Ice Station Death

by Gustavo Bondoni

  There were only six shots left in the gun, and for a single agonizing moment he sat there clicking on an empty magazine.

  But the monster was dead. It fell to one side.

  Javier turned to Natasha and smiled. “I’m sorry. I know you wanted it alive, but…” he shrugged and a wave of pain flew up his leg. The last thing he saw was the cold ice coming up to see him.

  ***

  Javier woke wrapped in a collection of blankets and jackets, and otherwise naked from the waist down. He felt a pressure on his leg, felt the discomfort of not being able to bend it.

  “Welcome back to the world of the living, sleeping beauty,” the doctor’s deep tones said beside him.

  “What happened?”

  “You broke both the tibia and the fibula on your left leg. Also, you nearly got eaten by a big reptile. That probably didn’t help.”

  “Where did all this come from?” Javier indicated the blanket and the pillow he just realized someone had put under his head. “Someone went back to the Irizar just for that?”

  “Sadly, that’s not possible anymore. Look.”

  He pointed towards Javier’s feet, so the colonel lifted his head to look. The once-proud icebreaker was nowhere to be seen. Only a long furrow in the ice, disappearing into the distance, served as evidence that there had once been a vessel there.

  “Damn.”

  The doctor grinned at him. “Well, at least it took that thing with it.”

  “I thought the one I killed might have been the one on the boat.”

  “Nope. I watched the bastard go down with the ship.”

  “Good.” Javier nodded in satisfaction.

  “Too bad they’re amphibious,” the doctor said.

  Javier gave him a dark look. “Is there any whisky?”

  “Yes. Plenty. But you can’t have any. I’ve already got you on some reasonably heavy painkillers. I immobilized the bones as best I could, but someone is going to have to operate on you when we get back.”

  “Not you?”

  “I don’t think my hands will ever stop shaking after this.”

  Javier smiled. “Thank you, doctor.”

  “Me? What for?”

  “For taking care of us. Of me, of Natasha, of Ingrid.”

  The doctor laughed. “I can’t believe it. The hero of the hour, and he’s thanking me. They’re talking about renaming the base after you.”

  Javier shook his head darkly. “What for? It’s not like I saved very many people. How many survived? Six? Seven?”

  “We’ve been getting stragglers coming back from the groups that descended to attack the big creature earlier. There are almost forty men and women alive here who are convinced they owe you their lives. Hell, when I told them you needed to get out of your wet clothes, a couple of guys offered to go naked so you wouldn’t have to. I told them not to be silly and sent them to the base for blankets. They ran there and back without a single complaint. They also brought the painkillers that are making this conversation possible.”

  “Where’s Natasha?”

  “She’s talking to Ingrid. Once we convinced her that everything was fine and that there were no more of the monsters, she melted down completely. I had to put her under again, and put Natasha on suicide watch in case she wakes up.” He grinned. “That woman is amazing. After everything she’s been through, I’d have expected her to be a complete wreck… but all she’s been doing is to try to convince some of the troops to accompany her to some cave to get some eggs. Do you have any idea what she’s talking about?”

  “Yeah, I do. And it might not be a bad idea to get down there. That’s where all the bodies are. The people from the base, I mean. We should probably try to recover them for when the rescue comes.” Suddenly doubt hit him. “Help is coming, isn’t it?”

  The doctor put a hand on his arm. “There’s a Hercules scheduled to land on the strip near the base in an hour or so. At least the sailors insist that they convinced Buenos Aires that the coast is clear. I’m not sure whether to believe it, and none of the officers survived.”

  “We did.”

  “Yeah. But that’s only because we’re senior guys who get to watch the action from well behind the front lines.”

  That made Javier laugh hard enough for pain to shoot up from his leg, reminding him that all was not well with his body.

  “Could you call her over?”

  “Who?”

  “Don’t be a jerk.”

  The doctor walked away, chuckling to himself, and was replaced within moments by the much more attractive features of a certain Russian zoologist.

  She smiled and kissed him, a light brush on the lips. “That was the craziest thing I’ve ever seen,” she said. “Thank you.”

  He returned the smile. “Just doing my job.”

  “Your job is to attack prehistoric animals unarmed? Why would you sign up for something like that?” She knelt closer and allowed him to lay his head on her thighs.

  “It sounded like fun at the time. Now, I’m not so sure… who would have thought I’d be injured?”

  She laughed.

  “Seriously, though, has anyone looked to see if there are more of those things out there?”

  “If there are, they’re not coming for us. The doctor posted sentries who know how to shoot. We have plenty of FALs recovered from the dead, and more ammo than we really need unless there were many more nothosaurs than we originally saw.”

  “All right.” He studied her face. “What are you going to do now? Once we get back to civilization, I mean.”

  “I’m going to stay with you until you can walk again.”

  Javier had his reservations about that. Argentina wasn’t exactly a fortress. What would happen if the Russians tried to snatch her? Then he relaxed. It would probably become a moot point once the truth of what had happened here reached the international press. Argentina, after all, wasn’t a fortress.

  “And after that?”

  “I’m going to stay next to you until such a time as you become convinced to leave the army and settle down with a girl.”

  It was the same thing all the rest had wanted. The same thing he’d refused each and every one of them. But this time, it felt different somehow. Perhaps it was Natasha… but more likely it was the realization that his military career had just reached its apex; nothing he could possibly be involved in from here on out—barring an extremely unlikely war—would ever be as exciting or as important as what had happened over the past twenty-four hours.

  “All right. We can talk about it.”

  Natalia cocked her head. “Do you hear that?”

  “Hear what?”

  “A noise. A plane?”

  Now he heard it. “Not a plane. That’s a helicopter.”

  They looked up, and out of the corner of his eye, Javier saw other men looking up as well.

  “Could you call the doctor?” he said and, when the man arrived, he asked: “Buenos Aires was going to send a Hercules, weren’t they?”

  “Yes.”

  “That sounds like a helicopter. I wish I could see it through this haze, but I think we can be confident that it’s not Argentine. How many men do we have with combat training?”

  “Four or five.”

  “All right. Tell them to take a few more guys with FALs to meet the chopper when it lands. If the bird is American, wave at it and have them land as close as possible… then bring me whoever is in charge. If it has no markings, take cover and shoot at whoever emerges. The Russians weren’t in a mood for taking prisoners last time around. But tell them to show some restraint; I’m pretty sure it’s the Americans.”

  Ten minutes later he was proved right: an American officer with short, graying hair and bright blue eyes was marched to where Javier was waiting.

  “Help me sit,” the colonel told the doctor.

  “You’re in no condition to sit.”

  “Just do it, will you?”

  Javier grimaced, regretting the decision immediately,
but left with no option other than to brazen it out unless he wanted to look like a complete wimp in front of the American.

  The gringo saluted. “Colonel, they tell me you’re in charge.”

  “That’s right, Major.”

  “Let me get straight to the point. Are we prisoners? I don’t have enough men to fight off ten guys with infantry rifles. This was supposed to be a humanitarian mission into friendly territory.”

  Always to the point, Americans. “No, Major. You’re free to go whenever you like, and to look around at anything you wish. The men with guns are just a precaution against other threats. Oh, and insurance against any attempt to take the Russian woman with you.”

  “What Russian woman? My orders are to find a guy named Breen and fly him back to the Polar Star with anyone else he told me to.”

  “I’m afraid Breen didn’t make it.”

  The guys eyes narrowed. It was natural for someone surrounded by foreigners—even supposedly friendly foreigners—armed to the teeth to be a little suspicious when said foreigners informed him of a compatriot’s death. “Can I see the body?”

  “Sure. It’s inside that big lizard over there.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Doctor, can you show the Major the nothosaur’s big brother?”

  “Of course.”

  A considerably more polite major returned from the expedition to see the largest of the monsters. “What the hell happened here?” he said, eyes wide.

  “Would you believe me if I said that Russians happened?”

  “After what I just saw, I’d believe you if you told me it was Martians.”

  Javier chuckled. “It wasn’t Martians. We think it was a Russian project with unintended consequences. Mr. Breen was killed in helping us take down the big one. We lost a lot of our own men as well if that’s any comfort to you.”

  “Can we report this? Do you mind having one of my men look over the entire scene and send some pics back to Washington?”

  “Of course. I meant it when I said you weren’t prisoners. But I think Washington is already up to speed. Breen told them all about this. He only died a couple of hours ago.”

  “Well, no one warned me about this.”

  Javier just raised an eyebrow. The other man chuckled. “Yeah, I know how it goes. Give me a second.”

  The Major gave the orders over a cell phone and turned back to Javier. “Can you tell me more about this Russian woman we’re not supposed to take back with us?”

  “That would be me,” Natasha said.

  “Pleased to meet you. And now I see why the Colonel refuses to let us take you.”

  “No. The reason I refuse to let the US take her is that no matter what you and the Russians think, people aren’t just pawns in your great game.”

  The man didn’t respond to that. Clearly he’d had experience dealing with foreign officers before because he just gave a tight-lipped smile and said, “Like I told you, I don’t know anything about that. Hell, I didn’t even know what we were flying into.”

  “All right. You can go if you want.”

  “I’d feel more comfortable sticking around for a while. At least until I know the people here are going to be able to get out.”

  “We have a Hercules coming in at any moment.”

  “I’ll stay.”

  “As an observer?”

  “If you want to call it that. I don’t think I’ll make any friends if I go back home without taking as much information as I can about what happened here. It’s probably something Washington is going to want to hear about.”

  “I don’t doubt that at all. And I can’t force you to go. Antarctica belongs to the entire world, after all.”

  The man nodded his thanks—they both knew that the guys with the guns could always ask the other guys to do whatever they ordered—and walked away. Javier wondered if he would be chastised for allowing the Americans to walk around what was a place of Argentine national disaster, but decided he probably wouldn’t. Heroes were thin on the ground in Argentina, and it would be nice for the government to be able to parade one around.

  Besides, creating a diplomatic incident with the biggest power in the Western Hemisphere would look terrible on his record. It was bad enough when the Navy sank Chinese ships… but China was far away. The US was a more immediate concern.

  “Penny for your thoughts?” Natasha said.

  “I was just wondering what is going to happen now.”

  “Well, for one thing, I need to get some of those eggs and take them back to Oxford. If you hadn’t insisted on killing every nothosaur who crossed your path, I’d try for a live one, but if any survived, it’s going to be a race among governments to secure it, and I suppose Argentina has the most resources nearby, so I’m not going to win that one. But an egg? Surely they’d sell Oxford an egg.”

  “Sell?”

  “Of course. You don’t think they’d let something like this get out of their hands for free?”

  “I hadn’t thought of it that way.”

  She sighed. “Academia isn’t some pure field, morally perfect, inhabited by people with utter honesty. It’s just as political and backstabbing as any other field, and made worse by the fact that the kind of people who choose academia as a field tend to be obsessive and emotionally stunted.”

  “Wow. Such bitterness.”

  She smiled. “All right. It might not all be like that. I’ve met some truly wonderful people at Oxford. But sometimes it can become a bit overwhelming.”

  He knew exactly what she meant. Perhaps the frustrations in each of their professions were similar. Or perhaps not, but he was willing to see what common ground they could find.

  Javier had a feeling they would find quite a bit.

  The unmistakable sound of four enormous turboprop engines droned overhead. He smiled and took Natasha’s hand. It appeared that this place’s magic was broken and they’d be leaving after all.

  Epilogue

  Present day – Yekaterinburg, Russia (formerly Sverdlovsk, USSR)

  A grey door opened onto a brightly lit grey room. Three men and a woman awaited his presence patiently. They had every reason to be patient. The thing they were observing was something none of them had ever seen before, and something they certainly weren’t expecting.

  They’d probably been expecting to be consulted on the genetic sequence of some virus or bacteria. After all that was what a visit to Compound 19 normally entailed.

  “I’m sorry I’m late,” Dr. Park Sun Lee said in broken Russian. “The weather is filthy outside.”

  The others, three Russians and one researcher from Finland all nodded, trying to disguise their condescension for the man from North Korea who couldn’t deal with a little snow. They’d manage, however, if only because all four of them were curious to know what Park had for them this time around.

  “I suppose you’re wondering what that is.” Park pointed at the egg, encased in a transparent box with a combination lock.

  “Some kind of modified ostrich egg?”

  He quickly spun the lock and removed the contents, then allowed himself a superior smile. His one pleasure was that, even as a foreigner, his position meant that he didn’t have to be polite to these people. “Close. You were only off by a hundred million years or so. This is an egg from a Triassic reptile known as nothosaurus.”

  Surprise flashed across every face. “Do you expect us to believe that you have managed to reverse engineer a dinosaur?”

  “Not exactly a dinosaur, and no, we didn’t reverse engineer anything.” Park gave them a quick outline of how the nothosaurs had survived to reach them, leaving out most of the more recent events in Antarctica.

  “And these eggs are viable?”

  “We think so, yes. Apparently, they’ve developed a survival mechanism over the millennia: the fetus matures only when the outside conditions are above a certain temperature. We think that temperature is five degrees Celsius.”

  They all peered at
the egg as if it would suddenly hatch. The room was well above the threshold. “And you’ve called us in to help you hatch it?” the Finn asked. “That doesn’t really make sense. We’re all geneticists and molecular biologists… you need a zookeeper.”

  “Of course not. There are other teams in other installations taking care of that. They think it will be easy. No. We’re here for another purpose. There are reasons to believe that, using a certain strand of the anthrax bacillus, we can mutate the embryo inside this egg to create a much more… interesting version of a nothosaur.”

  “I still don’t understand why we’re here. Surely, if anthrax strains were available in Russia, you’d have easier access to them than us.”

  “Don’t play coy with me, Juha. You know we’ve got anthrax in this lab as well as anyone else does. Hell, even Wikipedia knows about this place… although they certainly don’t even suspect the real scope. Getting anthrax isn’t the problem. The problem is getting the right kind of anthrax. The strain we need is no longer… stored here.”

  Anna, a sixty-year-old woman from Murmansk, spoke for the first time. “That strain?” she asked, her normally jovial voice flat and dead.

  “Yes,” Park responded. “That strain.”

  “What…” Juha began, and then caught himself. “Oh.”

  They all looked uncomfortable for a second. There was a longstanding tradition that certain things were not discussed in that lab, or in Russian government projects in general. The big one was the Chernobyl accident, but other disasters such as Kyshtym were included. The Sverdlovsk anthrax leak was, if anything, even more taboo than the rest. After all, nuclear power was perfectly acceptable while biological warfare was anathema in the civilized world.

  “The strain we need was the strain that… escaped. From what I’ve been able to piece together from Soviet records, the remaining samples were diluted, put in metal drums and, supposedly, sent somewhere… but the ship carrying them sank near Antarctica.”

  “And that’s how the nothosaur with cold weather adaptation came into contact with it?”

  “That’s what we think, yes.”

  “And you have no remaining samples we can cultivate?”