Ice Station ss-1

by Matthew Reilly

  "Guess I won't be playing football anymore," Mother said.

  Schofield looked at her face, and he saw her open her eyes.

  "That fucking fish took my leg," she said indignantly.

  "I noticed. Could have been worse, though."

  "Don't I know it," Mother snorted.

  Schofield laughed.

  Mother looked him over as he laughed. "Scarecrow. Have I ever told you that you are one damn fine-lookin' man?"

  Schofield said, "I think that's the methadone talking."

  "I know a good man when I see one," Mother said as she leaned back against the wall and closed her eyes slowly.

  Schofield spoke softly. "I'm not certain of many things, Mother, but one thing I am certain of is that I am not much to look at."

  Schofield began to think about the two scars that cut down across his eyes and how hideous they were. People instinctively winced when they saw them. When he was back home, he almost always wore sunglasses.

  As he thought about his eyes, Schofield must have looked away from Mother for an instant, because when he looked back at her he found that she was staring at him. Her eyes were hard and sharp, not glazed or drugged out. They bored right through his reflective silver glasses.

  "Any woman who won't have you 'cause of your eyes doesn't deserve you, Scarecrow."

  Schofield said nothing. Mother let it go.

  "All right, then," she said. "Now that we got all these pleasantries out of the way"?she raised her eyebrows suggestively?"what brings you down to my neck of these woods? I'm hoping it wasn't just to check up on my health."

  "It wasn't."

  "Well... ?"

  "Samurai's dead."

  "What?" Mother said seriously. "They told me he was stable."

  "He was murdered."

  "By the French?"

  "No, later. Much later. The French were all dead when he was killed."

  "It wasn't one of their scientists?"

  "Accounted for."

  Mother spoke evenly. "One of our scientists?"

  "If it was, I can't figure out why," Schofield said.

  There was a short silence.

  Then Mother said, "What about the one that was shut up in his room when we got here? You know, what's-his-name. Renshaw."

  Schofield's head snapped up.

  He had completely forgotten about James Renshaw. Renshaw was the scientist Sarah Hensleigh had said had killed one of his fellow scientists only days before the Marines had arrived at Wilkes. He was the man the residents of Wilkes had locked inside his room on B-deck. After Samurai's death, Schoneld hadn't even checked to see if Renshaw was still in his room. If Renshaw had escaped, then maybe he had ...

  "Shit, I forgot all about him," Schofield said. He quickly eyed his helmet mike. "Book, Rebound, Snake, you out there?"

  "Copy, Scarecrow," Snake's voice replied.

  "Snake, I need someone up there to go down to B-deck right away and make sure that that guy who was shut up in his room is still there, OK?"

  "I'm on it," Snake said.

  Schofield clicked off his intercom.

  Mother smiled, spread her arms wide. "Honestly, where would you be without your Mother, Scarecrow?"

  "Lost," Schofield said.

  "Don't you know it," Mother said. "Don't you know it." She eyed Schofield carefully; he was staring at the floor. What's wrong?" she said softly.

  Schofield kept his head down. He shook his head slowly.

  "I should have known they were soldiers, Mother. I should have anticipated it."

  "What are you talking about?"

  "I should have locked them up as soon as I saw them?"

  "You couldn't do that."

  "We lost three men."

  "Honey, we won."

  "We got lucky," Schofield said seriously. "We got very, very lucky. They'd flushed four of my men out onto that catwalk and were about to slaughter them when they dropped into that pool. Christ, look at what happened down in the drilling room. They had a plan right up to the end. If Rebound hadn't caught wind of it beforehand, they would have got us, Mother, even at the very end. We were on the back foot the whole damn time. We didn't even have a plan at all."

  "Scarecrow. Listen to me," Mother said firmly. "You wanna know something?"

  "What?"

  Mother said, "Did you know that about six months ago I was offered a place in an Atlantic Recon unit?"

  Schofield looked up at that. No. He hadn't known.

  "I still have the letter back home if you want to see it," Mother said. "It's signed by the Commandant himself. You know what I did after I got that letter, Scarecrow?"

  "What?"

  "I wrote back to the Commandant of the United States Marine Corps and said thank you very much, but I would like to stay with my current unit, under my commanding officer, Lieutenant First Class Shane M. Schofield, USMC. I said that I could find no better unit, under no better commander, than the one I was currently in."

  Schofield was momentarily stunned. That Mother would do such a thing was quite incredible. To reject an offer to join an Atlantic Recon Unit was one thing, but to politely decline the personal invitation of the Commandant of the United States Marine Corps to join such a unit was something else.

  Mother looked Schofield squarely in the eye. "You are a great officer, Scarecrow, a great officer. You are smart and you are brave and you are something that is very, very rare in this world: you are a good man.

  "That's why I stayed with you. You've got a heart, Scarecrow. You care about your men. And I'll tell you right now, that puts you above every other commander I have ever known. I am prepared to risk my life at your judgment because I know that whatever the plan is, you're still worried about me.

  "A lot of commanders, they're just looking for glory, looking for a promotion. They ain't gonna care if that dumb ol' bitch Mother gets herself killed. But you do care and I like that. Shit, look at you now. You're beating up on yourself because we almost got our asses capped. You are smart, Scarecrow, and you are good, and don't you ever doubt that. Ever. You just have to believe in yourself."

  Schofield was taken aback by the force of Mother's words. He nodded. "I'll try."

  "Good," Mother said, her tone now a little more upbeat. "Now. Was there anything else you wanted to hear from 'Dear Abby' while you were down here?"

  Schofield snuffed a laugh. "No. That's it. I better get going, check on this Renshaw guy." He stood up and headed for the doorway. When he reached the doorway, however, he stopped suddenly and turned.

  "Mother," he said, "do you know anything about men being planted in units?"

  "What do you mean?"

  Schofield hesitated. "When I found out Samurai had been murdered, I remembered something that happened a couple of years ago to a friend of mine. At the time, this friend had said something about people planting men inside his unit."

  Mother looked hard at Schofield. She licked her lips, didn't speak for a very long time.

  "It's not something I like to talk about," she said quietly. "But, yes, I have heard about it."

  "What have you heard?" Schofield stepped back into the storeroom.

  "Only rumors. Rumors that get bigger and bigger each time you hear 'em. As an officer, you probably don't hear this shit, but I'll tell you, if there's one thing about enlisted men, it's that they gossip like a bunch of old women."

  "What do they say?"

  "Enlisted grunts like to talk about infiltrators. It's their favorite myth. A campfire story designed by senior line animals to scare the booties off the junior troops and make them trust one another. You know, if we can't trust each other, who can we trust, or something like that.

  "You hear all kinds of theories about where these infiltrators come from. Some folks reckon they're inserted by the CIA. Deep-cover agents enlist with the armed forces with the sole purpose of infiltrating elite units?so that they can keep tabs on us, make sure we're doin' what we're supposed to be doin.'

  "Others say it
's the Pentagon that does it. Others still say it's the CIA and the Pentagon. I heard one guy?a real fruit-loop named Hugo Boddington?say once that he'd heard that the National Reconnaissance Office and the Joint Chiefs of Staff had a joint subcommittee that they called the Intelligence Convergence Group and that it was the office that was in charge of infiltrating American military units.

  "Boddington said the ICG was some kind of ultrasecret committee charged with hoarding intelligence. Charged with ensuring that only the right people in the right places knew about certain stuff. That's why they have to infiltrate units like ours. If we're on a mission and we find something we're not supposed to?I don't know, like a crashed space shuttle or something?those ICG guys are there to wipe us out and make sure that we don't tell anybody about what we saw."

  Schofield shook his head. It sounded like a ghost story. Double agents among the troops.

  But in the back of his mind there was a single doubt. A doubt that took shape in the form of Andrew Trent's voice screaming over Schofield's helmet radio from inside that Incan temple in Peru: "They planted men in my unit!... They planted fucking men in my unit!" Andrew Trent was no ghost story.

  "Thanks, Mother," Schofield said as he headed back for the door. "I better get going."

  "Ah, yes," Mother said. "A unit to run. People to organize. Responsibility to take. I wouldn't be an officer for all the money in the world."

  "I wish you'd told me that ten years ago."

  "Ah, yes, but then tonight wouldn't have been anywhere near as much fun. You take care, you hear me, Scarecrow. Oh, and hey," she said. "Nice glasses."

  Schofield paused for a moment in the doorway. He realized that he was wearing Mother's antiflash glasses. He smiled. "Thanks, Mother."

  "Hey, don't thank me," she said. "Hell, the Scarecrow without his silver glasses, it's like Zorro without his mask, Superman without his cape. It just ain't right"

  "Call me if you need anything," Schofield said.

  Mother gave him a wicked grin. "Oh, I know what I need, baby," she said.

  Schofield shook his head. "You never quit, do you?"

  Mother smiled. "You know what?" she said coyly. "I don't think you realize it when someone has their eye on you, honey."

  Schofield raised an eyebrow. "Does someone have their eye on me?"

  "Oh, yes, Scarecrow. Oh, yes."

  Schofield shook his head, smiled. "Good-bye, Mother."

  "Good-bye, Scarecrow."

  Schofield left the storeroom and Mother sank back against the wall.

  When Schofield was gone, she closed her eyes and said softly to herself, "Does someone have their eye on you? Oh, Scarecrow. Scarecrow. If only you could see the way she looks at you."

  Schofield stepped out onto the pool deck.

  The whole station was deserted. The cavernous shaft was silent. Schofield stared at the pool, at the stationary cable that stretched down into it.

  "Scarecrow, this is Fox," Gant's voice said over his earpiece. "Are you still up there?"

  "I'm still here; where are you?"

  "Dive time is fifty-five minutes. We are proceeding up the ice tunnel."

  "Any sign of trouble?"

  "Nothing yet?whoa, wait a minute: who's this?"

  "What is it, Fox?" Schofield said, alarmed.

  "No. It's nothing," Gant's voice said. "It's all right. Scarecrow, if that little girl's up there with you, you might want to tell her that her friend is down here."

  "What do you mean?"

  "That fur seal, Wendy, She just joined us in the tunnel. Must have followed us down here."

  Schofield pictured Gant and the others swimming up the underwater ice tunnel, covered in their mechanical breathing apparatus, while beside them Wendy swam happily, not needing any such equipment.

  "How far have you got to go?" Schofield asked.

  "Hard to say. We've been going extra slow, just to be careful. I'd say it'll be another five minutes or so."

  "Keep me posted," Schofield said. "Oh, and, Fox. Use caution."

  "You got it. Scarecrow. Fox, out."

  The radio clicked off. Schofield stared at the water in the pool. It was still stained red. At the moment, it was calm, glassy. He took a step forward, toward it.

  Something crunched beneath his feet.

  He froze, looked down at his boots, bent down.

  On the metal deck beneath his feet lay some broken shards of glass. White frosted glass.

  Schofield frowned at the glass.

  And then, with frightening suddenness, a voice cut across his helmet intercom: "Scarecrow, this is Snake. I'm on B-deck. I just checked Renshaw's room. There was no answer when I banged on his door, so I busted it open. Sir, there was no one in there. Renshaw is gone. I repeat, Renshaw is gone."

  Schofield felt a chill run down his spine.

  Renshaw wasn't in his room.

  He was somewhere inside the station.

  Schofield was about to move, about to go and find the others, when he heard a soft puncturelike sound, followed by a faint whistling through the air. There came a sudden thwacking noise, and Schofield immediately felt a stinging, burning sensation on the back of his neck and then, to his horror, he suddenly realized that the thwacking noise had been the sound of something impacting against his neck at extremely high speed.

  Schofield's knees buckled. He suddenly felt very weak.

  He immediately put his hand to his neck and then held it out in front of his face.

  His hand was slicked with blood.

  Blackness slowly overcame him and Schofield dropped to his knees. The world darkened around him, and as his cheek thudded down against the ice-cold steel of the deck Shane Schofield had a single terrifying thought.

  He had just been shot in the throat.

  And then suddenly the thought vanished and the world went completely and utterly black.

  Shane Schofield's heart...

  ... had stopped.

  FOURTH INCURSION

  16 June 1510 hours

  Libby Gant swam up the steep underwater ice tunnel.

  It was quiet here, she thought, peaceful. The whole world was tinted pale blue.

  As she swam, Gant could hear nothing but the soft, rhythmic hiss of her low-audibility breathing gear. There were no other sounds?no whistling noises, no whale song, no nothing.

  Gant stared out through her full-face diving mask. In the glare of her halogen dive lantern the icy walls of the tunnel glowed a ghostly blue-on-white. The other divers?Montana, Santa Cruz, and the scientist woman, Sarah Hensleigh? swam alongside her in silence.

  All of a sudden the ice tunnel began to widen dramatically and Gant saw several large round holes set into the walls on either side of her.

  They were larger than she had expected them to be?easily ten feet in diameter. And they were round, perfectly round. Gant counted eight such holes and wondered what kind of animal could possibly have made them.

  And then, abruptly, she forgot about the holes set into the ice walls. Something else had seized her attention.

  The surface.

  Gant keyed her intercom. "Scarecrow. This is Fox," she said. "Scarecrow. This is Fox. Scarecrow, are you out there?"

  There was no reply.

  "Scarecrow, I repeat, this is Fox. Come in."

  Still no reply.

  That was strange, Gant thought. Why would Scarecrow not answer her? She had spoken to him only a few minutes ago.

  Suddenly a voice crackled over her earpiece.

  It wasn't Schofield.

  "Fox, this is Rebound!" He seemed to be shouting above some wind. He must have been outside the station. "I read you. What's up?"

  "We're approaching the surface now," Gant said. "Where's Scarecrow?" she added a little too quickly.

  "He's inside the station somewhere. Down with Mother, I think. Must have taken his helmet off or something."

  Gant said, "Well, it might be a good idea to go find him and tell him what's going on down here. We're about to surfac
e inside the cavern."

  "Got it, Fox."

  Gant clicked off her radio and resumed her swim upward.

  The water's surface looked strange from below.

  It was glassy. Still. It looked like a warped glass lens of some sort, completely distorting the image of whatever it was that lay beyond it.

  Gant swam toward it. The others rose slowly in the water beside her.

  They all broke the surface together.

  In an instant, the world around Gant changed and she found herself treading water in the center of an enormous pool situated at one end of a massive underground cavern. She saw Montana and Santa Cruz hovering in the water beside her, with Sarah Hensleigh behind them.

  The cavern was absolutely huge. Its ceiling was easily a hundred feet high, and its walls stretched so far into the distance that the farthest reaches of the cavern were cloaked in darkness, evading the fiarsh luminescent glare of the Marines' high-powered halogen lanterns.

  And then Gant saw it.

  "I'll be damned ...," she heard Santa Cruz say.

  For a full minute, Gant could do nothing but stare. Slowly, she began to make her wav toward the edge of the pool. When she finally stepped up onto solid ground, she was totally entranced. She couldn't take her eyes off it.

  It looked like nothing she had ever seen before. Like something out of a movie. The mere sight of it took her breath away.

  It was a ship of some sort.

  A black ship?completely black from nose to tail?about the same size as a fighter jet. Gant saw that its two enormous tail fins were embedded in the ice wall behind it. It looked as if they had been consumed by the ice as it had crept slowly forward through the ages.

  The huge black spacecraft just stood there?in stark contrast to the cold white cavern around it?standing high on three powerful-looking hydraulic landing struts.

  It looked fantastic, otherworldly.

  And it looked mean.

  Black and pointed, sleek and sharp, to Gant it looked like a huge praying mantis. Its two black wings swooped down on either side of its fuselage so that it looked like a bird in flight with its wings at the lowest extremity.