David Weber - Worlds of Honor

Eternity crawled as Susan Hibson clawed her way upward through a shifting, icy world. Her ski suit kept her body warm, but her soul was another matter, and the darkness and closeness and fear drove a dreadful chill deep into the heart of her. She had no light, no guide but her sense of up and down, and she wanted more than she had ever wanted anything before to curl up into a ball and just huddle where she was until someone found her. But she couldn't do that. Ranjit was hurt—worse than he wanted her to believe, she knew—and Andrea Manders was trapped, and so was whoever had gripped Andrea's ankle, and that meant she couldn't stop.

She closed her eyes, feeling the ice against her cheeks as she reached forward once more in the dark, driving her gloveless fingers into the snow ahead of her and dragging herself through it like some sightless worm. She'd lost her broken ski pole, and her hands were like frozen iron claws at the ends of her arms, she could barely feel them now, but she knew they'd been abraded bloody long since. Not that there was anything she could do about it, and she tried not to think about it, just as she tried not to think about how much air she had, or whether the snow would let more air pass through. She didn't think it would, but she didn't know, and it wasn't something she could afford to worry about now anyway.

Her thrusting hands hit something hard, ramming into it with enough force to make her cry out in pain and shock. She snatched them back against her, hugging them to her chest and whimpering while she waited for the hurt in her fingers to subside. It seemed to take forever, but at last she uncurled a little and reached out once more, tentatively. It was another rock, she thought. It wasn't the first she'd encountered, but as her hands tried to explore it and find a way around it, she realized it was the largest so far. There was only one way around it, she told herself, and braced her hand against its support, then arched her back. The snow was just loose enough that she could wedge it away from her, packing it more firmly, using her own body to shape the tiny, moving open space she carried with her, and she arched her back again and again, panting through gritted teeth as she forced the all-enfolding snow to conform to her desires. At last she let herself slump back, pressing her forehead against the rough, icy surface of the rock she had never seen while she sucked in air. She was so tired. So very, very tired. But at least the space about her was big enough now, and she rose on her knees and reached over her head with aching, exhausted arms. She drove her hands into the snow directly above her and felt it shower down. It fell with frightening speed now that she was digging vertically through it, and she bit her lip, forcing herself not to sob with terror as she visualized hitting a looser patch of snow, having it lose its cohesion and come rushing down like crystalline quicksand, filling her tiny space, sealing her mouth and nose alone in the dark—

Susan Hibson moaned, fighting to shut her mind down, clinging to the memory of her brother, and made herself dig onward.

"This may be one of the lift cars here, Ma'am. According to the DIR, anyway." Major Stimson's finger jabbed at a blur of light in the holograph generated by the deep-imaging radar mounted in the shuttle hovering overhead. The DIR was intended to probe for underground bunkers and similar installations, but it should have been equally useful for work like this. Except that the avalanche had carried so much debris down with it that they could never be certain exactly what they were looking at. It could have been a lift car . . . or a boulder . . . or a section of the lift tower.

"What about sonar?" Honor asked.

"No more definitive," Stimson said unhappily. "Whatever it is, it's about thirty meters down, and resolution is crap with both systems. Thing is, if DIR is right and it is a lift car, sonar ought to be indicating a void inside it, and it isn't. Of course, thirty meters is a long reach for a skinny's sonar. We really need more of the big units the alpine SAR people use. But still—"

He shrugged unhappily, and Honor forced her face to show no expression as she nodded. She knew what he meant, of course. Even if it was a lift car, there could be at least one very simple reason why neither the DIR nor sonar had revealed any open air spaces within it.

"All right, Frank," she said after a moment. "I want a squad working on it anyway. Get one of the pinnaces over and use its tractors and belly fans to clear the first ten or fifteen meters for them, then they can go in with the hand tractors and shovels."

"Aye, aye, Ma'am." The Marine nodded and began speaking into his own boom mike, and Honor turned away to survey the snow field.

More civilian rescue personnel were arriving now, but most of them were concentrating on the ski slopes higher up the mountain. That made sense, she supposed, given that at least half the missing had been on the slopes when the avalanche hit. Others had taken over the areas in which Novaya Tyumen had concentrated his efforts, digging down into buried buildings and freeing the people trapped inside them. She couldn't really fault their priorities, and her pinnaces were busy everywhere, moving people and equipment wherever they were needed and bringing their tac sensors to bear in response to requests from rescue teams. But she herself and all of her Marines were committed to the area here around the beginners' slope lift and the neighboring intermediate slope lift. Major Berczi was with them, limping painfully around with a face like beaten iron, as they drove themselves into exhaustion trying to find the children death had snatched away from them. At least there were enough other rescue personnel present now to let them concentrate their efforts here without ignoring other needs, and she tried to feel grateful that it was so.

They'd been at it since late morning, and the shadows of early evening were stretching out across the churned snow. The winter mountain twilight wouldn't last long, and the temperature was dropping, too. By morning, all the snow softened by the sun would have frozen hard, making their task that much more difficult. But, of course, by morning anyone who was still alive underneath this wilderness of hostile white would almost certainly be dead, anyway, she thought grimly.

Nimitz made a soft sound on her shoulder, and she reached up to comfort him. He pressed against her gloved palm for a moment, but then, to her surprise, he leapt lightly down. He landed in the snow and crouched there for a long moment, whiskers quivering and ears cocked, and then he began to move slowly away from her. She stared at him, her weary mind trying to figure out what he was up to, and he looked back over his shoulder at her. He flirted his tail and bleeked up at her, and then went bounding away into the shadows.

"Ranjit? Ranjit! "

Ranjit's eyes snapped open as the sudden panic in Andrea's voice penetrated his hazy thoughts. He blinked hard, then rubbed his face weakly, trying to scrub himself back to wakefulness. It didn't work very well, and his mouth moved in a parody of a smile as he realized why. It wasn't simple fatigue or sleepiness reaching out for him; it was blood loss from his damaged leg and the cold biting into him where his ski suit must have been rent and torn.

"Yes?" he said after a moment, and noted the hoarseness of his voice with a sort of dull bemusement.

"I—" Andrea paused. "I was afraid you'd passed out," she finished after a moment, and he astounded them both with a dry, coughing burst of laughter.

Passed out? I don't think so, he thought. You were afraid I'd gone and died on you, Andrea. But I haven't. Not yet.