Chapter 27. Maxim
MAXIM
I’ll never take the sun for granted again.
We spent four months cloaked in darkness.
Every day without the sun, it’s harder to lift your spirits.
Depression, seasonal affective disorder, vitamin C deficiency—whatever you want to blame for it or call it, it’s real.
We ate the dark like nightshade, and it was poisonous.
Melancholy with every meal. The weight of the endless night can suffocate you if you’re not careful.
I know now why men have gone mad in the Antarctic.
I understand the rigorous psychological testing for those who winter over. We aren’t built to live this way.
Just as I’m sure I’ll lose my mind, one day, the faintest glow illuminates the horizon, and we at least don’t need head torches to see and move around.
“I’m counting the days to the peninsula,” Grim says over a hand of poker one night in September. “After all this snow, I’ll take the water for a few months.”
“Not sure how open the waters will be,” Peggy says, chewing on a cigar she never actually smokes. “We’ll be contending with ice floes and another set of challenges.”
“I need another set of challenges.” I fold my hand. “I’m kind of ready to go home.”
“Tulip girl’s waiting for you?” Grim asks, his eyes briefly flashing the humor his mouth doesn’t allow.
“Shut up, man.” I shake my head and slide my seat back, not in the mood to be teased about Lennix.
“I’ve seen you looking at the pictures of her in the tulip garden,” he says, his voice serious. “She’s pretty.”
“Pretty is the least of what she is, but she is that, too.”
I miss my mother, my brother. Hell, as strained as our relationship is, I even miss my father.
But what I’m missing with Nix is more somehow.
Even after only having a week with her, it’s more.
For every time Grim has caught me looking at that photo on my phone, there’s a dozen times I’ve pulled it out he hasn’t seen.
I’ll never regret this trip. It’s been good experience, and our research is valuable, but even with the part I’m most excited about still ahead, getting outside this summer and exploring the peninsula, I’m ready to go home.
The quiet and the scope of this place change your perspective on life.
And if there’s one thing I know about my life after this trip, it’s that I want Lennix Moon Hunter, however I can get her, in it.
___________
Being on the water breathes new life into my passion for this Antarctic voyage. Living confined and in the dark with limited human contact for so long felt like my hope was packed under ice as tightly and surely as the prehistoric snow we collect.
We worked ashore the past few days, which took an enormous amount of preparation.
Bureaucratically, because the area is so closely guarded and managed that it takes a machete to cut through all the red tape.
We received our approval to gather data mere days before reaching shore.
Now that we’re off the peninsula and our ship The Chrysalis is floating alongside an armada of glaciers, I feel as buoyant as the ice floes bobbing around us.
“The landscape looks different every day,” David says from beside me, his forearms leaned on the ship’s railing.
“That’s part of what makes it so unpredictable,” Grim adds. “Glad we got some good work in before conditions changed.”
“The birds were my favorite part,” Peggy inserts with a laugh, chewing on her ever-present unlit cigar.
She worked with our seabird specialist to get population counts for various species, which will be compared with previous data, helping identify any potentially endangered populations.
They’ve been able to perform a thorough penguin census and collect blubber from the seals in the area.
We also gathered several mud samples that will be analyzed and hopefully give us information on how carbon may be trapped under ice.
“I think Larnyard may wish he’d listened to you,” Grim says, hitching his chin toward the sky. “Look at those clouds.”
I recommended we make camp on shore for a few days and spend some extra time collecting much-needed data since it had taken so much time and effort to even access the area. Dr. Larnyard had disagreed and wanted to get back on the water for the next leg of our expedition.
Sailing through ice is a treacherous, exhilarating prospect.
The Chrysalis is ice-capable, but no vessel guarantees safety if you clip a ’berg the wrong way or get trapped out on the water in one of the Antarctic’s volatile storms. The clouds looming over our ship promise storms. We’re hundreds of miles from shore, thousands of miles from civilization, and a hairbreadth from catastrophe.
“I don’t like what the sky’s telling us,” David says, his brows rouching over concerned eyes. “Iceblink.”
There are only a few places in the world where the phenomenon of iceblink, glaring white near the horizon reflecting light from ice, is even possible.
Antarctica is one of them. Polar explorers and sailors have been using iceblink to navigate arctic seas for centuries.
In contrast, water sky projects open lanes of water onto the clouds, showing how to avoid hazardous ice floes that could lock up a ship for days or even weeks. Hell, for months.
When I saw water sky, it was the first time I could articulate the exact color of Lennix’s eyes. Dark, stormy gray and seeing far. Seeing things no one else did.
“What I wouldn’t give for a water sky,” I say softly, only giving the situation half my focus. What I wouldn’t give to see her. To tell her I was a fool to think I could walk away from eyes like that.
“Right,” Grim says, frowning at the gathering clouds. “We need open water. You see all this ice crowding around the ship?”
He’s right. Even just an hour ago, our path was clear, but now tessellations of ice have interlocked around the ship, a tundra jigsaw puzzle that, if not navigated skillfully, could strand or even sink our ship. Beyond skill, we’ll need a lot of luck.
That night, I fall into a dead slumber after all the work we’ve done over the past few days. It’s not a loud boom or crash that jolts me out of my sleep. It’s another sound that sends a shiver down my spine.
Absolute silence.
The engine of The Chrysalis is quiet. The steady throb that’s become so much a part of the ship’s environment is gone.
David and Grim jerk up in their bunks, too, and we stare at each other for a few seconds, absorbing the quiet together before leaping out of bed and dragging on our sweats and down jackets.
On the bridge, there’s a forced calm to the energy as the captain and crew study satellite feeds and maps.
They say for every iceberg, the visible ice comprises only 10 percent of the whole.
The other 90 percent lies below the surface.
That’s what this is. The 10 percent the captain shows us is controlled, but an icy panic rules the atmosphere from beneath.
Dr. Larnyard sits on a bench with his head buried in his hands.
“What’s happening?” I ask Captain Rosteen, a former Australian naval officer who has negotiated this planet’s roughest seas for decades.
“We’re locked in,” he answers, deep lines around his mouth and eyes showing distress from the typically unruffled Aussie. “Rudder’s blocked by ice.”
“What’s that mean?” David asks.
“Means we aren’t in control of this ship,” Grim says with a dark frown. “We got no steerage, right, Cap? The ice is steering us.”
“Right.” Captain Rosteen gives a terse nod. “According to our satellite projections, a powerful storm’s coming, blowing westerly winds.” He pulls up an image on one of the radar screens.
“What’s that big blue thing?” David asks.
“An iceberg,” Dr. Larnyard answers, his voice muffled behind his hands. “It’s on the move and headed for us.”
“Dammit!” I link my hands over the tensed muscles behind my neck. An iceberg of eighty thousand tons will easily break through the ice floes that have us trapped and crush our ship.
“Should we evacuate?” Peggy asks. “We have enough lifeboats to get off before the ’berg hits.”
“That storm that’s coming,” Captain Rosteen says, shaking his head. “Being caught in a lifeboat in the middle of that with no land for miles could be as much a death sentence as a sinking ship.”
“We’ll call for help,” I say quickly. “Planes should be able to get in now that winter’s over.”
“Already called,” the captain says. “They’ll try.”
“They’ll try?” Grim asks, anger showing through on his usually impassive features. “What the hell do you mean they’ll try ? We have sixty-five people on this ship in addition to your crew. Students. Teachers. Women . They need to do more than fucking try, Cap.”
“The closest team that could help is a Japanese ship that can only break through ice that’s three to four feet thick,” Captain Rosteen explains. “It’s impossible. Everything around us is at least twice that now.”
“And the storm that’s closing in on us,” Dr. Larnyard says wearily. “It’s already all around. The visibility in the surrounding areas is too low for anyone to fly in safely.”
Even as he says it, wind whistles violently beyond the porthole, rocking the ship. The Antarctic shows us what a capricious bitch she can be—placid one moment and vengeful the next. A thump jerks the ship dramatically.
“Shit,” Captain Rosteen says, moving over to check the tilt meter. “Ship just went three degrees to the right.”
He runs from the cabin, and we follow. Dread sinks in my belly like an anchor dropped overboard.
The wind, silent just hours before, wails high-pitched screams all around.
Up on deck, the three degrees on the tilt meter is more obvious, setting the ship slightly askew.
A cluster of ice floes jostling for position have formed a pointy steeple and pierced the side of the boat.
The captain searches the sky crowded with ominous clouds and looks up at the stars imploringly, like they might pose a solution where there apparently is none. He says the words we all hoped we’d never have to hear.
“We’ve been hit.”