William Dietrich - Dark Winter

"Justify by killing people."

"By getting us to act like the fools he thinks we are. Maybe we'll find out someday, if we get through this."

"It would have to be something pretty bad, wouldn't it? Something to really make you feel terrible about life?"

Lewis looked at the cook for a long time and then let his gaze drift around the room. Geller. Calhoun. Dana Andrews. Alexi Molotov. Accusers. Executioners. "Yes," he finally said. "Like tying an innocent man to a stake at the Pole." He couldn't hide the bitterness.

Everyone looked away.

He should have bit it back but Norse's taunting had hit home. Lewis was angry, sore, depleted. He'd lived, yes, but some vital part of him seemed to have gone: He felt that he'd died a little just by being strapped to that stake. He wondered if he'd ever get that part of himself back. Basic optimism. Trust.

He'd come looking for community and they'd been willing to dispose of him. The harder he'd tried, the worse things seemed to get. So here he was, the woman he was falling in love with in the hands of a madman, without a friend and without a future. Welcome to the Three Hundred Degree Club, buddy.

Sitting in a metal box, waiting like dumb poultry for their fate. That's what Norse would have predicted, wouldn't he?

Predicted that, at the end, none of them would be talking to each other.

He'd played with them.

What if he was still playing with them?

It was the first thought to jolt Lewis out of his depressed apathy. What was Norse's game now? They had nothing but the word of a killer that he'd ever let Abby go. That he wouldn't damage the station. There were, what? He counted. Seventeen of them. Abby, the eighteenth, and then Norse. Six dead, assuming Tyson had succumbed. And…

Where the hell was Pika?

The little man was so quiet he was easy to miss.

Lewis stood up, suddenly terribly concerned but not certain what he was concerned about. The lethargy! They had to shake it off! Norse was counting on it to give himself time to get away. Get away with Abby. Get away with… what?

Seventeen against one.

What the hell were they sitting there for?

The others were eyeing him uncertainly.

"Cueball, did you get a look at his gun?"

Pulaski shrugged. "Barely."

"Is it real?"

The cook looked at Lewis speculatively, his own energy pricked slightly by the geologist's. "It looked real to me. Won't know unless we jump him."

"How many shots does he have?"

"Well, a real gun would have been picked up in the detectors when he came down here, so his looked pretty crude, a bunch of homemade parts." Pulaski thought. "I saw two barrels, which suggests there's no chamber for extra bullets. Probably just two shots, like a double-barreled shotgun, until he has time to reload. Who knows how many bullets? What are you thinking?"

"That we've been letting him control events since the winter began. And that we're still letting him, by sitting here."

The cook looked doubtful. "You want to risk Abby, Jed?"

"You think she's not already at risk? After all that's happened? Norse says he's going to leave, but how?"

"The Spryte," Geller spoke up. "Like Tyson tried. Norse was curious about it from the beginning. Load a sled with food and fuel and take off across the plateau. It's risky, but he knows he's dead if he stays here. If we'd killed you, maybe he would have gotten away with the whole thing, but not now. His only chance is to go to the Russians and try to bribe his way off the continent with the meteorite."

"Norse is a good talker, but it doesn't make sense. It's him against eighteen or nineteen witnesses, and he knows we'll get the radios back up sometime, that we'll alert NSF and the Russians."

"He's crazy, Jed," Calhoun offered.

"Is he? If Norse takes that Spryte, he not only gets away with murder, but he takes away our only emergency exit in case something goes wrong. What if he's screwing up the base right now, sentencing us all?"

"He can't get to the fuel or generators," Pulaski said. "We sealed those up."

"So how is he getting to the garage to get the Spryte? When you sealed off the generator room you sealed off the garage, too, didn't you?"

That stopped them.

"Maybe he's breaking in or something," Geller said. "He'd have to. Pika is the only one who knows a way to get in. Who has a key."

Lewis let his eyes scan the room. "So where's Pika?"

Heads turned, their apathy becoming alarm. Had Norse kidnapped him, too?

"If Bob is planning to bring down the temple like some kind of deranged Samson, we need him alive to tell us how to defuse whatever he's cooked up. Don't we? We can't afford to let him set off for Vostok because then he's free to pull the plug on this place. Booby-trap it, like the batteries in Comms."

"Set a fire," Pulaski said. "Cut a cable."

"We're sitting like hams in a can, waiting for him to do it."

They looked at the galley door. What if Norse had anticipated this very conversation? What if he was outside the door, waiting for one of them to test his threat? Or was he already firing up the Spryte, the station generators about to explode?

"Maybe we need to get out of here and into emergency shelter," Dana said quietly. "Run the bloody hell to Bedrock Village."

"If it comes to that. But I'm not sure I'm willing to write off the rest of the station for this guy. Willing to sit out there, hoping for the best."

"I hear you on that," Mendoza said.

"If he's got Pika's keys, or Pika himself," Lewis reminded them, "he can go anywhere, do anything. We're letting a lunatic roam the station."

"And if we go charging out there, we're not only going to get some of us killed, but Abby, too," Linda Brown warned. "If we just wait maybe it will be over."

"Or not. Maybe his experiment hasn't stopped. Why should we believe it has?"

Everyone was looking at Lewis uneasily, suddenly restless, suddenly uncertain again. Every choice seemed risky.

"I care for Abby more than any of you. But Norse is counting on us to react, not anticipate. That's been his expectation from the beginning. He's counting on us to be a step behind him."

"He said if we go out that door- " Linda began.

"That's my whole point. He said."

"But what do you want us to do?"

Lewis stopped. What should they do? He thought a moment. "If he sees us coming, he's got more chance to hurt Abby or hurt the station. We need to take him by surprise. If he's really fleeing, then he has to already be in the garage gassing up. Right? He's got to be getting ready. So he can't see us. There's only one of him. Let's go outside, circle around to the garage doors, and jump him when he comes out."

"What about the generators?" Mendoza said. "What if he's rigged them to blow when he leaves? Blow if we come at him?"

Lewis paused. "Is that possible?"

"Who knows? He seemed awfully sure we won't survive long enough to sic the authorities on him."

"Okay, how about this? A few of us should go that way- sneak into the garage the back way in case he tries to retreat. Check for any sabotage. Take him from behind with the rest in front. We'll surround the bastard."

"How do we get in?"

"The same way Norse did, I hope. I just remembered something. Pika's been going to BioMed like a horse to a feed bag but there's no sign he's sick. When I found Nancy in the storeroom there was a cabinet askew, a panel behind it, and I'm wondering now if there's some kind of utility access there to the arches. I'd like to take Longfellow through in case there's some electrical thing Norse has rigged to booby-trap our power. You, too, Carl. See if we can find Abby before he takes off in the Spryte, and get her safe. Then the rest of you can block him."

"He's got a gun!" Linda Brown reminded.