Under the Ice

“I knew that I could rely on you, my son. Now, remember our shared dream. And when the comet arrives in all its fiery glory, recollect the prophecy that the grandfathers handed down to the people at the very beginning of time. And perhaps the Great Spirit will intervene, and mankind will be spared.”

With the conclusion of these words, Nakusiak was caught up in a fit of violent coughing. And as the blood poured down the corners of his cracked lips, the elder shut his eyes and initiated the first steps of his final journey.

Beside him, Ootah was strangely affected by his father’s passing. No tears fell down his cheeks.

Rather, he felt as if a great weight had been lifted from him. And it was in this spirit that he began making the burial arrangements.

Later that morning, not long after Nakusiak’s corpse was deposited in a shallow grave at the utskirts of their camp, Ootah was drawn to the very edge of the pack ice. As he gazed up into the clear blue heavens, he felt a strange feeling overcome him, and for a brief, fleeting magical moment he touched upon the oneness that guides mankind’s destiny. Suddenly no longer afraid of that final journey he, too, would have to eventually face, the Inuit scanned the vast Arctic sky, finally fixing his gaze on a thin white line that cut the heavens like a knife. No stranger to the vapor trails left in the wake of the white man’s airplanes, he knew this track was lower than the others he had viewed, and somehow different.

Ootah was in the midst of contemplating what made this sky trail unique when the heavens exploded in a fireball of dazzling color. This blindingly bright shaft of light was followed by a deafening boom, that seemed to shake the very ice beneath him.

Mesmerized by the intense wheel of fire that seemed to be falling toward the earth, Ootah suddenly got an inspiration. Could this be the comet his father had warned of? And if it was, did this blast signal the end of the world that the grandfathers prophesied?

Trembling at this thought, Ootah brought his hand up to the smooth bone amulet that hung from his neck. He had sworn to Nakusiak that he would carry on the tradition handed down by his father’s father.

This was a great responsibility, and to insure that he didn’t fail, he could do but one thing. With his eyes still locked on the smoking debris that continued to fall from the heavens in the distance, Ootah determined that he would initiate a holy pilgrimage to gather these remains and determine if they were indeed from the realm of the Great Spirit.

Chapter Four

Less than twenty-four hours after the USS Defiance returned to her home port, her captain was called to the base commander’s office to explain their early arrival. Matt Colter had just completed this two-hour meeting, and as the car carrying him back to the Defiance returned to the docks, the blond-haired Annapolis grad pondered the rather tense conference that had just taken place.

During his past encounters with Admiral Alien Long, Colter had always found the distinguished, white-haired officer an open-minded, compassionate individual. It had been under Admiral Long’s expert tutelage that Matt had adjusted to the rigors of his first command, and matured as both a naval officer and a human being. Yet for the first time ever. Matt had seen a different side to the admiral’s personality.

Cold and analytical. Long had proceeded as if it were Matt’s fault the mission failed.

Quick to defend himself. Colter did his best to explain the reason why he was forced to cut their mission short. With the assistance of the ship’s log, he described the three separate instances when their prototype surface-scanning Fathometer improperly interpreted the ice conditions topside, causing a trio of bone-jarring collisions. He even displayed a recently taken photograph of the Defiance’s, rudder; it clearly showed the spot where a navigation beacon had been cleanly sheared off by the force of one of these violent confrontations with the pack ice.

Seemingly deaf to this certain proof. Admiral Long continued to probe Matt’s motives for prematurely concluding the patrol. He even pulled out the transcript of the log of one of the Defiance’s earlier Arctic patrols. On that one Matt Colter had also hesitated to bring his command topside because of difficult ice conditions.

Such a move on Long’s part angered the young captain. This past incident had been more than fully explained, and concerned an attempt by the Defiance to surface at the North Pole alongside a British weather station. Though their surface-scanning Fathometer had not failed on that day, in Colter’s opinion, the polynya displayed topside had not been large enough to safely accommodate the Defiance. This was in direct contradiction to the observations of the weather station crew, who’d reported an opening more than sufficient for the three-hundred foot-long vessel.