Chapter Eighty-Nine: Riding the Wind and Breaking the Waves

Wang Laiyu stood on the foredeck of the Snow Dragon, staring out at the vast white expanse around him and the thick ice that seemed to have covered the entire sea, utterly at a loss.

The Snow Dragon was a colossal vessel. Its red hull stretched 307 meters in length and 40.5 meters in width, with a full-load displacement of forty-two thousand tons, nearly the size of a light aircraft carrier. The ship had six decks and could carry 130 people. In general, two expedition members shared a cabin of about ten square meters, each equipped with central air conditioning, a bathroom with twenty-four-hour hot water, a refrigerator, a wardrobe, a desk, and every other convenience one could ask for.

The Snow Dragon was the republic's newest and most advanced polar research vessel. It possessed sophisticated navigation, positioning, and automatic piloting systems, along with advanced communications equipment, a platform and hangar capable of housing two helicopters, and all the necessary supporting gear. In addition, the ship carried a broadband internet cafe, a small library of several thousand volumes, a compact swimming pool, even a sauna and massage room, a small basketball court, and three restaurants of varying sizes that also served as viewing rooms.

The Snow Dragon was powered by a main engine with an output of twenty thousand horsepower and three auxiliary engines of five thousand horsepower each. Its tremendous power and massive size allowed this floating laboratory to cruise at twenty-five knots, with an endurance of fifteen thousand kilometers. It could withstand winds above Force 12 and roam any ocean in the world.

Most importantly, as a large polar research vessel, the Snow Dragon was not at all what Lei Dong had imagined. It possessed formidable icebreaking capability, the most basic condition for survival in the polar regions. Relying on its broad hull form, more than twenty thousand tons of displacement, multiple-propeller design, and the sturdy structure of special steel and specialty alloy steel, the Snow Dragon was highly effective in both continuous icebreaking and ramming icebreaking. According to its design specifications, this immense polar research ship could, at a speed of nearly one knot, break cleanly through ice two meters thick, with another meter of snow on top.

Yet Wang Laiyu could never have imagined that this Snow Dragon would encounter such an expanse of ice, so thick it defied imagination. Even in the Antarctic ice-and-snow continent, one scarcely ever met with such a hopeless situation.

The freezing had come without warning, sudden and merciless.

More than ten hours earlier, the Snow Dragon had abruptly received an emergency encrypted message jointly sent by the State Council and the General Staff Headquarters, ordering it to depart at once and rendezvous at Saint Light Island with a group of about two hundred people.

The message did not say whom they were to retrieve, but Wang Laiyu, who had been bombarded for two days by news of the missing Flight 740, immediately concluded that they were most likely the passengers from that vanished aircraft.

Before he even had time to put the message down, he at once switched on the shipboard broadcast system and excitedly issued a rapid string of orders: inspect the engines, inspect the electrical circuits, inspect the provisions, inspect the fuel... Considering the possibility that the passengers might suffer physical or psychological distress, Wang Laiyu even brought aboard a three-person medical team and a psychological counselor.

Under Wang Laiyu's relentless urging, the Snow Dragon, which had been standing down for repairs, disembarked all expedition members and unrelated personnel at the Great Wall research station built on the edge of the Antarctic ice continent, and completed all preparations within twenty minutes before setting course north.

The voyage had been smooth beyond expectation. The sea after the storm was calm, and under the force of its immense power, the Snow Dragon cut through the waves and surged ahead at full speed.

Who could have known that, with only about thirty nautical miles left to go, and Saint Light Island already plainly visible on the navigation chart, this inexplicable ice sheet that had emerged from nowhere would trap the great ship on the sea, leaving it unable to move an inch.

It was as if someone had merely blinked. One moment the sea had been calm and still; the next, the heavens had shifted color. An endless chill had descended from above, and the entire sea surface had frozen into ice in an instant. The spray broken by the hull had not even had time to fall back before turning into glittering crystals, ring after ring gathering around the Snow Dragon and forming ripples across the flat frozen sea.

And then, under the immense power and terrifying momentum of the ship, the Snow Dragon forced its way forward less than one ship length before stopping dead with a thunder of impacts that still rang in the ears and would not fade. It was completely locked in the ice, motionless. The ice broken open by the hull also solidified again in an instant, pinning the Snow Dragon to the spot with ruthless force.

From full speed to a sudden, brutal halt, Wang Laiyu, like everyone else aboard, was flung from his command chair by the violent inertia. His head slammed hard against the slanted corner of the console, instantly raising a huge swelling on his forehead. Inside his skull, a thunderous dizziness flashed like bolts of lightning, but he had no time to care about any of it. He sprang up at once, scrambling forward in panic to the console and bellowing the order for maximum power output.

The roar of the four engines, together producing more than thirty-five thousand horsepower and running at full load, almost shattered Wang Laiyu's eardrums, but he could no longer spare it a thought.

"Port rudder, two-twenty! First propeller, full speed!" Wang Laiyu shouted himself hoarse into the communicator.

"Roger. Port rudder, two-twenty. First propeller, full speed!" came the reply from the engine room. The Snow Dragon then let out an angry roar, its massive hull shuddering slightly before shaking violently, but soon that trembling died away, and it returned once more to complete stillness.

"Port rudder, no response. First propeller, no response..." The chief engineer's voice was crackling with fury, as though smoke were coming from his throat, but Wang Laiyu felt only a chill run straight to his bones.

With all four engines functioning normally and power output holding steady, if the ship's controls failed to respond at all, there was only one possible explanation: the ice was so thick that it had completely frozen the propellers and rudder in place.

Wang Laiyu did not want to give up. Yet after repeated attempts, everyone on board began to despair. The enormous Snow Dragon remained trapped as firmly as ever, unable to move. The best result they achieved was a slight lifting of the bow by less than a meter. Normally, even against the endless mass of floating ice on the Antarctic ice continent, a maneuver like that would have sent the front half of the ship leaping onto the ice under its own tremendous momentum, crushing the ice sheet under tens of thousands of tons of steel, shattering it into pieces, and then forcing a path forward through the frozen sea.

Damn this ice. It seemed to have frozen the whole ocean into a single solid block.

Wang Laiyu cursed in anger, stepped out of the bridge, and went onto the foredeck, hoping to find some way out of the predicament on the open sea. But the world around him was nothing but blank whiteness, not even the shadow of a seabird in sight. What possible solution could there be?

His gaze fell on the rescue helicopter on the landing pad. It looked as though this was the only way: send the helicopter to shuttle the people back.

But he also knew that setting aside the helicopter's limited carrying capacity and the sheer number of trips it would take to transfer more than two hundred people from the distant island, and setting aside the fact that this damned ice would probably not melt for ten or fifteen days, creating a serious food shortage aboard the ship, the hellish temperature alone might be impossible to endure.

He knew very well that the vast ice sheet stretching endlessly across the sea would cause the surrounding temperature to plummet. At the current rate, within a few hours the temperature above the water would fall below freezing. Once so many people were gathered aboard, a great many would have no warm clothing to spare. In that case, the engines would have to keep running to maintain the ship's temperature, but could the fuel on board last until the ice melted? It would be better to leave that group of more than two hundred on the island and have them burn wood and withered grass for heat.

Ever since receiving the order, Wang Laiyu had been trying to guess who was behind all this. Could the enemy really have intended to let those people wait safely on the island for rescue? Just thinking of the countless possible variables made his heart twist with pain.

"There is no other way!" Wang Laiyu drew in a hard breath and made his decision. He could only send out the helicopter to transfer the personnel and break radio silence in order to call for help from headquarters!

"What a humiliation!" Wang Laiyu clenched his fists so tightly that his nails nearly cut bloody marks into his palms. A dull ache rose in his chest as well. He was about to suffer the first failure of his seafaring career, and at the same time, the first failure since the Snow Dragon had been launched.

But compared with the lives of more than two hundred people, what was his own failure worth? Wang Laiyu pulled a cigarette from his pocket, his trembling hands lighting the old Dubao lighter that had accompanied him for years. He managed to get it lit at last, took a deep drag with all his strength, and the acrid smoke rushed into his lungs, stinging so fiercely that tears nearly came to his eyes.

"The helicopter..." Wang Laiyu spat out the smoke that had been coiling in his lungs and roared.

But before the words had even faded, the first officer, who had been standing beside him silently watching the sea through binoculars, suddenly cried out with a voice full of bewilderment and startling joy: "Look! Look! Look..."

The first officer seemed to have lost the ability to speak, repeating the same word over and over. Wang Laiyu snatched up the binoculars hanging from his chest, raised them to his eyes, and followed the first officer's gaze toward the sea.

"What is that?!" Wang Laiyu shouted as he sprang to his feet. Blood surged to his head in an instant, flooding his face with sudden color.

Far off in the distance, a straight black line appeared on the ice, racing toward the Snow Dragon from afar at tremendous speed. It was approaching so quickly that in moments it was only a few kilometers away. Through the binoculars, the black line grew wider and wider, and behind it white spray surged, rolled, and leaped.

In less than ten minutes, a sea passage fifty meters wide, stretching all the way to Saint Light Island, had appeared directly before the Snow Dragon. The roar of the rushing spray and the relentless crackling of ice breaking apart fused together in that instant into a magnificent symphony.

"Ahhh!" The worry vanished from Wang Laiyu's face. No trace remained of the stern, steady captain. He threw back his head and shouted, then dashed off with the first officer toward the bridge.

"Engine room, full power output! Ballast tanks, drain all water, full speed!" Wang Laiyu howled out a string of commands.

"Rumble..." The engines roared once more, and with a sharp series of cracking sounds, the propellers churned up towering waves beneath the water. The Snow Dragon, long trapped in the sea ice, began to move slowly, then gathered speed. A few minutes later, the giant ship was riding the wind and waves, head held high, forging confidently ahead.