Лю Цысинь - Supernova Era

A little more than one hundred meters away from Huahua, Second Lieutenant Wei Ming was also trudging arduously through the blizzard. During a sudden lull in the wind, he heard the call of a cat. At first he thought it was just a figment of his imagination, but when he looked around he noticed a stretcher he had just passed on the ice. It was buried in the snow and he had mistaken it for a snowdrift. The meowing was coming from underneath. He left his column and slipped and slid over to the stretcher, where the cat had jumped down and was shivering in the snow. He picked it up, and then recognized it: Watermelon.

Pulling the army blanket off the stretcher, he saw Morgan lying there, clearly seriously wounded. Her face wore a white beard of frost, and her eyes glittered with fever. She didn’t appear to recognize Wei Ming, and when she spoke a few words, her voice was as weak as a thread in the driving wind. Without a translation unit, Wei Ming couldn’t understand her anyway. He tucked the cat back under the blanket, pulled it over Morgan, and then went around to the front of the stretcher and started pulling. He made slow progress; when the next column of children caught up to him, a few members broke away and came over to help him carry the stretcher forward.

For ages, swirling snow was all the children could see in the expanse of white around them, and although they strove to move forward, they felt as if they were frozen in place on the ice. But just as they were too numb to move, hazy black silhouettes of ships appeared ahead of them, and they were informed via radio not to proceed any farther. They had reached the edge of the ice shelf, where the ice was not frozen solid, and they could fall through at any time. The ships would dispatch landing craft and hovercraft to fetch them. By the time they received the message, over a thousand children had already fallen through crevasses into the icy sea, but the vast majority of them managed to reach the edge of the ice.

Smaller black shadows, separate from the distant fleet, gradually took shape through the snow, dozens of landing craft pushing through the floating ice. When they reached the solid ice, they opened their rectangular maws to let the children swarm aboard.

Wei Ming and the other children carried the stretcher onto one of the landing craft. It was a vessel especially for the wounded, so his companions left at once and he never knew what countries they were from. Under the cabin’s dim yellow light, Wei Ming saw Morgan staring blankly at him from the stretcher. She clearly hadn’t recognized him yet, so Wei Ming picked up Watermelon and said, “You can’t take care of him anymore. Why don’t I take him with me to China?” He set the cat down and let it lick its master’s face. “Don’t worry, Lieutenant. We went through so many devilish games and made it out alive, and life will go on. We’ve survived the impossible, so blessings must be in store. Goodbye.” Then he put Watermelon into his backpack and left the boat.

Huahua and a few generals from other countries were coordinating the boarding, and preventing the children who were temporarily unable to board from crowding too far forward and collapsing the ice shelf with their numbers. Farther back on the ice, children from different countries clustered together into large masses to shelter from the cold as they waited. All of a sudden Huahua heard someone call his name, and he turned around to see Wei Ming. The two former classmates embraced.

“You came to Antarctica too?” Huahua asked incredulously.

“I came a year ago with B Group Army’s advance team. I’ve actually seen you and Specs quite a few times from far off, but it didn’t feel right to disturb you.”

“Out of our class, I think Wang Ran and Jin Yunhui also joined the army.”

“Correct. They came to Antarctica too,” Wei Ming said, his expression faltering.

“Where are they now?”

“Wang Ran was evacuated last month with the first batch of wounded, but I don’t know if he made it back home. He was seriously injured in the tank games. He managed to stay alive, but his spine was severed, and he’ll probably never walk again.”

“Oh… and Jin Yunhui? I recall he was a fighter pilot?”

“Correct. A J-10 in the First Airborne Division. His fate was much happier. He crashed into a Su-30 during a fighter game, and both planes were blown to bits. He was posthumously awarded a Nebula medal, but everyone knows he only hit the enemy plane by accident.”

To cover up his own sadness, Huahua asked another question: “Any other kids from our class?”

“We kept in touch the first few months, but by the start of Candytown, most of them, like all the other kids, left their assigned jobs. I don’t know where they ended up.”

“Didn’t Ms. Zheng leave a kid behind?”

“Correct. At first, Feng Jing and Yao Pingping were looking after him. Xiaomeng sent someone to look for the kid, but Ms. Zheng’s final instructions were ‘You may not use your connections to give him any special treatment,’ and so they didn’t let anyone find him. At the start of Candytown, the kid’s nursery was hit by an epidemic, and he ran a high fever. He survived, but the fever took away his hearing. The nursery was disbanded near the end of Candytown, and the last time I saw Feng Jing, she said he had been transferred to another one. No one knows where he is now.”

Huahua was too choked up to speak. A deep sadness came over him, and the numbness he had begun to acquire at the harsh pinnacle of power instantly melted away.

“Huahua,” Wei Ming said, “do you still remember our graduation party?”

Huahua nodded. “How could I forget?”

“Specs talked about how the future can’t be predicted. Anything could happen. He proved it using chaos theory.”

“That’s right. He also mentioned the uncertainty principle…”

“Who would have thought back then that we’d run across each other in a place like this?”

Huahua could no longer hold back his tears. The wind blew them cold on his face almost immediately, and then they froze. He looked up at his classmate. Wei Ming’s eyebrows were white with ice, and the skin on his face was dark and rough and patchy with scars and frostbite and the visible and invisible nicks and scratches left by life and war. His child’s face was already weathered by time.

“We’ve grown up, Wei Ming,” Huahua said.

“Correct. But you’ve got to grow up faster than us.”

“It’s hard for me. And for Specs and Xiaomeng, too.”

“Don’t let anyone know. You can’t let the country’s children know that.”

“And I can’t talk to you about it?”

“I can’t help you, Huahua. Give my regards to Specs and Xiaomeng. You’re the glory of our class. The absolute glory.”

“Take care of yourself, Wei Ming,” Huahua said with feeling as he shook his classmate’s hand.

“You too.” Wei Ming gripped his hand for a moment, and then turned and disappeared into the snow.

Davey boarded the aircraft carrier USS John C. Stennis. Anchored close to shore, this supercarrier launched in the 1990s was a black iron island in the blizzard. Across the runway on the snow-covered flight deck, Davey heard the sound of shots from the gun platform, and asked the captain who had greeted him what was going on.

“Lots of kids from other countries want to board. Marines are preventing them.”

“You dumbass!” Davey roared. “Let every kid aboard who can, no matter where they come from!”

“But… Mr. President, that’s impossible!”

“That’s an order! Tell those marines to get the hell away!”