Chapter 7 - Sixty Knots of Mercy
The wind on the exterior catwalk struck Jasper with the physical impact of a concrete wall. At negative thirty-five degrees Fahrenheit with sixty-knot gusts coming directly off the Beaufort Sea, exposed skin froze solid in less than sixty seconds. Jasper leaned his entire body forward at a forty-five-degree angle, his studded boots digging frantically into the perforated steel grating that groaned and flexed over the roaring abyss.
Below him, the Arctic Ocean was an undulating cauldron of black slush, jagged ice floes, and churning foam. The lower living modules of Base Camp Boreas had already torn away, floating thirty yards out like dying iron whales before slipping silently beneath the icy swells. The main structural frame of Triage Bay Charlie was groaning in its death throes, the structural steel shrieking as rivets sheared and popped with the sound of rifle shots.
Ten feet away, mounted to the main structural pylon, sat the heavy yellow manual release lever. It was encased in a three-inch rind of solid frozen spray.
Jasper raised the steel release hook with arms that felt like lead pipes. Every breath drew freezing fire into his lungs. His vision was tunneling, the edges of his goggles encrusted with solid ice. He swung the hook with all the remaining strength in his shoulders, smashing it against the yellow lever.
*CLANG.*
A shower of ice chips exploded into the wind, but the lever remained frozen in its upright, locked position. Inside the pod, Kora Hail watched in sheer agony through the observation port, pounding on the glass, powerless to assist.
“Again!” Jasper screamed into the howling gale, the sound swallowed instantly by the roaring storm. “Move, damn you!”
He struck the lever a second time. The steel hook bent slightly under the impact, but a hairline fracture split the thick rind of ice encasing the pivot pin. Behind him, the entire catwalk gave a sickening shudder. The main anchor cable snapped with a deafening TWANG, whipping through the air like a lethal steel razor and severing the handrail three feet from where he stood. The walkway tilted sharply downward toward the black water.
Jasper lost his footing, his boots sliding out from beneath him. He caught himself by one arm wrapped desperately around the release pylon, his legs dangling out over the empty, freezing void. The cold penetrated his heavy layers instantly, turning his fingers into unfeeling wooden blocks. He couldn't lift the hook again. His grip was failing.
Looking up through his frosted visor, he saw the face of Kora Hail in the pod window—desperate, fierce, refusing to look away. He saw the faces of the young men inside whose lives hung on the balance of a single mechanical latch.
Jasper let go of the steel hook. Using both hands, he reached up, wrapped his arms completely around the yellow release lever, and threw his entire body weight backward into the empty air.
*CRACK.*
The ice shattered. The heavy forged-steel lever slammed downward to its stop. High above, the massive counterweights broke free from their magnetic cradles, plunging downward through their guide tubes and releasing the high-pressure pneumatic locks on the pod’s carriage.
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With a tremendous roar of escaping compressed nitrogen, the survival pod was catapulted down the angled launch rails, clearing the twisting wreckage of the collapsing station and flying outward into the snowy gloom.
As the pod soared clear of the destruction, Jasper felt the catwalk finally tear free from its anchors. The iron platform plunged into the freezing sea below, and the dark, icy waters of the Arctic closed over Commander Jasper, swallowing him into the silent deep.
