ICE GENESIS

by Kevin Tinto

  Leah closed her eyes for a moment. She clenched her fists underneath the conference table, and drew in a deep breath to keep from getting emotional. “Tell me what we have to do, Gordo.”

  “At the very least, I need a fresh sample of her blood, immediately. Ideally, I’d want her here—where we can do a complete work-up and a wide series of tests. You alluded the shaman has become extremely protective of the Ancients. I would prefer a blood sample, over having you and Mr. Moon suffer injury or death at his hand….” He hesitated. “I’m wondering if it might be time to ‘isolate’ him from the rest of the Ancients. For your safety—and that of the Settlement.” Gordo leaned away, as if he expected Leah to pick up a chair and toss it at him for the very suggestion.

  Instead, Leah glanced up and studied the ceiling for a moment. “I think that might be a very good suggestion, Gordo. His sway over the Ancients is growing by the day. I’ll ask him if we can take K’aalógii for testing. I’ll tell him her health is in danger. But if he refuses, then we’ll need to act fast.”

  “Here’s a head twister,” Leah added. “We’re on this hunt yesterday. Turns out, the entire event was staged theatre. Me and Garrett, the sole audience. Needless to say, he got his point across. But, he could have made the same point at the Settlement, without so much as getting up off his ass. Why would he do that?”

  Gordo glanced back and forth between Jack and Leah. “I’m sorry. What hunt?”

  Leah waved her hand. He had three deer, good as dead, and walked away, then said something to the effect, “I’m not hunting deer when I’ve got three square meals a day provided freebie. He did not bother to add, ‘I hope you enjoyed the six hours climbing over hill and down into ravine’, but I got the message. Appanoose took hours to make a point he could have easily made to Garrett, then turned his back on me. Why?”

  Gordon said, “As a teaching professor, I can tell you that demonstrating a point with an experiment, specifically one your students are invested in—gets the best result.”

  Jack nodded in agreement. “It does sound like Appanoose is taking time to school you. Didn’t he give you advice before he sprinted back to the Settlement, at the end of the hunt?”

  “He said it was getting dark soon—and when it got dark it was going to get cold. That we should hustle our asses back to the Settlement, post haste.”

  Jack grinned. “See? Mr. Warm and Fuzzy. As much as he’s pushing back at you and Garrett, he took time to make a point you already knew to be true. Perhaps a touch of ‘playing nice’ after giving you blisters. He’s turning into the master of head games. We just need to figure out his game plan.”

  “Yeah. That threw me. He generally treats me like a stack of wet firewood.” Leah said. “Plus, he didn’t bother to cut our throats with the knife he stole from the perimeter security—so I have that in the positive column—today anyway.”

  “Day is still young…”

  “Jack!”

  “Kidding—still, we could be playing with the biological equivalent of Chernobyl, here. Maybe that’s why these people were not returned home, why they were isolated in a sealed lab in Antarctica.”

  “That brings us to our current quandary,” Gordon said. “I have not yet updated Mr. Paulson or anyone else in Washington about my findings. And there’s no doubt that the Genesis Settlement, at least as Dr. Andrews envisioned, will cease the instant I report my findings. The Ancients will be quarantined for scientific and safety reasons. But clearly these individuals could turn aggressive, even dangerous, if the government tries to round them up.”

  “That’s a given,” Leah said, “if Appanoose is in charge when the round-up begins. I have no doubt, if challenged, they can be lethal.”

  “I want you and Garrett out of there,” Jack said. “Don’t even return to the Settlement. I’ll go in there myself, tell Garrett you’ve come down with pneumonia, you’ve had to be hospitalized, and that he’s needed for a fast debrief—anything to get the two of you safely away before the shit hits the fan.”

  “I hate to tell you guys, but I have a feeling that we’re all underestimating Appanoose. He’ll smell this double-cross coming a mile away.” She turned to Gordon. “This comes down to you, Gordo. How soon are you planning to report your findings? When you report, we’ll be lucky to have twenty-four hours before a platoon of Special Operations fast-rope into Gila and all hell breaks loose.”

  Gordon paused before answering, his expression conflicted. “Reporting could result in your death, and Mr. Moon’s as well, following your line of reasoning. I hesitate to report results that could be misinterpreted without additional testing and analysis. I suggest we follow your plan. See if you can free Ms. K’aalógii for a medical work-up.... That will also guarantee that she’s not at the Settlement if…violence should break out.”

  Jack said, “If the shaman won’t free K’aalógii, you and Garrett have to get out of there—as fast as you can. I’m not leaving until I know that you two are safe.”

  Leah closed her eyes, feeling a throbbing migraine starting to poke her left temple. That poke would soon turn into a ballpeen hammer. “I need another Gus Beckam. Someone I can trust, who can stand up to Appanoose.” As quickly as she said it, Leah winced. The death of Navy SEAL Gus Beckam and his team was still a painful reminder of what had gone wrong in Antarctica.

  If I’d only minded my business, as I’d been warned, none of this would be happening.

  Chapter 9

  Liam and Lenny Clay stood beside the wrecked Antonov fuselage while Beckam gave the skies and horizon a quick look-see with binoculars. Wind had kicked up and visibility had closed in to less than half a mile.

  Beckam swung his handheld compass in the general direction they’d spotted the first wave of Russian airborne troops. “I have the outbound bearing as one-niner-five,” Beckam said, glancing once again at the compass. “The reciprocal is…one-five degrees on your return.”

  Liam Clay checked his compass. “Got it. We’re good to go.”

  “Okay, Frogs. Get it done.”

  The Clay twins skedaddled.

  The adrenalin rush of a combat task, and a battle plan does wonders for mental health, thought Beckam.

  “If there’s commie gear out there, they’ll find it,” said Frantino from inside the fuselage, his thumbs-up barely visible above the stacks of junk surrounding him.

  “I’m not sure commie describes the current political situation in Russia,” Beckam replied. “More like cult-of-personality?”

  “Yeah. Well. Commie still works for me.” Frantino dropped his hand to his side.

  Danny was getting weaker, Beckam noted. His survival, and their own, depended upon getting out of town, and fast.

  ✽✽✽

  Nine hours later, Liam Clay stuck his head back into the wrecked fuselage.

  "Pay dirt?”

  “Hell yeah, Skipper. Maybe ten klicks right on the azimuth. You called it. They air-dropped enough gear to move in permanent. The pallets are cemented in snow and ice, compliments of the detonation. Lenny’s getting a jump on cutting through the ice with his MK-3, but we could use a shovel or, even better, a pick-axe.”

  Beckam was delighted—especially on behalf of Frantino. “There’ll be a shitload of tools strapped in with the gear—right on top if they offload the same way we do. Let’s see what we have around here that can get the party started. Once we break a pallet or two open, it’ll be the land of milk and honey.”

  Searching in and around the fuselage, they soon located several inch-diameter sections of loose steel pipe. “This ought to work fine as an ice-chipper,” Beckam said, holding up a meter-long section.

  He walked over and knelt beside Frantino. “Hang tight, Danny. We’ll be back inside five hours with transportation out of this dump.”

  His executive officer coughed and squeezed his eyes shut before speaking, “I’m good, Skipper.” He lifted a gloved hand and grasped Beckam’s.

  Beckam grinned and grabbed Danny’s hand in both
of his. “I think our rotten luck is changing.”

  “Get ‘em, Boss. And bring back something to eat besides Vienna Sausage.”

  Beckam nodded in agreement, then patted his XO on the shoulder “Roger that.” He spun and found Liam Clay waiting impatiently with a pipe in one hand and his MP5 slung over his shoulder.

  Beckam and Liam traced the prints the twins had laid down on the outbound azimuth. Liam quickly overtook Beckam, setting a fast pace toward the Russian airborne drop. Beckam paused for a breather, catching a glimpse of the sapphire-blue, frozen ice cap that covered whatever remained of the alien lab. For kilometers around the detonation site, the ice glimmered a light shade of pink, shards of the signature red granite of Thor’s Hammer, now blown to smithereens and dusting the terrain in all directions.

  He set out again, following Liam’s trail.

  Amundsen-Scott was their best bet for Danny’s survival, and their own. He had a knuckle sandwich all ready to serve with a side order of kick to the head if he managed to get off the ice and locate Stan Fischer or anyone else, including the President, who’d had something to do with this cluster. The thought of squeezing the presidential advisor’s neck between his bare hands increased Beckam’s speed over the ice. He caught up with Liam Clay and passed him, the growing sense of hope putting a fresh spring in his step.

  Chapter 10

  Jack leaned back into the web-and-aluminum seating of the Black Hawk helicopter. He had just lifted off from the meadow at the Supply Landing Zone, headed back to Holloman after the meeting with Gordon and spending time with Leah. Jack was well-adjusted to living within a hazardous environment, death a single mistake, one slip, one screw-up of any kind, away.

  Watching Leah rolling down the trail on the quad, knowing she was returning to a potentially lethal situation, was harder to endure than descending Everest with a storm inbound, out of oxygen, and frostbite already working back from your nose into your brain.

  Leah was emotionally invested in the Settlement, violently opposed to the idea that her people end up as lab rats in some off-shore, black research facility. He couldn’t talk her out of returning to the Settlement, regardless of the looming danger.

  The only thing he could do was park himself at Holloman Air Force Base with a Black Hawk on standby. Alerting the perimeter security personnel would only create the disaster they wanted to avoid.

  Leah and Garrett were on their own, and Jack desperately hoped Appanoose agreed to allow K’aalógii to be removed from the Settlement. His instincts said the chances of it happening were remote. The Lakota shaman had made it clear to Leah and Garrett that he was done with interference from outsiders—terrestrial or not.

  While he waited at Holloman, Jack had his own responsibilities. In bare-knuckle negotiations following their return from Antarctica with the U.S. government’s own nuclear bomb, Al Paulson, now Chief of the National Security Council and unofficial Wheeler watchdog, had made Jack Hobson his direct link into DARPA. Stan Paulson the former NSC Chief had been demoted to Special Presidential Advisor.

  For more than fifty years, DARPA (Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency) had been the tip of the spear when it came to identifying and funding breakthrough defense technologies in the name of national security. To say DARPA had hit the jackpot by being tapped as the lead agency researching the discovery of the non-terrestrial technology they’d brought back from the facility in Antarctica was a vast understatement. Working with the agency under Kyra Gupta, Jack had two key responsibilities. He was one of a handful of surviving individuals who had been inside the complex before Fischer’s black-ops CIA team had ransacked and then nuked the alien structure. Consequently, Jack had spent hours with DARPA engineers and artists, describing every detail of the inside and outside of the complex. Just when he thought he’d described it down to a molecular level, he’d be called for another session, where sure enough, they’d pull fresh details out of him.

  Jack was also tasked with developing non-technology-driven techniques for finding and identifying additional non-terrestrial sites, if they existed. Having worked all around the globe as climbing guide, on numerous adventures, Jack was uniquely qualified for this task. The theory went that he might be able to link historical cliff and cave-based dwellings cities with regional history, legend, and mythology to find other sites where the non-terrestrial entities might have carried out snatch-and-grab programs among other local populations.

  Jack had told anyone who would listen—and many who wouldn’t—that this historical-cultural-archaeological approach was unlikely to yield results. But the discovery of the Antarctic facility and the implications of foreign nations getting ahold of such technologies had created turmoil at the highest levels of government. Pointless it might be, but the search for other sites would continue, with or without Jack Hobson.

  Thus far, only one location on the globe seemed remotely worth pursuing: eastern Turkey. Specifically, an amalgamation of cliff dwellings in ancient Cappadocia, the mythology associated with Mt. Ararat, and a mysterious hot spring on the shoulders of Ararat that had been named Jacob’s Well.

  He hadn’t told Leah that he’d been named the chief candidate to lead that mission. The timing seemed wrong, given how off-the-rails her plan for the Ancients had gone in such a short period of time. Not that the timing could ever be right…. He already knew the words she’d use, line by line. Doubtless the same words Leah had found so effective when she’d booted him out for taking a large cash payment to guide an unqualified, eight-thousand-meter-peak climber. An amateur climber named Al Paulson.

  Jack looked down on the terrain speeding underneath the Black Hawk, as Hutchinson made a bee line for Holloman. He had one major concern. It had gotten to the point, that’d he began having theatre-quality nightmares, with a variety of scenario always ending in a blinding flash.

  Marko Kinney.

  His plan for Marko to babysit a nuclear weapon, that had the potential to wipe out every single living thing in New York City, or Chicago, or Albuquerque was the most tenuous part of their post-Antarctic survival plan, hatched and successfully implemented by Paulson. Simply stated: without the Hafnium warhead, there was no guarantee, even with Paulson’s political allies, they wouldn’t be rounded up and sent off-shore. They posed an incredible threat to Wheeler, his remaining administration and the information they all possessed was worth millions of dollars on any market.

  Marko had limited patience for anything that resembled structure, and while he grasped the importance of harboring the warhead, having seen one detonated live, that didn’t mean he couldn’t snap after being cooped up in a cavern for weeks on end.

  Marko was a liability on every level. He had the same knowledge as everyone who had survived, making him a target for both governmental agents, and the media, if they ever cornered him—so there was no way he could be cut loose on the streets anytime in the near future.

  Jack decided right then, he needed another plan for Marko. All it might take would be a Big Mac wrapper that had been blown in during a windstorm, to set him off.

  Chapter 11

  Leah stashed the quad inside the hide, making sure to plug in the solar-charging system. She even returned the helmet that she’d so casually chucked aside back to its checklist position on the vehicle’s seat. As she closed the door to the hide, she vowed to wear the helmet on future rides, having imprinted the quad’s handlebar pattern on her forehead earlier in the day.

  After taking a deep breath and rubbing her face and hair with dust and pine needles to eliminate any lingering scents, Leah jogged down the deer trail toward the mesa. She stopped at the same overlook from which she’d viewed the Settlement that morning.

  Closing her eyes, she drew in a deep breath. When she exhaled, she imagined casting aside all the trappings of modern civilization that she’d enjoyed only hours before, thus making a seamless transition back into “Ancient” mode.

  High cirrus clouds and a visible ring around the setting sun whispered
a storm was inbound. Probably meant rain, maybe even snow at this altitude, which would only add to the perpetual chill.

  “Láiish!”

  K’aalógii had spotted Leah and was sprinting toward the deer trail connecting the mesa top with the Settlement below.

  Leah felt an upwelling of warmth inside. At least one of the Ancients cared about her.

  “Láiish!” K’aalógii shouted again, waving her arms, her face lit with joy.

  Leah grinned. She’d only been gone for most of a day, but K’aalógii made it seem as she’d been missing for a hundred years. The girl ran up the trail at a pace that would have exhausted a world-class athlete, skipping the trail’s switchbacks to climb on all fours up near-vertical rock and sand, saving time and distance and reaching Leah in a fraction of the time it would have taken Leah to descend the deer trail at a dead sprint…had she been inclined to risk breaking her neck.

  She and K’aalógii shared a secret that should have made the scientist, Dr. Leah Andrews, ashamed to hold the title. When one of the Settlement’s initial food deliveries had been dropped off by Black Hawk, she discovered that the military had included cases of packaged Corn Nuts, not corn kernels, as instructed. In a fit of weakness, Leah had stashed a case of the Corn Nuts in the hide before returning the rest. Every now and again, she’ made a run to the hide and load a pocket or two of her flight suit with small plastic bags filled with Corn Nuts. The salty snacks were a delightful guilty pleasure, supplementing the bland corn-and-bean diet she shared with the Ancients. One night, in a moment of weakness, she’d given K’aalógii a handful, telling her it was a special treat, but a secret only between them.

  Now, any time Leah returned after a longer-than-normal absence, K’aalógii ran to her in hopes of getting another handful of Corn Nuts. This time however, the girl didn’t have her hands out for the special treat; instead, she seemed more flushed and excited than normal, grinning as if she’d decoded the key to the universe.