Scott Cleveland - Pale Boundaries

“How about a compass?”

“I’ve got a little electronic hand-held.” She got it out of her pack for him.

“It’ll do. Is it calibrated for true north or magnetic north?”

“I didn’t know it mattered.”

“It doesn’t—I just have to know.” He punched through the simple menu for a moment. “True north; that’s fine. Does the sled’s altimeter work?”

“Isn’t that part of the GPS?”

“That answers my question,” he replied, and went back to the compass menu. “Never mind; this has one. I can calibrate it from the sled’s atmospheric pressure sensor and the map. Won’t be as accurate as I’d like, but it will work.”

O’Brien’s stomach began to hurt. “Are you trying to tell me that you’re going to try and navigate using a dime-store compass and a paper map?”

Pelletier nodded. “And a copilot with a sharp eye and a rudimentary familiarity with basic land navigation.”

“Maybe we should rethink this,” she said.

“Fine by me,” Pelletier shrugged. “You’re the ones in a hurry.”

He had her there. They could rethink it a hundred times, but it all came down to the Embustero breaking orbit without them in a little over sixteen hours—a deadline only slightly less certain than the sun coming up in the morning.

His confidence made him appear a godsend at first, but what he proposed to do bordered on ludicrous, now. It was easy for a spacer to say that death was preferable to stranding, but as the possibility loomed she found herself thinking that a dirtside prison might not be so bad after all.

Her attention turned back to Pelletier, who watched the play of emotions across her face while she thought it through, patient and impartial. He wasn’t constrained by a deadline, but was willing to take what struck her as an absurd risk. Was he just crazy, or was he really that good?

“Tell me straight,” she demanded, looking directly into his eyes, “what are our chances?”

“Eighty percent we get out,” he said. “Sixty percent we get out in time for you to make your lift. Twenty percent we don’t make it.”

“Twenty percent being we get killed, or get caught?”

“If we get caught the EPEA will execute us on the spot,” he assured her.

“Comforting,” she replied sourly. She nodded at the map. “Explain how this works.”

“We’ll fly out in a series of legs,” he said. “I’ve identified landmarks at each waypoint. The map gives us altitudes, the compass direction, and we’ll need a clock or stopwatch for duration. We find the landmark at each waypoint to confirm location, then change course and reset for the next waypoint.”

“That’s the craziest idea I’ve ever heard,” O’Brien told him.

“Maybe so, but it works. I’ve done it before.”

“In the dark?”

“Where I’m from we got fog so thick the visibility was no better.”

“Oh? Where was that?”

Pelletier ignored the question. “Who’s flying right seat?”

“Grogan’s got the most experience with the sled.”

“Grogan’s an idiot. Who’s second?”

“I guess that would be me,” she sighed.

“You need to study this, then,” Pelletier told her, gesturing to the map. “It’s going to be up to you to spot landmarks and keep track of where we are.”

She looked over his annotations, which indicated that they’d head south for quite a distance before turning east toward the preserve’s border. “What was wrong with Grogan’s course?” she asked. “We know that route a lot better.”

“Those valleys are perfect for avoiding radar,” Pelletier agreed, “but the terrain’s too narrow and rugged to navigate this way at high speed. You wouldn’t make your lift if we flew it slow enough to avoid crashing.

“This route,” he said, finger tracing the series of doglegs, “is more open and the elevations change more gradually. We can fly faster, and the trees should provide better contrast against the snow.”

“But they’ll see us on radar,” O’Brien pointed out.

“Maybe, but we’re heading away from the main search area, and they’re not looking for another aircraft. If they do happen to see us, they’ll most likely assume we’re one of them.”

O’Brien combed her fingers through her hair. Pelletier’s self-assurance was difficult to argue with, under the circumstances, but she and the others were fools to give him their trust and confidence carte blanch. “What’s the fastest you can fly the first leg?” she asked.

“The ridge should hide us for a while, so we can fly higher and faster here than we can when we get to the bottom of the valley. Why?”

“I’m going to put out a rescue strobe when we leave,” she said. “That’ll draw them all here while we haul ass the other way.”

Pelletier frowned. “Not necessarily the best idea,” he said. “The more eyes that point this way, the more likely that someone will spot us.”

“Then you’d better be as good as you seem to think you are,” O’Brien replied. “It’ll be dark in another couple of hours.”

“I’ll be ready.”

The poachers finished loading their gear as dusk swept across the mountains. They chose to abandon the non-essential and consumable supplies. Grogan performed the preflight and powered up the sled’s systems before relinquishing the pilot’s seat to Pelletier. “All yours, genius.” The sled’s repellers came to life as he withdrew to the passenger compartment. “Everyone’s strapped in,” he announced.

“Let me know when you’re ready,” Pelletier called back to O’Brien.

O’Brien pulled the rescue strobe from its charging socket in the sled and carried it to the aircraft’s tail. She set the strobe frequency and aimed it into the depths of the cave. “Fire in the hole!” she called, closed her eyes and triggered the strobe.

The flash dazzled her eyes through her lids and the strobe emitted a high-pitched whine as it recharged its capacitor for the next flash. O’Brien lugged the device to the mouth of the cave and shoved her feet into her snowshoes. Drifting snow had constricted the entrance to less than half its original size, raising concerns as to whether the sled would even fit. It was still more than large enough for a human being, though, and she trudged out to seat the strobe in the snow a few meters from the opening.

Back inside, she caught a handhold long enough to kick loose the snowshoes and swung herself aboard. She left Grogan to secure the hatch while she made her way to the cockpit and strapped in next to Pelletier. “Four minutes left!”

The sled moved forward slowly. O’Brien held her breath as the nose came in contact with the low trailing edge of the drifts and began to plow it into a hump that climbed toward the cockpit windows. The sled’s mass proved too much for the obstruction; irregular blocks of wind-compacted snow broke free and slid aside, tumbling into the darkness down-slope.

“Three minutes,” O’Brien said.

Pelletier turned onto the compass heading for the first leg. “Start the clock.” She toggled the counter, and the sled accelerated down the mountain’s flank at full speed. Dark splotches appeared in the dim gray expanse of snow beneath the sled, flocked copses of trees that grew larger and more frequent as they approached the valley floor then merged into unbroken forest.

“Any second n—” A burst of light bright enough to be seen from orbit lit the sky behind them before she finished. Reflections from the surrounding hills illuminated the valley for a split second, long enough to spot the first landmark: a pass through the foothills into the next valley. “Five minutes to the next strobe.”

Pelletier had seen the pass, too, and altered course slightly without slowing. His eyes flicked back and forth between the sled’s maneuvering clock and the little compass. O’Brien leaned forward, peering through the useless front window, straining her eyes for any clue as to what lay ahead. Her neck and shoulders tensed in anticipation of the certain impact.