5. ARCTIC TEARS

[MISSION DAY 1, FEBRUARY 16, 2033]

[1325 hours local time]

[Southwest of Little Diomede Island, Bering Strait]

Monster ran into the teeth of the gale. Emile ran just in front of him. It was barely running. It was hardly walking. It was a stumbling, drunken lurch, fighting for every footstep. Two Bzadians had been standing guard outside the entrance to the tunnel, but they had been looking the wrong way. Emile had burst past them, ducking and dodging off into the snowstorm. They had raised their weapons to fire, but then Monster had been on them, bashing their helmets together and leaving them stunned, lying on the ice. Monster glanced at their helmets and batteries but shots from the tunnel behind them kicked up snow at their heels.

Now Monster and Emile ran. The cold was ferocious; ice spicules beat against their unheated armor and cut their unprotected faces.

The cuts did not worry Monster. The cold here was a better bandage than any gauze. The blood froze, sealing the cut as soon as it was made. He saw Emile wiping ice from his face, and grabbed his hand to stop him.

The ice was painful, but it was also protection, forming a solid barrier and shielding his face from more of the sharp flying particles.

Monster instinctively kept his head down and a hand in front of his face to protect his eyes. Without goggles or a mask, it was impossible to see, and he blinked constantly to prevent the fluids around his eyeballs from freezing.

Even the body armor offered scant protection. It blocked the wind but not the cold. The thermal lining inside was supposed to do that, but unpowered it offered no more warmth than a thin blanket.

Monster ignored the cold, concentrating instead on the greater danger, which would come from behind. Already, he heard the crack of coil-gun fire, but in this blizzard, he knew they were shooting at shadows.

Emile turned and pulled the pin on the grenade that he was still carrying, hurling it in the direction of the gunfire. A moment later came the thump of an explosion, but the firing from behind them intensified.

A waste of a grenade, Monster thought, but he understood why Emile had done it. He was running for his life and getting shot at. It wasn’t a nice feeling the first time someone was shooting at you, trying to kill you. Come to think of it, it was never a nice feeling getting shot at. The grenade didn’t worry him. What worried him was running out on his friends. Had he made the right decision? He had seen the question in Emile’s eyes. Seen the brief nod from Price. He had understood what Price wanted Emile to do. But it was an act of desperation.

There was a plan to the universe. He truly believed that. Ever since Uluru. There had to be, otherwise none of this made any kind of sense. And even if he couldn’t see the plan, couldn’t understand the plan, if his part in that plan ended here, then that was just how things were. But not Price. Please, not Price. She would die, too, after torture by the PGZ. That was like a kick to the stomach, because there was nothing he could do about that.

Around him the landscape was flat and featureless, except for the dome-like hills that were Bzadian tanks.

He steered them on a diagonal course, which was easier than heading straight into the wind.

The first fifty meters were the hardest. Every step was a scream of pain, both from tortured muscles fighting their way into the blizzard and from the burn of ice on his face. Worse was the cold that seeped through his combat suit. That was not the sharp bite of the wind, but a constant ache that became an intense throbbing before it began to fade.

That was a relief, but it meant his skin was going numb. Frostnip could quickly turn to frostbite. That would be followed by the gradual lowering of his core body temperature, leading to hypothermia. Violent shivering would be followed by stumbling and mental confusion, leading to a stupor that was the first stage of death.

He ignored the cold. He ignored the pain. He ignored the fear. He knew that as bad as it was for him, for Emile it must be much worse. He was younger and smaller. Yet there was no bleat of a complaint.

The lights of Little Diomede, the smaller of the two islands, were a beacon in the white desert, a dull glow through a hazy gauze curtain. When Monster looked up, which wasn’t often, it was to make sure that those lights were still ahead of him.

He was concentrating so intently on the simple act of putting one foot in front of the other that he almost fell into the crevasse.

It was Emile, behind him, who saw it first and grabbed his arm. Monster stopped with one foot out over the void.

It was a fissure in the ice. Not as wide as the crevasse they had recently crossed, but wide nevertheless. It ran from north to south, separating the two islands.

Emile was saying something to him, but he couldn’t hear it. The words were caught by the wind and swept away into the storm.

He bent down so Emile could put his lips next to his ear.

“We gotta go back,” Emile said.

“We can’t go back,” Monster said.

“We gotta!” Emile said. “We gotta go back for the others.”

“We cannot,” Monster said. “The Pukes will be looking for us. Must keep going.”

“I didn’t escape just to save my own skin!” Emile shouted. “I’m not running out on the others.”

Monster grasped him by the arm, so tightly even through the armor of his combat suit that Emile winced. Monster eased his grip and took a deep breath.

“We not running out,” Monster said. “We go back, we all die.”

“We can’t leave them,” Emile cried. “It’s my fault we got caught!”

Monster shook his head. “Not your fault.”

“I had the scope,” Emile said. “I should have seen the Pukes coming.”

“Were you watching the scope?” Monster asked.

“Yes. I mean, I think so.”

“Then not your fault,” Monster said. “Scope not work too good in these conditions.”

“But still…”

“Not your fault,” Monster said for a third time. “If we can make it to Little Diomede, we can alert ACOG, then try to save others.”

“Little Diomede?” Emile asked. “You think we can make it that far?”

“I think we can try,” Monster said.

Their options were extremely limited. Little Diomede was their only chance and that was hundreds of meters away, across a rugged landscape that would be challenging even in good weather. In this blizzard it was next to impossible. And what if the station had been taken over by Bzadians? He put that thought out of his mind. Little Diomede had to be a place of safety. It had to be.

He looked down into the fissure. It was not deep, little more than a meter, and the ice at the bottom seemed solid. Better still, the drop on their side, although steep, was not sheer.

Monster pointed down into the fissure and, although Emile looked doubtful, he nodded.

If they broke through the thin ice at the bottom into the sea below, at least the end would be swift.

Emile, being lighter, went first, slithering over the edge and sliding down into the cleft. When the ice took Emile’s weight, Monster followed suit. The ice cracked as he landed, but it did not break. They crouched, out of the wind, except for the occasional swirl that curled over the lip and eddied around them.

“Which way?” Emile asked. Out of the wind, they could hear each other without shouting.

“To the north,” Monster said, hoping that was the right direction. With the random zigzag patterns of the fissures, either way could be the right way to go. Or neither.

He slapped at the ice on his face, feeling it crack, then break into pieces and fall away. Emile did the same and kept pummeling at his face even after all the ice was gone, slapping at the skin until it was red and raw, unable to feel the blows through numb, dead skin.

Monster stopped him. “You got it all,” he said.

—

The depth of the channel shielded them from the wind, but it had its own hazards, the least of which was the movement of the walls. This was not a pathway through the ice, but a gap between two constantly moving ice floes. At times the walls ground closer, threatening to crush them, and at other times, for no obvious reason, they shifted farther away, exposing black seawater a few centimeters below their feet. Monster and Emile stepped carefully and made it past those sections without a sudden, and deadly, dip in the sea.

“Talk to me,” Monster said after Emile stumbled for the first time on a perfectly smooth patch of ice. The sound of the wind above them seemed to be easing and, when he looked up, the skies were starting to clear. That was good and bad. The snowstorm, as painful as it was, was their ally, hiding them from their pursuers. If the Bzadians found them in this trench across the ice, they would have nowhere to run. Nowhere to hide.

“Talk about what?” Emile asked. His voice was unsteady and the words had to find their way out through a rigid jaw.

“Anything,” Monster said. “Monster want to hear your voice.”

“I didn’t know you cared,” Emile said.

“Why you join Angels?” Monster asked.

“I’m starting to wonder that myself,” Emile said.

“But really,” Monster said.

There was silence for a moment. Silence except for the noises of the ice shifting and cracking on either side. It was a bizarre sound, a mixture of creaks, hollow booms, and something else that reminded Monster of the laser gun sound effects from a science-fiction movie.

“My parents didn’t want me to,” Emile said eventually, reluctantly.

“Parents?” Monster asked.

“Yup,” Emile said. “When a man and a woman love each other very much and the man…”

“Ha-ha, funny guy,” Monster said. “You know mostly Angels are orphans.”

“I must have annoyed them so much that they let me in anyway,” Emile said. “I wanted to be an Angel ever since I heard about them.”

“You want to be Angel?” Monster asked.

“Yup,” Emile said. “Didn’t you?”

“Cheese and rice, my dude, no,” Monster said. “I was picked out of paintball team. That’s how most of us are chosen. I don’t even know it is test, until recruiter showed up at my home.”

“Well, I knew,” Emile said. “There was a guy in my camp who was selected but didn’t make the grade. He told me all about it. I joined a paintball team the next day and made sure I was the star player.”

“You have death wish?” Monster asked.

“Just wanted to do something to help,” Emile said. “And I thought it would be cool. Refugee camp was kinda boring.”

“This is true,” Monster said.

“How many Angel missions have you been on?” Emile asked.

“Too many,” Monster said. And too many friends have not come home.

“What were they like?” Emile asked.

“Warm,” Monster said.

“No kidding,” Emile said. “You served with Ryan Chisnall, didn’t you?”

Monster waited awhile before answering. “Ryan was my friend,” he said.

“The other Angels talk about him as if he was some kind of superhero,” Emile said.

“Not true also,” Monster said. “He is just a regular guy. If not for war, he wouldn’t even make captain of football team or class president. War brings out best in some people.”

“You miss him, don’t you?” Emile asked.

Monster didn’t answer. All Angel missions were voluntary, and he had volunteered for this one. Part of it was Price, of course. But there was something more. On some deep level, he wanted revenge, for Chisnall and Hunter, and everyone else who had suffered at the hands of the aliens. Revenge, as someone once said, was like biting a dog because the dog bit you, but that didn’t stop him from wanting to hurt those who had caused such pain.

Emile stumbled and fell and was slow getting up. Monster grabbed him by an arm and helped him to his feet. “Sing,” Monster said.

“Nah,” Emile said. “It’s hard enough talking.”

“Sing, and that is order,” Monster said. “So I know you not hypothermic.”

“Yeah, and if I’m getting hypothermic, what are you going to do about it, Sergeant Monster?” Emile asked. “Give me a nice warm bath or a hot cup of tea and put me to bed?”

“No, Emile,” Monster said. “We keep walking.”

“Pity. I like warm baths,” Emile said. “And hot tea.”

“So sing,” Monster said.

“Sing what?”

“You choose.”

It took a few moments, and his voice was quavering with the cold, but he did. He sang in Lebanese in a soft, high, melodic voice, a song with strange warbling notes. It reminded Monster of a young Bzadian they had once met in the sands of the Australian desert.

They came to a gap in the ice and stopped while they tried to work out how to get past it. A place where an undersea current bubbled up through the ice, creating a kind of blowhole and preventing the water from freezing.

It wasn’t wide, but with stiff, frozen muscles, they had no way to leap across. They were already reduced to a kind of hobbling shuffle.

In the end they managed to sidle past it, although the blasts of water soaked their boots and their armor up to their knees as they did so. That quickly froze, creating a clear sheet of armor that weighed them down and made it even more difficult to walk.

“I can’t hear your voice,” Monster said when it had been silent for a little too long.

“I’m sorry, Sergeant Monster,” Emile said.

“That’s okay, but keep talking,” Monster said.

“I mean, I’m sorry for all this. This is my fault. I was stupid,” Emile said.

“Nothing to be sorry for,” Monster said. “You got us out of there. You gave us chance. Chance to alert ACOG and chance to rescue the others.”

“I wanted to be a hero,” Emile said. “Like you and Lieutenant Price and Lieutenant Chisnall.”

Monster swallowed rapidly several times, choking down a spew of hurt, anger, and grief. There were droplets of ice forming around his eyes, tears that froze as soon as they were formed.

“Emile, you are hero,” he said, when he could.

—

The ice beneath his feet was dark and uneven and Monster was surprised to find he was walking on rime-coated rocks.

A few paces farther on, Emile stumbled and fell. He got up slowly, and Monster realized that neither of them had been speaking. Somehow he had forgotten about that. His mind seemed a little foggy, and he knew it was very important to keep talking, but he was not sure why.

“Emile,” he said with a thick tongue through lips that seemed like blocks of ice.

There was no answer.

“Emile!” Monster said, and when that got no response, he caught up with him and placed a hand on his shoulder. Emile looked at him dully, through eyes that did not seem to recognize him. He shook off Monster’s hand and continued to stumble on.

Monster trudged along after him, not sure why, or where they were going, but knowing that it was vital to keep moving.

They encountered another patch of rocks covered with thin ice. They were slippery and treacherous. Why there would be rocks here in the middle of an ice field, Monster couldn’t understand, although something about it caused a tickle at the back of his memory. Why was he even in an ice field?

Emile had sat down, Monster saw, and that seemed like a good idea. He was so cold and so tired. Emile leaned against one of the walls of ice that surrounded them. Where was Price? Monster wondered. She was supposed to be in charge of this mission, but he couldn’t see her anywhere. Where was Chisnall? His friend. Why wasn’t he leading the mission?

He went to sit down next to Emile and that was when he remembered. Chisnall was dead. His friend was gone. He had died fighting the Bzadians. Price was dead, too, or soon would be if he didn’t do something about it.

He loved her in a way that had taken him by surprise. When Price had been terribly wounded on the last mission, it was as though he, too, had been injured. He had helped nurse her back to health; he remembered that. The long hours of rehab, building up the muscles in her new leg. But for what? So she could die in a Bzadian prison cell?

He could not let that happen. He could not stop, no matter how tired he was.

He shook Emile’s shoulder a couple of times and when that got no response, he grabbed the smaller soldier by the arms and hoisted him up in a firefighter’s lift.

Emile was light, even with his armor, but Monster was so tired and just one step seemed like an impossible task. He managed it, though. After that the second didn’t seem as hard, although he couldn’t understand why he was doing this, or who it was he was carrying.

He put one foot in front of the other and thought that if he could keep doing that, then he would be all right. They would be all right.

The sky was clear and the sun low on the horizon, a bright red disk that lit up clouds in shudders of orange and streaks of deep dark blue.

Ice under his feet turned to snow-covered rock, which began to rise up, steeper and steeper until it was too hard to climb.

Perhaps if he dropped his pack. It was a heavy pack. He let it slide off his shoulders and was surprised to see a body fall to the ground. He had been carrying someone. But who? And why? Somehow that didn’t seem important. It was so hot here. Why hadn’t he noticed that before? He was sweating. He had to get cool. He reached for the releases on his armor but his fingers were frozen into claws and he couldn’t get the clasps open.

He took one more step, then felt the ground coming up to meet him. The snow was surprisingly hard.

He tried again to take off his armor, to cool himself down, but it would not come off and so he stopped struggling. It was the struggle that was making him hot, he decided. Better to rest.

And although nothing made sense anymore, about why he was here, or why it was so hot, he did understand in some deep place that his body was shutting down. And it made him wonder: Was this really what the universe had in store for him?

All he could think was that it was a silly way to die.

Such a silly way to die.