Read Trial by Ice for Free Online Page A

survivors all stood in silence. The white elephant in the room was the man connected to the reactor. No one quite had words for the moment. The desperation that many had felt softened, while the excitement rose.
    The wind shrieked in through the entryway. Grue entered with Berry, a civilian named James and a Private named Nur. Vito came not far behind. Grue walked angrily across the room and kneeled next to the reactor.
    He looked up angrily. “Where did you find it?”
    Eduardo looked down his nose at Grue. “It is mine, from my capsule, from my strider.”
    Grue tilted it and began to unscrew the connectors on the side.
    “What are you doing?” Eduardo called out. He took two quick steps and pushed Grue weakly.
    “Stop!” William yelled. He worked his way forward and grasped Grue by the shoulder pulling him away.
    “Get your hands off me!” Grue shouted back. He rolled his shoulder and stepped away. “Do you want to freeze to death? We need to get this hooked up to a heat sink.”
    “Hess will die!” Eduardo protested. He stood, shaking. His tattoos had shifted, the angel was now bracketed by flames.
    Vito stepped forward and knelt next to Hess. He peeled back the protective liner from a nanite patch and applied it to Hess’s neck. Vito sat back on his haunches and looked down at the man.
    “He’ll freeze…” Eduardo said softly.
    Vito shook his head. “The patches will keep him warm and help him heal.”
    Eduardo sunk down onto the floor and nodded. The burden of keeping his men alive had passed, at least for the moment, to other men.
    Grue stood and brushed past Berry. Berry looked at the dimming room and followed him outside. Nur stood a moment later and followed.
    A team was dispatched into the cold to strip heat dissipation coils off of the nearest capsule. The reactor was disconnected gently, gingerly, and with the watchful eye of Eduardo keeping everyone on task. Even Grue was silent when Eduardo's raspy voice called out instructions. Conducting cord was run between the tents. The capsules cooling fins were wired in with a slab of cold rock as an insulator to keep them off the floor.
    The reactor was stocky and featureless except for the power connectors. It was controlled by a slim panel that flipped down with the most basic of maintenance tasks. When all was hooked up the chilled eyes all went to Eduardo. He was like a creaking old man laid next to it. His hands were chilled and the tattoos seemed muted and gray.
    He touched the tip of his tongue to his upper lip and tapped on the screen. All of the survivors who could walk had crammed into one tent to watch. To observe the Promethean emergence of a fresh new energy. With an undramatic tap the screen slid back into the beveled housing and Eduardo slid next to Hess and covered himself up with the sheer sleeping bag.
    The men watched the fins before them. It was gray and flaked with white patches of oxidation. The fins were of a fierce nickel iron niobium alloy that reveled in the heat. Not so much the atmosphere but that wasn’t an issue as they wouldn’t be pushing that much heat through it.
    The greedy eyes all coveted the heat. Men held out hands before them with white and brown palms aching in the cold. A single drop of water slid down one of the cooling fins and fell as liquid. It landed as ice but everyone saw it. A barely audible gasp went out as the heat slowly radiated.
    For the first time since they awoke battered and cold, they had heat.
     

 
     
     
     
     
     
    CHAPTER THREE
    The Cut
     
    The night was finally warm, though only warm in relative terms. A drip could exist but only in the center of the room. Everyone huddled and shook, none wanting to get too close, and none wanting to be too far. Throughout the night the cooling fins pinged like an out of tune banjo.
    The greatest downfall of the twanging fins and the meager heat was the moisture. What had been air as dry as a desert now seemed to deposit moisture. It seeped into