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on Sigil ’s decks, but there’s no activity, no sign of any defense. I hope that means the twelve civilians are on lockdown, huddled in designated security zones, waiting on rescue. Despite Wilcox’s assurances, I’m worried they’re armed, that they’ll put up a resistance. I don’t want any more casualties.
    “Kanoa.”
    “Here.”
    “You got a status update on Oscar- 1 ?”
    “He’s still tied up, waiting for fuel—”
    “Waiting? I thought he had a fuel problem—contamination or something?”
    “Negative. He’s having a problem with the facility superintendent at the last refueling stop, north end of Ellesmere.”
    That doesn’t make sense. Infiltrating phony orders into military networks is a specialty of our intelligence team. I’m not going to pretend to understand how the system works. Insofar as I can tell, our ETM strike squad uses bureaucracy as camouflage. A charade of hacked orders, false identities, and compartmentalized oversight lets us operate with the appearance of an officially sanctioned force attached to the United States Army. It’s a position reinforced by a black-ops budget and need-to-know security that ensures no auditor ever compiles enough information to prove that we are not who we claim to be.
    So far anyway.
    And compared to engineering an authorization for transport aboard a nuclear submarine, convincing the superintendent of a remote listening station to refuel Oscar- 1 should be easy.
    “Kanoa, just get Intelligence to push an order through. I need to get Julian evacuated. It’s a two-hour flight just to get here, and if he’s not even in the air yet—”
    “We’re working on it, Shelley.”
    “Or you could write an order for a military flight. There’s got to be buzz on the network anyway. Glover must have put an emergency call through, and if not him, than the civilians—”
    “No. The network’s quiet. I think Sigil ’s communications have been suppressed.”
    “Suppressed? How? I thought we couldn’t access their system.”
    “Look, even if I can get a military flight, it’s going to leave a footprint that’s hard to erase, and it could have political repercussions. Oscar- 1 is still our best option. And you need time to run down that helicopter anyway.”
    “It’s Julian I’m worried about.”
    “Roger that. We’re doing what we can.”
    The closer we get to the platform, the harder it’s going to be for us to return fire if someone does decide to shoot at us from the decks, so I call a halt when we’re still a hundred meters out. “Logan, I want you to take Fadul and Tran. Get in position to provide covering fire if we need it.”
    “What about the prisoners, Shelley?”
    “Dunahee! How are you holding up?”
    “I’ll do what I need to do, sir.”
    “I know you will. I need you to babysit a prisoner. The small guy. Shoot him if he gives you any trouble.”
    “Happy to, sir.”
    “And stay close to Julian.”
    “Yes, sir.”
    “Escamilla and Roman, you’re with me. You too, Wilcox. Let’s find out what Glover left behind.”
    The platform becomes an ugly industrial roof as we approach the pedestal that supports Deep Winter Sigil and houses the pipes and drill. That pedestal descends seven hundred feet into the deeps below us, but I’m only concerned with climbing its upper twenty feet to the first deck. Fortunately, there’s a caged stairway to make it easy.
    I follow through on my threat and send Wilcox up the stairs first, with Escamilla right behind him. They find no activity, no evidence of booby traps, so Roman and I go next.
    We clear the first two decks. Kanoa checks in as we climb to the platform’s third level. “We’ve got a thermal image just in from a survey satellite. Low-res, but it shows a hotspot fourteen kilometers northeast. Probably the helicopter.”
    “Stationary?”
    “Heat profile indicates it—but the ice is rough the whole way. It could take you ninety minutes to reach