by Ben Hammott
With no scent of fuel in the air around the craft to indicate the imminent chance of an explosion, the group stared back at the mushroom cloud slowly beginning to drift apart.
After a few moments, Sullivan asked, “What’s the plan now we’ve lost our transport, Commander?”
“We salvage anything that might be of use from the wreckage, place everything inside that might give away that we are SEALs—armaments, weapons, radios, etcetera—and destroy it all with the stowed charges we packed for such an event, including some thermite charges to ensure nothing is recognizable. We then head for the crater where we picked up...”
“Abducted!” reminded Richard.
“...Richard and contact HQ for an EVAC.”
“That’s a bloody long walk,” said Mason, “with your leg and all.”
“We’re SEALs. We eat hardship for breakfast,” replied Colbert, adding a smile.
Richard rolled his eyes at the macho bullshit. “What about me? I’ve not had your training.”
Colbert turned to Richard. “We could be traveling across terrain infested with heavily armed Taliban, venomous snakes and starving man-eating tigers, and you’d still survive. I wouldn’t concern yourself with a couple-of-hundred-kilometer trek.”
“Kelly and I will set the charges,” informed Mason.
The two men went to do the tasks.
“I’m going to head to the road and wait for my comrades to arrive,” informed Krisztina.
“How will you explain the crashed helicopter if they spot it, as I’m sure they will when we destroy it?” asked Colbert.
Krisztina shrugged. “I’ve no idea.”
“You could tell them you think it was a helicopter delivering supplies and equipment to the dig site at Batagaika crater,” suggested Richard. “When I was brought here, the helicopter transporting me passed close to the guard post along the road, so they do come this way.”
“Good idea,” agreed Colbert. “Say it got caught in the blast and crashed. You noticed it go down and rushed over to see if there were any survivors, but all had perished.”
Krisztina nodded. “I will.” She looked at Boris. “Can you take Boris as I’m sure nothing pleasant is in store for him now his guardian Luka isn’t about to protect him?”
“It’s the least we can do,” said Colbert.
“Thank you. Now, I must go before my comrades arrive.”
“Us, too,” said Colbert, holding out a hand. “Thanks for your help and good luck.”
Krisztina shook his hand. “To you also.” She crossed to Richard who was staring out into the tundra, dreading the long walk ahead. “Thank you, Richard. I doubt I would have survived and the aliens might not have been destroyed without your help.” She held out a hand.
Richard pouted playfully as he took her hand. “No kiss?”
“You already had one, and I don’t want to make others jealous.”
“Go ahead,” said Sullivan. “I assure you none of us want a kiss from him.”
Krisztina laughed. After saying her goodbyes to the rest of the team, she headed for the road a kilometer distant.
“All set?” asked Colbert when Mason and Kelly joined them.
Mason nodded. “Charges set for three minutes.”
“Then let’s move!” Colbert ordered.
After distributing what little gear they had salvaged from the wreckage among them, Sullivan checked the GPS reading on the tablet that had survived the crash and pointed out into the tundra. “That way.”
As they set off, Richard touched the object in his pocket he had all but forgotten and looked back at Krisztina heading in the opposite direction. “I’ll be back in a minute.” He rushed off to catch up with Krisztina.
“What’s that damn fool doing now?” asked Colbert.
“Probably still after a kiss,” quipped Mason.
Hearing running footsteps, Krisztina turned. Puzzlement crossed her face at seeing Richard heading towards her. “Richard?”
A little breathless from his sprint, Richard took something from his pocket and thrust it into her hands. “A present that might make what happened here a little easier for your superiors to accept.”
Krisztina stared in surprise at the alien pistol. “Where you get it?”
Richard nodded towards the destroyed facility. “I found it back there. I was going to sell it for a huge amount of cash, but I now realize aliens and their technology have brought me nothing but hardship and close encounters with death. I don’t want anything to do with either anymore.”
Krisztina smiled at him. “Thank you, Richard. Now, for this, you deserve kiss.” She planted a kiss on his lips.
“Hurry up, Richard, the helicopter’s about to blow,” warned Sullivan.
“Gotta go, they’ll never survive without me. Goodbye, Sweet Cheeks.” He turned and sprinted away.
Krisztina smiled. “Goodbye, Richard.” She turned away and glanced at the distant speck in the sky growing larger, nearer.
Kelly had also noticed the distant speck. “Russians are coming.”
As soon as Richard had rejoined them they sprinted across the tundra.
The helicopter exploded, sending fragments out into the landscape. At its heart, an intense white light melted metal and everything else it came in contact with.
Noticing the Russian helicopter turn towards the black smoke whipped about by the wind, Richard and the SEALs lay down amongst a bunch of the shrub that thrived in the desolate wilderness. From their concealed positions they watched the helicopter swoop towards Krisztina when the pilot spied her waving at them. The helicopter landed near her, and two men climbed out. After conversing with Krisztina for a few moments they gazed towards the dissipating blast cloud over the facility and then over at the burning wreckage before all three boarded the helicopter. It took off and headed for the downed craft, where it hovered with a man leaning out of the open rear door scrutinizing the wreckage. Seeming to be satisfied with the explanation Krisztina had given for its presence, the man closed the door. The Russians turned and headed back the way they had come.
While waiting for the helicopter to fly far enough away to no longer be a danger, Mason spoke, “I’ve just thought of something. We’ve no rations, and it’s a hell of a long walk to the crater. I’m already starving.”
“Don’t be such a pussy, Mason. You could do with losing some of that fat you’ve been collecting lately,” said Sullivan.
Deciding the Russians were now far enough away, Colbert prompted his team to restart their long walk to Batagaika crater.
“Yeah, but,” protested Mason, “after what all we’ve just survived, the aliens, the bomb and all, I’d hate to starve to death.”
As he climbed to his feet, Richard smiled at Boris beside him. He reached down and squeezed his side playfully, feeling the meaty flesh beneath his hairy covering. “Oh, I don’t think starving will be a problem we’ll have to worry about.”
Boris looked up at Richard and chattered at him.
As they headed across the tundra, Boris grabbed Richard’s hand.
Richard looked down at the chimp. “Your lousy taste in friends could come back to bite you in the ass, literally.”
Boris hooted and chattered at Richard.
Richard sighed. “No, I’m not carrying you.”
Boris chattered again.
“Maybe you’re right. Mason is chubbier and might be tastier.”
Mason turned his head at Richard and glared.
THE END
Factual Places and Events mentioned in Ice Rift - Siberia
Kamera or “the Chamber”
The secret laboratory named Kamera is where the Soviet secret police invented exotic poisons used to kill dissidents in hideous and (mostly) untraceable ways.
The Soviet Union’s secret poison factory was established in 1921, not long after an attempted assassination of Vladimir Lenin via poison-coated bullets. Originally dubbed the “Special Room,” it was later called Laboratory No. 1, Lab X,
and Laboratory No. 12 before becoming known simply as the Kamera or “the Chamber” under Joseph Stalin.
It’s no secret that the KGB used assassination, often by poison, to silence political dissidents who spoke out against the Soviet regime (known within the agency as “liquid affairs”). What remains shrouded in secrecy to this day, however, is the mysterious laboratory where the toxins were concocted.
The goal of the Chamber was to devise a poison that was tasteless, odorless, and, to protect the anonymity of the assassin, a substance that couldn’t be detected in an autopsy. This led to innovations such as a cyanide that could be deployed as a mist, a poison that made the cause of death appear to be a heart attack, and a gas pistol that could shoot liquid up to 65 feet away. One politician was killed by a poison sprayed onto his reading lamp, which the heat from the bulb caused to disperse through the room with no trace.
As for the lab itself, very little is known to this day, including the exact location. KGB agents were forbidden to enter the lab and were never informed of its whereabouts; only Chamber staff and high-level officials were allowed in. Some disturbing details were revealed in 1954 by a KGB defector, who admitted that poisons were tested on political prisoners and described the lab as being near the secret police headquarters in Lubyanka.
The Soviet government, for its part, had just the previous year claimed that the lab was abolished. But many believe it may still be functioning in some form today, and the lethal innovations developed there still in use. Though it’s been some 30 years since the fall of the Soviet Union, even within the last decade enemies of the Kremlin have been found dead in mysterious circumstances, including some, apparently, by poison.
Batagaika Crater – gateway to the underworld
Batagaika crater is a dramatic tadpole-shaped hole in the ground located near the Yana river basin in a vast area of permafrost.
The crater is also known as a "megaslump" and is the largest of its kind: almost 0.6 miles (1km) long and 282ft (86m) deep. But these figures will soon change because it is growing quickly. A more recent report has it at 100 meters (328 feet) deep and continually expanding in size.
Locals in the area avoid it, saying it is a "doorway to the underworld".
For scientists, the site is of great interest. Examining the layers exposed by the slump can give indications of how our past climates of our world once looked. At the same time, the acceleration of the growth gives an immediate insight into the impact of climate change on the increasingly fragile permafrost.
The trigger that led to the crater started in the 1960s. Rapid deforestation meant that the ground was no longer shaded by trees in the warmer summer months. This incoming sunlight then slowly warmed the ground. This was made worse by the loss of cold "sweat" from trees as they transpire, which would have kept the ground cool.
As the ground surface warmed up, it caused the layer of soil directly above the permafrost to warm and thaw. Once this process started and the ice was exposed to warmer temperatures, melting escalated.
Analyzing the layers now exposed could reveal 200,000 years of climatic history. Continuous growth means that the crater gets deeper and deeper every year, exposing more of the past. Scientists have already found ancient forests and frozen remains of a musk ox, mammoth, and a 4,400-year-old horse inside the crater and believe there is much more to find.
Discovery of Ice Age Cave Lions
Two 12,000-year-old cave lion cubs preserved in remarkable detail have emerged from thawing ice in Siberia.
After thousands of years trapped beneath the ice, their young faces are still covered in fur. You can even make out the whiskers on their cheeks and the tips of their sharp retractable claws.
Named for the Siberian riverbank where they were found, Uyan and Dina are the most complete cave lion remains ever discovered. They could prove key to learning more about a species that became extinct over 12,000 years ago.
Over the summer of 2015, flooding along the Uyandina River exposed the ice lens where the cubs were buried. By a stroke of luck, a team of contractors was in the area collecting mammoth tusks. One sharp-eyed worker, Yakov Androsov, spotted the remains through a crack in the ice.
Until now, everything we knew about cave lions came from Stone Age art and fossilized bones. One of the largest feline predators of the ice ages, the cave lion made its way from Africa to Europe about 700,000 years ago, gradually spreading to most of North Eurasia. The size of a modern-day Siberian tiger, the cave lion once roamed everywhere from the British Isles to the Yukon in Canada.
In 2017 the frozen remains of another cave lion cub likely dating back to the last Ice Age was recently unveiled in Russia.
Local outlets reported that the remains of the roughly one-year-old cub were found in Russia's far northeastern Yukatia region this past September (2017) by a local resident. It's not the first time the frozen Siberian region has yielded prehistoric finds.
The area's permafrost, or permanently frozen ground, is capable of preserving animals like cave lions and woolly mammoths, even tens of thousands of years after their species went extinct.
The new cub comes just two years after two similarly frozen and intact lion cubs, named Uyan and Dina, were found. Dated to around 12,000 years old, Uyan and Dina were the first prehistoric cave lions found in such a well-preserved state.
Unlike the 2015 cubs, who died at around two to three weeks of age (before their teeth came in), the new cub appears to have died when it was roughly a year old. Because it was old enough to grow teeth, scientists may be able to get a fairly accurate estimate of the cub's remains.
The new cub's good condition has refueled hopes that the remains could be used for cloning. In 2016, Korean and Russian scientists told Interfax they would attempt to clone a cave lion cub. What becomes of this new cub remains to be seen, but bringing extinct animals back to life, or de-extinction has been a pursuit rife with debate among scientific communities.
De-Extinction
Thanks to ongoing advances in DNA recovery, replication, and manipulation technology, as well as the ability of scientists to recover soft tissue from fossilized animals, it may soon be possible to breed Tasmanian Tigers, Woolly Mammoths and Dodo Birds back into existence.
Communications Security Establishment Canada (CSEC)
The Communications Security Establishment (CSE) is one of Canada’s key security and intelligence organizations, focused on collecting foreign signals intelligence in support of the Government of Canada’s priorities, and on helping protect the computer networks and information of greatest importance to Canada. They also provide assistance to federal law enforcement and security organizations in their legally authorized activities, when they may require our unique technical capabilities.
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HORROR ISLAND (Extract)
Where All Your Nightmares Come True
PREFACE
Extraterrestrial
THE METEOR APPROACHED Earth almost lazily at 25,000 miles per hour and entered its atmosphere at an angle of 42 degrees, which proved optimal for its size to survive the extreme heat peeling away its mass. The friction rapidly decreased its cosmic velocity and a few miles above the Earth’s surface, it reached its retardation point. Just as the many thousands that fell to the Earth each year, the rock succumbed to gravity and arced to the ground at 200 miles per hour. Though the ocean below spread out for miles in all directions, the meteorite headed for a small patch of gree
n and brown amongst the blue. It struck the side of a hill and threw up clods of earth and vegetation as it gouged a small trench down the slope until plopping into the stream at the bottom with a hiss of steam. The rapid change in temperature cracked the rock as it sunk to the streambed. For many years it laid dormant while the organism within fed on the nutrients the current washed over it.
Attracted by the tasty-looking, pale worm-like tendrils waving enticingly in the water, the trout approached the algae-covered rock to which they were attached. A swish of its tail darted it forward with its mouth open to receive the food. Though the fish sensed danger when the tendrils twisted together into a single form and stretched towards it, it had no time to react. With lightning speed, the tendril worm released its attachment on the alien rock that had been its home for thousands of years and dived down its victim’s throat. The fish struggled to eject the thing that squirmed inside it but failed and fell still while the alien parasite adapted to its new host. A few moments later, no longer in control of its own body, the fish swished its tail and swam away.
The male fox glanced disinterestedly at the bright moon reflected in the stream when it lowered its mouth and lapped up the cool liquid. When something leaped from the water and flopped on the grass beside it, it sprung back into a defensive stance and stared at the plump, wriggling fish. Pleased by the unexpected easy meal that would cut short its hunt, the fox pounced on the fish before it wriggled back into the water and ended its thrashing with one bite. With the meal clamped in its jaws, it headed into the undergrowth. After only a few steps, the fox convulsed, fell to the ground, and lay still. A few moments later, it awoke, picked up the fish that now had a rip in its side, and headed for its den where the vixen and her newborn cubs anticipated its return.
The vixen stopped nuzzling her cubs, glanced along the dirt tunnel at the sounds of something entering her den and sniffed the air. Though at first reassured by the familiar scent of her mate, her keen sense of smell detected something else she couldn’t identify. She placed herself between her cubs and whatever approached and waited for it to appear.