Penguins

The mass of penguins occupied the entire flight deck of the ship. Jonathan had counted nearly two thousand of them, but it seemed now there were more. So how the hell had the captain managed to leave the ship without alarming the horde? He knew for a fact that anyone walking along the deck would set the penguins off. Even at night, they would start honking wildly, expecting raw fish to be thrown to them. But then, the method of escape was not the real problem. The problem was that the captain was gone, and all the knowledge of how to run the ship and contact help was gone with him. Along with the penguins, a crew of twenty-six animal activists was all that remained on board, none of whom were qualified to captain any kind of boat, let alone a thousand foot long aircraft carrier.
 Jonathan took off his thick purple tuque and used it to wipe his glasses. They had gotten so close to finishing the job, he thought. He was positive it would only have been a few days before they reached the coastal ice, but with no way to safely get there and back, what could they do? He was sure they would be able to get to their destination, but with the captain gone, and the satellite code with him, they had no easy way back and no safe way of running the ship. The retired 2020's carrier wasn't an easy to use canoe, or even a speedboat. With a control room as complicated as the space shuttle's, they had no way to figure it out. We have to get these penguins there. There isn't another way.
Fifty three years into the 21st century, the global temperature was still rising. Unlike Antarctica, the arctic still held onto some of its sea and coastal ice. Though mostly melted, the ice there would hopefully be enough for the gentoo penguins to survive. The gentoos, or gents as they had taken to calling them, crucially needed the ice to find enough food for a sustainable population. Their destination was Davis Strait, in between Greenland and Baffin Island. Bringing the two thousand penguins up there was their only hope, even if doing so violated international invasive species laws.
Jonathan went back inside the crew's quarters to talk with his friend Sal and the other activists about their situation. The series of rooms were more than large enough for the crew of twenty six. The walls were made of metal panels with steel rivets, with bunk beds lining the sides. Above, the pot lights were shining cold LEDs.  Inside, he found the activists heatedly arguing over the team's next step.
"Turning back now is the only way", someone yelled from the back. "We don't have the skill to anchor the ship and get going again, and we are running out time!"
"You know that if we start south, all of the penguins will die," shouted another.
"If we get into trouble, we'll have no way to contact for help," the first one shouted back. "No code means no radio!"
Both of them were right, Jonathan thought sadly. He looked around for Sal, and found him drinking his coffee in the corner of the room, frowning at the others. Sal was twenty-nine, like Jonathan. He had dark skin and wore rectangular glasses and a baseball cap. Jonathan's friend normally enjoyed conflicts, but this time was different. Jonathan knew Sal's opinion on their next step.
"John, you're still planning on takin' us north, right?" Sal asked. Jonathan leaned against the wall next to Sal and looked at the others arguing.
"We can't go back at this point," Jonathan said. "We've got more than half the world's population of gents up on the flight deck. We can't get them back to Antarctica, so I really only see one option."
"You gonna tell them that?" Sal pointed at the growing group of activists on the starboard side of the room, which was where those in favour of returning home were walking over to, to join in the argument.
Jonathan had become the unofficial leader of the activists back when they were still gathering the gentoos from Antarctica. He had taken charge of the party that went down from the ship and got the penguins. From then on most of the activists casually considered him the guy in charge. He hoped that the activists would listen to what he had to say.
"Might as well join in," Jonathan said, starting towards the others. "Hey!" he said loudly. "There are two thousand gents up there," he said pointing towards the flight deck. "We have more than enough fuel to get to the ice, and back. But we don't have nearly enough to get these penguins back to Antarctica. So unless one of you wants to shell out another hundred thousand dollars for fuel, going back means the penguins die."
"We know that, Jonathan," one of the activists said. "But don't pretend to us that getting back will be easy. We don't even know how to run this thing!"
"Don't you understand how dangerous of a situation this is for us?" another yelled.
"You're here to save a species of animal from extinction," Jonathan said, with a firm, disappointed tone. "Instead you want to ruin the gents' last chance of survival just so that you can go home. And that risk? We're on a boat, guys. A boat is controlled with a wheel, like a car. Just because there are thousands of buttons and dials in there doesn't mean we have to use them." The activists on the opposing side looked at him, silently thinking. It made Jonathan feel nervous, he knew what he just said wasn't entirely true.
"I agree," Sal said, walking over.
"I do too," said another activist who had previously opposed continuing on. Most of the rest soon agreed, they would keep going north.
"Good," Jonathan said, smiling. "And thanks."
The atmosphere on the ship was tense over the next two days. Most were confident and felt good about their chances of success. Others sensed they would soon be giving more for the penguins than they would ever want to. Not everyone onboard was as firm in their resolve to see the job to the end as Jonathan, and he knew that some might cause trouble if things went bad.
Sal was the first one to see the ice. The aircraft carrier was near two kilometers from the coast, where the water was starting to freeze. They turned slightly towards the shore, and continued forward. Before sundown, they were in sight of the point where the open water ended completely and all that could be seen was a slightly broken cover of ice and snow. Penguin habitat, Jonathan thought, grinning.
"I bet you we need to turn the ship into reverse right now, if we don't want to risk hitting it," Sal mentioned, almost lazily. One of the other activists ran up to the bridge to make the change in direction.
"How many days of food we got left, John?" Sal asked.
"If we get back to Halifax on time, we're still going to be one day short of it." Jonathan said. "We need to be finished unloading the gents by tomorrow or we are going to go a bit hungry."
"I don't think that will be an issue. A day is more than enough time," Sal concluded and began walking down to the mess hall. Jonathan wasn't worried about their food supply, either. A little bit of hunger never hurt, and he was confident they wouldn't run into any major time wasting impediment.
It looked to him like they had time to spare before they reached the ice, so he decided to go up to the bridge and check on the progress they were having on figuring out the controls.
"How's the boat slowing down, guys?" Jonathan asked the activists in the control bridge.
"Right now we're using the artificial intelligence system to slow the ship automatically," the activist in charge of the controls said.
"You mean like an auto piolet?" Jonathan asked. He wasn't entirely sure what the activist meant. An AI  system should be able to do all the work for them, he thought. They wouldn't need to worry about starting up the ship again.
"It's like that, yeah. But they don't call them that anymore,"
"Will it be able to get us going again after we anchor? Why doesn't anyone else know about this?" Jonathan asked quickly. He didn't want to get his hopes up. If the ship had a system capable of such things he was sure he would have heard about it.
"As long as it keeps working, it should be able to," the activist said. "We only just figured out that the ship's AI was functional, this morning. Maybe two or three hours ago."
Jonathan felt a weight lift off him. "Thats great! So there's not much to worry about, now."
"No, things are looking good," the activist said. "And it looks like we're just about to come to a full stop, Jonathan. You should go get the others ready,"
No longer at risk of capsizing the boat, starving, drowning or getting lost, Jonathan was almost completely at ease. All that was left was to finish what they started, to get the penguins off the boat and onto the ice.
Jonathan went down to the flight deck and called everyone together. He told reminded them of the different jobs that needed doing and had everyone pick what they were going to help with. They would need people to herd the penguins down the ramp and people to lure them down with fish. They would also take a few penguins down onto the ice before they crammed the others down the ramp. The idea being that the first few would encourage the others onto the ice, speeding things up.
"Before we start unloading gents, I have some good news," Jonathan said. "As it turns out, this ship has an AI system, an auto piolet. We don't have to worry about knowing how to get the ship going  anymore. That's all gonna be taken care of by the AI." A few people sighed with relief, and everyone was all smiles. "Let's get these penguins off the ship, guys!" He said enthusiastically.
Getting the penguins down the ramp and onto the ice was no easy task. By its self, a gentoo walked incredibly slowly. Together, the two thousand of them created an even slower moving jam. They worked tirelessly all day and only stopped when the light was all but gone. By then, only a little more than half the penguins had made it off the ship. The second day was much like the first. The penguins went slowly and the activists started to grumble about their food supply.
The job was done before sundown, and the activists were celebrating their accomplishment down in the crew quarters with some alcohol. All of them knew the importance of what they did. They had potentially saved an entire species from extinction, and would hopefully inspire more people into similar action. The activists had some time to rest before they set sail again in the morning, and it wasn't until then that anyone took notice of what happened. Jonathan was reading in his bunk when he heard Sal.
"Jonathan," Sal called into the crew quarters. "Come over here." Jonathan got out of bed and put on his coat.
"What is it?" Jonathan asked, emerging from the doorway. Sal pointed over the edge of the ship and at the ocean below.
"Look down there, and tell me what you see." Jonathan was unsettled by the tone of Sal's voice. He tentatively stepped up to the rail and looked over the edge of the ship. What he saw scared him. The temperature outside was fifteen degrees below zero. Even during the day, the seawater was steadily freezing. Where Jonathan looked, there had once been a safe five metres of open water between the ship and the ice. Now their was only ice. The ship hadn't moved, the ice had grown. It came right up to the ship's side, and cornered around the bow and stern. The ice was thick, and the boat long. There was no way for it to break free.
"We're locked in place?" Jonathan asked in disbelief.
"It looks to me like we aren't going anywhere," Sal replied.