by Greig Beck
The creature coiled itself up and prepared for an almighty flex.
Alex walked back down the tunnel and began opening his senses to the stone, the walls and the floor. He could still hear Matt continuing with the digging, but knew he’d be lucky to be able to keep it up for more than a minute. Aimee and Monica stood on either side of him, either advising and commenting on his digging prowess or trying to take the knife off him so they could take a turn. Alex felt sorry for him; he knew how hard that ice was. Blue ice was not like normal ice where you could find a fault line or air bubble and cause a large chunk to crack and shear off. You literally had to dig it out chip by chip. It was a good thing Matt had a sense of humour.
A hundred feet farther down the tunnel, Alex stopped and stood silently in the dark. He blanked out the sounds of the digging and slowed his breathing until it almost seemed to stop. He was fully opening all of his extraordinary senses to his surroundings. He was listening, feeling, sensing for movement or a presence other than their own.
There. He felt it. It was close, too damn close. It was right here now. Like a bolt of electricity, Alex’s body came alive once again as super-charged adrenaline surged through his body. He sprinted back down the tunnel.
Aimee felt the small tremor run through the floor and hoped it was nothing more than some minor geological activity. She was about to comment on it when Alex reappeared. Behind him the floor started to lift like a wave. Giant stones that had been knitted in place for thousands of years were tossed aside like a small child’s building blocks. The sound of crushing rock was ear-splitting.
Lieutenant Owen would wait another few hours. He wasn’t surprised that he hadn’t heard from the HAWCs yet and he hadn’t expected to be kept in the loop. When those guys were involved, the brass knew the details and everyone else just did their job or got out of the way.
He kept the blades turning on the helicopter to keep the generators warm. Though it looked calm enough out on the snow he knew it was well below zero and while he trusted the SeaHawk-S in cold weather, there was nothing worse than lead in the feet when you had to lift a full load.
At last, he thought. Owen saw the large man come over the edge of the crater and unbuckle himself from the drop winch. He had his head down, his white parka suit straining across massive shoulders and arms and Owen couldn’t remember the suits being so ill-fitting when he dropped the HAWCs off. He hoped he wasn’t going to be asked to help them up out of the hole; he wasn’t dressed for it.
The side door slid open and Owen turned in his seat. “Howd—” The sight that met him froze the greeting on his lips. A single eye burned from a blood-streaked veil of hate and fury. A meaty black hole where his other eye should have been and a beard matted with congealed gore completed the image of a Halloween mask. The man yelled something in a language he couldn’t understand.
Owen reached for his sidearm as a fist like a pile-driver struck him in the face with enough force to knock out all his front teeth and flatten his nose. It would not be the last of his injuries that day.
Borshov dragged the American pilot out onto the snow. He needed more room to beat the man properly. His anger from his defeat by Alex Hunter was now almost volcanic as he broke bones in the man’s face and arms.
He carried the limp form to the edge of the deep chasm and went to throw him over the edge a hundred feet to the unforgiving rocks below. He looked at the man and hesitated. He spoke to him; shook him. The pilot opened his eyes and groaned. Borshov shook him gently again, then smiled.
With a mighty heave, the Russian threw him out into the abyss. The pilot screamed as he fell. It was so much better when they knew what was happening.
As Alex reached the group he did two things. He jammed his communication squawk box into the shallow hole in the ice. The hole was less than the depth Alex would have liked but there was no other option now. He pressed send, and the small device became a beacon sending out its coded packet of information that contained the call signature for Captain Alex Hunter and his GPS position. The second thing he did was yell a single word, “Move!”
They had no choice but to retreat back down the tunnel towards the mayhem that was unfolding. The creature had not yet breached the tunnel floor and was still pulling its bulk up to where they were fleeing. The shock waves were rippling out through their floor as it pushed and widened the hole it was making. They had several choices of offshoot tunnels to choose from but stayed as close to Alex as they could. Alex knew they trusted his instincts and he hoped his choices led them away from the rising horror.
Even Alex found it hard to stay upright as the creature was literally shaking the entire floor as it pushed its way up towards the surface. Monica was just skirting around a large block of stone and had found herself on the other side of the tunnel to the group when one of the creature’s deadly tentacle clubs burst through the floor and reared up between them. At that point the floor fell away; Alex, Aimee and Matt were on one side of the gulf, and Monica on the other. Alex could see Monica contemplating a leap across the abyss before quickly changing her mind. She took a last look at them; Alex could see the frustration and fear in her eyes. She looked at Matt, holding his eyes for a few seconds and then ducked quickly into one of the dark rooms on her side of the tunnel. Alex had to physically restrain Matt from trying to get back across to her as the beast hauled itself further onto their level.
“We’ll find her later.” Alex grabbed Matt by the arm and pulled him and Aimee into a tunnel directly behind them.
Monica kept running hard, the light of her helmet lamp jerking from the walls to the floor as she sprinted down the dark stone hallway. In no time her adrenaline levels dropped and she was out of breath, the recent exhausting days caught up with her and she had to slow her pace for a few minutes to get her strength back. She was slightly heartened to hear that the sounds of the creature were distant from her; unfortunately it also meant the sound of her friends had disappeared.
She didn’t want to go too deep into the tunnels as she knew she would become hopelessly lost. The thought made her double over and she sucked in some deep breaths; she felt sick from the fear and for the first time in her life she felt the cold pressure of claustrophobia. Calm down, girl, you’re better equipped than most to survive down here. She started to whisper to herself to try to draw back some of her old courage in the darkness; she’d give it a few more minutes of walking, then if the sounds grew more distant she’d double back. For now, though, she’d go on a bit further and see if there were other exits she could use.
* * *
Alex and Aimee moved on at a jog.
“We’ve got to go back. Wait! Please, we have to go back.” Matt had stopped dead and was gasping for breath.
Alex looked at Matt and shook his head wearily. Matt rushed at him and grabbed his arm, intending to drag him back down the tunnel the way they had just come. Matt might as well have tried to move a stone pillar. Alex gently reached out and took Matt by the upper arms. “We can’t fight it in there. We have to stay ahead of it for now. She’ll be OK as long as she keeps moving. We’ll pick up her trail later on, I promise.”
Matt sank to the ground and covered his face with his hands. “She was scared, so scared, and now she’s alone in the dark.” He lowered his hands and turned one over. There was a faint red chalk outline of a heart, now nearly erased.
Aimee sat next to him and put her arm around him. “We’re all scared, Matt, but we’ve got to stay alive so we can find her.”
Matt let out a long, exhausted and shuddering breath. “I can tell you one thing, I won’t be going anywhere dark or cold for my next vacation.”
“Why, a bit too quiet for you? Perhaps you can go caving with Monica on your honeymoon,” said Aimee.
Matt smiled briefly and then looked towards the ceiling as though he was trying to see the blue sky above them. In his mind’s eye he could see Monica by herself in the darkness; she called to him. He squeezed his eyes shut.
�
��Let’s go.” Alex moved them on again.
Twenty-eight
Private First Class Dan Everson entered Major Jack Hammerson’s office at a run. “Sir, we’ve received a coded call signature from the Arcadian.”
The Hammer leapt to his feet. The pencil he had been writing with disintegrated into splinters in his large hand. His eyes bored into the young private. “Where and when,” he said as he exploded around his desk.
Major Hammerson began walking quickly down the wide corridor, fists balled and chin jutting forward. His highly polished military-issue boots were beating out a quick drumbeat on the linoleum as his aides jogged to keep up. On his way to the command centre he barked questions and orders over each shoulder without drawing a breath.
“Exactly how far from the initial insertion point are they?”
Dan Everson shuffled the papers he had in his hands. There was one thing he had learned being assigned to the Hammer, and that was the information you provided better be up to the minute and accurate as hell.
“The message came in at 2109 hours, exactly seven point one miles from the insertion point. There’s nothing visual on the surface, and the signal muffling indicates it is coming from just over one hundred feet below the ice.”
“Who have we got in the proximity? What are they packing? Who sent the message? How do we get down to them or them up to us? Have we responded yet? Organise a full briefing for me in ten minutes. Get me everything I asked for, and anything I haven’t. Go.”
Private Everson quickly peeled off to the operations room and the Hammer continued on his way to the command centre.
Borshov was hopping the helicopter along the ground in five-hundred-foot leaps; he was unfamiliar with the SeaHawk’s controls and only needed to get it to the Leningradskaya base and out of sight.
The American message came in over his headset and lit up the computer screen in front of him — Captain Hunter had been found and the American station at McMurdo was being ordered to respond. The coordinates displayed meant he was only a few miles away. He landed and thought for a few seconds, then touched the screen with a bloody finger. Borshov reached behind him and retrieved Benson’s gas-powered M98 and slung it over his shoulder. He already had a little water and now both his and the pilot’s communication devices; he had everything he needed.
He lifted off again and slow-hopped towards a ridge of broken ice. When he was a hundred feet out he opened the cabin door and leaped from the moving helicopter. As he hoped, it continued on its slow path, sliding to jam itself under one of the ice overhangs. The cabin collapsed and its broken rotor blades shattered like porcelain, catching the weak Antarctic sunlight as they flew to bury themselves beneath the snow and ice.
Borshov got to his feet and started to jog towards the last coordinates of Captain Alex Hunter.
Monica’s tunnel abruptly ended in another large, round chamber as her helmet lamp was fading from yellow to a dull orange glow. She slowly examined the room, her heart thumping so hard she could actually feel it leaping in her chest as the nausea was rising in her throat again. Like most of the other rooms they had been in, it was largely featureless except for raised carvings of small figures on the walls but without Matt they were inaccessible to her. Anything of value had probably been removed and anything that could be used for fuel had long been burned. Towards the centre of the room there was a large hole roughly ten feet in diameter. She wished Matt was here to let her know whether it was a well or maybe a bathing recess where the bottom had fallen away into the chamber below. She whimpered to herself and couldn’t help her bottom lip quivering as tears began to run down her cheeks. There was a familiar, acrid smell in the room that would have made her eyes water if not for her tears.
She almost completed her slow examination of the chamber’s perimeter when she became aware of a figure standing silently in the doorway she had just come through. The figure glided smoothly and silently towards her.
She squeezed her eyes shut for an instant in the near total darkness and prayed for it to be Matt when she opened them.
“Matt, Alex?… No, not you… please, not you!” The image of Silex stared sightlessly back at her.
“We have to find Monica. What happens if we can’t find her?” Matt was in a state of high agitation.
Aimee grabbed him by the arms and looked into his face. “We’ll find her, don’t worry.”
She looked at Alex, and he met her gaze. Aimee could read his expression clearly; he didn’t think the odds were in their or Monica’s favour. “Of course we will,” he said. “Let’s go.”
The sounds of the creature advancing had subsided a while back. There were no more crushing-stone sounds and heavy vibrations under their feet. Alex, Aimee and Matt didn’t think for a minute that it had given up; they just hoped that it didn’t mean the creature had somehow managed to fully pull itself up into their level of the labyrinth.
The air in the tunnels was now a mist of falling dust from the shaking and rending. It caused the darkness to become more oppressive and their torch beams, now starting to burn a deep orange, were cut shorter and only illuminated about twenty feet in front of them. Alex didn’t believe his senses would let him down and allow him to walk into an ambush, but with its enormous strength and bulk, if the creature was behind one of the walls and crashed through, it could easily crush them before they had a chance to flee.
Alex’s mind worked furiously at calculating the odds of his signal being picked up. He expected the Hammer would have floating birds looking for them, and the Australians had a close base at Casey, but since the SINCGARS had gone offline there was no chance of any transmission relay via the more powerful unit. If the transmission sweeps missed them or there was a storm in the ionosphere, then they were as good as dead.
Alex sensed the giant presence close by and looked over his shoulder into the darkness. The atmosphere in the tunnel carried a familiar chemical smell and a sensation of enormous power, and more alarming for Alex, a primordial aggression that made the skin on his neck prickle. They would have no second chance.
Twenty-nine
The military personnel assembled by Major Hammerson were in the darkened command centre looking at an image of a field of snow broken only by the black dots of men moving over its blinding whiteness. The live feed was coming from one of the reconnaissance choppers they had in the area from the McMurdo base but the images gave no clue as to the whereabouts of the missing team. Since they had lost communication with the group, Hammerson had authorised both surveillance and attack birds to be on constant rotation until further notice. He knew it was asking for too much to expect that they would find some way out already cut or open for them. This was going to be an ass-and-elbows free-for-all.
“Either way, if we want to reach them or bring them up we need to cut through that ice. We can dig through it, blast it or melt it. My guess is that they are sheltering in some sort of cave below that ice and snow layer.” Captain Hicks gave a summary of the pros and cons of each option. “Digging is by far the safest option, but also the slowest. Even if we bring in large-scale boring equipment it would take four days — and add to that another two days just to fly it down there. Blasting could fracture the ice and the impact shock wave could bring the tunnels down. Our engineers believe they can mitigate this through layer blasting, but it’s slow and the risk is still there.” Captain Hicks handed Major Hammerson pages of statistics and continued talking. “However, my choice would be to melt it. We could burn a hole in the ice fifty feet in diameter and one hundred feet straight down in minutes. We also have the ordnance on site right now.”
Hammerson looked up at Hicks and raised his eyebrows. “Thermite?”
“Yes, sir.”
Hammerson knew that thermite was messy, dangerous stuff but their choices were limited. Thermite wasn’t used in battle anymore, however its high burn temperature meant it was excellent for stealth missions where the enemy armaments needed to be neutralised quickly. Its high tempera
ture and low visual flaming, depending on the barium/sulfur mix, meant that the molten thermite would permanently weld the breech of an artillery piece shut, making it impossible to open and load the weapon. Dirty, portable, and very useful.
Hammerson also knew when it came down to brass tacks they were running out of time, and the U.S. military wasn’t even supposed to be down there; any long-term digging operations and explosions had to be kept to a minimum.
“Talk me through it, Captain.”
Hicks gave Major Hammerson some more notes and continued with the briefing. “We recommend thermite as it contains its own supply of oxygen and does not require any external source of air. Meaning it won’t be smothered by the snow and will even continue burning while wet — it can’t be extinguished with water. That’s a good thing as we expect the melting ice will create a lot of water. Even underwater the molten iron produced from the burning thermite will extract oxygen from water and generate hydrogen gas in a single-replacement reaction.” Hicks flipped a page.
Hammerson interrupted, “TH3 or Standard?”
“Standard, sir; it’s hotter than thermite-TH3. Standard iron-thermite burns with little flame, but enormous heat. It’s a lot dirtier, but it will be a more effective incendiary composition for our purposes.”
“Risks?”
“Computer models recommend three iron-thermite blasts with seven-second intervals between each — the first two containing twenty-seven units of thermite, and the last blast containing just twenty-five. This should take us down between ninety-eight and one hundred feet and leave little residual water. The risks are that if our team under the ice is too close to the burn zone and we are out by just a few feet we’ll cook them. They must be under cover before ignition.”