As a result they were tracking a zigzag course across the snow, taking way too long to reach the river. Vance was starting to worry about the accuracy of their maps and the inertial navigation systems. By his and Ken’s reckoning, they should have reached the Lan tributary yesterday. One more problem that the sheer grind of driving banished.
They were traveling through low hill country, winding along the wide valleys, dodging the small woods and treacherous rough expanses of snow that they’d long since discovered covered vast swathes of ferns. The strange, jagged snow covering was always loose, and the frozen fern fronds snapped like glass if anything drove over them, turning the whole area into a giant ice granule swamp that would pull the vehicles down and surround them with a powdery shale while their wheels churned away uselessly.
Vance could see a dune up ahead, sparkling green as the vigorous aurora borealis slithered through the clouds above. He studied it intently as the MTJ rolled onward relentlessly, the snowplow blade cutting cleanly through the rumpled surface, while their big tires threw off churning fantails as they flattened the snow for the convoy to follow. It didn’t rise too far out of the surface, maybe a meter or so at the top. The pitiful radar image on the windshield confirmed what he was seeing, though he almost discounted it. Snow with all its varying densities, as they’d discovered, did strange things to the return. He gunned the throttle and turned the wheel slightly so the MTJ was lined up full square. Only when the tip of the snowplow was about to hit did Vance realize he’d made a mistake again. Now that he could see over the brow of the dune, the deep depression behind it was visible to him.
“Wrong,” he snarled as the snowplow hit the dune. He concentrated hard, aware of how the vehicle began to dip then slow as the resistance built up. He knew there wasn’t enough power to get them through; impact with a hundred other dunes made such knowledge instinctive now. Snow thrown up from the blade and bonnet drew a lazy arc in the air, smothering the windshield and thudding down loudly on the roof. He carefully throttled back, timing it so the motors were still by the time they came to a halt. The wipers strained to clear the fat smear of snow from the windshield.
“Good call,” Camm Montoto said as they finished moving.
“Let’s see,” Vance said. He put the axle motors into reverse and applied power. If he’d gotten it wrong, if he’d kept the acceleration going too long as the MTJ buried itself in the dune, they’d be stuck fast. The MTJ shifted backward a fraction. Vance maintained power, making sure the big tires didn’t spin, allowing them to gain some traction on the flattened snow. Slowly and surely the MTJ began to back out of the dune, crawling up the incline.
“You okay?” Davinia asked over the ringlink.
“We’re moving,” Vance confirmed. “There’s a slope on the other side, not sure how deep.”
“Are we going around?”
Vance looked at Omar, who was sitting in the passenger seat. The Legionnaire grinned, which scrunched up the protective membranes covering his cheek. “We can manage that.”
“Going through,” Vance announced to the ringlink. The MTJ extracted itself from the dune, and Vance continued to back up. Twenty meters from the dune he stopped and adjusted the snowplow blade height. He twisted the throttle sharply, sending the MTJ racing toward the dune again. He had to keep a strong hold on the steering wheel, making sure the big vehicle threaded straight into the gap he’d already created.
They hit the snow again, punching farther in. Vance intuitively knew they weren’t going to make it, and eased up on the throttle as he felt the MTJ’s momentum dissipate once more. Backing out slowly again. Lining up. Charging forward. Keeping the blade tip aligned on the center of the gap.
Third time was enough. They broke through, with snow forming an airborne curtain overhead. They bounced and jostled down the slope on the other side as the wipers worked fast, clearing away the smears and chunks of snow. There were trees ahead, a big sprawl of bullwhips and cozpals and trinnades, meshed by vines that in turn produced a vast undulating roof of snow and ice. The snow around them was the now familiar rumple of submerged ferns.
Vance throttled back and turned left, giving the bad snow a wide berth before slowly coming to a halt. There weren’t many functioning sensors or smartdust on the MTJ, but he could just access enough in his grid to give him a view back to the gap he’d rammed through the dune. The second MTJ was maneuvering through. Davinia used the snowplow blade to carve a deep slice out of the side of the gap, producing a wider track for the trucks and biolabs.
While they were waiting for the rest of the convoy to come through, Vance told his e-i to bring up the map again. Something somewhere didn’t tally. Either the map was wrong, or the inertial guidance. But each vehicle had an independent guidance system, and they were all agreeing on where the convoy was. Logically then, it had to be the map.
Vance studied the profiles and contours carefully, trying to find a recognizable landmark. Apart from the tributary itself, there wasn’t one. But as Leif said, it was just a question of traveling due south, they had to reach it at some point. Their fuel levels would have to be reassessed when—
“Oh shit, shit!” Ophelia exclaimed over the ringlink.
“It’s going, it’s going,” Gillian added.
Vance accessed the MTJ’s rear mesh just in time to see truck 2 sinking into the snow. It started to tilt over. Vance sucked down an anxious breath. Before the angle grew acute enough to tip it on its side the movement stopped, but the truck was now embedded in snow to the top of its wheels. The sledge it was towing slid serenely along one side, then twisted sharply as the cable jerked it to a halt.
“Oh for crap’s sake,” Omar protested. “There goes the rest of today.”
“Yeah,” Vance agreed in a jaded tone. “Looks like it.”
It took ten minutes to get ready for the outside. The four of them squirmed around, putting their clothing layers back on. Vance pulled a high-neck sweater over his quilted shirts and thermal underwear. Then there was another two sweaters before he fixed his armor on. Thermal overtrousers went on next, followed by waterproof trousers. Two sets of gloves. Surprise—Angela hadn’t knitted him one of her balaclavas, so he had a printed version that scratched his ears, and a thick hat that just fit under his helmet. With all the layers on, he was free to struggle into his parka. Finally there were the goggles.
“What do we ever do if we need to get out fast?” Camm grunted from the rear seat as he wrestled his parka on. “Anyone got a contingency protocol for that?”
“Just get out,” Antrinell said flatly. “Worry about the cold later. It takes a couple of minutes before it does any real damage.”
“Good to know,” the xenobiologist grunted sarcastically.
They climbed out into the bitter air. Vance tramped along the side of the track the MTJ had created, boots sinking ten centimeters into the virgin snow, which made every step an effort. When he passed truck 1 and the tanker he got back onto the track, walking down the depression rut made by the tires.
Ophelia Troy had already gotten her outer layers on and was outside, inspecting what had happened. Gillian remained in truck 2’s cab, looking disgusted with herself.
“Why didn’t you follow the track?” Vance asked Ophelia. He was looking at the snow, seeing the way truck 2 had veered away from the track he and MTJ-2 had cleared.
“We picked up some sideways drift going down the slope,” Ophelia said. “No point trying to correct when you’re going down. Gillian would have just steered back onto the track when we were back on the flat. Which we were doing. It wasn’t much. Crap’s sake, if you’d been three meters farther over it would have swallowed you, too.”
Vance nodded slowly. She was right. The snow where the truck had sunk down didn’t look any different, the surface was a little more puckered perhaps, but nothing to indicate how light it was underneath. In fact he didn’t understand why the density was so different. Just another obstacle St. Libra was throwing at them with its usual dispassion.
The other convoy members were gathering around. Vance was pleased to see the Legionnaires were all carrying their weather-sheathed carbines. Leif and Darwin peered down into the holes that had captured the wheels.
“There was running water under here,” Darwin decided. “I think it chewed the snow away from underneath. The truck fell through the roof of a small ice cave. It’s sitting on a whole lot of crushed ice now.”
“Makes sense,” Antrinell said. “We’re at the bottom of a slope. Maybe this used to be some kind of runoff.”
“Maybe,” Vance said, knowing how petulant he sounded and not caring. A week of the relentless delays and frustrations that the convoy had thrown at them had worn away any vestige of humor.
The first priority was to dig the wheels out. The sledge towed by Tropic-2 was broken open and spades handed around. Two people per wheel began scooping the snow away. It was difficult work, with the loose snow crumbling easily. The ramps they were making had to be twice as wide as the tires to prevent them falling in on themselves.
Karizma went over to the sledge towed by biolab-2 and hauled out the flex grids that they would place under the truck’s tires. She and Erius started locking the individual units together to form four long strips. Leif himself tethered the truck’s sledge full of bioil bladders to MTJ-2, and carefully pulled it clear.
While the tires were being dug out, Vance ordered all the vehicles to top up their tanks. He was helping unwind a hose from the side of the tanker when Angela came over.
“The fuel’s lasting surprisingly well,” she said. “I’ve been keeping track of consumption.”
“Given we spend most of our time idle while we wait for the lead MTJ to make some progress that’s hardly surprising. Keeping the cabs warm doesn’t use up half as much bioil as driving.”
“But we’re taking a long time getting anywhere.”
“The tributary can’t be more than a day away now, no matter how poor our map is.”
“Good.”
“All right, Angela, what’s bothering you?” He glanced around the convoy. Most people were out of the vehicles, either helping with the refueling or digging around truck 2. Five Legionnaires walked a simple patrol pattern around them, scanning the empty white landscape. There had been no hint of the creature since they left Wukang.
“The fuel may be holding out,” she said. “But I’m not sure the food will.”
He closed his eyes.
Please Lord, just let one thing go right
. “Really?”
“Elston, it’s been a week, and we’ve barely covered three hundred kilometers. We were planning on taking two and a half weeks, three tops. I calculated the food load on that basis, plus a week’s worth of composition gel in case of emergency.”
Vance checked around again, this time making sure no one was close enough to overhear them. “Are you telling me we haven’t got enough food?” he asked in rising frustration.
“I’m telling you that if we take more than another couple of weeks it’ll be touch and go. For a start you need to tell everyone to cut down. They’re all eating as if there was a resupply flight about to drop crates of gourmet meals on us tomorrow. We also need to get them used to the composition gel. Once it’s prepped a carton gives you a perfectly calculated two thousand calories per day; that’s all you really need. And if it looks like we’re going to take longer, then they can go on a diet for a week. Wouldn’t hurt.”
“Okay. I’ll break that news once we’ve got truck 2 clear. We’ll start to alternate composition gel with our standard meal packets tonight.”
“Thank you.”
“Have you ever tasted composition gel after it’s been prepped?” he asked.
“No.”
“Consider yourself fortunate.”
Vance carried on with the refueling, dragging the hose nozzle over to MTJ-2. The snowfield around him was abuzz with activity as the hoses were pulled out and tanks filled. The front wheels of truck 2 had now been cleared, and Erius was down on his belly, wriggling and shoving, trying to get the obstinate strips of flex grid into place along the crude ramps of ice chunks. Leif had already attached a pair of tow cables to the front of truck 2; now he was waiting for the MTJs to finish refueling and maneuver into place. The two vehicles plus the truck’s own hub motors should be enough to pull it out of the collapsed ice cave, so Leif claimed.
After ninety minutes of hard work by everyone, truck 2 was ready to be liberated. The MTJs were hooked up to the cables and slowly rolled across the snow, angling so that their pull would compensate for the way the truck was leaning. Leif drove MTJ-2, while Antrinell was behind the wheel in 1; Gillian was in truck 2’s cab, determined to make amends for the disruption she’d caused.
Vance stood back with a big group, watching as the tow cables took up the slack and became taut. Ophelia Troy was down on her knees beside the truck’s offside front wheel, just above the ramp, watching to see if the tire tread was moving onto the flex grid, linked to Gillian to relay what was happening. Paresh Evitts walked alongside MTJ -2, keeping an eye on its performance for Leif, while Dean Creshaun was performing the same duty for MTJ-1. Vance could see the vehicles start to shake as they applied pressure. A rear wheel on MTJ-2 spun as it lost grip. Truck 2 shuddered and lurched a few centimeters forward.
“Tires touching the grid,” Ophelia said. “Take it easy, we’re almost there.”
Smiles were appearing amid the watchers as the truck began to lumber forward, slowly shifting back to the vertical. The motion caused the tow cables to slacken off for a moment. Both MTJs lunged ahead, tugging the limp cables taut again, exerting their full force in less than a second.
Then the cable connecting the truck to MTJ-1 snapped. It happened with a crack like a gunshot, which made Vance flinch, muscles contracting to deliver him into a half crouch. The two halves of the cable slashed through the air, releasing their tension energy at high velocity. They emitted a menacing whispering whistle as they moved. But even that sound wasn’t enough to alert those nearby to what was happening, so fast was the cable moving.