The Tethys Report (The Rise of the Chirons Book 1) Page 5

  Hal looked up at the darkening sky. “The damn things must be running from somewhere nearby. Who the hell could be doing this? Not the Russians. We’re helping their people. The Chinese?”

  “I don’t know who it is,” Alex said. “But we’d better get moving as fast as we can. We’ll be in trouble if we’re stuck out here.”

  “How can we even avoid the drones?” I asked. “We can’t detect them. They’re one of those stealthy new kinds.”

  “There’s nothing on the radar. That’s correct,” Hal said. “But if we don’t like it, we need to just move on and muddle through. It’s the best we can do.”

  “The noise is coming from the north. I swear it is,” Ross said. Then there was an explosion in one of the snowcats. Everyone stood still with weapons drawn while scanning in all directions.

  I searched the sky, especially the north. It was too hard to see anything throughout the sky without binoculars or other such devices, and the lighting from the vehicles was so poor, nearly useless. The drone or drones could have been anywhere. I soon gave up looking for them.

  Having been used to the hot Florida air, the constant wind and dry weather chilled us all to the bone. I was seated next to Alex as we shared a snowcat together. They were pretty easy to drive. The only problem was that the hard snow was packed so that sometimes even the snowcat had problems with the traction and I had to readjust our direction or else we would have peeled out. We were able to keep a decent speed of forty kilometers per hour. Driving in the dark was the hardest though. We had to each take turns doing that. It took some adjustments to be able to sleep with the noisy engine running. But exhaustion is the best cure for insomnia.

  We drove through the night taking turns driving. The cabs were kept fairly warm so that we weren’t in danger of frostbite. However, it did take a lot of gas to keep us moving and warm at the same time. Even the considerable heat from the engine wasn’t enough to keep the cabs warm and further fuel was consumed to keep things to a minimum level of comfort.

  There was a beautiful view of an aurora overhead. Even Hal let us take a pause to get out and look at it. It was wonderous. I had never seen such a beautiful view in all my life. Green ripples of electric waves crackled through the cosmos above. Straight stringy patterns of blue and white echoed through the night sky, lighting up the pearly expanse of snow below. Even the wind seemed to die down to behold Nature’s beauty. Luckily, the enemy drone had been silent until now.

  After three days, we finally made it to the science camp just after dusk. A team of three scientists greeted us. However, a look of puzzlement told me that they had been told nothing of our purpose for being there. With so many military people showing up all at once in that remote part of the world, it must have surprised them. One moment when I was alone, they asked me for information. I brushed off their desire to know what was happening. I had to keep our intentions secret. They had thought that I, as a fellow scientist would have let them in on what was going on, but I was determined to keep myself out of trouble.

  We had a much-needed rest, though there was little room in the camp to get shelter. We ended up sleeping in the cabs after socializing a bit with the scientists who seemed mostly nice but very freaked out.

  Daybreak began with fierce winds coming from the southwest. I opened my eyes with the awareness and absurdity of being surrounded by so much snow being scattered in all directions. It was hard for me to imagine that I had been in such warm climates only a few days prior. I looked over to my right. Alex had already woken and was doing exercises outside. I moved to the camp in the hopes of getting some warm coffee. I soon found I was out of luck.

  Once at camp, we assembled one last time before heading out for the Russian research station. Kraftburger had already asked me to give the team a little presentation on what I knew of Lake Victor before we headed out. I assembled the group and gave them what I knew.

  “Greetings everyone. If you wanted to go for a dip, the place we’re going is not the best first choice—especially after Florida. Lake Victor is a lake that no one has seen—until now, and therefore we had no direct evidence of its existence. It used to be about two kilometers below the ice, but thanks to the warming temperatures and ice melt, it lies only one point five kilometers below the surface of Antarctica. It’s supposedly the sixth largest lake in the world and the size of one of our Great Lakes—Lake Eerie. We think it’s about two-kilometers deep at most. It’s estimated that the water is up to twenty to twenty-five million years old and was sealed off. Up until a few years ago, we didn’t expect to be able to penetrate it so soon because we thought the temperatures within Antarctica would actually get colder, one of the anomalies of the climate changing.”

  “And you were wrong.”

  “Yes, we were wrong—partially at least. Look, what’s happening here is that the continent of Antarctica is melting and with all of the political problems, refugees and wars brewing, the whole world is looking at this place and thinking it wouldn’t be a bad idea to secure a claim before all hell breaks loose—especially if there are resources to exploit.”

  “What does Russia, China and Korea say about that?” Hal asked.

  “I’m pretty sure they don’t like us down here,” I replied.

  “So why all the talk about cooperation then? Why don’t they just stop us from being a part of all of this?” Lance asked. “I mean why go through all these motions when they could just go out and claim it.”

  “It’s a good question, but the reason is, everyone is playing this game of musical chairs, and until the music stops, they have to go through the motions, the niceties and all of that because once the dogs of war are let loose, things could get dicey for them.”

  “Or us,” someone said.

  “True, but neither Russia nor China is comfortable sending a strike force to take the land outright—at least not yet.”

  “What about the Koreans?” Carl asked.

  “What about them? After they were unified by the North Korean invasion, things haven’t been going well for them. The US and Europeans blocked their access to capital markets and the government has been especially repressive. They’re in no shape to launch an assault.”

  “What dangers do we have to worry about down there?” Hal asked.

  “Good question. There are a few. First, because the lake is under so much ice, there is enormous pressure—maybe even one thousand bar of pressure. That’s equivalent to being ten thousand meters underwater.”

  Two people whistled at hearing this.

  “As such, you can guess what hitting a wall would do with say a bullet. It would be like tapping a huge dam with tons of water waiting to move through. We’ll have to be especially careful.”

  “Second,” I continued, “We have to be careful of the microbes down there. We don’t know what kind of life there is, but it might make us sick. Whatever life is in there is ancient.”

  “You said it’s been sealed off for over twenty million years. Does that mean we’ll see dinosaurs?” Bret asked, probably in jest, but I treated it as a legit question.

  “Well, I’m guessing that we won’t because dinosaurs existed much earlier, namely up to sixty-five million years ago or so. One other thing I should mention is that the continent of Antarctica is not as it may seem—all ice in other words. In fact, the US used to be covered by ice the same way Antarctica is now. Actually, it used to be connected to the great continent Gondwana about half a billion years ago. And at that time, geologists think it was a much warmer place. The island we just left, part of the Falklands was connected to it too.”

  “Do you think it carries life from that time?”

  “Good question, but I doubt it. The glacier effectively covers—“

  “That’s great doc, but we’re kind of worried about the big things—Eastern alliance special forces and whoever else wants a piece of us,” said Bret in an odd voice. “We’re over here, freezing our nuts off, getting shot at by drones and you’re talking about scie
ntific theories. No thanks. I flunked science way back in middle school.”

  “Which grade?” Lance asked.

  “All of them,” Hal said.

  Laughter erupted—except Hal of course who sat in the corner looking brooding. There was a mix of annoyance and fear in his eyes. We were close to our objective, and we were all realizing what was happening: we were moving into one of the most hostile environments in the world in a part of the world that could be the beginning of the next global conflict.

  “That’s pretty cute, but I don’t know what to tell you. Anyway, other than that, we don’t know much else. This information, by the way, is provided to us by satellites that have the ability to see through the ice. Keep in mind, there is no light source. Therefore, you won’t have the fish and other sea life that you see everywhere else. Normally, in the ocean we know, the sun powers the phytoplankton, the krill eat those, and the whales eat those and so on. You don’t have that kind of ecological system in this lake. It should be mostly dead.”

  “Why don’t we have any actual facts from the scientist down there who we’re supposed to be rescuing?” asked Bret.

  “Because it’s a rescue mission you idiot,” said Lance. Ross looked on and grinned.

  “That’s a good question,” Hal said, stepping in and ignoring Lance. He rubbed his hands through his thick beard that had collected ice, making him look like a strange Viking. “We don’t know the answer to it. In theory, we should be communicating via the Russian station, but that’s not happening because we can’t even get the Russians to communicate.”

  “We can’t communicate with the lake directly because it’s blocked by the ice and thus to normal communication devices. The way it was supposed to work is that we communicate to the Russians and they send signals through a wire that they connected to the station below. The station itself is actually a large mobile research vessel that was put in place there by a massive drill that’s still somewhere down there.”

  “We’re still getting no reading from the Russian scientists at the station,” said Russ in a gloomy voice.

  “Nothing? Still?” Hal said with disbelief. “How in the hell are we supposed to carry out this mission if they won’t respond?”

  “Beats me,” replied Russ. “But it doesn’t seem like anyone’s home. I’ve been trying since McMurdo. It shouldn’t be this hard.”

  “You don’t think there could be any interference, do you?”

  “Negative. Even if there were a scrambler drone, my communications would get through at least some of the time—I’m guessing since I’m changing the frequency and sending via several signal enhancers. I’m getting nothing. All static.”

  “That is damn strange,” said Hal, looking at me. “What do you think?”

  I considered the question for a moment and said, “They either can’t respond or won’t respond. Either way, we have no choice but to go there and find out for ourselves.”

  Hal nodded. “OK. Let’s go then. Alex, how far is it until we get there?”

  “We should make it in about two days of continuous driving,” he answered.

  “Do we have any intel on things to worry about?”

  “No—none. At least from what I got. Should we be worried? The drones are one thing, but that could be anyone. Maybe it’s some prankster,” said Alex.

  “The hell it is,” said Ross.

  “Well, we can’t do much about it, can we?” said Hal.

  The silence gave him his answer.

  “Let’s do it then.”

  We soon left on those high-powered vehicles that plowed over the packed snow that was hard as ice. We made enough noise to alert half of Antarctica if someone were tracking us. I tried to put such thoughts in the back of my mind, however.

  Alex and I were in relatively good spirits, despite the heavy winds and overcast skies. I quickly learned how the weather could change from sunny to stormy in a matter of minutes. Luckily, the drone hadn’t hit again, and there were no ominous signs that day.

  “How far do you think it is?” I asked Alex a tad nervously.

  “Not far. Maybe a couple of hours at most now. We should be there with no problems. This rig’s holding up pretty well for the most part.”

  “I wonder what happened to the drone.”

  Alex looked at me and said, “You worry too much. Relax.”

  “Don’t you think it’s odd though? We get sporadic attacks, and then there’s nothing?’

  “I don’t try to think too much,” he replied smiling. “I just follow orders.” He said smiling. Then he added, “It’s probably the winds and low visibility interfering with their ability to control the drone. They’ll probably be back once things clear up.” He smiled at the last part.

  I returned the smile, but I don’t think it held much weight to it. Scanning the distance in front of us, I had a tough time making anything out. The wind seemed to be blowing as strong as ever, but could it really discourage a modern drone? The sky gave no answers. The hazy horizon seemed to merge with the snow. There were no discernable features so far from what I could tell. The whole scene appeared to be one of dreams with no discernable separation between ground or sky, and it was as if we were floating through clouds. From the view panel’s sensors, it was a relatively flat plane that we were on. That was supposed to change when we reached the south end of the lake where the Russian station was. There were some mountains near Lake Victor, which made me a bit nervous since that would provide excellent scouting positions.

  The frozen waste extended in all directions as the sun played off its surface. I pulled out a pair of binoculars to see any defining features of the land, and with them I could begin to see some distant mountains in the foreground directly in front of us. Some of them even appeared to be losing their ice, as I could see spots of brown and black where the cracks in the ice were appearing. I knew from my geological training that the ice was teaming with bacteria and viruses as all parts of the world were, but I could see no signs of larger life. From the naked eye, it was all a dead land.

  About a kilometer from the site, the team slowed down. Daylight was fading, and we had perhaps about thirty minutes left in the day. After that, things would start to get really cold, really fast. I got off the vehicle I was sharing with Alex and stretched for a bit while they examined the research facility from afar. It looked like a large ‘H’ with two long rectangular steal facilities along with a smaller bridge connecting them both. We were able to observe the location from an elevated slope so as not to worry about being detected.

  “The whole damn thing seems like a trap,” I heard Bret mutter. My ears pricked up at this because as far as I knew, we were going to be going in a friendly fashion.

  “What’s up?” I said.

  “Nothing—don’t worry,” Hal said.

  “Hal, tell me what’s going on. Obviously, Bret’s not happy about something.”

  “All right, dammit. I’ll level with you, only because it makes sense that you know what’s going on. This place is supposed to have people in it, and we were supposed to report back and possibly escort our scientists out—using force if necessary, but it doesn’t seem like anyone is around, and that’s not good.”

  “How do you know that no one’s around?”

  “I don’t see any snow vehicles in the area, meaning either they’re all away temporarily, or this site is abandoned. There’s another possibility, which is burning me right now.”

  “What’s that?”

  “It’s made to seem like there’s no one there, which may suggest an ambush.”

  “What do you mean? Are we at war with the Russians?” I asked incredulously.

  “Down here in no-mans-land, better known as Antarctica, we are,” he said.

  “We can’t wait out here forever, can we?” said Alex.

  “No,” Hal said, scratching his beard. “We cannot. That’s for sure.” He glanced at the sky, and so did I. Light died fast in Antarctica. There were some furious winds howling
too. It was a possible snow storm coming, and we sure didn’t want to be caught in it.

  There was nothing left to do. We parked the three vehicles in an ordered fashion, with as much cover as we could manage. We even left the keys in the cab. There were no thieves out here.

  “Saddle up boys, we’re going in.”

  We approached the research facility with utmost caution. The place seemed even larger up close. The steel walls had no windows, which made us all nervous because we couldn’t look in without actually going in ourselves. There was no smoke coming out of the top, nor any generator running. Of course that meant there were no lights. I think that spooked us more than anything.

  In that heavy arctic climate, we found the front part of it was accessed through a large door located on the south side, which was roughly the direction we came in.

  “Should we attempt to contact them by radio one more time before going in?” Alex asked Hal.

  “Negative. No use now. There’s been no contact before. We may as well find out what’s going on inside the building.”

  “But what if it’s a trap laid inside the building?” Bret said. “We don’t know if they’re in there. At least we can rule that out if we try to contact them.”

  “Then the Russians can hear us, and we’ll be definitely giving away our presence.”

  “But they know we’re here anyway, if they’ve been observing us, which is pretty easy to do if you have the infrared pointed at this direction,” I said.

  Hal gave me a hard look and then a gesture which meant no more argument. We all got into position. He was right. There really wasn’t any sense in being cautious now. Anyone would have been able to notice us either from the noise or the sight of us in the open.

  Ross tried the door and found it locked. He then opened it with the butt of his gun, and moved in, followed by Hal and Lance. I came behind with Bret and Alex. I couldn’t see much of what was going on inside because it was dark, and the first three soon disappeared around a corner.

  We stood there waiting with the cold choking wind blowing in while checking the room for possible threats. I noticed a gleaming light directly east of the building off into the distance. It could have been just the snow reflecting light at an acute angle, but I told Bret about it, and he seemed worried. Taking out his binoculars, he peered in that direction for a while before cursing and pulling us in.