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Jonah punched the intercom and ordered Marissa to join him at the helm. Dressed in a thick ski jacket and leather boots, their guest stepped into the command compartment moments after.

“Are we there yet?” she asked, glancing around the bridge.

“We’re close,” Jonah said. “I was hoping you could guide my helmsmen over the final stretch.”

Marissa nodded, but Vitaly just sighed with annoyance. His hands were tightly wrapped around the submarine’s control yoke, keeping a steady depth below the pack ice.

“Vitaly does not need lady help,” protested the helmsmen. “We already too shallow. Submarine useless in shallow. Nowhere to hide, no way to escape.”

“We need to go here,” said Marissa, touching the digital screen at the rendezvous point less than a thousand meters distant. “Steady on. It’s just a little further.”

Vitaly grumbled and swore in Russian. “This is not tour bus,” he said, but still adjusted the rudders as requested. The tiny digital avatar of the submarine slowly approached Marissa’s updated coordinates as the helmsman brought the engines to a drifting halt.

“Prepare the ship to surface,” ordered Jonah.

Alexis caught herself wondering why Jonah hadn’t deployed the periscope and taken a peek before moving the entire submarine above the protection of the ice. Then she realized they wouldn’t be able to this time, not with the frozen pack in the way of the sensitive optics.

For the first time, Alexis realized she completely trusted Jonah and his leadership. Their rag-tag crew wasn’t backed into a corner and forced to defend themselves, and her role on the ship was no longer a matter of chance or convenience. She was his crew, his engineer — and she was goddamn proud of it. No matter how incredibly illegal or insanely dangerous their mission, she was there by choice. Who knew? Maybe she’d even get paid this time.

“Wear your warmest,” advised Hassan, standing up from his place next to the helm. “It’s negative fifteen degrees outside with forty-five knot wind gusts. Frostbite can set into exposed skin in as little as five minutes. We picked up weather broadcasts in Japan on the way over — forecasters are saying this is the worst winter in a century.”

“North Korea was already in rough shape,” said Alexis. “Can’t imagine how bad it’s gotten in a hundred-year winter.”

“NGO’s estimate they already lost over a million tons of grain reserves to seasonal flooding earlier this year. Hundreds of thousands may die before the next harvest.”

“Hate to be pragmatic, but that’s why their families are paying double,” Marissa added.

Alexis and the doctor just frowned.

“Don’t look at me like that,” she protested, dismissing both with a wave of her hand. “I’m just saying.”

Alexis tried not to let the comment distract her as she prepared the Scorpion to surface through the ice, setting all control planes to a neutral position using a series of hydraulic wheels. Vitaly slowly filled their auxiliary ballast tanks with pressurized air, displacing heavy seawater.

“Why don’t you just make the computer do it?” asked Marissa, quizzically watching Alexis as she strained against the manual systems.

“She doesn’t speak to me when I use the automated protocols,” said Alexis, releasing the wheel to catch her breath. “But when I use my hands, she spills her guts — if she’s strained, if she’s bowed, if she’s leaking, if something is about to break down. Everything is connected to everything else, but you can’t feel any of it through a keyboard. And in a situation like this, I need to hear, to feel, her every word.”

“Alexis has point,” Vitaly said as he pressed a single digital button, filling up the last of the auxiliary tanks with air. “But sometimes she make things too difficult also.”

The leading edge of the conning tower crunched against the ice, and the frozen crust cracked and squeaked as the buoyant submarine started to break through. Alexis knew the rudders and twin propellers would take the worst of it; she hoped they hadn’t missed anything important during the recent retrofit. And then they were through. The conning tower emerged from the snowy pack to the wince-inducing cacophony of steel against ice.

“Vitaly, maintain your post,” ordered Jonah. “The rest of us are going topside to see what we’re dealing with.”

“Da, da,” said Vitaly. “Someday Jonah steer ship while Vitaly breathe fresh air.”

Carrying two black, angular assault rifles from the weapons locker, Dalmar ducked as he stepped into the command compartment. He passed one to Jonah, keeping the other for himself. Alexis had to admit the captured military-grade weapons were a big step up from the Depression-era armaments they’d first used to take the Scorpion. And yet Jonah still wore a shiny silver antique on his hip, a weapon more suited for cowboys than a modern-day underwater smuggler.

“We must add a flamethrower to our arsenal,” boomed Dalmar in an authoritative voice. “A group of my enemies once barricaded themselves in a bunker below the ruins of the presidential palace, laughing at our bullets and grenades. But they did not laugh at my flamethrower. I learned that day that nothing burns quite like a man.”

“Duly noted,” said Jonah, only half-listening as he turned his attention to the interior conning tower ladder, ascending the first few rungs. “Have Vitaly put it on the requisition list.”

“Excellent,” said Dalmar in a satisfied tone. “You will not regret the purchase. It will pay for itself with the first use — this I guarantee.”

Alexis followed the two men up the conning tower, with Hassan and Marissa close behind. Jonah grunted as he opened the main hatch, ears popping as the slight pressure differential equalized throughout the submarine with whispering hiss. Blowing snow drifted down the ladder, swirling in the wind as Jonah disappeared out of the hatch.

Windswept ice and snow assaulted Alexis’ senses as she, too, emerged into the blizzard. She winced, squinted, and then held up a hand to shield her eyes from the storm. Roaring winds whipped across the cracked, shifting pack ice, already piling snow drifts against the hull. There may as well have been a sign that said Texans Go Home—she didn’t belong out on the pack any more than she belonged on the moon.

Hassan passed binoculars and spotter scopes to everyone, each taking a different watch position on the conning tower, scanning the endless ice sheet. Alexis couldn’t make out the horizon; the only landmark was the conning tower beneath her feet, everything else was lost to the cold, grim whiteness.

“I have never seen snow before,” grunted Dalmar. “It is very unpleasant and I do not like it.” The former pirate dropped the binoculars from his eyes for a moment to sweep a few flakes from his shaved head.

“What do you think, Doc?” Jonah asked. “You see anything?”

“Visibility is very poor,” answered Hassan.

“How about you, Alexis?”

“I can’t see fucking shit out here,” complained the engineer. “It’s whiter than a Wilco concert. So far, North Korea is even more depressing than I imagined.”

“I’ll cancel the seaside crew retreat,” chuckled Jonah. He seemed to appreciate the tone of her answer much more than painfully proper Hassan’s. “Marissa picked a good spot. Most ships won’t make it through this ice, and it’s too thin for tanks or military vehicles. All the same, let’s find these people and get them on board so we can get the hell out of here.”

Alexis slowly scanned her sector of the horizonless expanse, searching for a visual anchor among the endless white. And then she saw the movement of slight human figures in the distance, a huddle of rags and blankets trudging across the ice, their forms almost lost to the wind and snow.