by Jonah Buck
“French-administered territory.”
Denise decided he must mean one of the French territories in Africa, like Algeria. The French didn’t have much territory that was close to Cape Town, though. France controlled a lot of northern and western Africa, a historical remnant of the mad scramble for colonies over the last couple of generations.
Denise looked over at Cornelia. Cornelia looked back over at Denise. Cornelia had a lot of talents. During the Great War, she’d worked as a military nurse and she had a knack for medicine. She’d studied geology at one point, but she wasn’t any sort of expert or learned scholar on asteroid debris, though she knew a bit about lunar meteorites. Neither of them knew how to study a meteor impact site, though.
“Right. So, this thing landed somewhere in French-administered territory. I’m not sure what that has to do with us, though. I can track an animal down a game trail. It’s not like this thing left a bunch of tracks and spoor. You’d be a lot better off hiring an astronomer or a geologist or basically anyone else, if you’re trying to find the impact crater.”
“Oh, no. We know more or less where the impact crater is. Our problem is that we know very little about anything else going on in the area. It landed in a very isolated region, and the French have been very resistant to any attempts to muscle in on their studies. What we want is to send someone unaffiliated with the government out to examine the situation.”
“You want us to…spy for you?”
“It is substantially less involved than that.”
“It sure as hell better be. I have no intention of being carted off to some French prison or lined up against a wall for espionage.”
“All we need to know is whether we have any cause to be alarmed or not. The area where we believe the meteorite fell is also under some British territorial claims. A day of looking around the countryside should be plenty to tell you whether or not there is anything unusual happening.”
Cornelia spoke up. “So, I still don’t see why you need us, specifically. If you just want somebody to wander over and look around for an hour, why not ask some expert on asteroids? Or just have someone ask the locals if they’ve seen anything out of place?”
“We’re asking you because of who the French have asked to investigate the situation. They initially sent a small team of geologists. After that, they called in a large number of biologists. Dozens and dozens of scientists and aides. There’s been an unprecedented flurry of construction in the area, and we believe it’s connected.”
“Are you saying they found something alive? Something from space?”
“We have no idea what they found, which is precisely the problem. We don’t need you to steal research papers or decipher every aspect of what they may or may not have discovered around the site where that meteorite landed. We just need some experienced eyes on the situation. If things are under control down there, then it will be a matter for British diplomacy and intelligence services to pry any worthwhile secrets out of the French and their researchers. If things are going badly down there, we calculate that your experiences and skills mean you are moderately more likely to survive any catastrophe than most other people we could send.”
“How flattering,” Denise said.
“And the French will just accept us there at their secret project site?” Cornelia said.
“We’ve made arrangements with the French government to allow a couple of adventurers into their territory. They’ve accepted, given certain conditions. Initial access should not be a problem. Again, this is not some infiltration commando raid. We only need observations and impressions so we can evaluate whether or not further action is required. Then the real professionals can step in.”
Denise was pretty sure that line about the real professionals was meant to bait her. Well, if Butts McGee wanted to pretend he was Mr. Slick Knickers about everything, she could play that game, too. She gave him a smile that was all teeth.
“So let me see if I have things straight here,” Cornelia said, shifting forward in her seat. The joint in her artificial leg made a little squeaking noise as she moved. “You mentioned biological aberrations a couple of times.”
“As I said before, the British Empire is a very large place, and it has some very dark corners. My organization has several centuries of experience in flushing light into those places and studying what we find among the shadows.”
“I know. A group that hunts and studies monsters. Sounds crazy, doesn’t it?” Metrodora said, her tone completely deadpan.
“If your organization is so widespread, why are you bothering to recruit us at all? Don’t the Squires already have somebody else in the region?” Denise asked.
“We used to. They died.”
“Ah. Doing anything related to this job?”
“No.”
“So what about supplies? Equipment? Logistics?” Denise asked. “What will we need for this?”
“Well,” Butts McGee said, “we will provide you with some specialty gear. Clothes, mostly. We don’t think you’ll need much in the way of equipment, but we hired a pilot to help you navigate when you reach the site. Naturally, we will be paying for all your expenses in this matter, including transport and lodgings on site. You’ll also receive a small premium.”
“We’d like the premium up front. As a sign that you’re really on the up and up. I’ve never heard of your organization before, and I don’t trust you any further than I can spit right now.”
Denise leaned back in her chair and eyed her two visitors. On the one hand, she didn’t like the way St. George’s Squires seemed to operate. This cloak and dagger business wasn’t how she liked to do things, and it certainly wasn’t something she liked in her clients.
Bringing this Metrodora woman along would be a mixed bag. On the one hand, Denise didn’t like the idea of anybody looking over her shoulder or jogging her elbow while she was trying to work.
On the other hand, if St. George’s Squires were willing to loan out one of their people, it presumably meant that they were serious about ensuring there weren’t any shenanigans happening behind the scene. If something went wrong, they couldn’t just cut and run, leaving Denise and Cornelia stranded in the middle of nowhere.
Plus, the Squires weren’t necessarily offering a bad deal. This was, in fact, a lot more pleasant and cordial than meeting with some other prospective clients, not that a veneer of manners necessarily guaranteed that things would work out in the end. Still, there seemed to be some indication that these people were serious about seeing that things went off with a bare minimum of fuss and the maximum chance of success.
Paying some money up front was a good sign. Some preparation work regarding logistics was a good sign. Some modest and articulable goals about what they wanted her to do were a good sign. Hell, just the fact that they weren’t obviously hucksters was a good sign.
Denise glanced over at Cornelia. Cornelia gave Denise a quick nod.
“Alright, I think we can work something out. We’ll check this place out for you and report back if anything is terrorizing the countryside. Where exactly do you need us to go?”
“Antarctica.”
TWO
THE SHRIEKING SIXTIES
The icebreaker moved across the waves with all the grace of a hog stuck between some fence posts. The deck of the HMS Sulaco rolled under Denise’s feet whenever she tried to walk anywhere. There were handrails everywhere to try to counteract some of the problem. In their cabins. Along the edge of the deck. In the biffy. Despite the handrails, Denise had still been tossed around a couple of times as the ship chugged through the waves.
They were deep in the southerly latitudes, where the wind could swirl around the entire southern ocean without any landmasses to break the momentum. Denise had learned from the crew that passing forty degrees south latitude had brought them into the Roaring Forties, where things started to get rough. Further south took them into the Furious Fifties, which combined everything unpleasant about the Forties and dipped
it in hot sauce. Denise had a strong stomach, but being rolled violently up and down for hours on end had turned her guts into a mass of lukewarm jelly.
Denise had expected the final stretch of the journey, the Shrieking Sixties, to swirl them around like a dead goldfish being flushed toward the pearly gates, but the weather had temporarily broken. The seas themselves were relatively calm, which came as a blessed relief.
The Shrieking Sixties had brought something new to torment them, though. Great chunks of ice floated in the water. The Sulaco’s captain steered around anything too large. Denise was grateful that he hadn’t sunk them yet. However, the captain simply smashed through anything small enough, and that was slowly driving her insane.
Denise grabbed onto the railing as the reinforced hull bashed its way through another tiny white island. The entire ship shuddered and gave a lurch. There was a tremendous cracking noise as the ice split apart, and then there was a sound as if demons were pounding on the hull with hammers as the disparate pieces of ice scraped and crunched against the entire length of the ship.
Denise gritted her teeth against that noise. It was all too easy to imagine some oversized hunk of ice lurking just beneath the surface of the choppy water, like a crocodile watching the shore with just its snout and eyes poking from the muck. Every single time the icebreaker smashed through some new obstacle, Denise’s heart gave a little leap. The angry clatter of ice against the hull always sounded like it was doing some catastrophic damage that would surely send them down to the cold, cold silt thousands of feet below.
Below them, the churning sea was only a few degrees above freezing, and no one would last long in that choppy mess. Hypothermia would claim anyone unlucky enough to fall in the water. At best, a person who fell overboard might last an hour. Most likely, the frigid sea would take them faster than that, though. She tried to focus on something else and avoid thinking about buckling metal.
Metrodora continued to sketch in a notebook she’d brought along. She’d barely said anything since she came aboard the Sulaco with Denise and Cornelia, and most of Denise’s attempts to strike up any sort of conversation had puttered out in short order.
Denise turned her attention from the window and craned her neck over to see what Metrodora was working on. The sketch was pretty good, all things considered. It was a pen and ink drawing depicting something whose head looked like a sphincter with teeth and a single large horn. Several parts were carefully labeled in neat handwriting, and there were spaces in the corners of the paper that were apparently reserved for more detailed drawings of particular pieces of the creature. Denise had never seen an animal quite like the thing Metrodora was drawing, and she hoped she never did.
Metrodora noticed Denise staring. She carefully tucked her pen behind her ear and closed her notebook, blocking Denise’s view.
“What is that?” Denise asked, pointing toward the notebook.
“It is an emela-ntouka,” Metrodora said, without bothering to open the notebook back up.
“Huh.” Denise tried to think of something else to say. “Have you and the Squires dealt with them much?”
“We have a breeding pair at our main facility. I don’t deal with them directly myself. Dr. Smithback is in charge of their upkeep.” Metrodora spoke in precise, clean language that still had a trace of accent from some native language.
“I see.” Denise did not actually see. “Are they big?”
She was relentlessly probing into the unknown with these scintillating questions today. The field of aberrant zoology would never be the same after she was done with it. Are they big? Inquiring minds needed to know.
“Very,” Metrodora said before shifting around a little to face more toward the window and block off Denise from seeing what she was drawing.
Denise got the feeling that Metrodora thought she’d been stranded with the loser kids at the playground. Maybe she was still sore about being mistaken for a porter. Or maybe she just preferred not to talk to them for the same reason veterans didn’t bother socializing with the new recruits. Maybe they would be worth talking to if they survived long enough. Perhaps she just preferred to keep to herself.
Denise turned back and glanced at their equipment. Most of their gear consisted of protective clothing like parkas and jackets. Technically, the temperature was a couple of degrees above freezing, but it sure didn’t feel like it. The constant, sheering wind cut through even thick clothing. Whenever she took her gloves off, it felt like someone was peeling the skin off her hands with tongs. The environment out there was unlike anywhere Denise had been before, and it made her feel unprepared for what she was about to do.
St. George’s Squires had come to her because she and Cornelia were the closest vaguely qualified people for the job. It seemed strange that they were the nearest, but it was true. Antarctica didn’t have any sort of permanent population, so the mere fact that her office was on a relatively nearby continent was enough to make them the most convenient people to send.
She still wasn’t sure exactly why anybody needed to be sent, though. The fact that the French had shipped a bunch of biologists down here didn’t prove anything. That they’d sent them down after the meteorite impact was interesting, but hardly definitive. Granted, it did make her wonder what they were up to down here, though.
The only people who could answer that question were the French researchers they’d be staying with. One of the more exciting possibilities was that maybe there had been some sort of life amid the meteor debris. That would indeed be cause for a stir. Denise wasn’t sure how likely that was, though.
The meteor had apparently detached from a larger asteroid. To the best of her knowledge, the typical comet and asteroid was just a big hunk of rock floating through space. No atmosphere. No water. Nothing that could sustain any sort of organism.
On the off chance that anyone really had discovered genuine life amid the debris, Denise figured it would probably turn out to be some Earth-borne microbe that had contaminated the site. Maybe a fungus or something.
Even if the lifeform were from the depths of space, it would have to be a microbe or a single-celled blob of some sort. Not that something like that wouldn’t be incredibly interesting and a huge development in the study of life. It just wouldn’t be Denise’s job to deal with it.
She, Cornelia, and Metrodora were basically down here to check under the earth’s bed for monsters. Even if there was some great and amazing discovery to be made down here, the odds that she would need to concern herself with it were basically zilch.
That was assuming that Metrodora, St. George’s Squires, and Butts McGee were straight shooters, though. Everything she’d been told indicated that she and Cornelia were just down here as a prophylactic measure. They were the B-team, sent here to soothe some nerves amongst the people who liked to study biology’s weirder corners.
But Denise had learned a long time ago to prepare for the worst. That’s why she and Cornelia had brought some of their special tools along with them. There were a couple of .577 Nitro Express elephant guns locked away in their baggage along with five hundred rounds of ammunition. About half the rounds had a silver coating. Denise had seen enough to know that it was better to have and not need than to need and not have.
She’d seen too much for her tastes a couple of times, in fact. There had been incidents when all hell broke loose. In her experience, it paid to bring enough supplies to stuff every last devil back through hell’s gates and then lock the doors behind them.
Denise cringed a little as the Sulaco crunched its way through another stretch of sea ice and jolted her forward. The captain sounded the horn in belated warning as they bashed into another clump of ice.
Fletch Adams walked through the doorway, using the handrails to expertly guide himself along even as the ship shuddered with each hit from the ice. The American pilot was the only one among them who had experience in the Antarctic, serving as a supply runner on a couple of prior expeditions.
“We’re
almost there, ladies,” he said. “If you want, you can come to the front of the ship and see the shore through the binoculars. You can just barely make out Delambre Station. It’s a lot bigger than I was expecting.”
“Compared to the expeditions you’ve been on, just how much bigger?” Cornelia asked, looking up from her inventory of equipment.
“The last expedition I was on had a research station. It was exactly one shed. About ten feet by twelve feet. There weren’t any other buildings. Everything else was either a tent or some half-assed igloos that a couple of guys tried to make. When you hired me to guide you around down here, I thought you might be a little soft in the head. Pardon my saying so. But no one would want to go to Antarctica just as an adventure vacation. Not the version of Antarctica I remember, anyway. You got lucky, though. Our French friends have built the Ritz Carlton compared to what I was expecting.”
Technically, it was St. George’s Squires who had hired Fletch. He just didn’t know that. As far as both he and the researchers at Delambre Station were concerned, she and Cornelia were just a couple of diehard explorers who wanted to be the first women to step foot on this particular stretch of Antarctica. Harmless thrill chasers. Denise was pretty sure that was the only reason the French had agreed to host them for a few days. That, and a generous research grant that had also been plucked out of the Squires’ coffers and filtered through her account.
“So what can we expect?”
“It’s a whole compound. Looks like permanent structures. Concrete walls. The whole shebang. I’d never even heard of this place until a few weeks ago, but they invested in a major building effort down here.”
“Can you tell what any of the buildings are for from here?” Denise asked.
“One of them’s pretty big. I would assume that’s some sort of crew area. Bunks and a common room. Maybe a mess hall. That sort of thing. I guess we’ll know within the hour. Best get your things ready to unload.”