by Frank Martin
As Oscar drew closer, he noticed it was metal. Solid and defined. Not to mention much, much larger than he thought from a distance.
It was a ship of some sort, but far larger than any Oscar could imagine. He guessed it was at least three times as long as he was, though he couldn’t tell how wide. Still, after hours upon days of the same oceanic existence, Oscar welcomed the change.
He spread his tentacles out wide, preparing to propel himself forward toward the vessel. Oscar then stopped suddenly, wondering the consequences of what he was about to get himself into. Although his intentions were benign, Oscar knew full well that any humans he could possibly encounter might not feel the same way. After what happened in New York, there was a strong—almost certain possibility that they might view Oscar’s intentions as hostile. What then? How would he convince them otherwise? Was he to fight back? Was his only option to meet every encounter with force?
While searching for the answer, Oscar thought about April and their last encounter together. She sent him to cause havoc and destruction, but that was wrong. She made a mistake and said so herself. April wanted Oscar to be more than a destroyer. He wanted that, too, but feared what might happen if he swam any closer to the ship he was so eager to meet.
Oscar was faced with a choice. He could take his chances by approaching the vessel, hoping that the encounter wouldn’t descend into the violence he was trying to avoid. Or he could swim away, head back out into the ocean and return to the life of solitude he was so desperate to get away from.
Oscar weighed both options in front of him as his gaze shifted back and forth between them. The ship or the open ocean. People or isolation.
Finally, Oscar closed his eye and took a deep breath, meditating on his decision. He thought of April and their time together. He recalled her laugh and her smile. The memories filled him with joy and made him hopeful for the future.
With April’s image now firmly in the forefront of his mind, Oscar opened his eye and swam on ahead.
The End
Read on for a free sample of The Siberian Incident.
PROLOGUE
Lake Baikal, Southern Siberia—100,000 years ago
The object entered the southern part of the nearly 400-mile long lake where it was deepest, at 5,300 feet—just over a mile down to where it was darker than night with crushing depths and a permanent, unbearable cold. Its ferocious impact shattered and melted the lake’s ice layer, and the flash and sonic boom created a pressure wave so great it flattened the trees around the lake for dozens of miles and generated a 50-foot displacement wave that washed inland, turning most of the low-lying shoreline into an impassable bog.
Huge air bubbles continued to boil to the surface for days, and the colonies of rare nerpa freshwater seals refused to leave their dry perches until near-starvation finally forced them back to the water.
Homo sapiens had been in Siberia for over 250,000 years, and one small band observed the phenomenon. That night, huddled together in their cave, they felt the need to document what they saw on the walls around them. But their curiosity was both a gift and a curse. The following day, a small band of warriors set off toward the lake to investigate.
Many days later, of the six warriors that departed, only one returned. He wasn’t the same man he’d been when he left. It became clear that something terrible had found them.
That evening, the ground shook. The clan huddled in the rear of their cave, unable to act as their world collapsed around them.
Seasons came and went, and eventually, the scars on the landscape healed. The animals returned, new plant growth sprang up, and the lake’s water settled and cleared. The ice closed over the impact site like a scab over a wound, and nature forgot. But down in the pitiless, sunless depths, the lake never did.
EPISODE 01
CHAPTER 01
INTERACTION: Southeastern shore of Lake Baikal—2nd century B.C.
The war had raged for nearly 200 years, bloody battles fought between the Chinese Han dynasty and the Xiongnu confederated state. But in a final assault, Huo Qubing of the Han had marshaled one of the greatest armies seen in over a century.
He marched over 1,000 miles to engage the forces of the Xiongnu’s Worthy Prince of the East, and Huo’s army quickly encircled and overran their enemy, killing over 70,000 men in a single day and scattering the rest.
Huo’s military leaders assembled and General Jinx Wei bowed before he spoke. “You have won, my lord.”
Huo Qubing grunted and then looked out over a near-endless plain of broken corpses. The cold trapped the smells, but steam still rose like tiny departing souls from the torn bodies.
“I didn’t come here just to win, but to annihilate our enemies for all time.” He turned back to his generals. “Kill them all.”
And so, the remnants of the Xiongnu army were tracked all the way to the shore of an icy, inland sea that would one day become known as Lake Baikal. And there, the last few thousand Xiongnu warriors were slaughtered to a man.
Before returning home, Huo Qubing ordered supplies to be taken from the forests: deer, bear, Xiongnu horses, and even wolf meat.
But over the coming days, the men became restless, and rumors spread of great disturbances out on the frozen lake. Cracking sounds, water falling in the darkest times of the night, and then men started to go missing—a few at first and then many, and always when the night was darkest. Soon hundreds of Han warriors had vanished.
“Deserters,” Huo Qubing proclaimed. “They are to be executed on sight.”
But the warlord knew this was just to placate the men’s nerves, as none of the disappearing men had ever been found. And then there were the tracks.
He had been shown the strange marks leading from and back to the lake where the ice was broken open. Huo had posted more guards, but then two of his most trusted men vanished and he personally joined in the search, following their bare footprints—until they found the final abomination.
Huo Qubing swallowed hard and worked to control his expression as he stared at the piles of human intestines and organs on the lakeshore. He had seen the insides of men before, but the inexplicable thing was that the men’s tracks proceeded into the dark water as if they had been disemboweled and then simply kept on going as if nothing had happened.
The great military leader knew then that his men were being taken and drawn down into the frozen, inky depths by something evil. He could make war on any army and win. But he couldn’t fight against something they couldn’t even see.
He ordered the army to immediately break camp and they marched away from the lake. No one spoke of what happened. And after a while, no one wanted to.
CHAPTER 02
Boca Ciega Ave, Madeira Beach, Florida—Today
“Yes!” Marcus Stenson put the phone down and turned to his wife, grinning from ear to ear.
Sara balled her fists. “You got it?”
Marcus waited for a second or two, building the suspense before yelling: “We go-ooot it.” He sucked in a huge breath and let it out. “Five-year rolling contract, with worldwide rights. No one else but us.”
Sara leaped in the air. “Yay!” She ran and jumped into his arms, kissed him, and then held him at arm’s length. “So what’s next from here?”
“Now, we spend money… lots of it.” Marcus mentally ran through the business plan in his head.
The five-year contract was for farming the endangered Beluga sturgeon in the pristine, freezing, and secluded waters of Lake Baikal in southern Siberia. The ancient fish was slowly going extinct, and the Russian government was looking for solutions to resurrect the species. Marcus had put in a proposal that described a breeding program that would pay for itself within five years, and also be able to create a healthy population of fish for both restocking the lakes and for ongoing farming.
He had already spent hundreds of thousands of dollars of his own money, first on securing an old disused paper mill and its surrounding lakeside property. Then more on navi
gating the labyrinthine bureaucracy of the Russian public service, and ensuring political donations, special fees, and gifts were all funneled into the right hands.
He turned and held up a finger. “Step one, we now need to lock in our suppliers of eggs and breeding age Beluga sturgeon, and formalize all those promises that were made to us.”
“How long have we got before…?” Sara raised her eyebrows.
He smiled and knew what she was asking: how long has she got until they both needed to go over and live there, perhaps permanently.
Marcus puffed his cheeks and blew air between pursed lips. “Well, I need to go next week to get the ball rolling. The sturgeon can’t arrive until we have the pens set up, and they’re not built yet. In fact, next to nothing is built yet. I’ll need to find and engage local tradespeople, as part of my proposal submission was to create jobs for the local community.” He counted off another finger. “Plus, we need to find suitable pen sites that are clean and secluded to ensure there is no cross-contamination from the local sturgeon species that can be riddled with parasites and infections.”
“And what’ll you do in your next week?” Sara grinned.
Marcus laughed and held his arms wide. “Go fishing, of course.”
Truth was, there were a million things he needed to do, and it all seemed so achievable on paper. Now that he needed to press the button and execute his plans, he felt a bit overwhelmed.
“Once I’ve got the basics set up, then you follow.”
“How long?” She lifted her chin.
He bobbed his head. “Maybe three months.” He looked up at her. “Is that doable?”
Sara studied to be a biologist but was enticed into corporate life early on. Now she ran a marketing consultancy business, and he knew she had already floated the idea of stepping back from hands-on control and letting her second-in-charge run it for her. Even though he was the specialist marine biologist, he needed her with him—she was smart, decisive, and as well as being an excellent scientist, she was the one with the business brain. He was a dreamer, and she was the one with the eye for detail and clarity.
“Three months?” She nodded. “Yeah, doable, easy.” She tilted her head. “Will we still be staying at the mill house?”
“Yes and no. Not in the mill house itself, but the manager’s residence. By the time you get there, I’ll have transformed it into a palace.” He grinned and tried to look confident.
“Palace, huh?”
He nodded slowly. “Yep… and fit for a queen.”
She crinkled her nose. “Can you at least make sure it’s warm?” she asked with a half-smile.
“As Florida?” His brows shot up. “Well, I’ll do my best.”
Marcus knew she was still a little concerned by the cold—after all, it was Siberia. In summer, the lake weather was mostly warm and mild. Down on the southern tip, people even went swimming, although they did so with gritted teeth and blue lips.
Unfortunately, where they would be living and working was more north, where the lake area climate remained both freezing, the lake’s surface frozen for most of the year. And in winter, when it really got cold, he’d heard reports of the lake’s ice layer growing to 10-feet thick.
He saw that Sara was turned to the window and looked out over the lush green lawns to the sparkling blue water of the Pacific Ocean. Madeira Beach was beautiful, and she was a beach girl through and through, so he knew where they were going was going to be tough on her. She turned back with her hands on her hips.
“Well, as long as the roof doesn’t leak, and it can be heated, then I’m in. But just remember, buster, we’re from Florida, and the mill is in Siberia.”
“Of course, don’t worry.” He hiked his shoulders. “And when have I ever let you down?”
She tilted her head, smiling. “Well, firstly, there was that time…”
“Okay, okay.” He grabbed her hand and pulled her close. “Enough about me.” He kissed her, deeply, and then continued to hold her close. “It’ll be hard, but we can do it.”
She felt down between them. “I think it’s hard already.” She smiled with heat in her eyes.
“I thought you’d never notice.” He kissed her again.
CHAPTER 03
30,000 feet over the Pacific Ocean
Marcus sat in the window seat of the business-class cabin. There was enough room for his six-foot frame to stretch out with just a touch of luxury. On the tray table beside him was a cold beer and he hummed softly as he flipped through his marketing proposal. Sara had put it together for him and it was a great summary of the work that needed to be done and even a description of the fish stocks he’d be managing.
He knew one of the advantages he had in winning the bid was in part due to the work he had previously done on a similar breeding program at home, on the endangered sturgeon in the Great Lakes basins. Given sturgeon can live to be 120 years old and are not even sexually mature until they’re 20 to 25 years old, it would be a generational program unless he added in a few extra DNA marker changes for speeded maturization. His success was a world first and he had patented the process.
“And that’s where the magic comes in,” he said softly and hummed a little more.
Still, there were years of work before them, and Russia understood that and was looking more to the long-term preservation of their prized fish and not for fast returns.
And their agreements reflected that: if he could meet certain performance targets within five years, he’d be granted a non-competitive 99-year license—it’d be a family business that made him and his heirs rich for a century.
He flipped a page of his notes, finding the fish’s background information and quickly skimmed through it again. He smiled; there was so much work to do, but he looked forward to every minute of it.
The airline steward appeared with the drinks trolley, and he grabbed another beer, and this time, instead of the usual dried nuts in a foil pouch, he was given a small cheese and fruit plate. Nice, he thought, and cleared the plate in just under a minute.
Marcus slumped back in his seat after he finished his beer. He closed his eyes and let the alcohol and his good spirits transport him away.
***
The Siberian Incident is available here!