The Mailman of Hole 227

Small-Joe exhaled. Vaporous crystals spiraled in front of him, then flew away into the clear, frigid air. He tapped his black Whorlskin glove against the brushed-steel thermometer on his door. Minus ten Celsius. His route would still run even at twenty degrees below, at which point his Airboard's engine wouldn't spark.

Effrost's small sun was still beneath the horizon. Small-Joe shuffled back and forth in the dark outside the messhall, trying to warm his blood up. The cook took his sweet time coming to the window. Dim light and warmth spilled from inside the messhall. Small-Joe passed a credit chip inside, and the cook returned a large steaming bowl. Mostly bone broth but there should be a few skimpy bones in there too, and this was all the meal he'd get until dinner. After the window closed, he huddled around the warm bowl. He drained most of it quickly to capture that delicious heat, then gnawed thoughtfully on the bones.

Today's mail route was to Old-Homefront. It was across the Brinefield, which meant high risk and high pay. He tried to avoid the sense of dread that was clenching his stomach, tried to avoid the inconvenient fact that almost all the deaths in his current occupation had been on the Brinefield.

Well, the best medicine for worrying about a route was just running the dang thing. Once you were in the middle, fear had no room anymore. You either died or lived, no use worrying. Anyways, he needed the extra food-rations. At sixteen he should be growing, but malnourishment was stunting him.

He grabbed his Airboard from the office and gave it the once-over. He waxed the bottom, oiled the engine, cleared the air-pistons, and greased the kicker. He knew every inch of it. It was basically a hover-board modified with thrusters on the back, and it was still taller than he was, just a little.

He grabbed his mailbag, tightened all of his gloves just short of being tourniquets, then donned his helmet. He wrapped a Whorlskin scarf around his neckline. He was suiting up for battle with the cold, and any slit or gap in his suit would become a heat-bleeding cut when he was making the run. He ratcheted his boots down to the board.

His city was New-Homefront, resting on a hill of five meter-thick ice, which he thought should be enough to insulate them from breaches, but decibel protocol was still strict. No engines until you were out past the city.

He stood on the hill and gripped the black thumbpad in his hand. Air-pistons: on. His board lifted him an inch off the ground, the upward thrust coming from two compressed air streams. He lowered his head, prayed for luck, and then set off downhill.

Going straight, the Airboard made a continuous thin line in the snow, where the air cut into it. Even without his main engine, he got up to a nice cruising speed. He carved lazy turns around black poles thrust into the white snow. Mile markers, which he could follow all the way. In the field of blank white, it was easy to get lost, and the mile-markers were a lifeline.

Of course, it was unlikely that all of them would be still up in the Brinefield.

Just outside the city, he flipped on the gas with his thumbpad, then kicked along the top of the large metal gear that ringed the thrusters on the back, which spun the ring, sparking the engine. The blue flame started with a dim throaty kohhhsshh, and black smoke spiraled up on first combustion. He pressed his thumbpad forward, and the thrusters roared. He took off like a shot, leaving a narrow pavement of glassy ice behind him, where the snow had melted and refrozen instantly.

The dark sky started to saturate pink as the sun rose. Ahead he saw the campsite for human-hunting grounds. Black poles marked the perimeter of a frozen pond, and small snow-dens were setup on the perimeter, reminding Small-Joe that he didn't have the worst job in the world.

Whorls were large underwater predators that thrived on surface feeding. They had skin that humans prized for its insulating properties. They also had huge bone-crushing mouths and grew up from itty bitty ten-tonners to adults that weighed several hundred tons and had the dimensions of small spacecrafts. This pond was small, man-made, and baited for the baby sea monsters.

It wasn't a typical pond, of course, you'd never plumb the depths of it. Just a thin area that revealed Effrost's truth: There was no land on Effrost, none. A planet-sized ocean of saltwater, and on-top of that, thick ice and permafrost covering the planet. But that icy surface was pocked by ponds, where something enormous breached the meter-thick ice. Wherever the water had been exposed, the ice grew back slowly, and the Whorls hunted in those thin places.

The Brinefield had hundreds, maybe thousands of thin places. That was where it got the name. A blanket of innocent snow hiding all of those frozen ponds, which hid all of those hungry Whorls. A minefield of sea monsters that listened. As Small-Joe flew past the camp, sleepy humans poked heads out of their snow-dens. No doubt they all were confirming the happy thought that theirs wasn't the worst job after all.

Snow passed by endlessly, and he had to use every trick to avoid drifting. Just a straight horizon line, white below, blue above. The occasional whizzing mile-marker. Then he heard an mournful groan and the first Whorl breached right behind him. It sounded like a glacier crunching and cracking. Even the splash sounded enormous. Small-Joe shivered. It'd been blank snow a moment before.

The groan was his only warning sign. Another ten miles and he heard a groan up ahead, and he cut right. A Whorl leaped up, snapping at the air that had been just ahead, then another Whorl breached up from the left, aimed at the same location, slamming into the first. They fell down, snapping at each other.

Some piece of this was guess-work. A part of survival, maybe the biggest part, was just down to luck.

Small-Joe slowed as he approached a section of intact housing. Old-Homefront. He stopped when he saw the other side. Half of a street had been perfectly preserved, with brutalist concrete architecture. No one in sight. Across the street, it looked like a god had dipped a finger through peanut butter. A huge swathe of snow was the shadow of the monstrous breach that had destroyed the city ten years ago. Buildings on the edges of the pond suddenly discontinued into the blank snow.

Whatever had done this, and speculation ranged from a 800-foot Mega-Whorl to a Kraken, it had breached through four meters of solid ice and sunken half the city. The event was officially "classified".

Some said the sea monster had been attracted by the noisy city, others argued that the large space-aimed radar had been the unwitting lure, and still others argued that it was just bad, bad luck. After that though, the city of Wellworth had been renamed New-Homefront, and humans had gotten much quieter.

This city had once been the center of operations, now it was nearly abandoned with a large snow-covered pond running through the middle of it. Small-Joe needed to get across. Yellow lights shone in a house over there.

Small-Joe started crossing at the narrowest point—nearly eighty feet by his guess. Immediately, several deep groans came from beneath him, the chorus making it hard to pinpoint. Too many. He lifted the prow of his board, the thruster pushed down, thumbing his engine to max output, rocketing him upwards at forty-five degrees. He looked down. Snow beneath erupted with the grey-blue lips of Whorls, three sets of them, breaching towards him, lips opening wide. His focus narrowed to a thin edge that counted milliseconds. His board reached its stall-point—the thruster couldn't push him up forever—and he saw the mouth of a Whorl open to catch him. His momentum carried him just past as the mouth snapped behind him. Another groan from up ahead. Another one? He had to change course, but he going too fast. The breach started. Small-Joe was falling and going to collide into its side. He flicked off his air-pistons and thrusters, angling his board sideways. He landed hard, plowing the snow, trying to stop himself. His legs buckled. The board stopped five feet from the cracked pond, and the splash rippled onto the snowy ice. He tried controlling his breathing. Quiet, have to be quiet. He was stopped dead out on thin ice. Ten feet from the nearest intact building. Even the air-fans would be too much noise now. He unstrapped his board and crawled, slowly, slowly, until he was across. He cried, tears falling onto his helmet's face-plate.

He saw boots and looked up. A woman, hastily wrapped in a white overcoat was shivering.

"Come inside. Come with me."

He'd made it. Her name was Red-Betty, and she was the matriarch of this small outpost. Nearly everyone had left. Red-Betty took his mailbag with desperate gratitude and gave him warm lunch leftovers—a tip nearly worth the ride. Two families crowded around as Red-Betty began opening the letters, checking if they could write an immediate response to mail back. She scanned the letters, until one grey envelope gave her pause. She tore it open and read it quietly. She whispered into someone's ear, and soon whispers went around the room. Small-Joe felt his stomach go hard again. He didn't like secrets.

He coughed and said, "I'm gonna start oiling my board, gotta make the run back by before dark. Got anything for me?"

"Us. We're going with you," Red-Betty replied.

"Excuse me? Do you got an airstrip and ship that I don't know about?"

"Do you know what this says?" she said ignoring me and holding the letter.

"I deliver ma'am. I don't read."

"Hand-copied Imperial Correspondence. It says that Effrost will be abandoned in a week by the airstrip at New-Homefront. Three final ships are being prepared to leave the planet for good, but the brass won't announce it to avoid a rush for the lifeboats. This letter is very illegal, from a friend of mine. It was sedition to even carry it."

"That's—that's impossible. There are still entire cities here."

"Like this one? The planet is a dead end. They say it here, 'The colonizing of 227 has failed, it was a watery hole to start and will always be.'"

"227?"

"What the Imperials call Effrost. Look, Small-Joe. I need you to lead us back. Most of us have never walked across the Brinefield."

"You mean none of you have. It's suicide, guaranteed."

"I made it once," she said, voice low, "But there's no hope without a scout."

"A scout? Is that me? A scout definitely needs an Airboard."

"You have one."

"So, what? You'd just let me take my board?"

"Only if you give your word to guide us across."

"And you'd just…believe that?"

"Sure. I'm a trusting soul. Plus, you're a good one to trust, I think."

Small-Joe shook his head. Her eyes were wide and trusting, but he wasn't a good one to trust. He knew what he'd tell her, because it was the only way home, but he wasn't sure what he'd do once he was out on the ice.