HRVST Ch. 20: The Long Cold Hours
The man who came out of the ice was not the same.
“Men Wanted For Hazardous Journey. Low wages, bitter cold, long hours of complete darkness. Safe return doubtful. Honour and recognition in event of success” -Ernest Shackleton
It was the golden age of Antarctic exploration. 1914.
Shackleton went twice, almost reaching the pole but Amundsen did it first. So, Shackleton chose a new mission to cross the continent, from one sea to another.
The Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition set out, aboard the ship Endurance. They ship tried to slip through the pack ice which circled the continent.
Just one day’s sailing away from the landing site, it was over already.
The winds squeezed the collar of ice against the shore and the Endurance was caught between them. The ship was trapped, its crew took shelter within its walls.
Shackleton remained calm but he knew what was coming.
The ice was not done. The slow tightening grip of the ice ripped away the stern, letting in the water, and the men had to abandon ship. They had been preparing for 10 months. The men set camp on the ice and watched as the ship was consumed.
A month later, the last of the Endurance was swallowed by the ice.
The order was to take only what they needed, everything else was dead weight, including the smaller of the 69 dogs taken along. Not even a mascot, a cat, was allowed. They tried to cross the ice but after a week they had managed only 7 miles. It was decided that they would camp on the ice and ride along as it flowed northward.
Islands were in sight, hope at last but the raft of ice the men sailed on was about to come apart. Shackleton ordered the men to launch their lifeboats.
Some of them were driven mad by lack of sleep, seasickness, and dysentery but they rowed on. They had no choice. They made dry land after a week on the bitter cold waters, their first dry land in almost 500 days. Elephant Island.
There were still far from home.
After a few days of rest, Shackleton, the ship captain, and four men took one of the lifeboats to get help. After two weeks of punishment by the seas on a tiny ship, they made it to South Georgia island but it was the other side of the island, far from help.
Shackleton with 2 others hiked for 36 hours over mountain and glacier to reach a whaling station.
“Who the hell are you?”
“My name is Shackleton.”
It took three attempts, 128 days since he left for help, until he rescued the men.
Everyone made it back home alive. August 30, 1916.
Shackleton prepared a fourth expedition. The man who came out of the ice was not the same, according to those who knew him. He lost a part of himself.
He died of a heart attack in 1922.
In 2022, the remains of the Endurance were found. A leader’s bravery was remembered.
Luna, Aitken Basin, train en route to Shackleton Crater, Hyperion
“Cap, ETA 30 minutes.”
“Tommy, everyone, equipment and weapons check.”
“Copy that.”
The captain called up a map.
“The administrator, Aleksander, gave me a rough map of what to expect at Shackleton. It’s classified, even to senior people at the Cooperative. That’s how much power Necker has. This is like his private island on the Moon.
This train runs between Armstrong, through the outer boros, all the way to the south pole, straight to Shackleton and Hyperion. It’s a maintenance and supply line that feeds Hyperion. Thanks to Aleksander, we can sneak in as Hyperion staff.”
The captain shows the matte black card marked with “HRVST” to Tomassina.
“What is this, Cap?”
“This is our pass into Hyperion, so we can get close to the “Harvest” when it lands.”
“Are we taking the ship?”
“We have to stop them from using the “Harvest” again. We have to find a way. Take it, break it, or blow it up. We’re on our own. No backup. Nobody else knows about this place but even if they did, they wouldn’t be able to stop it. For all we know, Necker is getting help from inside the Cooperative. He’s brilliant but even he needs friends.
The last time they used this ship, it set off a storm.”
“I heard from the news oracles that Texas by the gulf, that Heavyville got washed out, the whole Gulf got hit by that hurricane,” said one of the team.
“I don’t know if that was part of it but this thing Necker’s built is the reason for that CME. That’s the storm I was talking about. That ship set something off the Sun and sent it all over the place, hitting everything down the well, up here, and even Mars.”
Tomassina and the team looked at the captain. CME. Coronal Mass Ejection, the ejection of solar plasma which can disrupt electronics. The recent one was so powerful, it devastated entire systems. Worst of all it killed people everywhere.
“I don’t know if it was on purpose, part of a plan, I don’t care. We can figure that out later. We’re stopping it. The administrator told me, they’re still moving ahead, and they’re going to do it again, run another test. Some of Hyperion’s people, contractors living in Armstrong, including the last administrator tried to stop it but they were killed. He’s got blood on his hands, and he won’t stop.”
“If this was kept secret to even higher ups, how did you know?”
“I didn’t, that’s the other thing. I came up the well for a different reason, to find someone, to find out what happened to something, I mean someone important.”
The team waited for the Captain, as the gears turned in everyone’s minds.
“The Cooperative’s money. The Sentient Ledger has gone missing right around the time both of the those storms hit, about right before the hurricane and the CME. Looking back, it can’t be a coincidence. I was brought in by a friend in the Cooperative, out of Houston, to find the Ledger, find out what happened.
It led me to two co-presidents of the Cooperative, the one in Wellington, pushed out and stuck in gilded cage, and then Nairobi, who still had a seat at the table, and next thing I have to go up the well.”
“God, Cap. This is….”
“Tommy, I know. This is insane and almost nobody except for Necker, and whoever is helping him, knows what has been going on. But now we know. We’re here to stop them from killing more people. We have to stop that ship, this “Harvest”. And we have to find the Ledger.”
NOTES:
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