R.R.S. James Clark Ross

12.01 P.M, December 5th, 2004

"Holy shit," CJ managed. "How the hell did that happen?"

McIntyre was momentarily at a loss for words, but it didn't last long as his mouth came up with a reply without the intervention of his brain.

"Do you really want to know?" he asked.

CJ appeared to consider this for a second, opened his mouth to make a smart-alec reply, and then shut it again as none presented itself.

"We gonna sink?" he tried eventually, sounding as if he didn't really want to know the answer.

"That's what I'm going to find out." McIntyre turned to CJ. "Now stay here and fix that hole in your head while I go and stop us from sinking."

CJ clamped one hand over the leaking gash above his right eye.

"It's fixed," he said defiantly, daring McIntyre to disagree.

McIntyre tried to look stony-faced, but then relented. He knew he was going to need an extra hand because he had simply no idea what lay ahead of them all, and the only way they were all going to make it through alive was by working together.

"Well at least get a bandage over that then. You'll be no use to me bleeding all over the place."

"Right you are, Cap," CJ replied with a failed attempt at cheerfulness. He went carefully back into the infirmary, keeping one hand against the wall in attempt to keep his balance on a deck now more accurately an ice rink. McIntyre watched his retreating back leave then advanced a few more yards down the passageway. He had to watch his step, because the deck was murderously icy, and the ship had once again started the ferocious pitching and rolling that made even the briefest journey an utter nightmare.

"Ready." McIntyre looked around. CJ had hurriedly taped a gauze pad across his wound – in an attempt at repair best described as 'slapdash' – and had pulled on some cold weather survival gear. McIntyre noticed a touch uneasily that the material of the jacket and sallopets were rimed with frost which had no earthly right forming deep in the middle of a ship.

"Okay, follow me and for God's sake watch where you're putting your damn feet."

They moved off again, watching the floor with every step and moving as tentatively as crippled old women.

"Where we going?"

"The bridge, I want to see if Tony's still got us under control."

"Wouldn't we have sunk by now if he hadn't?"

McIntyre didn't answer that straightaway. He had to get up to the bridge as fast as possible because if Willis was dead or injured then it was surely only a matter of time before they lost headway and sank. James Clark Ross was a fine seaworthy ship but right now she was battered and bruised, torn full of holes and far too low in the water for any sailor to put one foot on her willingly.

"No."

"I'll take your word for it."

"Good."

They continued in silence for a moment.

"Now shut the hell up."

The thought crossed McIntyre's mind that maybe CJ was just scared shitless, which was why he was talking a great deal of crap, and that last retort had probably been unnecessary. That thought lasted only a second when the engineer pushed it to the back of his head, told himself that there was no time for that kind of stupid woolly-minded thinking because in all likelihood he was going have to save the ship with only the aid of a weatherman, a catatonic woman and three university students, only one whom seemed to have even the slightest connection with reality.

And even he wasn't exactly Mr. Reliable. From what McIntyre had observed, CJ had a level head that was occasionally seriously unlevelled by a tendency to never think ahead when required to. Of course, he recognised that the student was pretty quick on his feet, that he had a talent for improvisation when it was needed, but impetuousness was not what was required to see out this storm. What was required was care, forethought, stability, all the things he had yet to see in CJ.

Now the other one, McIntyre thought. Chris, he seemed ideal, far more serious and much better at thinking with his head instead of his gut. Except right now, whatever part of his head that wasn't consumed with anguish and worry over his comatose girlfriend was calculating the odds of getting off this ship alive, and quite frankly he was now worse than useless, his mind was so far away from the matter at hand he was actively unsafe.

They ascended a flight of stairs in a darkness punctuated by the twin beams of their torches.

"Shouldn't there be emergency lights on?" CJ asked.

"Must have been knocked out," McIntyre replied.

McIntyre stopped before a bulkhead door stencilled 'Deck A'. The engineer put one hand on the locking handle, then paused and half turned to look over his shoulder.

"What is it?" CJ asked cautiously.

"I don't know what's happened to the ship and whatever is past this door may be extremely hazardous to out health."

"So?"

"So be ready to run like hell."

McIntyre pressed down on the handle and slowly swung the door open, behind him he heard CJ take in a deep nervous breath. He had pushed open the door only a few inches when an icy gale so cold as to be an almost solid wall slammed the hatch right back and sent him reeling backwards into CJ. Only the student's quick reactions in grabbing hold of the steel banister stopped them both tumbling down into neck-breaking darkness.

"Still want to go through there?" CJ enquired breathlessly.

McIntyre replied with a wordless look of contempt.

"Give me a hand this time," he growled.

CJ nodded, and assumed a stance next to the engineer.

"Ready," McIntyre said, knowing to tense his muscles and brace his legs this time. "Now." He pushed down the handle, and then both of them pressed all their weight against the hatch. This time, however, the wind on the other side had temporarily dropped and the pair of them fell headlong through the hatchway, coming down in a tangled heap on an uneven sheet of something slick and unyielding. McIntyre noticed how it refracted the dancing beams of the falling torches to throw crazed patterns of light and dark all across the passageway.

"What the fuck?" CJ muttered as he tried pushing himself up from the deck. McIntyre grabbed one of the torches and pointed it straight downward.

"Ice. It's water coming in from the bridge that's frozen solid."

"Terrific," CJ said as he struggled into a kneeling position. "I'll bet that's something else that's never happened before."

McIntyre pulled himself gingerly to his feet using the doorframe they had just fallen through.

"Until we reach the bridge, I don't know what happened. And until then, shut the hell up."