Excerpt: Dead of Winter

Under the light of the full moon the cracked pattern of the ice floes formed a jagged, desolate landscape. Wind whipped the snow into dervishes which danced and twisted among the broken chunks, leaping from tip to tip and leaving a contrail of white particles behind them. In the teeth of the bitter cold, Edward Gannon leaned against the railing of the rescue vessel called Lewis and Clark, the metal cup of coffee in his right hand forgotten for the moment.

Found you, he thought grimly. Cost us a lot, but we finally found you. Now, what are you going to tell us?

"Is that it?" a woman's voice asked behind him.

He raised the coffee to his lips and spit it out. There were chunks of ice floating in it. How long had that taken, less than five minutes? Surely this place was the closest thing to Hell on Earth. "We won't know until we actually go aboard, but it seems a pretty safe bet," he answered. "There's no signal from the transponder and nothing else is supposed to be up here in these waters."

She snorted derisively. "Nothing else would want to be, you mean."

Edward allowed himself a small chuckle. Anna was right; nobody in their right minds would have volunteered for this voyage. It was a telling thing in itself that the crew of the Lewis and Clark had been earning straight double time pay for this voyage. There were simply too many damn things that could go wrong up here off the northern coast of Greenland, a stone's throw from the brutal weather of the Arctic Circle. Should the navigational system, the electricity, even the sewage system go awry, they were on their own in a way that few others on Earth would ever have the misfortune to find themselves.

He dumped the half-solid contents of the cup over the side of the ship and returned his stare to the forbidding black shadow some five hundred yards or so ahead. Its final transmission stated that with the problems being experienced with the ship's communication systems, they were using an unusually strong aurora borealis to boost the signal. Even so, they hadn't appeared to believe that anybody would hear their radio.

Luckily it was us, he thought.

The prow of the Lewis and Clark swung about until it was pointed directly at the black shape, then slowly began to chug through the field of broken ice. Larger pieces were mercilessly ground under the reinforced prow of the ship, the torso-sized chunks tumbling over each other and sucked under the frigid water. Edward thought briefly about getting another cup of coffee, then shrugged it off. Alertness wasn't going to be his problem.

"Let's get a look at you," he murmured and raised his binoculars.

Immediately his eyes focused in on the prow of the cargo ship. He murmured a curse under his breath as he saw the name Ouroboros in letters four feet tall. If there had been any kind of lingering doubts about what their mission was, they had just been erased. He was unsurprised at the small rise of dread in his stomach, but the accompanying lift of excitement made him smile faintly. Anna probably would have understood. She was--

"The equipment is fine, Edward. Do you want to do a final check through, or should we just let it ride?"

He shook his head. Anna looked several years younger than her listed age of thirty, but there was a wariness to her eyes that he heartily approved of. Her hair was midnight black, usually a vast corona of curls and corkscrews that puffed out like a cloud but was currently stuffed under a pale blue ski cap. The line of her throat was covered with a red and black muffler, a thick white winter jacket helping her ward off the cold. He briefly wondered if she'd gotten dressed in the dark, then decided against asking her even though it might lighten the mood. They way the vein in the hollow of her throat told him that she might not appreciate his attempt at levity. Besides, there was nothing lighthearted about what they were about to do.

"Any final thoughts?" he asked quietly as the ice chunks continued to bump and hiss past them.

"Scared," she said immediately. "I'm really scared. Did you know John Carney?"

He shook his head.

"He was--is, I have to keep telling myself that, he is-- a good man. A good team leader. He always had great attention to detail, and I think he was a... yeah. He's a good man." She bit her lip and sighed deeply, the breath sounding ragged at the end.

"Maybe he'll be all right," he offered.

Anna smiled tiredly. "You don't have to try to bring me up, Edward. I sort of know what the score is and what we're up against. We haven't heard anything from PIU-5 in almost two months, and now the Ouroboros has just appeared, here? Off the north shore of Greenland and let's see..." She did some quick mental math. "Roughly five hundred miles from its last known location? And without any power, emergency transponder or even a sprinkling of pixie dust? No, Edward. Things are most definitely not okay."

He jammed his hands in his pockets, wishing he knew what to say. "There's always hope," he murmured.

"Yeah," she sighed. "I guess there always is."

The closer they drew to the Ouroboros, the more the feeling of unease in the pit of his stomach grew. Anna was completely right, although he couldn't admit that to her aloud. One of the first rules of leadership was to try to always appear that you had a full grip on the situation, and it didn't really matter if that was a bad one or not. Her assessment of the situation was pretty accurate, and even though he was fairly sure they weren't going to find anything on the ship, he still had a bad feeling about this. He reached down and picked up his backpack, which he had already triple-checked, and shouldered it onto his back.

There's always hope.

Edward drew in a deep breath. Yeah. There was also always a dark side.

The other ship wasn't frozen in place, which meant that it had drifted here fairly recently. A quick check of the thermometer showed it was just over twenty degrees below zero, and with the wind that kept kicking up Edward was pretty sure they might be down to forty below, perhaps even fifty. Keep telling yourself that it's just the cold outside that you're feeling, he thought grimly. We're going to be all right. Anna is pretty capable, just like you are. You wouldn't be here unless you had been able to jump through all the hoops. You have all the equipment you need, and Anna has your back. Things are going to be fine.

The Lewis and Clark slowly moved into place alongside the Ouroboros, gliding to a smooth stop. After setting the anchors, two of the burly fur jacket-clad crew members wrestled a makeshift gangplank from the ship's deck and, after motioning a couple other men over to help them, carefully placed the walkway between the two vessels. He wondered briefly if anyone was still alive on the other ship to hear it, and hurriedly banished the thought.

"Showtime, Anna," he said aloud. "Do we have fresh batteries?"

"We should," she answered. "I've checked them three times already. I've been... I've been needing something to do. You know?"

He chuckled thinly. "We're going to be fine, Anna."

"That's probably exactly what John Carney and the rest of PIU-5 thought," she muttered.

He glanced over at the crew, who gave him the thumbs-up. "Showtime," he said, shouldering the pack.

She glanced over at the crew members questioningly. They had stepped back from the gangplank and were looking anywhere but at the two team members. "They're not... they're not going to be coming with us?" she asked hesitantly.

"Not in their contracts," he said. "Their captain had an inkling of what we were going to search for and where we would be doing it, so he had it specifically written in that no member of the crew would be asked to leave the ship under any circumstances."

Anna smiled briefly. "Pretty smart," she admitted.

"Agreed." He nodded toward the gangplank. "Ladies first?"

"That's all right. You go ahead. I think we can leave chivalry out of this one."

Pretty smart, he thought ruefully. They carefully walked across the metal deck of the Lewis and Clark, being careful to avoid the visible icy patches and taking their steps slow to ensure the ones that weren't immediately apparent wouldn't slip their feet out from under them. He took hold of the railing to pull himself up to the gangplank and shook his head at the frozen metal's brutal chill that was evident even though his gloves. As if in response to his thoughts, the wind merrily gusted again. He could feel the sweat freezing on the back of his neck.

"Something wrong?" Anna asked alertly.

"Want to make sure of my footing," he lied. "It's a long way to the water, and even longer to the bottom of said water."

Anna nodded. "All right. Well, just as soon as you're ready..."

Edward had meant to grunt brusquely and cross the gangplank to show that there was nothing to be worried about... and he paused after only taking three steps away from the Lewis and Clark. The dark hulk of the Ouroboros waited ahead, looming in the unnaturally bright moonlight as though it were a childhood monster patiently waiting for the return of its desired prey. As though the ship were hungry.

One step after the other. Do it. That's why Valentine picked you. Show her that her confidence wasn't misplaced.

He quickly crossed the gangplank and fought every instinct he had to shiver as he stood on the deck of the Ouroboros, watching Anna making her way gingerly across. He'd been so focused on not showing any trepidation while crossing from one vessel to the other that he'd completely tuned out the elements around him. As he watched, her arms briefly windmilled as a gust of wind made her pause, her face going pale. She had almost fifteen more feet to go. "Want me to toss you a rope?"

"Please?" she asked, teeth chattering.

He unrolled a twenty foot length of rope from a clip on his backpack and tossed it out to her; she wrapped it securely around her wrist, then held on with both hands as he gently led her across the makeshift ramp. When she stepped onto the deck, her face turned slightly green and she hawked and spat over the side of the ship.

"You all right?" he asked quietly.

"No," she said, biting the word off. "This ship feels wrong."

Edward nodded automatically, although he had no such feelings himself. That was why Anna was here, though; he may not have tested out with any sort of ability on the P-S Meter (short for the Psychic and Sensitive Meter, or what some would-be wits who had no idea what was really happening in the world today referred to as the B-S Meter), but Anna Kankanardes had registered at least some degree of psychic sensitivity. As much as it flew in the face of the logical upbringing he'd received, he knew that ignoring what she said in that arena was tantamount to walking into the ship's lower levels with no batteries in the flashlight and one eye closed. A year ago, he would have laughed at this suggestion.

It's a brave totally new world now, he thought. We're not living in the same universe we were twelve months ago. Things have changed.

They'd changed a whole lot earlier than that, he knew logically. It had just taken him a while to personally get the news.

Sometimes, he really wished he hadn't.

"Do you feel anything alive?" he asked.

Anna cocked her head and her eyes seemed to go distant for a few seconds before they came back into focus and she blinked several times. "No," she said shortly.

"Nothing at all?" he pressed. "Not even any rats?"

She glanced around and shivered. "I think the rats are too smart to live on a tub like this. This is the next best--or maybe next-worst--thing to a ghost ship, Edward. I'm serious; I really, really fucking hate this boat."

"I believe you," he said almost absently. Edward removed his flashlight from the leather belt loop and switched it off and on rapidly three times, pointing it at the bridge of the Lewis and Clark. A single short light answered him, and Edward snapped the maglight on, shining it about.

"What was that for?" Anna frowned.

"This tub is totally dark; I doubt they could see us to know that we made it across okay. Three flashes means in fifteen minutes we should be back topside and if we don't show..." Edward shrugged. "We don't really have a contingency plan for that, but then again, we shouldn't need one. Right?"

She swallowed heavily. "Right," she said, voice cracking slightly at the end.