks in. She started working with the campaign a few weeks ago. I know she believes in Jim, but I think more than anything she didn’t want to be apart from me. After four years of college and inseparable friendship, I don’t want to be away from her either.

  “Have you seen the news?” she asks, her face troubled.

  “News about what?” I ask distractedly, checking to make sure I have my forms, buttons and campaign signs to give anyone who wants them.

  “It’s Maxim.”

  A droplet of ice water cuts down my back. I haven’t heard from him. That was fine. We agreed to that. I knew that, though a tiny part of me has been marking off the days until his expedition is over and, according to his voice mail, we can talk. I haven’t let myself consider the dangers he was potentially facing. No news has been good news.

  Until now.

  “What about him?” I ask, trying to keep the panic from my voice.

  Kimba picks up the remote, turns the TV on, and flips through a few channels until she reaches CNN.

  Antarctic expedition team trapped in deadly storm

  Deadly?

  Trapped?

  The headline appears above a line of photos, and I recognize David and Maxim immediately. The words and images are a one-two punch to my solar plexus. I can’t breathe and I’m choking.

  “A dangerous situation is unfolding in Antarctica,” the reporter says with the appropriate amount of professional graveness. “A team researching climate change in the southern hemisphere finds themselves caught in a storm of imperfect conditions. Their ship has been hit and is sinking. They’re thousands of miles from civilization and hundreds of miles from shore. Extreme winds have assaulted the area, and low visibility makes flying in to rescue them nearly impossible.”

  I collapse into a rolling chair and fold shaking hands in my lap. I’m not sure I can do this again. When they found Tammara’s body, there was barely time to cry, to attend the funeral and console her family. If I think too long about how she died, I’ll wonder if Mama died that way, too. If her body was so carelessly used and then discarded, but unlike Tammara’s, never found. I pushed grief aside, old and new, the demands of the campaign as much a distraction as a necessity.

  Now this. I feel trapped here with my frigid grief and icicle fear, and the thing I don’t often allow myself anymore, but for Maxim, I must find.

  Hope.

  29

  Maxim

  “It’s too dangerous.”

  I say the words to the entire group, but Dr. Larnyard is the one I pin my hard stare to.

  “What do you suggest, Kingsman?” he snaps. “We stay on a sinking ship and die in the ocean?”

  A few of the university students gasp at the word “die.”

  This motherfucking idiot.

  “We’re not going to die,” I reassure them, taking a moment to look directly at the youngest students. “I won’t let that happen.”

  Grim meets my eyes with raised brows. His message is clear. How you gonna keep that promise?

  “We’ve been hit,” Dr. Larnyard reminds us unnecessarily. “We were three degrees to the right yesterday, and now we’re how many, Captain?”

  Captain Rosteen glances from his tilt meter to me. “Five degrees now.”

  “Two degrees in a day is significant,” Dr. Larnyard says. “We need to get off this ship. Some of those ice floes are a full acre. We can take rafts to those and wait there to be rescued.”

  “Except no one can make it to us right now,” I say. “And we don’t know when they’ll be able to. You’d have us in tents on an acre of ice in the middle of a blizzard?”

  “It’s the best of two evils.”

  “The best would have been if we’d listened to Kingsman in the first place,” Grim snaps. “And stayed ashore where our chances would have been better.”

  “There’s nothing we can do about that now,” I cut in. We have enough we’re fighting without fighting each other, but I have to talk some sense into Dr. Larnyard before he actually convinces anyone to follow him into a deadly storm. “We need to find the best way out of our current circumstance, and I cannot endorse leaving this ship in a storm this bad.”

  “And I cannot endorse staying on a ship sinking into the Southern Ocean,” Dr. Larnyard fires back. “This is your first Antarctic expedition, Kingsman, yes?”

  “Yes,” I grit out. “You know it is.”

  “Well it’s my fifth,” he says. “And I’ll be damned if I let some amateur with a superhero complex lead our team into a death trap.”

  “Him lead us into a death trap?” Grim asks, anger imprinted on his usually stoic features. “You were the one who—”

  “Grim,” I snap. “Shut the hell up. That’s not helping.”

  There’s a brief silence while our angry eyes clash in the tension filling the ship’s meeting room.

  “I’m leading this expedition,” Dr. Larnyard says. “It’s my call to make, and I say we take our chances while we can. If the storm worsens, it’ll only make it harder for us to leave later and get to safety on one of the nearby ice floes. It’s now or maybe never.”

  His dire words spark a flurry of concerned murmurs from the team, just shy of panic.

  “I’m staying with my ship,” Captain Rosteen says. “I’m not saying it’s the safest option. I’m saying this is my ship and I won’t abandon it until there is no choice left to me.”

  “I’ll go with them,” one of his crew members offers, his dark eyes anxious when he glances out the porthole to the howling storm beyond.

  “I’m not leaving either,” Grim states firmly. “It’s not the smartest option.”

  “I’m staying,” I add, hoping reason will prevail if enough of us push for it.

  In the end, most of the group decides to stay aboard the ship. Even as Dr. Larnyard and about a third of our team prepares to take a few rafts to the nearest ice floe, I keep watching the radio, willing someone to call and say conditions have improved enough for them to fly in and rescue us. It’s not safe on this ship. I know that, but it’s our best hope.

  I watch through the porthole when Dr. Larnyard and his contingency load into a few rafts, insulated in their extreme-weather gear and pressing into the howling winds.

  “Fool,” David mutters from my left.

  “Asshole,” Grim adds from my right.

  “I hope they don’t regret leaving.” I blow out a worried breath. “Hell, I hope we don
’t regret staying. Any word from anyone?”

  “Nope,” Grim says. “Visibility is shit, and no one with half a brain would risk trying to fly into this storm right now. It’d be signing their own death warrant.”

  I hope we haven’t signed ours.

  * * *

  It’s only been a few hours when we hear a shout from outside. Grim, David and I run to the porthole.

  “Shit,” I say through clenched teeth “I told that stupid bastard.”

  If it wasn’t for the bright red jacket, I wouldn’t be able to make out the figure bobbing in the icy water through the sleet and snow. A tent floats not too far from him, picked up and tossed carelessly by the screeching winds.

  “Larnyard,” Grim mutters.

  “Is he dead?” David asks.

  The frantic movement of Larnyard’s arms answers his question.

  “We have to help him,” I say, crossing our room to grab my puffy jacket and slip on my extreme-weather gear.

  “Motherfucker,” Grim says. “I’m not risking my life for that buffoon.”

  “Well I am. If you can live with yourself knowing a man drowned not even a hundred feet away and you did nothing, go right ahead. Not me.”

  “King, you can’t,” David says, grabbing me by the arm. “You gonna die for that idiot?”

  “We have to try. At least let’s talk to the captain to see what he says.”

  Captain Rosteen already stands at the railing, his grip white-knuckled as he holds on against the wind.

  “What can we do, Cap?” I ask, tugging the woolen toboggan lower over my ears.

  He shakes his head, resignation in his eyes. “Someone would have to go out in that to get him.” He tilts his head toward the roiling waves, rising walls of water surrounded by icebergs. “I won’t. We all heard you urge him to stay.”

  “So lesson learned?” I ask, anger and disbelief warring inside me. “Yeah, he made a dumb call.”

  “The last of many,” Grim interjects.

  “But we have to try.” I swallow my own dread. “I have to try. I’m not asking you to go. Just help me.”

  Captain Rosteen looks doubtful, but then nods. “We could tie a rope around you, put a lifejacket on you and send you out in a raft.”

  The wind whips so hard against the glass of the bridge’s windows, it’s almost like the storm is daring me to take up such a foolhardy mission.

  “Let’s do it.”

  “King,” Grim snaps, grabbing my elbow. “You idiot. I’m not letting you do this.”

  “You think you can stop me?” I step closer to him. “I don’t have time for this, Grim. Either help me or get out of my way.”

  He releases a frustrated breath, his brows dipping so low they shadow his eyes. “Cap, make it two ropes.”

  I nod grimly and slip on the life jacket. The rope is tight, but only so long. It’s been a matter of a few minutes, but Larnyard’s red jacket seems farther away. Grim and I grab a lifesaver for Larnyard, climb into the raft and start paddling toward him. He’s still bobbing up and down wildly, screaming over the storm, but the rope between us and the ship catches. We’ve gone as far as we can, but we’re a few feet shy of Larnyard’s struggling figure.

  Shit.

  It’s in that moment I realize how truly vulnerable we are. We strive for control, for power, to rule our small domains. But in the end, one wave, one storm could toss us beyond saving. I don’t know where the winds and water will take me, but I untie the rope from my waist.

  “No way!” Grim screams over the wind. “King, no.”

  “I have a life jacket,” I yell back at him. “His chances are better if he has one, too. We’re too close not to try, Grim.”

  “You keep saying that shit.”

  I grab the lifesaver and dive into the icy water. I press through the water toward him, my arms fresher than his, but still struggling against such powerful waves. I’m grateful for even a few seconds of the wind lessening enough for him to hear me.

  “Larnyard!” I shout. His wide, frightened eyes meet mine, and he starts frantically swimming against the heaving waves toward me.

  I toss the lifesaver, keeping the rope end in my tight grip. He grabs hold of it and manages to slip it over his head. I tug on the rope, pulling him closer, even as the winds and waves pull harder. I start swimming toward the boat, feeling his heavy, but reassuring weight as I cut through the water toward the raft and Grim’s outstretched hand.

  “Damn idiot,” Grim mutters, pulling me into the raft and adding his strength to drag Larnyard by the lifesaver’s rope toward us. We immediately start paddling to the ship and the ladder lowered on its side, waiting for us. Grim scrambles up and Larnyard follows, dripping and shivering. Icicles are forming on my life jacket and I know the frigid water only adds to the dangerous cold. I’m probably mere minutes from hypothermia despite the extreme-weather gear. My teeth chatter and my bones rattle. They have to pull me the last few feet when my exhausted arms and legs finally give out. I’m drawing a huge sigh of relief, when one last gust of wind tosses me as I’m climbing back onto the ship, slamming my head into the railing, and everything goes as dark as the Antarctic sunless winter.

  30

  Maxim

  “This ship cannot sink,” I say, my words slurred with fatigue and whatever the team doctor gave me for pain. I wince when he pulls the thread through a small wound at my hairline.

  My words cut into the shouts of jubilation and fill the ship’s meeting room where everyone’s gathered. It’s only been an hour since I regained consciousness. I wasn’t out long, but I have one hell of a headache. It’s hard to concentrate, to follow the developments, but I do know we cannot allow the ship to sink.

  “We’re getting off, Kingsman,” Dr. Larnyard says, brows drawn together. “The winds have let up just enough, maybe only long enough for us to get out of here.”

  He’s nursing a mug of cocoa, no worse for wear from our little swim in the icy ocean.

  “Yeah, King,” Captain Rosteen says. “Neither the Japanese nor the Russians could risk a helicopter to reach us. Your Americans are coming through.”

  The team gives another shout of relief and round of high-fiving.

  “I get that,” I say, my teeth still chattering despite the warmth from the heater. “And I’m grateful, of course, but we can’t abandon this ship.”

  “The hell we can’t,” David snaps. “Maxim, we have to jump through this window before it closes. What the hell, man?”

  “Of course we’ll leave,” I agree, keeping my tone reasonable. “But it’s not enough that we’re saved. The Chrysalis has to be saved, too. Or else we may create the worst Antarctic disaster since—”

  “Bahia Paraiso,” Grim says, running a hand over his military-cut pelt of hair.

  “Right.” I look to Dr. Larnyard. “Do you want to go down in history beside the largest oil spill and possibly manmade ecosystemic disruption ever in this hemisphere?”

  The professor gulps, and I can practically see him weighing all of his accolades and tenure against such a black mark.

  “What’s Bahia Paraiso?” Peggy asks.

  “An Argentinian supply ship trapped in 1989,” I tell her. “It was struck by a ’berg and sank here in Antarctica.”

  “Spilled a hundred and thirty thousand gallons of diesel fuel all over the west Antarctic Peninsula coast,” Grim continues, “and destroyed the local wildlife.”

  “I came here to do something good,” I tell them, spreading what I hope is a compelling look over the entire team. “Something that could help in our fight to save this planet. I’ll be damned if I’ll be party to devastating one of the most pristine parts it has left.”

  “What good will it do for us to go down with the ship?” Dr. Larnyard demands.

  “Not go down with it,” I say, not even bothering now to hide my impatience and disdain for the man. “Save it. When the Americans call back, we have to at least try to negotiate a rescue for this ship. If not when they pic
k us up, as soon as humanly safe and possible.”

  The radio crackles, signaling incoming communication. I don’t hesitate, but grab the radio before anyone tells me I can or can’t.

  “Chrysalis, do you copy?” the voice on the other end asks over the sound of whipping wind and propellers.

  “This is Chrysalis,” I say, glancing at Captain Rosteen, who gives a reluctant nod of approval. “We copy.”

  “We’re about a mile out,” the pilot says. “We’ve identified the ice floe large enough for us to land. Have you marked it?”

  “Roger that. The wind died down enough for the part of our team out on that ice floe to leave their tents and mark it with coffee beans.” I wink at Grim, whose agile genius had led to that idea.

  “Coffee, huh?” The pilot laughs, providing the only measure of comfort I’ve felt since ice pierced our ship. “As long as I can see it in the snow, we should be fine, but we gotta be fast. Satellite projects those storms will be swinging back soon. And with the size of your team, even with five helicopters, it’ll take several trips.”

  “I know you’re doing us a huge favor with this,” I say carefully, “and at great risk to your crew, but I have to ask. Any chance you have the means to repair this ship at least enough so it doesn’t sink before somebody can come back and retrieve it when the ice shifts?”

  “We got a team of engineers with us,” the pilot says. “If it’s one thing we know how to prevent, it’s oil spills, Maxim.”

  Maxim? How does he know me?

  “That’s good to hear,” I reply, smiling and frowning, pleased and confused. “You guys are prepared. Who are you anyway?”

  “Oh,” the pilot says, surprise evident in his words. “I thought you knew. It’s Cade Energy, sir. Your father sent us.”

  31

  Lennix