Ice War by Brian Falkner Page A

blizzard it was next to impossible. And what if the station had been taken over by Bzadians? He put that thought out of his mind. Little Diomede had to be a place of safety. It had to be.
    He looked down into the fissure. It was not deep, little more than a metre, and the ice at the bottom seemed solid. Better still, the drop on their side although steep, was not sheer.
    Monster pointed down into the fissure and, although Emile looked doubtful, he nodded.
    If they broke through the thin ice at the bottom into the sea below, at least the end would be swift.
    Emile, being lighter, went first, slithering over the edge and sliding down into the cleft. When the ice took Emile’s weight, Monster followed suit. The ice cracked as he landed, but did not break. They crouched out of the wind.
    “Which way?” Emile asked and Monster realised that here, out of the wind, they could hear each other without shouting.
    “To the north,” Monster said, hoping that was the right direction. With the random zigzag patterns of the fissures, either way could be the right way to go. Or neither.
    He slapped at the ice on his face, feeling it crack, then break into pieces and fall away. Emile did the same and kept pummelling at his face even after all the ice was gone, slapping at the skin until it was red and raw, unable to feel the blows through numb, dead skin.
    Monster stopped him. “You got it all,” he said.

    The depth of the channel shielded them from the wind, but it had its own hazards, not the least of which was the movement of the walls. This was not a pathway through the ice, but a gap between two constantly moving icefloes. At times the walls ground closer, threatening to crush them, and at other times, for no obvious reason, they shifted further away, exposing black seawater a few centimetres below their feet.
    “Talk to me,” Monster said, when Emile stumbled on a perfectly smooth patch of ice. The sound of the wind above them seemed to be easing and, when he looked up, the skies were starting to clear. That was good, but it was also bad. The snowstorm, as painful as it was, was their ally, hiding them from their pursuers. If the Bzadians found them in this trench, they would have nowhere to run. Nowhere to hide.
    “Talk about what?” Emile asked. His voice was unsteady and the words had to find their way out through a rigid jaw.
    “Anything,” Monster said. “Monster want to hear your voice.”
    “I didn’t know you cared,” Emile said.
    “Why you join Angels?” Monster asked.
    “I’m starting to wonder that myself,” Emile said.
    “But really,” Monster said.
    There was a silence for a moment. Silence except for the noises of the ice shifting and cracking. It was a bizarre sound: a mixture of creaks, hollow booms and something else that sounded like laser gun sound effects from a science fiction movie.
    “My parents didn’t want me to,” Emile said eventually, reluctantly.
    “Parents?” Monster asked.
    “Yup,” Emile said. “It’s when a man and a woman love each other very much and the man …”
    “Ha-ha, funny guy,” Monster said. “You know mostly Angels are orphans.”
    “I must have annoyed them so much that they let me in anyway,” Emile said. “I wanted to be an Angel ever since I heard about them.”
    “You want to be Angel?” Monster asked.
    “Yup,” Emile said. “Didn’t you?”
    “Cheese and Rice, my dude, no,” Monster said. “I was picked out of paintball team. That’s how most of us are chosen. I don’t even know it is test, until recruiter showed up at my home.”
    “Well, I knew,” Emile said. “There was a guy in my refugee camp who was selected but didn’t make the grade. He told me all about it. I joined a paintball team the next day and made sure I was the star player.”
    “You have death wish?” Monster asked.
    “Just wanted to do something to help,” Emile said. “And I thought it would be cool. Refugee camp was kinda boring.”
    “This is true,”