Ice Station Death

by Gustavo Bondoni

It felt as if he’d passed a test. He kissed her.

  Minutes later, though, Javier began to get the sense that something was going to happen. He couldn’t quite put a finger on it, but he felt a sudden urge to get on deck.

  “I need to go find out what’s going on,” he told Natasha.

  She pouted, but nodded. “Do what you need to do.”

  He went belowdecks and found the doctor, who favored him with a sour look. “Why aren’t you dead?” the man asked dourly.

  “I don’t know. One of the lizard things ate me but spat me out. It said to tell the chef that he’s fired.”

  They shared a chuckle. “You wouldn’t want to take command of this tin can, would you?”

  “I think you outrank me.”

  “Bullshit. This is a courtesy commission. I’m almost a civilian.”

  “Lay off it. What have you been doing?”

  “I’ve had the crew assembling the 40mm guns. My problem is that I don’t have time to supervise them.”

  “I really doubt that anyone is goofing off. They know what’s at stake.”

  “Of course. But I’d still feel more comfortable if someone I trust is supervising. Want to guess who just got the assignment?”

  “I’ll go look.”

  The sailors had used the ship’s undamaged crane to lift the crates containing the guns to the ship’s prow. Javier nodded in approval. With only two guns, it was best to keep them concentrated in the most likely place for the creature to attack them again—if it was still alive. That place was the bow, which had the additional advantage of being the largest open space on the ship. The roof of the central structure would have been better, but the cranes were too short… and the roof had buckled under the very first onslaught.

  He took a second look at the guns and groaned. They were Bofors 40mm pieces. Antiques. A Swedish design from the 1930s that saw ample use as anti-aircraft defense and then as general purpose guns in naval uses worldwide. It wasn’t a modern gun by any means… and he wondered just how effective they would be if the thing had survived an internal strike with an RPG.

  He approached the men around the gun. “How’s it going, guys?”

  “We were waiting for the order to fire some test rounds. Want to do the honors?”

  He shrugged. “Sure. What do I need to do?”

  “We’ve filled the autoloader. There are twenty-five rounds in there, but we want to test it with just one. That’s the fire mechanism, just pull on that lever there.”

  Javier sat in the gunner’s chair and followed the instructions. He was rewarded by a big bang. The gun absorbed all the recoil and, he assumed, a shell flew off into the middle distance. Even if it might not be enough to kill the big creature, it was a satisfying feeling to have something better than rifles to defend themselves with.

  He searched for some evidence of impact in the snow, but saw nothing. The shell was a bit too small for that.

  He waited for the other gun to be tested. One of the sailors fired it, and that was successful as well. Javier smiled. He was pretty sure these guys had never put together two disassembled guns so quickly in their lives—the fact that both worked perfectly was a testament to just how critical it was to get this correct.

  “Good work, men,” Javier said. The sailors, all frantic energy when he arrived, sat down and began passing each other cigarettes. One of them pulled out a mate and a thermos of water.

  “Go tell the doctor that his guns are up and running,” Javier asked one of the men. “Take the cigarette. Tell him I let you do it.”

  The guy gave him a mock salute and sauntered off, trailing smoke. The speed with which everyone had relaxed after the latest attack was surprising. Maybe this was the way they dealt with the stress of seeing their shipmates and friends cut down in such numbers. Maybe, like Ingrid, they would react fully in their own time.

  The gunner’s chair was comfortable enough, and he didn’t feel like doing anything productive, so he looked out across the ice and wondered what could have caused Camila to snap.

  What he hadn’t told Natasha, and probably never would, was that he’d pegged Camila as the resentful type from the first moment. He’d tried to give her the benefit of the doubt and had nearly convinced himself that it was natural for her not to like him after he was named the leader of the expedition she’d dreamed about all her life, but in hindsight, he’d never been too convinced.

  Camila had always seemed to him to be the typical exponent of the Argentine middle class: always resentful of the people who had a little more than they did—whether it be better education, better social connections or just more money—and dismissive of everyone worse off. In her case, that dismissiveness appeared to have turned into guilt, which had led to political activism of a very strange kind. Unfortunately, strange didn’t mean unusual.

  He shrugged. He’d probably never know what had happened to Camila out on the ice. That the horrors she’d encountered had broken something inside her mind was self-evident. It was something he could sympathize with. Being out there where time appeared to stand still while the wind nibbled coldly through your clothes and the nearest civilization appeared to be infinitely far away was enough to break anyone. He’d felt the call of madness himself… and at no time had he been facing death alone.

  Screech.

  The sound was like nothing he’d ever heard, the tortured cry of a colossus from hell. It vibrated through his bones and made him think, for a fleeting second, that the frozen landscape had spawned yet another monster.

  Then the truth hit him. Not another monster… the same monster, come back for more.

  They’d been wrong to assume it would come out the same ice hole as before. Nothosaurs were amphibious; this one had apparently remembered that fact and decided to hit them from the water.

  The screeches continued for minutes and echoed weirdly through the metal. Some reached them as groans, others as screams that sounded nearly human, but all turned otherworldly when they mingled with the wind blowing across the frozen plains.

  Men stopped and exchanged looks. Though not many crew were left aboard, they congregated at the bow. It reminded Javier of photos he’d seen of people waiting for the newspaper on a street corner to receive news of some global catastrophe. Even the cool palette of the deck and backdrop reminded him of dark black and white photographs.

  An agony of time later, the noise just… stopped. Silence returned to Antarctica as even the wind died down. Javier was almost loathe to break it, but he was nominally in charge.

  “Everyone grab a gun. You and you,” he pointed at two random sailors, one male, one female. “Do you know where the American stowed his gear?”

  The woman nodded. “At the back, below the heliports.”

  “Good, get back there and see if he left any more of those rocket launchers. You have my permission to open all of his crates. If you find anyone, tell them to get armed and take position along the railings. If they see the ice breaking, I need to know about it at once.”

  “Yessir.”

  They sprinted aft, looks of hopelessness replaced by purpose. Javier knew that, tactically, what he was doing was less than sound—he should get his ass out of the seat and put a decent screen of lookouts around the ship—but he didn’t want to give up the gun position. If anyone survived, they could court-martial him later.

  Everyone in sight was standing around trying to spot where the attack would begin. He tried to shout orders that might galvanize them into action like the two others, but he couldn’t really think of anything to say. Every single FAL on board had already been taken in the earlier attack; most of the men who’d died sported only their regulation sidearms—there hadn’t been anywhere near enough rifles for everyone.

  It almost came as a relief when cracking sounds arrived from the ice to his right. Everyone turned that way and watched as the creature found a weak spot it could exploit and began to open an exit hole maybe twenty meters from the starboard hull.

  It emerg
ed slowly, without a roar, as if the effort of attacking the bottom of the ship and boring through the ice had exhausted it.

  Gone was the terrifying monster that appeared able to bend steel into pretzels and pulp anyone who got too close at whim. The thing that struggled to drag itself upright was a figure to inspire pity more than terror. Whatever Breen had done would end up killing it.

  Of course, Javier reminded himself, that didn’t mean it couldn’t take everyone on board with it.

  He spun the handle that rotated the gun and saw the other gunner doing the same. Luck—bad luck in this case—had positioned Javier’s gun in a spot where he could only see the monster by craning his neck around a piece of superstructure… but the other man was in exactly the right place.

  “Wait for it to get closer,” Javier shouted.

  The monster might have been wounded—likely mortally so—but it still possessed enough strength to pull itself onto all fours. It took a step towards the ship and Javier heard machine gun fire from aft of his position. The beast paid the bullets no heed and struck downwards with its colossal head. Metal groaned and the firing stopped.

  It turned aft.

  “Quick, shoot it!” Javier shouted, descending from his seat to stand beside the man on the other gun. He would have preferred to wait until they could concentrate their fire on its head, but that was secondary. Getting the monster to move in their direction was critical—only the Bofors stood any chance of stopping it… and it was leaving their field of fire.

  The sailor lowered the muzzle a couple of rotations and fired.

  A small crater appeared in the creature’s rear flank and it screamed.

  “Good shot!” Javier exulted, thumping the sailor’s back.

  Enraged enough to forget its weakness, the reptile stood on its hind legs, balancing with its tail and turned towards its tormentors.

  Huge claws raked the superstructure just meters from the gun emplacement. Parts of the ship—some big enough to crush them—rained down.

  “Shoot it again! Come on! What are you waiting for?”

  But the sailor was paralyzed.

  Javier reacted immediately. He pushed the man from the seat and climbed on himself, only half-aware of the sailor running for the dubious cover of the main cabin area.

  He played with the wheel and tried to aim for the head. He fired.

  And missed.

  The nothosaur turned to look towards the noise. The elongated head darted closer, and Javier fired while frantically turning the wheel. The half-second between each thumping recoil of a shell being fired towards it seemed to last an eternity.

  He didn’t know if anything hit. He was too busy trying to track the creature’s head, attempting to do maximum damage.

  Huge teeth tore a chunk of railing away and a flick of the serpentine neck sent it flying across the ice. The thing wasn’t slowing down.

  A spatter and another screech galvanized him. He’d gotten the creature in the neck, and it was thrashing and gushing blood a mere ten meters away. He fired at the same spot again and again.

  Suddenly he was face to face with the creature’s head, the long snout just a couple of armlengths away from the cannon’s muzzle. A huge eye impaled him. There was no question: the creature had seen him and knew exactly who was responsible for its pain. The maw opened.

  Javier watched, frozen at the trigger. This was it. They’d given their all, fought the good fight, and now it was time for him to die.

  Breen had shot an RPG down its throat, and still this thing refused to roll over. There was nothing they could do.

  Breen.

  Breen had fought to the last ounce of strength. He’d repulsed the last attack. Javier would do no less than the gringo.

  He pulled back on the firing lever.

  Thump.

  Half-second.

  Thump.

  Half-second.

  Thump.

  The creature recoiled slightly and Javier kept pumping foot-long projectiles into it. He felt himself become covered in blood, but he just kept firing.

  The monster’s head lay on the deck five meters away and Javier kept firing.

  Long after the creature was dead, long after he’d completely depleted the auto-loader, Javier’s hand pulled on the firing mechanism again and again and again.

  The jubilant crew, when they came to celebrate the victory, had to pry his fingers off the trigger.

  Chapter 23

  The bar—or at least its stash of alcohol—had survived. Champagne, whisky and assorted other spirits appeared and were consumed right there on the deck. Javier stood with his arm around Natasha’s waist, working on his fifth plastic cup of bubbly.

  He was already at that warm sense between having just enough to drink and having had way too much… and Natasha, from all appearances, had already gone over that particular edge, laughing much too hard at his jokes and whispering obscenities in his ear loud enough for everyone to hear them.

  No one seemed to care, but the myth of Russians being able to hold their drink better than anyone else on the planet would never convince him again. Never mind that Natasha, like most of the rest, had consumed staggering amounts of the stuff. Javier’s own progress through the drink had been hampered by continuous requests for speeches by the hero of the hour.

  One of the sailors, a pudgy guy with darkish skin and hair, walked up to Javier and gave him a hug. “I propose a toast… to Colonel Dragonkiller.” He held his glass in the air, and everyone saluted Javier again. It was starting to get old, and the only thing Javier really wanted to know was where in the world the guy had gotten a container made of actual glass. From what he’d seen, every piece of glass on the ship—windows, cups, mirrors—was lying on the deck in small, sharp pieces.

  Someone got a set of speakers and plugged a phone into them and Javier found himself laughing almost uncontrollably. It didn’t occur to him until later that the music might call one of the small creatures.

  He turned to Natasha. “I must be drunker than I thought. I swear the deck is tilting.” He bent over to give her a kiss.

  She pushed him away. “It is. Look.”

  He couldn’t quite discern what it was she was pointing at—the ice, perhaps the horizon?—but one thing was certain: the tilt of the deck wasn’t in his mind. An unattended 40 mm shell rolled down the deck and under the railing. Fortunately it managed not to explode and kill everyone, but it was evidence that there was something amiss with the ship’s angle.

  “Wait. This is important.” He tried to think of why an angle to the deck might be significant but came up blank until a sailor who hadn’t been part of the festivities rushed into their midst.

  “We’re sinking! We’re taking on water. Abandon ship!”

  They exchanged glances and everyone broke out laughing. Once the mirth had passed, they created a game from trying to drop one of the gangplanks onto the ice. Finally, they got it done and paraded off the ship.

  From solid ground, or at least solid-ish ice, the angle became much more pronounced.

  “He was right. The ship is sinking,” Natasha remarked. Then she giggled into his jacket.

  The Irizar, once the pride of the Argentine Navy, was a wounded vessel. It had a noticeable list to one side and Javier would have sworn he could hear the bubbling sound of more water rushing in. Of course, that might just have been the sound of red wine spilling onto the ice beside him from an overturned bottle.

  “It doesn’t look anything like blood,” he told Natasha.

  She nodded. “Too purple.”

  Suddenly, someone rushed down the gangway. His stride was so purposeful that attention immediately focused on him. Fortunately, the cup in his hand identified him as one of them.

  “It’s the doctor,” Javier said loudly.

  Everyone raised their drinks to hail the man.

  The doctor walked right up to Javier and threw the contents of his cup into the Colonel’s face.

  Javier sputtered, and felt ang
er coming over the glow of wellbeing. “What was that for?”

  The doctor held his ground. “To get your attention. This ship is sinking, I have two sedated patients in the infirmary and no one seems sober enough to help me get them out. Or rather the three sober sailors I’ve found have refused to go below decks. They say the ship might go under at any moment. So I came to look for someone who’s shown courage verging on idiocy in the face of danger.”

  “Ingrid?”

  “Yeah, and another guy that will survive if we get him out, but not if he drowns first.”

  “I’ll go.”

  “I know. That’s why I wasted my water on you.”

  Javier handed Natasha his sidearm. “Use this if any of the nothosaurs come around. I think there are still a couple of the small ones out there.”

  For a second, the Russian biologist seemed almost sober. “I’d much rather capture one alive.” Then she giggled. “Can you imagine the faces of people at Oxford? If anyone doubts me when I say I have a prehistoric,” she stumbled over that word quite badly, “reptile in captivity, I’ll just release it at them and see who runs fastest and who becomes a nest liner. Fun!”

  The doctor led him back up the gangplank and down the nearest stairway. The emergency lights below decks were flickering. Some areas were already immersed in the penumbra.

  Javier hadn’t been below deck at all since he’d boarded the icebreaker. He’d dismissed those areas as service levels, but now realized that many of the crew who didn’t rank highly enough to rate a cabin on the superstructure were housed down there. In the end, the joke had been on those who’d gotten the open views above: most of the cabins in the central section of the ship were now scrap, and possessions were strewn all over the ice or sunk in the ocean.

  Of course, that was moot as well. With the ship sinking and most of the crew dead, who was going to come crawling in here to recover some old clothes?

  “We should get a light,” Javier said. His intoxication was disappearing as his adrenal glands reacted to the fact that he’d just chosen to enter the bowels of a sinking ship.

  “No time. Look.”