Operation Orion - Kevin Dockery [51]
“Keep the man in front of you in sight,” Jackson ordered, standing to the side as the file of SEALS—strangely anonymous in their bulky pressure suits, trudged past him. They were traversing a steep ridge, sticking to the snowbank just to the lee of the summit. Barely a dozen meters overhead the lieutenant could see a film of ice crystals scoured by the furious wind blowing off into the distance. Faintly illuminated by the light of distant Arcton, the plume of frost looked like a sheet of smooth blue silk.
He had learned that it could cut like a knife when he had dared to stick his head over the top of the ridge. The windblown crystals had struck his faceplate like sand from a power blaster, and he had ducked hastily down again, fearing that even his rugged suit could not stand up to that kind of pressure for long.
Still, on the plus side, the storm was not quite as intense on the planetary surface as it had been in the midlevel atmosphere. Now visibility was at least ten meters, and sometimes a gap in the gusts would allow him to see five or ten times that far. It was enough to confirm that the file of SEALS was advancing down a deep, troughlike valley surrounded by icy sheer heights on both sides. Marannis was now in the lead, forging a trough in the snow that made walking much easier for the men behind him. His ghillie cloak caused him to vanish against the white background, disappearing so completely that it looked as though his tracks in the snow were being left by a ghost. The sailors brought up the rear of the column, except for Chief Harris, who followed a couple of hundred meters behind, keeping a keen eye out for unwelcome visitors.
It was such perfect ambush country that it made his skin crawl.
To counter the danger, he had the men employ any and all components of their detection arrays that could be made to work. Several men activated the IR filters on their facemasks. It was that visual enhancement into the thermal spectrum that saved the Team from disaster.
Marannis, still at the point, knelt in the deep snow and raised his hand to halt the file while he waited for Jackson to catch up to him.
“LT,” the scout reported in a matter-of-fact tone. He indicated his fellow scout, Sanchez, right behind him in the line. “Willie called my attention to something. I switched on the IR scanner and got a line of hot spots up on each slope of the valley. Couple dozen—at least—on both sides. They’re actually more warm than hot; I had to double-check to see if there’s really anything there. They don’t have much of a heat signature, but they’re hunkered down on those heights. If we keep moving, we walk right down the middle of Ambush Alley.”
Jackson nodded, considering. Surprisingly, he felt a vague sense of relief at the prospect of action. It certainly beat walking through the blizzard for days until their life support ran out. Furthermore, if they encountered sentient creatures out there in the blizzard, those strangers must have come from somewhere presumably a little more sheltered than the surface of the ice moon. If they could defeat the ambush and find out where the hostiles were based, they might actually find somewhere they could get shelter and perhaps even find a way to call for help.
“Any idea if they’ve spotted us yet?” he asked his scout.
Marannis shook his head. “Not by any reaction they’ve made, sir. And our own IR signature is pretty washed out right now; the outside of our suits is damn near as cold as the rest of this place.”
Jackson whistled into his helmet as he made a sudden deduction. “But these guys are making some kind of heat signal. That means they might not even be in suits, doesn’t it?”
“Now that you mention it, that makes sense, sir. Though how they can live in this stuff is beyond me. But they’re up there on the heights for sure, to the left and right of us. Do you think they might be native?”
Jackson was very curious about that point as well and knew they weren’t going to get any answers