Ice Station ss-1

by Matthew Reilly

  Suddenly something emerged from the fireball that had consumed the alcove.

  It was large and gray, square-shaped, and it tumbled end-over-end out into the central shaft of the station. It fell fast, cutting through the air, its immense weight driving it downward. With a thunderous crash, the four-hundred-pound ejection seat that had been sitting in front of the console in the C-deck alcove came smashing down onto the deck that surrounded the pool at the bottom of the station. It weighed so much and landed so hard that it dented the thick metal deck when it hit.

  Despite the chaos all around him, Shane Schofield kept his eyes locked on the retractable bridge three stories above him. He took in the distance.

  Thirty feet. Maybe thirty-five.

  He wasted no time, raised his Maghook, flicked a switch marked M with his thumb?and saw a red light on the head of the grappling hook activate?aimed, and fired.

  The grappling hook shot up into the air. However, this time the claws of the hook didn't spring outward. This time it was set on magnet.

  The bulbous magnetic head of the Maghook thunked into the underside of the retractable steel bridge and stuck there.

  Schofield did some quick calculations in his head. "Shit," was all he said when he finished.

  Then he handed the launcher to Kirsty and said, "Three words, honey: don't let go."

  She took the launcher in both hands and looked at Schofield, puzzled.

  He smiled at her reassuringly. "Just hold on."

  Then he pressed down firmly on a small black button on the grip of the Maghook.

  Suddenly Kirsty flew up out of the water as the Maghook reeled her upward like some bizarre kind of fishing rod.

  She was light, so the Maghook had little difficulty whisking her up to the bridge. Schofield knew it would have been considerably slower if his weight were also being?

  A killer whale shot up out of the water after Kirsty.

  Schofield's jaw dropped as he saw the massive whale lift its entire body out of the water in a magnificent vertical leap.

  Kirsty was still moving rapidly upward, pulled up by the Maghook. She looked down and saw the whale emerge from the water beneath her like the Devil coming out of Hell itself. Saw it come roaring up toward her, its body rotating as it rose into the air.

  And then all of a sudden Kirsty came to a jarring halt.

  The whale kept coming upward.

  Kirsty squealed in surprise, looked up, and saw that she had hit the underside of the bridge.

  She couldn 't go any farther up!

  The whale opened its jaws wide as it reached the zenith uf its leap . . .

  Kirsty gripped the Maghook as hard as she could and quiickly brought her legs up tightly against her chest just as the killer's teeth jammed shut with a loud crunch, coming together barely a foot below her butt, the lowest part of her body.

  Kirsty watched as the huge black-and-white whale fell away beneath her, diminishing in size until it disappeared back into the pool below. The animal must have been at least thirty feet long, and it had lifted its entire body vertically out of the wat?

  Suddenly a hand appeared in front of Kirsty's face and she almost had a heart attack, almost let go of the Maghook.

  "It's OK," a voice said. "It's me."

  Kirsty looked up and found herself looking into the friendly eyes of the Marine she knew as Mr. Book. She took his hand, and he hauled her up onto the retractable bridge.

  She was breathing heavily, almost crying. Buck Riley hearing her, looked at her in amazement. After a second, Kirsty reached into her pocket and pulled out a plastic puffer for her asthma.

  She drew in two long puffs and caught her breath. When, finally, she was able to speak she looked at Riley, shook her head, and said, "They definitely don't have that at Sea World."

  Schofield was still down in the pool. Two of the killer whales circled him ominously. He noticed that these two appeared to be smaller than the other killers. Juveniles, maybe.

  He tilted his head upward and yelled, "Book! I need my Maghook!"

  Up on the bridge, Riley immediately dropped to his belly and leaned out over the edge of the narrow metal platform. He reached out underneath the platform and tried to deactivate the magnet on Schofield's grappling hook.

  "I need it now, Book!" Schofield's voice sailed up through the shaft of the ice station.

  "I'm trying! I'm trying!" Riley said.

  "Try faster!"

  Riley stretched his arm out under the platform, tried to reach the switch marked M on the grip that activated and deactivated the Maghook's powerful magnet.

  As he did so, however, a strange thing happened.

  For a brief second, Riley could have sworn that he heard Kirsty speaking to someone on the bridge above him.

  "Help the diver, Wendy. Help the diver."

  Riley blinked to himself. Must be hearing things.

  Down in the pool, Schofield thought it was all over. The two killers on either side of him were closing in as they circled, shutting off any possible escape route.

  Suddenly one of them seemed to break out of his circle and swing around. Schofield swallowed. He was coming round for the kill.

  The killer turned in a slow, wide arc until he was pointing right at Schofield. His body was only a foot or so beneath the surface, and his high dorsal fin sliced easily through the waves in the pool. He was moving at such powerful speed that he created a rolling bow wave in front of his submerged black-and-white head.

  The bow wave raced across the water, on a collision course with Shane Schofield.

  Schofield looked around himself. There was nowhere to go this time, no weapon to use.

  Out of sheer desperation he pulled out his Desert Eagle pistol, raised it above the water.

  If it had to come to this, he thought, then it had to come to this.

  The killer charged toward him.

  And then suddenly a black missilelike object plunged into the water right in front of Schofield's face, right in between him and the killer whale.

  Whatever it was, it was so sleek that it entered the water with barely even a splash, and once in, it zoomed away from him at phenomenal speed.

  Both killers saw it instantly and immediately lost interest in Schofield. Even the one that had been charging at him only seconds before abruptly altered its path and raced off in pursuit of this new quarry.

  Schofield was stunned. What had it been? It had looked almost like a... a seal of some sort.

  And then, miraculously, a Maghook dropped into the water right in front of him.

  Schofield grabbed it before it sank and immediately looked upward. Up on the bridge he saw Book Riley lying on his belly, with one arm stretched out underneath the bridge.

  Schofield looked at the Maghook and suddenly felt a new lease on life come over him.

  Just then, a small pointed black head popped up out of the water right in front of him and he fell backward in surprise.

  It was Wendy. Kirsty's little Antarctic fur seal.

  Her cute red collar glistened with wetness, and her soft black eyes looked right into his. If it was possible, Schofield could have sworn that the little seal was smiling?having a ball of a time swimming around in the pool, evading the less agile killer whales.

  Then he realized. Wendy must have been the object that had dived into the pool in between him and the charging killer whale.

  Suddenly Wendy's head snapped left.

  She'd heard something, sensed something.

  Then she gave what looked like a final happy nod to Schofield before she ducked back under the water and sped off down the length of the pool.

  She swam fast. Speeding just underneath the surface of the water like a tiny black torpedo. Cutting left, ducking right, and then disappearing suddenly as she dropped into a steep vertical dive. No sooner had she moved than three black dorsal fins appeared behind her and immediately gave chase, before they themselves vanished beneath the surface in hot pursuit.

  Schofield t
ook the opportunity and swam for the nearest edge. He was three feet from the deck when a sudden surge of water rocked him and he rolled in the water as the giant body of one of the killers swept past him at a frightening speed. Schofield immediately tensed for another fight, but the whale just barreled past him, in search of the elusive Wendy.

  Schofield breathed again, swam forward, and grabbed hold of the deck. He climbed up out of the water and saw the. battered ejection seat lying crumpled on its side on the deck in front of him. Then he turned around, surveyed the chaos around him.

  Sarah and Abby were long out of the water and were now hurrying into the tunnels of E-deck. Not far from them were Rebound and Mother. Rebound was kneeling over Mother. He appeared to be applying pressure to a wound of some kind on Mother's leg.

  On the other side of the pool Schofield saw the two surviving French commandos, also safely out of the water. Soaking wet, they were just getting to their feet on the deck. One of them saw Schofield and began to reach for his crossbow.

  Just then, a sudden movement caught Schofield's eye and he turned and saw a familiar black shadow whipping down the length of the pool.

  Wendy.

  Three larger black-and-white shapes raced through the water behind her. The killers in pursuit.

  Wendy was travelling at tremendous speed, just below the surface. Her flippers would occasionally sweep backward with a powerful stroke and then fall in by her sides so that her body remained as streamlined as possible. She looked like a bullet shooting through the pool, alternately appearing and disappearing in the murky red clouds that stained the icy water.

  She was heading for the deck, for that part of the deck on which the two French commandos stood. And she wasn't slowing down.

  In fact, it looked to Schofield like she was picking up speed as she sped toward the deck with the three black-and-white specters racing through the water behind her.

  Schofield then watched in amazement as, within a meter of the deck, Wendy suddenly launched herself out of the water. It was a flat, graceful leap, and she landed smoothly on her belly on the deck and slid forward a full three meters.

  She slid right past the two bewildered Frenchmen standing next to her.

  But she didn't stop there. No sooner had she stopped sliding than she was up on her foreflippers and galloping as fast as she could, away from the water's edge.

  For a fleeting instant Schofield wondered why she would do that. Surely once you were out of the water you were safe from the killers.

  And then Schofield discovered why Wendy did what she did.

  Like a demon rising from the depths, one of the pursuing killer whales roared out of the water and hurled its massive body up onto the deck, landing on the thick metal grating with an enormous crash. The huge whale slid fast across the deck, carried forward by the weight of its own inertia. It rolled smoothly onto its side as it moved, so that its jaws opened vertically, and then, with almost effortless grace, it caught one of the Frenchmen in its mouth and bit down hard.

  The big animal's sliding movement stopped and it ground to a halt, with the French soldier?screaming madly, blood pouring from his mouth?held tightly within its jaws. The whale then began to shuffle its enormous frame awkwardly backward along the deck. After a few moments, it reached the edge and fell back into the water, taking the screaming Frenchman down with it.

  Wendy had known. You weren't truly safe from the killers until you were well clear of the water's edge.

  The six people remaining on the deck understood at once.

  Get away from the edge.

  Schofield saw Gant join Rebound on the other side of the pool. Saw them both hurriedly pick up Mother by the shoulders and start to drag her away from the edge. As they did so, Schofield caught a fleeting glimpse of Mother's lower body. The bottom half of one of her legs was missing.

  At that moment there came a sudden resounding whump! from behind Schofield and he felt the deck beneath him shudder violently. He spun instantly, faced the pool, and saw the smiling face of one of the killer whales sliding across the deck toward him!

  The whale slid across the deck fast.

  Schofield was still on his knees.

  The whale rolled onto its side, opened its mouth wide.

  Schofield dived away from the massive creature, saw the battered ejection seat lying on the deck four feet behind him. If he could just get to it and leap over it, he'd be safe. He scrambled across the deck on his hands and knees, toward the big ejection seat.

  The whale kept coming. Fast.

  Schofield clawed at the deck, crawled as fast as he could. Not fast enough. He wasn't going to make it.

  He wasn't going to be able to get over the ejection seat in time.

  Schofield saw water spread out on the deck all around him. The wash from the advancing killer whale.

  It was right behind him!

  Schofield's adrenaline surged and he dived forward. He knew he wasn't going to make it over the chair, so he slammed himself, back first, into the ejection seat.

  He was now facing the pool, "sitting" in the battered ejection seat as it lay crumpled on its side. He looked up and the killer whale filled his entire field of vision.

  It was right on top of him! Less than a meter away. It came roaring toward him.

  There was no chance of it slowing down.

  No chance of it missing him.

  And Shane Schofield shut his eyes as the killer whale's jaws came slamming down around his head.

  There came a sudden otherworldly clang!, a noise louder than anything Schofield had ever heard in his life.

  He had expected to feel pain?sharp, sudden, burning pain?as the killer whale's teeth chomped down hard on his head. But strangely, he didn't feel any pain.

  Bewildered, he opened his eyes...

  ... and saw two long rows of razor-sharp teeth stretching away from him into darkness. In between the two long rows of teeth sat an obscenely fat, pink tongue.

  It took a second for his brain to put it all together.

  His head was inside the killer whale's month!

  But for some reason?some unfathomable, incredible reason?he was still alive.

  It was then that Schofield looked up and saw that his head was surrounded on three sides by the battered steel headrest of the ejection seat.

  The killer whale's ferocious bite had come down hard on the headrest, on either side of Schofield's head. But the steel headrest had been strong enough to withstand the incredible force of the bite?it had halted the big whale's teeth only millimeters short of Schofield's ears. Now, two severe dents in the headrest jutted inward on either side of his head. One of them?sharp and jagged?had drawn a tiny bead of blood from his left ear.

  Schofield couldn't see anything else. His entire upper body, from chest to head, was completely covered by the killer whale's mouth.

  Suddenly the ejection seat jolted beneath him.

  It scraped loudly against the metal deck, and Schofield fell back into the seat as the whole thing lurched forward.

  The movement stopped suddenly, almost as soon as it had begun, and Schofield rocked forward and shuddered to a halt. He suddenly realized what was happening.

  The whale was dragging him back toward the pool.

  The ejection seat jolted once again, and he felt the seat slide another three feet across the deck.

  In his mind's eye, Schofield could picture the whale's movements. It was probably shuffling backward?as the other one had done before with the Frenchman?undulating its massive body back across the deck as it dragged the four-hundred-pound ejection seat toward the edge of the deck.

  The ejection seat moved again and Schofield felt a sudden rush of warm air wash over his face.

  It had come from within the whale.

  Schofield couldn't believe it. The killer whale was huffing and puffing, breathing hard as it held this unusually heavy prize within its jaws and dragged it back toward the water! Schofield wriggled in his seat as another rush of warm air
hit his face and the seat jolted once again.

  His feet were still sticking out from the base of the ejection seat, out from the side of the whale's propped-open mouth. If he could just wriggle down that way, he thought, he might be able to slip out of the chair?and out of the whale's mouth?before it reached the water.

  Schofield moved slowly, gingerly, easing himself down in the ejection seat, not wanting to alert the whale to his plan.

  Suddenly the seat lurched sideways. It screeched hideously as it slid across the metal deck. Schofield quickly grabbed hold of the armrests to stop himself from falling forward onto the big animal's teeth.

  He lowered himself farther. Now his waist was out of the chair and his eyes were level with the whale's sharp, pointed teeth. The whale grunted as it heaved on the heavy steel chair.

  Slowly, Schofield lowered himself an inch farther out of the chair.

  And then he encountered a problem.

  He was now sitting so low in the ejection seat that he couldn't keep a hold on the armrests anymore. He needed something to hold onto, something from which he could push himself out of the seat. He desperately looked around himself, searching for something to grab onto.

  Nothing.

  There was absolutely nothing to hold onto.

  And then his gaze fell upon the killer whale's teeth in front of him.

  I don't believe this, he thought as he reached up with both hands and took hold of two of the killer whale's enormous white teeth.

  Suddenly the ejection seat jolted and slid again and Schofield felt it lift slightly off the deck. He had a sudden horrifying thought.

  It's reached the edge of the deck.

  And now it's tipping over it...

  Holy shit.

  Schofield gripped the whale's teeth tightly and pushed hard off them, and hurled himself clear of the ejection seat. He slid out from the chair, out from the side of the big whale's mouth, and fell clumsily onto the deck just in time to see the killer whale's rear end drop back into the pool. As its tail entered the water, the big whale's body tipped upward, and its head reared up, lifting the entire ejection seat off the deck. Then the killer whale's enormous black-and-white frame began to slide downward, into the water, and the great predator took its prize to a watery grave.