Ice Hunt

Greer was last, diving through, a grendel at his heels.

Amanda slammed the door shut behind him as the beast struck. The concussion knocked her into Matt. He steadied her, but she shoved to the door.

In the dark, Matt heard a metal bar slide home.

Muffled as they were by the thick hatch, the echo of the gun battle still reached them. Occasional heavy bodies collided with the walls and door.

As the battle waged in the hallway, they all lay panting on the floor, huddled in a mass just inside the doorway. Matt took a moment to pull out his moosehide boots and cram them over his aching, frozen feet.

“We should be safe for the moment.” Amanda spoke from the darkness. “This door is solid plate steel.”

“Where are we?” Matt asked, lacing his boots.

“The heart of the station,” Bratt answered. “Its main research lab.”

A light switch was flipped and bare bulbs flickered to life.

Matt stared around the clean and orderly lab. Steel tables were aligned with military precision. Glass-fronted cabinets housed beakers and polished tools. Refrigeration units lined one wall. Other smaller rooms opened off the main lab, but they were too dark to see into.

As Matt’s gaze circled the room, another chain of lights flickered into existence. Each bulb flared, one after the other, illuminating a curving concourse that arced away into the distance. The corridor seemed to follow the outer wall, probably circled the entire level.

Matt bore witness to what each bulb illuminated. “Oh, dear God…”

Act Three Feeding Frenzy

11. Timeless

APRIL 9, 1:42 P.M.

OUT ON THE ICE…

Bundled in a white parka, Viktor Petkov rode through the heart of a blizzard. His hands were encased in heated mittens, his face protected from the winds by the furred edge of his hood, a thick wool scarf, and a pair of polarized goggles.

But no amount of clothing could keep the cold from his heart. He was heading to the gravestone of his father, a frozen crypt buried in the ice.

He straddled the backseat of the hovercraft bike, harnessed in place. The skilled driver, a young officer under Mikovsky, handled the vehicle with a reckless confidence that could only come from youth. The craft flew over the ice, no more than a handspan above the surface, a rocket against the wind.

The storm continued its attempt to blow them off course, but the driver compensated, maintaining a direct line toward the lost station using the bike’s gyroscopic guidance system.

Viktor stared out at the snow-blasted landscape. Around him lay nothing but a wasteland, a desert of ice. With the sun blanketed by clouds and snow, the world had dissolved into a wan twilight. It sapped one’s will and strength. Here, hopelessness and despair took on physical dimensions. With winds wailing in his ears, the eternal desolation sank into his bones.

Here is where my father spent his last days, alone, exiled, forgotten.

The craft swung in a slow arc, following the shadow of a pressure ridge, the spines of a sleeping dragon. Then, out of the continual gloom, a misty light grew.

“Destination ahead, Admiral!” the driver called back to him.

The hovercraft adjusted course under him. Flanking the lead bike, the other two craft matched the maneuver like a squadron of MiG fighters in formation. The trio raced toward the light.

Details emerged through the blowing snow. A mountain range of ice, a black pool, square, man-made, and at the base of one peak, a shaft of light shone like a beacon in the storm.

They rounded the polynya and swept toward the opening to the base. Engines throttled down. The three hovercraft lowered to their titanium skis, touching down again, skidding across the ice. They slid to a stop near the entrance, parking in the lee of a ridge to protect the vehicles from the worst of the storm.

The driver hopped off while Viktor struggled with his harness’s buckle. Bound as he was in mittens, his dexterity was compromised, but even bare-knuckled, he would still have had difficulty. His hands shook. His eyes were fixed to the ragged shaft — blasted, hacked, and melted down to the tomb below. He had seen ancient burial sites ripped into like this by grave robbers in Egypt. That is what they all were — the Americans and the Russians — filthy grave robbers, fighting over bones and shiny artifacts.

He stared, unblinking.

I am the only one who belongs here.

“Sir?” The driver offered to help, reaching toward his harness.

Viktor snapped back to the moment, unbuckled on his own, and dismounted. On his feet now, he yanked off and pocketed the heated mittens. The cold immediately burned his exposed flesh, like Death’s handshake, welcoming him to his father’s crypt.

He stalked past his men, heading toward the entrance. He found a lone guard inside the shaft. The fellow snapped out of his shivering hunch.

“Admiral!” he said.

Viktor recognized the man as one of the senior officers of the Drakon. What was he doing standing guard duty? He was instantly alert. “What’s wrong, Lieutenant?”

The man fought his tongue. He seemed to be struggling to find the right words. “Sir, we’ve run into a couple of problems. One here, one back at Omega. Captain Mikovsky is awaiting your call on the UQC.”

Viktor frowned, glancing back at the empty polynya. A black line, almost buried in the snow, trailed from the lake and disappeared down the shaft. It was a UQC line, an underwater telephone, a type of active sonar that transmitted voices instead of pings. Such communication spanned only short distances, so the Drakon had to still be patrolling the local waters.

He waved the guard to proceed.

The half-frozen party headed down the tunnels, slipping past the blasted ruin of a Sno-Cat near the door. The guard continued to speak rapidly. “The problem here, sir, is that a handful of military men and civilians have barricaded themselves on Level Four. We couldn’t get to them because of some strange beasts that attacked our men.”

“Beasts?”

“White-skinned. Massive. The size of bulls. I didn’t see them myself. The creatures disappeared back into the ice caves by the time reinforcements arrived. We lost one man, dragged away by one of the creatures. The hall is under guard now.”

Viktor’s legs grew numb under him at the description. Before leaving, he had read his father’s secret reports in Moscow.

Grendels…could it be them? Could a few still be alive?

They were soon inside the main station. The black vulcanized line ended at a small radio unit. The radioman stood rapidly at the appearance of the admiral.

“Sir! Captain Mikovsky is holding for—”