She nodded. “It is type of fish found in only two places in the world, the east coast of Africa and the north coast of Sulawesi, Indonesia. I know it is very old order of fish.”
“Cretaceous old,” Ava said. “And it’s a classic Lazarus Taxon. The coelacanth turned up frequently in the Mesozoic fossil record, just like troodontids, and everybody assumed that it subsequently went extinct. Then a museum curator observed one caught in a fisherman’s net back in the 1930s. Turned out local peoples had been fishing coelacanth out of the water for generations. Anyway, the point is they survived.”
“I wonder how did they manage this,” Darya said.
“A combination of being hardy and just plain managing to go unnoticed is my guess,” Ava replied. “Food and temperature requirements have continued to restrict their range, which in turn has limited their numbers, keeping them rare. They’re extremely long-lived, up to a hundred years, and they’re also reclusive by nature. They spend most of their lives hiding out in deep underwater caves. The life of a coelacanth is so well camouflaged, even time itself overlooked them.”
“You think these Troodon successors have evolved along the same lines?” Callum asked.
“Isn’t it obvious? This island is the ideal place for a species like this to have carved out their own successful little niche. Its remoteness means that it was the last landmass on earth to be discovered by modern man, and as far as we know,” she looked to him, “the place has never been properly settled by humans.”
“As far as we know,” he agreed.
A satisfied smile appeared on her face. “It’s remarkable. All the elements have come together to preserve these creatures. A remote wilderness, virtually untouched by humans precisely because of the hostility of the environment, and a creature perfectly evolved to exploit those conditions in self-sufficient isolation.”
“Until now, Doctor Lee,” Lungkaju said. “Until now.”
He had been quiet for so long, just listening to Ava speaking, that the sudden sound of his voice, like the end of his singing, made an impact. He cocked his rifle. “But I think that whatever these creatures are, we should not wait here for them any longer.”
Chapter 13
The Compound
1
The ice had melted. The ground had thawed. The compound itself was unchanged. It was just as Koikov had left it when he, Sharova and Yudina had first raced to Dolgonosov’s aid.
Koikov shuddered and reached for a papirosa. Shit! Only two left in the carton. He lit up, inhaled deeply and began refamiliarising himself with the layout. The remaining buildings were arranged in a grid pattern to the west of the partially constructed runway. There were seven in total: four dilapidated huts and three Nissen-style hangars, rusted semi-cylinders beaten into disrepair by the extreme conditions.
The three concrete heads of the interconnected bunker system sat to the east. The forklift was still parked out front, forks lowered towards the entrance, a snapshot of the moment Koikov had first heard Dolgonosov’s screams. In the background, the remains of the fixed crane towered over the northern end of the runway, its cross arm drooping down at around forty-five degrees. The surrounding area was still strewn with chemical drums.
He revved the hovercraft and descended towards the compound. It may not have been much, but it was shelter.
Sitting next to him, Marchenko said, “The men are exhausted.”
“Me too,” Koikov replied, surprised at his own openness. “My nerves are as close to being shot as I can remember.” He spat over his shoulder. “What’s the ammunition situation?”
“Depleted.”
“Check the numbers. I want to know exactly what we’re playing with.”
He pulled up next to the bunkers, dismounted and watched as his team jumped out the back and formed up. To a man, they were wide-eyed and pale, their white combat uniforms daubed with streaks and swirls of dried blood. He did a quick headcount. Fourteen. Only fourteen of them had survived the mist, including himself and Marchenko. Fourteen men. A day on Harmsworth and over half his team were already dead.
Koikov’s mind replayed the horror of the last few hours. It had been a fucked-up scene, carnage cloaked in white. The creatures had encircled them. There might have been twenty, two hundred or two thousand. Even with LVV there was no telling. They had moved too fast, bolting in through the circle of men and inflicting what wounds they could before disappearing again. It was classic hit and run. If he hadn’t been on the receiving end, Koikov would’ve felt nothing but admiration. But he had been. And after the longest hour of his life, the enemy had simply melted away with the mist.
He addressed what remained of his team. “Home sweet home.”
No reaction. Just the same rank of sunken faces. He thought about trying to reassure them, but they were way past it. “Okay, this is how it’s going to work. Marchenko. Take Khabensky and two others. Go search for a radio transmitter. There must be one here. Without reliable external communications, they’d all have gone nuts.”
“Yes, Starshyna. Turov, Dubrovsky, with me.”
“Corporal Voronkov. I want you and Zyryonov up on top of that ridge over there.” He pointed to the moraine where Private Dolgonosov should’ve stayed put. “Regular comms, you hear me? And don’t you even think about moving from that post. Dragons and mist are what you’re looking for. You see so much as a flash of white that isn’t clearly a seagull and I want to know about it.”
“Yes, Starshyna.”
“Ivanov. We need a medic and you’re it. I want you to take care of Private Tsaritsyn.”
Tsaritsyn was laid out in the back of the hovercraft, his stomach crudely bandaged, barely conscious. Koikov removed his glove and placed a hand over the young man’s forehead. It was cold and clammy. He was no expert, but he could see that the abdominal wounds were serious, probably mortal. Tsaritsyn’s condition was deteriorating fast. “Do what you can for him. If all you can do is keep him warm and comfortable, then that’s what you do. Private Koshkin. You assist.”
He turned back to face the remainder of the team. “The rest of you, I know you’re tired and I know you’re hungry, but I want the drums removed from these bunkers,” he gestured to the semi-subterranean structure, “and sorted into two stacks, empty and full.”
“What about the half-empties?” Corporal Aliyev asked.
“You mean the half-fulls,” Koikov replied. “Positive is all we’ve got out here, Corporal, so do me a favour and suck its dick. Count them with the full ones. And Aliyev, you take charge here while I’m gone.”
“Gone where, Starshyna?”
“Recruitment drive,” Koikov replied. “Private Gergiev, with me.”
2
While Turov and Dubrovsky were checking out the other Nissen shelters, Marchenko and Khabensky had searched three of the four huts and found precisely fuck all. Hastily constructed out of breeze block and corrugated iron sheeting, the remnant barrack blocks were sparsely furnished with rows of wall-mounted wooden bunks. Construction debris and other oddments cluttered their interiors – abandoned items of clothing, cigarette packets, even the remains of a broken dartboard. Something large, hopefully a bear, had made a nest in the back corner of one. But so far there was no sign of any radio equipment.
“This place looks more like a prison colony,” Khabensky said. His blond hair was smeared with grime, and his eyes were pale and bloodshot.
“My thoughts exactly,” Marchenko replied. He approached the door to the fourth building and kicked it in. The sound of the timber splintering echoed around the compound. Once inside, he could see that the internal layout was different. A large table was positioned centrally and desks were pushed up against the walls. The door to the rear partition was still in place and it led through into a narrow back room.
“Bingo!” Marchenko said. “It’s the comms room.”
“But there’s
nothing here, Sergeant.”
Khabensky was right. The long, wall-mounted wooden surface in front of them bore nothing but a few scraps of old timber and the fingerprints of former items thrown into relief by the dust.
“It looks like they’ve taken most of the portable comms equipment,” Marchenko said. “But I doubt they bothered with the antenna.”
“What antenna?”
Marchenko turned his attention to a room-height timber unit jutting from the wall to the right. He pounded at one side of it until it shifted and creaked open on a concealed hinge, exposing a transmitter mast.
“It’s retractable,” he said. “The conditions out here get too bad for a fixed mast.”
“Does it still extend?”
Marchenko fiddled with the control toggle. “It was meant to be electronic, but there must be a manual override here somewhere.” He felt around the back of the mast and his fingers fell upon a handle that had seized up with cold. “Khabensky, see if you can shift this while I give Koikov the news.”
Khabensky started work loosening the handle.
“Starshyna, this is Marchenko. Over.”
There was a pause before: “Give me good news, Sergeant.”
“I’ve located the comms room.”
“Does the equipment still function?”
“The equipment’s gone, Starshyna.”
There was another pause, before: “I said give me good news!”
“The good news is that the transmitter mast is still in place. If we can get it extended then I can try and adapt a tactical radio and transmit over an extended range.”
“The tactical radio signal is weak as fly piss.”
“But we only need to reach the base at Nagurskoye. It’s 250 kilometres as the crow flies and I’m pretty certain I can boost the signal. Then it’s just a matter of finding the right frequency.”
There was silence before: “If you think it’s doable then do it. If it doesn’t work then gather your team and rejoin the others at the bunker. Out.”
* * *
When Koikov returned he could see that the rest of the team had made a good start at removing the chemical drums from the bunker and stacking them as ordered.
“The majority are either full or half full, Starshyna,” Corporal Aliyev reported.
“Good, that’s how I remember it,” Koikov replied. “We need to gather up any others that are lying around as well.”
Aliyev’s brow furrowed. “Why? The bunkers are nearly clear. We’ve got shelter.”
“True,” Koikov replied. “But then what? I’m not about to just sit in there and wait for the mist to come back. Are you?”
Aliyev said nothing.
“We need to make what’s left of our ammunition count. I say we use the empty drums as a defensive barricade and set the full drums up at regular stations to form a series of perimeters. Concentric perimeters.” He mimed taking a shot with his rifle and then brought his hands apart to signal an exploding drum. “If those things want another fight, then this time it’s on our terms.”
Aliyev’s expression remained stolid. “You realise shifting all these things around is going to take time and manpower? Perhaps more than we’ve got.”
“Marchenko’s sending Turov and Dubrovsky back to help, and I’m here as well. Also—”
There was a sudden rumbling noise behind them, followed by the screech of metal on metal. Both men turned and watched as first the bucket, then the arm and then the body of an enormous mechanical excavator appeared over the head of the bunker. The roof of the cabin was easily three or four metres off the ground and the massive arm was laced with vein-like wires, pipes and pistons.
“I clocked her when I was out here before, cleaning the place up,” Koikov said. “Must’ve been left behind when the whole project went to shit.”
The corporal’s face flushed with wonder as the machine’s chest-height tracks clunked and rattled their way around the side of the concrete and came to a stop. The arm lowered down, pressing the teeth of the metal bucket into the permafrost. The cabin door swung open and Private Gergiev poked his beefy, oil-smeared face around the side and cracked his knuckles. “Anybody call for backup?”
Koikov turned to Aliyev. “This should speed things up, Corporal. We can balance two, maybe three drums in the bucket with each run and we can lash another two or three to the cabin. We can fit at least another three in the Czilim and another on the forklift.”
Gergiev left the machine idling and climbed down from the cabin to join them.
“Are you confident you can operate that thing?” Koikov asked him.
He grinned and cracked his knuckles again. “The controls are simple enough. The pedals work the tracks, the handles control the arm and bucket. It’s not rocket science.”
“So let’s get the fuck on with it,” Koikov said.
3
“The thing that really amazes me,” Ava was saying, “is their ability to change colour. Just like a chameleon. It’s a startling adaptation, I can’t think of any other parallels in nature. Contemporary nature, that is.”
Two hours had passed since they had left the remains of the campsite and she had talked about the creatures more or less continuously the whole time. Under the circumstances that was a good thing. Her obsessive scientific focus was probably all that was keeping her from seizing up with panic. In complete contrast, Lungkaju had kept himself to himself, walking ahead of the others, sipping at regular intervals from his hipflask. Without a word, he had navigated them around the southern edge of the Hjalmar Ridge and into the south-west of the island.
“There are no parallels for this in modern birds, or mammals,” Darya said. “Only in reptiles, amphibians and marine cephalopods. Chameleons are obvious example, but also some species of cuttlefish, squid and the mimic octopus, are changing their skin colour by manipulating their chromatophores, the cells that contain the pigment.”
“Why not birds and mammals?” Callum asked.
“This is because fur and feathers are made of dead cells, like human hair and fingernails,” she replied. “Their properties cannot be changed. To change colour, birds and mammals must produce whole new coat. It is why they moult.”
Ava looked confused. “So how do they do it then?”
Darya shook her head. “I am not sure of this, but I know that it is not the feathers that are changing. I think it is probably the skin. The feathers from the dead creature were without colour.”
Callum remembered the dull translucent fibres that Ava had handed him, like lengths of frayed fibre-optic cable.
“I think the feathers act only like magnifying glass,” Darya continued, “reflecting underlying skin colour.”
“Fascinating,” Ava said. “It’s the sort of thing that our current scientific techniques could never pick up on in fossils. Things have advanced so quickly over the last few years that it’s now possible to detect trace colour signatures in fossilised material. So we can say, for example, what colour triceratops was. Isn’t that crazy? But, I mean, even that technique is still in its nascency. The ability to detect a colour-shifting capacity simply doesn’t exist yet.”
“It makes you wonder,” Callum said.
“Wonder what?”
“What other basic assumptions we’ve got wrong.”
“You bet it does,” Ava replied. “If there’s going to be one beneficiary of all this, it’s going to be science. Science is going to learn a hell of a lot from Harmsworth. And I don’t just mean in terms of palaeontology.” She paused then added, “That is, if we ever make it out of here.”
Her words lingered in the cold. Then, to everyone’s surprise, she began to laugh.
“What is funny?” Darya asked.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “It’s just that the more I think about these creatures, the less surprised I am that they’v
e survived, you know?”
Callum hummed agreement. “Such a versatile species, it’s strange that they’ve never made it off the island.”
“Who’s to say they haven’t?”
There was silence once more.
“You think they have?”
“I think it’s entirely possible. But no, as it happens, I don’t think they have.”
“If it’s possible for them to leave then what’s stopping them?”
“Perhaps nothing’s stopping them,” she replied. “There’s nothing stopping me from stripping down naked and doing a handstand right here and now.” She smiled wryly. “But you’ll agree that there’s a big difference between what’s possible and what’s desirable.”
Callum thought about replying, but in the end he just smiled back.
“Of course it’s possible for these creatures to have left Harmsworth,” she continued. “You said that you’d observed them swimming.”
“You make it sound as if they weren’t trying to kill me at the time.”
“You know what I mean.”
“Okay, yes, Darya and I observed them in the water.”
“So even without the pack-ice land bridge, the fact is they could’ve left anytime.” She paused then added, “But the real question, Doctor Ross, isn’t why wouldn’t they leave, it’s why would they? They’ve evolved to exploit this very particular environment. They’ve got everything they need to survive here.”
“You think they’re territorial?”
“I don’t think it’s as simple as passive genetic attachment to a home range. I think it’s based on active decision-making.”
“You give them great intelligence,” Darya said.
Ava nodded. “I think they’re probably incredibly smart. Smarter than some people I’ve known, that’s for sure.”
Colony Page 24