Beneath the Dark Ice

Twenty-eight

Private First Class Dan Everson entered Major Jack Hammerson’s office at a run. “Sir, we’ve received a coded call signature from the Arcadian.”

The Hammer leapt to his feet. The pencil he had been writing with disintegrated into splinters in his large hand. His eyes bored into the young private. “Where and when,” he said as he exploded around his desk.

Major Hammerson began walking quickly down the wide corridor, fists balled and chin jutting forward. His highly polished military-issue boots were beating out a quick drumbeat on the linoleum as his aides jogged to keep up. On his way to the command centre he barked questions and orders over each shoulder without drawing a breath.

“Exactly how far from the initial insertion point are they?”

Dan Everson shuffled the papers he had in his hands. There was one thing he had learned being assigned to the Hammer, and that was the information you provided better be up to the minute and accurate as hell.

“The message came in at 2109 hours, exactly seven point one miles from the insertion point. There’s nothing visual on the surface, and the signal muffling indicates it is coming from just over one hundred feet below the ice.”

“Who have we got in the proximity? What are they packing? Who sent the message? How do we get down to them or them up to us? Have we responded yet? Organise a full briefing for me in ten minutes. Get me everything I asked for, and anything I haven’t. Go.”

Private Everson quickly peeled off to the operations room and the Hammer continued on his way to the command centre.

Borshov was hopping the helicopter along the ground in five-hundred-foot leaps; he was unfamiliar with the SeaHawk’s controls and only needed to get it to the Leningradskaya base and out of sight.

The American message came in over his headset and lit up the computer screen in front of him — Captain Hunter had been found and the American station at McMurdo was being ordered to respond. The coordinates displayed meant he was only a few miles away. He landed and thought for a few seconds, then touched the screen with a bloody finger. Borshov reached behind him and retrieved Benson’s gas-powered M98 and slung it over his shoulder. He already had a little water and now both his and the pilot’s communication devices; he had everything he needed.

He lifted off again and slow-hopped towards a ridge of broken ice. When he was a hundred feet out he opened the cabin door and leaped from the moving helicopter. As he hoped, it continued on its slow path, sliding to jam itself under one of the ice overhangs. The cabin collapsed and its broken rotor blades shattered like porcelain, catching the weak Antarctic sunlight as they flew to bury themselves beneath the snow and ice.

Borshov got to his feet and started to jog towards the last coordinates of Captain Alex Hunter.

Monica’s tunnel abruptly ended in another large, round chamber as her helmet lamp was fading from yellow to a dull orange glow. She slowly examined the room, her heart thumping so hard she could actually feel it leaping in her chest as the nausea was rising in her throat again. Like most of the other rooms they had been in, it was largely featureless except for raised carvings of small figures on the walls but without Matt they were inaccessible to her. Anything of value had probably been removed and anything that could be used for fuel had long been burned. Towards the centre of the room there was a large hole roughly ten feet in diameter. She wished Matt was here to let her know whether it was a well or maybe a bathing recess where the bottom had fallen away into the chamber below. She whimpered to herself and couldn’t help her bottom lip quivering as tears began to run down her cheeks. There was a familiar, acrid smell in the room that would have made her eyes water if not for her tears.

She almost completed her slow examination of the chamber’s perimeter when she became aware of a figure standing silently in the doorway she had just come through. The figure glided smoothly and silently towards her.

She squeezed her eyes shut for an instant in the near total darkness and prayed for it to be Matt when she opened them.

“Matt, Alex?… No, not you… please, not you!” The image of Silex stared sightlessly back at her.

“We have to find Monica. What happens if we can’t find her?” Matt was in a state of high agitation.

Aimee grabbed him by the arms and looked into his face. “We’ll find her, don’t worry.”

She looked at Alex, and he met her gaze. Aimee could read his expression clearly; he didn’t think the odds were in their or Monica’s favour. “Of course we will,” he said. “Let’s go.”

The sounds of the creature advancing had subsided a while back. There were no more crushing-stone sounds and heavy vibrations under their feet. Alex, Aimee and Matt didn’t think for a minute that it had given up; they just hoped that it didn’t mean the creature had somehow managed to fully pull itself up into their level of the labyrinth.

The air in the tunnels was now a mist of falling dust from the shaking and rending. It caused the darkness to become more oppressive and their torch beams, now starting to burn a deep orange, were cut shorter and only illuminated about twenty feet in front of them. Alex didn’t believe his senses would let him down and allow him to walk into an ambush, but with its enormous strength and bulk, if the creature was behind one of the walls and crashed through, it could easily crush them before they had a chance to flee.

Alex’s mind worked furiously at calculating the odds of his signal being picked up. He expected the Hammer would have floating birds looking for them, and the Australians had a close base at Casey, but since the SINCGARS had gone offline there was no chance of any transmission relay via the more powerful unit. If the transmission sweeps missed them or there was a storm in the ionosphere, then they were as good as dead.

Alex sensed the giant presence close by and looked over his shoulder into the darkness. The atmosphere in the tunnel carried a familiar chemical smell and a sensation of enormous power, and more alarming for Alex, a primordial aggression that made the skin on his neck prickle. They would have no second chance.