Upper Gwyr Valley, Carolyn Ranges, Commitment
Even though he had slept well, Michael was exhausted. He had been completely drained by the enormous effort it had taken to get his stick away from the camp and safely across the brutal nightmare that was Koenig’s High Pass.
Michael lay back against a rock while he waited for Fellsworth to get things going. His feet hurt, his hands hurt, and parts of his face had the bluish-white patches of early frost damage. Even so, he had gotten off lightly. Apart from his face, he had avoided any serious damage even if the process of rewarming had been a painful one. A few days and he would be fine; happily, so would the rest of his stick.
He looked around at the group, counting heads. He sat up; something was wrong. Another quick check confirmed it: It looked like they were one stick commander short. With the blizzard still howling over the treetops high above them and the snow falling relentlessly through the trees, Michael knew that anyone not off the mountain by then had no chance. He shivered, and it was not just from the cold. The mountainside fell steeply away from Koenig’s High Pass in an uninterrupted sweep of icy, wind-scoured snow, dropping hundreds of meters down into a boulder-strewn, snow-choked ravine. Anyone who came off the guideline would fall. Unable to slow down, let alone stop the fall, they would have smashed into the ravine too fast to have any chance of surviving.
Michael closed his eyes at the awful thought. He had been less than half a step away from the same fate for all those long hours, a perverse and vindictive wind toying with him as he struggled to keep his feet along a path that was only thirty icy centimeters wide in places.
“Okay, folks. Listen up.” Fellsworth’s voice was tired, but her underlying strength showed through the fatigue. Nobody listening to her could have any doubts that she was going to make a success of what inevitably had become known as the Long March.
“Right, first the bad news, though I’m sure most of you have worked it out already. Lieutenant Kamarova’s stick is lost. They were last to cross the pass, and no one saw them go. We think they may have cut the guideline too early, someone slipped, and that was it.” She stopped for a moment, the pain of losing eight of her spacers clear in her eyes. “We won’t forget them. I’ve sent a team to check out the bottom of the ravine below the pass in the hope that someone made it. There’s a faint chance, but I don’t hold out much hope. I’ve given the search party until last light, and then they’ll come back in, earlier if the blizzard looks like it’s easing.”
She took a deep breath in. “Right,” she declared firmly. “First up, there’s a small change of plan. I am concerned that Lake Schapp could be a trap. Here, have a look.”
With a few strokes from her staff, she drew a quick mud map of the Gwyr River as it ran northwest toward the Forest of Gwyr. A small circle in the middle marked the position of the moraine-dammed Lake Schapp.
“By now, the Hammers must have worked out that we did not head for the coast. That is,” she said with a grim laugh, “as long as they don’t think we’re all dead in a snowdrift. So, putting a blocking force in is their best next option, and the lake is the obvious place to do so. In fact, it’s the only place they could get landers in and out safely given the shitty weather in these parts. The rest of the Gwyr Valley is too steep-sided. If they have troops in place, I don’t want to run into them. The bad news is that those of you with marines and spacers with covert ops experience in your sticks will have to hand them over. They will become my recon unit.”
A small groan went up from those affected, Michael included. Yazdi and Murphy had been the rocks on which his team had been built. To lose his two marines now would be a real blow.
“Yeah, yeah, I know,” Fellsworth acknowledged patiently when the muttering died away. “I would not want to lose them either, but not crashing into a Hammer patrol is a higher priority. Anyway, where was I? Oh, yes. The recon patrol will leave four hours before dawn. They will check the route to Lake Schapp. If the Hammers are there, they’ll pull back, and we’ll have to sit and wait them out. If it’s clear, the plan remains unchanged, but we’ll go a day later. I’ll get you the precise departure schedules sometime today when we’ve had a look at the injury list. The most mobile sticks will leave first, cut down to the Gwyr River, turn downstream, and continue on to set up camp past Lake Schapp tomorrow night. Bivouac there two days before pushing on. Any questions?”
After a brief flurry of questions, none of any significance, the briefing broke up. Michael got to his feet, pleased that he would have an extra day to recover. A day’s break would be wonderful. He had not gotten far when Fellsworth waved him over.
Michael’s heart sank. He smelled a new assignment, and he would bet his life that it would not be counting the rations. Michael walked over to where Fellsworth was sitting.
“Job for you, Helfort. I want you and Corporal Yazdi to make for McNair. We need to get word to the embassy there that there are survivors. And before you ask why I chose you, it’s because you’re both small enough to pass for Hammers. A few weeks of half rations and a decent layer of dirt and they’ll never pick you out as Feds,” she said confidently.
“Fine, sir,” was all Michael could say in reply.
“Good. Now, find Yazdi, get a plan together, and brief me in. . an hour’s time. Okay?”
Michael nodded. He shivered as he walked away to find Yazdi. It was easy for Fellsworth to be so sure; he wasn’t. Pushing on alone, just the two of them, against the most ruthless police state in all of human history, without money or identity cards, without the security and support the rest of the Ishaqs provided-all of that was bad enough.
But the thought of falling into DocSec’s hands again was a hundred times worse. It absolutely terrified him.