Ice Trap Page 16

  Before McCoy knew what was happening, Nuie bared his forearm and slashed it deeply with the ulu.

  A roaring wall of water geysered up all around their iceberg as it plunged into the green-black ocean. Chekov scrambled away from the surging whitecaps, trying to regain his footing on an ice shelf now bucking and heaving in rhythm with the churned-up waves. Water like a cold, firm hand shoved against the back of his legs, hissed past him over dissolving snow, froze to a glassy glare before the edge could peel back on itself and slip away. Chekov scrabbled, on hands and knees, beyond its reach and beat at the frosty glaze already adhering to his insulation suit. The ice broke and scattered with a crackling loud enough to challenge the static over his communicator.

  Still unsteady with the iceberg's movement, hands outstretched to either side, he stumbled in a circle to take stock of their situation. The gravsled bobbed at the end of its tether, bumping ruts in the ice at what was now the highest point of their sloping raft. Howard lay tangled in the ropes and pitons near the sled; Uhura's frantic anchors had saved him from watery death yet again today. Near the top of a sharp incline, Uhura's slight figure picked its way across frozen snow and broken ice, fixated on something below and ahead of herand not the stout, white-feathered man clambering up the slope behind her.

  His heart spasming with fear, Chekov broke into a run even as he pushed up the suit's external volume. "Uhura!"

  The native spun to face him, but Uhura only waved impatiently, her attention elsewhere. "It's all right," her voice crackled over the communicator channel. "I see him."

  She couldn't have been talking about the native, but Chekov had no time to ask her to elaborate. The Kitka abandoned Uhura without even a pause, springing downslope at Chekov to tackle him into the water-slicked snow.

  Ice, hard and ridged, knocked his breath away upon impact. Chekov rolled, trying to dislodge his attacker, only to have the Kitka clamp strong legs about his middle and pin him. Glossy feathers afforded no hold for insulation-suited hands, and Chekov found himself gripping nothing but air when the Kitka swiveled to jerk a broad-bladed knife from one boot top.

  Oh, God, please no! Chekov recoiled instinctively from the blade's downward swipe. One hand flew up between thema desperate attempt to keep the Kitka from his throatand pain as bright as the Nordstral auroras shot through his forearm.

  He felt the gritty scrape of ivory blade against human bone, felt the Kitka's weight rock forward with the blow, and heaved his legs upward to slam the native in the back. Overbalanced, the Kitka whistled in surprise and faltered. Chekov wrenched his injured arm away from the knife, swung a right-handed punch at the native's shoulder. The blow separated them again, tumbling the Kitka down the ice toward the open water and leaving Chekov to curl up on his side, gasping.

  The splash of the Kitka hitting water was an oddly comforting soundit let Chekov know exactly how far away the native was, assured him that the native was busy with something else now besides attacking him. Let the Kitka worry about his own survival for a while.

  Rolling to his knees, Chekov caught himself with his good hand when nausea surged up through him and turned his vision gray. Even so, there was no mistaking the spattered pattern of scarlet in the snow all around him. He moaned softly through his teeth. Oh, please God, don't let this be happening. He couldn't afford to bleed to deathnot out here, not right now. Taking a few deep, shuddering breaths to steady himself, he clenched his jaw for strength and looked down to access the damage.

  Blood dribbled in a slow, dark patter between the fingers he'd clasped over the wound. Not bright enough to be arterial flow, not thick enough to be venous. Goodthat meant no imminent death, although his breath still came tight and his heart still labored. He could flex his left fist, too. It rifled pain clear up to his temple, but it told him the knife had passed between muscle and bone, not between the two arm bones where severed nerves would have rendered the hand useless. All in all, much better than he had a right to hope for, considering the circumstances.

  He staggered to his feet, still hugging his wounded arm to his stomach. Shock had almost numbed his senses, but he could feel a buzz of dizziness behind his eyes, a slow, maddening clench of muscles in his chest that fought his breathing. Best to find Uhura, make sure she was all right before adrenaline deserted him and left him to pass out face first in the snow. He'd probably follow the Kitka down into the water then. Given his current condition, that wouldn't be a good idea. "Uhura?"

  Her voice came to him clearly, both over the communicator channel and through the air: "Chekov! Come help me!"

  It took nearly all his concentration to crest the brief incline between themhands, knees, remember to breathe. Even so, he was panting as though he'd just climbed Mount Everest when he slid down the other side. Uhura labored at the water's edge, her back to him and her hands nearly elbow deep in the frigid sea. When Chekov saw what she struggled with, horror startled a wordless cry from him and he lunged forward to grab at her hands.

  In the water at Uhura's feet, Publicker bobbed barely even with the rocking iceberg. His eyes, closed and sunken, looked bruised against his ice-white face, and his lips were already the damning purple-black Chekov had learned to associate with people stranded out too long in the snow. Publicker's missing respirator meant his lungs were unprotected; the gashes in his insulation suit meant water had splashed against his skin since the moment their ice slab first broke free. Prying at Uhura's fingers with his own blood-slicked hands, Chekov ignored her frantic protests and dragged her mercilessly away from the water's edge. No longer supported by someone else's efforts, Publicker sank out of sight without a struggle.

  "What are you doing?" Uhura jerked as hard as she was able, panic and frustration sharp in her voice when she discovered all her strength wasn't enough to loosen Chekov's grip. "Chekov, he's unconscious! He could die!"

  His own head spinning, his heart sick with shock and despair, Chekov pushed her hands firmly against her sides and held them there. "You're wrong," he said, his voice very hoarse and tired. "He's dead already."

  Chapter Eleven

  UHURA CLOSED HER EYES , unable to watch as Publicker's frozen face sank below the dark and silent water. She reached out blindly for Chekov, wanting the touch of another person to erase the lingering feel of icy hands sliding out of hers. Her fingers met the security officer's rigid arm, then jerked back from his flinch and gasp of pain.

  "You're hurt!" She spun around, eyes flying open to stare stupidly at Chekov's face, as if she could read any expression past the shimmer of his goggles. Then she saw the way he held his left arm, hugged tight to his chest with his other hand clamped below the elbow. The sleeve of his insulation suit glistened with icy streaks in the arctic glare, but it wasn't until Uhura saw the red stains on the ice behind him that she realized it was blood.

  "Oh, my God!" She scrambled up the steep icy slope, pushing him back toward more stable footing. "What happened?"

  Lacking a free hand, Chekov jerked his chin toward the dark water of the crevasse. Their slab of ice rocked gently as some current stirred beneath it, tugging it away from the jagged blue walls. "Sub-zero water. With an insulation suit intact, it wouldn't matter. Once it got inside his suit, though, he never had a chance."

  "No, I mean what happened to you?" Uhura reached out to catch at his good shoulder when he swayed.

  "A native came at me witha knife." Chekov's voice, which had been merely strained before, thinned into breathless gasps as he spoke. "I foughthim offoh, God!"

  He shocked her by lifting his good hand and tearing at his breath filter. It snapped open, letting out an explosion of frost-white air. Glittering ice crystals swirled and vanished in the arctic wind.

  "Chekov, what's wrong?"

  "Can't breathe" His words echoed Publicker's so eerily that Uhura felt a shiver scrape up her spine. "Can't" Chekov staggered down to his knees, the smooth surface of his insulation suit sliding out of her small hands.

  "No!" Uhura grabbed at th
e security officer, suddenly terrified that he would slide down the icy slope into the water. One last shred of frost-white breath choked out from his open insulation suit, then he toppled facedown onto the ice. Uhura's quick lunge barely kept him from landing on his injured arm. He ended up in a twisted sprawl, half across her lap and half across the ice. Through the opened breath filter frost sparkled on his cheeks and chin, white as the bloodless skin beneath it.

  "Oh, no." Uhura fumbled at his belt for his medikit. No simple knife wound could have caused this kind of reaction in the security chiefunless the knife blade had been poisoned.

  She snapped the hypodermic of universal antitoxin out of his kit, then peeled Chekov's body slip away from his face to expose the muscles of his throat. She had the hypo almost in position when his limp body suddenly wrenched against her, convulsing into a rigid arc of pain. Uhura gasped as his head slammed backward into her arm, hard enough to send the slim hypodermic flying. She watched in horror as it landed meters away, then skittered down the sloping ice into the sea.

  "No!" Panic made the communications officer ruthless. Shoving Chekov's stiffened body off her lap, she grabbed across her waist, clawed her medikit open and yanked out her own antitoxin shot. This time she didn't bother looking for muscleshe slammed the hypodermic down onto the nearest bare skin she could find and shot it home.

  And nothing happened.

  "Chekov, damn you, don't you dare die on me!" Uhura jammed both hands down onto his chest, forcing out whatever air remained in his lungs. Below the yielding foam of the insulation suit, the muscles of his torso felt like solid metal. She yanked her own breath filter off, gasping as the cold air seared her lungs, then leaned over to push what air she could into his frozen lungs. One breath, two breaths, threeand the tension ran out of him like melting ice.

  Uhura sat back, breathing so hard her lungs felt burned. She couldn't see any difference in Chekovno rush of color into his ice-pale face, no sudden flutter of closed eyelids. If he was breathing, he was doing it so slowly she couldn't tell. Oh, God, was he dead?

  She leaned down, not even sure what she hoped to do. Something thin and hard bumped against her chin as she did, and she lifted a hand to feel Nhym's Kitka mask, hanging loose and forgotten around her neck. An idea struck her suddenly. She dragged the bone mask over her head, almost tearing off her breath filter in her haste. The shining bone surface gleamed warm as milk as she held it over Chekov's ice-rimmed lips. The shine stayed in place for a long, excruciating moment, then faintly clouded with a film of mist.

  "Thank God." Uhura dropped the mask from shaking fingers, then swung Chekov's breath filter back over his face to protect him from the cold. Her own cheeks were burning with frost. She began to snap her filter closed, then stopped abruptly.

  From somewhere behind her, her outside mike had picked up the unmistakable crunch of a footstep.

  The physician that was the heart and soul of Leonard McCoy galvanized into action. He vaulted off the bed into the stinking, frigid water and grabbed Nuie. "What the hell are you doing?"

  The shaman thrust him away like a bothersome child. "You must not stop me in this, Leonard. This is a part of my life that needs to be completed. You cannot interfere."

  "The hell I can't!" He attempted to grab the Kitka's bare arm and failed, hands sliding free across the flow of blood. "Dammit, Nuie!"

  Someone pounded on the outer door. "Bones! Are you in there?"

  The muffled cry stopped McCoy dead, freezing him for an instant before he spun and clawed his way to the door, water spraying in all directions. He hammered the thick metal with a fist made of cold-stiffened appendages that only barely resembled fingers. "Jim!" Relief so profound he almost wept flooded through him and made his legs flutter, threatening to send him under again. Just hearing his friend's voice drove the terror to bay.

  "Bones, open the door!"

  "I can't! It's been jammed from the outside! Jim, it's flooding in here! We're almost under!"

  He watched the door wheel tock back and forth a minuscule distance, then heard Kirk swear loudly. "I'll get you out! I promise! Who's in there with you?"

  "Just Nuie."

  "How high is the water?"

  McCoy swallowed hard. "Almost to my neck. We can get up on the beds and counters, but that won't make much difference in a few minutes."

  "Do it! It'll give you extra breathing time. I What the hell is that?!"

  Behind McCoy rose an eerie, ululating wail. He whipped around and a cry tore from his throat. Nuie stood with his arm stretched high and straight above his head like a mountain's summit. Blood tracked down the corded muscle, staining his uniform and blushing the water with rosy tendrils. Head thrown back and eyes closed, his voice rose again in the weirdly pitched Kitka song. "Get in here, Jim, before we have a ritual suicide!"

  "I'm coming as fast as I can!" Kirk cried.

  McCoy licked his lips nervously and stepped toward Nuie. "Put away your knife, Nuie. It's not time for us to die." Liar, a portion of his mind singsonged. He reached up and clamped his fingers firmly around Nuie's slashed forearm, one eye on the ulu in the Kitka's other hand. Blood welled under his palm from the cut, warm to the touch, and he pressed more firmly against the hard flesh. The first mate flinched and the song cut off.

  McCoy felt drawn into the silver eyes. "Nuie, we're not going to die. Not today," he stressed. "Kirk's alive, and he'll get us out if anyone can. I've known him a long time and there's no stubborner man in the galaxy. He's cheated death more times than anyone I know."

  "You can only cheat death as long as she lets you," Nuie replied pragmatically.

  McCoy felt like beating a head against the wall, uncertain if it was his or Nuie's he felt most like bashing. I don't need this conversation. "Then death must like Jim Kirk a lot, because she keeps letting him beat her at her own game." His numb fingers tightened, sticky against Nuie's skin. "Dammit, Nuie, you're my friend! I won't let you die!"

  "It's not your choice, Leonard, it's mine. If I die without speaking with the god, if I don't offer myself, I'm nothing as a Kitka, my world's afterlife will reject me. My soul will be trapped forever inside a shell at the bottom of the sea. I won't go on to join the cycle "

  McCoy looked into Nuie's eyes and finally understood what he saw there. The Kitka was not afraid of death, but he was terrified of leaving this world without performing this ritual. His dying was intrinsically woven with his living, warp and weft of the same material. Nuie had accepted McCoy's fear with understanding. The doctor could do no less, although it galled him to admit that he had no right to deny the man his culture.

  "Okay! I agree! But we're not going to die!"

  "Can you promise me that?"

  McCoy couldn't lie when faced with that frank, patient gaze. "I can't promise you anything, Nuie." He sighed and released him. "I know what I believe, but I can't expect you to believe it, too. If we are going to die, though, when the time comes, I'd like to speak with the god, too. I'd like my death to mean something."

  Deep emotion touched Nuie's eyes and was gone. "You do me a great honor, Leonard, but I'm sorry. I cannot accept. You're not Kitka. The god wouldn't take you."

  Annoyance rankled McCoy. "What's the matter, do I smell bad?"

  "I don't know how you smell to the god. All I know is that it wouldn't accept you, and your body would float around uneaten."

  "Well, it's a damn sorry world when a man can't slit his wrists or offer himself up to Heaven in lieu of drowning." He glowered at the faint smile that touched Nuie's mouth, and gestured at his arm. "Have you bled enough for one day?"

  "For now." Nuie's swished the gash in the water, apparently unbothered by the sting of salt.

  "For now," McCoy mimicked, and spat saltwater. Fear shot him clawing for the submerged bunk. He hauled himself atop it with arms that would barely hold his weight and stood, putting his mouth as far out of the water as he could. "Jim!"

  "I'm here, Bones!" Kirk's response seemed to come from every angle
and the quality of his voice had changed.

  "Where?"

  "There!" Nuie pointed to a grillwork along the ceiling juncture of one wall. "The ventilation shaft."

  "That's right," Kirk called. "You need to climb up in here, Bones. I've got some of the crew with me and they guarantee we can get you out this way and dog a makeshift hatch to keep out the flooding."

  "What about the rest of the system? Won't that flood, too?"

  "We're taking care of it. Stop arguing and get in here!"

  McCoy peered through the murky depths. "There's nothing to stand on."

  "Then you'll have to tread water." Kirk was beginning to sound impatient.

  McCoy couldn't blame him, but "Dammit, Jim, I'm a doctor, not a synchronous swimmer! I can't tread water!"

  "Then you'd better learn."

  "I'll help you, Leonard," Nuie offered, arms moving rhythmically, feet already several inches off the floor.

  McCoy eyed the dark hollow of the shaft. "I'll never fit."

  An explosive sigh resounded through the ventilation system. "Would you rather just drown?! Get in the shaft, McCoy. That's an order."

  "I hate when you play hardball," McCoy muttered. Arms held rigidly before him, he slid forward off the bunk, eyes fixed intently on the dark, square, hopelessly small ventilation grill.

  * * *

  "Is the chief all right?"

  The anxious, husky voice on the comm channel made Uhura's breath hiss out in relief. "Howard!" She snapped her filter closed and scrambled to her feet, turning toward the sound of footsteps. The security guard's tall figure circled the gravsled, then began climbing the tilted ramp of ice toward her. He moved a little stiffly, but his arm hung normally at his side. She assumed that Chekov must have had enough time to reset it before their ice slab fell.

  "Thank God you're still here." Uhura skidded down the white slope to meet him, impatient with his slow progress. "Give me the antitoxin from your medikit."