Kraken Rising: Alex Hunter 6 (10 page)

“Not helpful.” Sulley’s voice rose again from behind Bentley.

Alex exhaled, looking from Cate to the scientists. “I know, to you, your project is important. But we are nearing a conflict tipping point, and I’m sure you don’t want World War Three starting on your doorstep.” He stared hard at Arkson Bentley, and the man held his gaze. “I’m sorry, but in relation to that, your work is to be temporarily commandeered.”

“Like bullshit it is.” Bentley’s eyes narrowed. “No American spook is going to march in here and say,
how are you?
By the way
,
I’m taking over your project because we pissed off the Chinese
.” He crossed his arms over his chest. “You’re not going near our probe.”

Alex looked along the faces, speaking now through clenched teeth. “Do you really think I care about your fucking probe?” He took a step towards Arkson Bentley, feeling a knot of fury start in his belly. The man went pale behind his beard. Alex’s eyes blazed, and without even realizing it, the hand he held up had curled into a fist. “I need to get down there, fast. Your probe is the only chance I have to do that.”

Alex waited, but most of the men had stopped looking at him, not wanting to meet his eyes. Only Cate was still staring, and her gaze was quizzical. Alex shrugged at her. “All I can promise is, I’ll do my best to protect your probe.” He scoffed. “And stay alive.”

Silence hung in the small room for a few more moments before Schmidt held up a hand.

“
Ah
, Mr. Hawk, protecting the probe is not the issue. It is certainly possible you can fit yourself into the capsule, we have left the rear mostly vacated for cushioning and to act as a buoyancy tank for when the drill canister is in the water. It must be suspended nose down for smooth release of the probe. But …”

“But …”  Bentley spoke without looking away from the floor. “On the way down, there will be enormous changes in temperature. To begin with, it will be well below freezing, as it drills into the top layers of snow and ice. But once it strikes the hard ice,
the dark ice
, the heating units are designed to kick in to soften it. The exterior of the probe will rise to four hundred degrees, and the interior, we estimate, will be near two hundred. You will not survive. All we will succeed in doing is depositing a broiled body, in a dark sea, several miles down.”

“Your concern is touching.” Alex never blinked. “You just concentrate on getting the probe down there, I’ll worry about my comfort level.”

Cate snapped her fingers. “Hey Sulley, we have thermal sheets that are temperature controlled. They could help.”

Alex shook his head. “Like I said, you let me worry about my own safety.” Alex lifted his kit and dropped it on a table. He unzipped the bag, revealing several sets of goggles, fins, and a single slim backpack, which he looped over his shoulders.

Cate peered into the bag and reached for one of the other sets of goggles, turning it over in her hands.

“How long will it take … until I make the water surface?” Alex asked.

“The entire penetration?” Schmidt shrugged. “Test sinkings have taken up to seven hours. But we have increased both the power of the drill and the thermal displacement unit. Our estimates are a drop of sixty-seven minutes of high speed ice coring, and then a slower descent through the granite mantle. There’s about a hundred feet of dense, orbicular granite. Going to be one bloody rough ride.”

“And getting there isn’t the only danger.” Cate’s brows were drawn together. “You have no idea what you’re getting yourself into.” She crossed to one of the computer screens and flicked it on. She opened a file, and started the video footage, and then turned the screen towards him.

“There’s life down there, you know, and not just blind shrimp, or bacterial clumps. There are predators – huge, we think.”  She stopped the film at an immense eye filling the screen. It was lidless, round and white-rimmed, and its pupil was a goat-like slit.

The eye seemed to stare into Alex’s soul. He was momentarily transfixed, and felt his mouth go dry. “Yes.” He found it hard to look away, as monstrous memories came rushing back. “I know what to expect.” He tried to smile at her, but felt his mouth fail to fully comply. “Unfortunately, I’ve been there before.”

Bentley scoffed. “Yeah, right.”

Cate stared at him for several more moments, but there was something in her expression that was more assessing than disbelieving.

Bentley’s grin split his face, rising on both sides of his long nose. “Like I said, if the heat doesn’t kill you, the vibrations will certainly loosen your teeth … and then you wait until you meet whatever it was that took
Flipper
out.” He finished with a snigger.

“Let’s get started,” Alex said.

Cate folded her arms. “Listen, Mr. Hawk, or whatever your real name is, I don’t care who you think you are, or how many politicians’ arms you twisted to get here. Without my approval, you’re not going anywhere.” She paused, her gaze direct. “Unless.”

Alex waited, seeing something building behind her eyes.

“One condition.” She held up a finger. “You take me with you.”

Bentley spluttered. “Are you crazy?”

Her team crowded around, and even though she was a tall woman, the men seemed to stand over her, their faces twisted in either disbelief or anger.

She folded her arms. “I’m going. I’ve waited my whole life to get a glimpse of what’s down there. I thought that we wouldn’t send anything biological until we knew what the contamination risk profile looked like … well, seems that assessment protocol has been overridden by our clever benefactors.” She turned, looking at each of them. “I’m not sitting around up here, when I could be down there.” She nodded towards Alex. “Besides, I’ll have John Carter of Mars with me.” She turned back to Alex. “Deal?”

“No.” Alex continued to get ready.

Cate’s folded arms seemed to tighten across her chest. “You weren’t listening. One word from me, and
no one
is going … and you can’t launch by yourself, tough guy.” She smiled. “Besides you’re going to need me – as well as being an evolutionary biologist, and the closest thing to a primordial environment expert you got, I’ve also had medical training. If you get injured, I can help.”

Alex continued to work on his pack, and she stepped towards him, wrenching his arm. “I’ve spent my whole life studying this potential landscape. You’ll need me. I’m an asset.”

Alex looked up slowly. “Dr. Canning, you’ve spent your life studying fossilized landscapes or things compressed in shale that have been dead for millions of years; they’re nothing like they are in real life.” He stared hard at her. “Down there is not our world. Down there, human beings don’t belong.”

Cate’s teeth were gritting, as she wrenched his arm. “But you’ve got a free pass, huh?”

“Not because I want to go.” Alex went back to his pack. “And I don’t take sightseers.”

“Then all I can lend you is a fucking shovel, mister. You can dig your way down.” She turned away. “Have your president call our prime minster. I’m sure they can sort something out in a week or two.”

Alex stared at the back of her head with such ferocity, his vision almost blurred. After a moment he exhaled. Why should he care if this woman was determined to kill herself?

“You don’t know me, and I don’t know you,” Alex said evenly. “If you get injured, or in any way become incapacitated, I’ll leave you without blinking. That’s the way it is.” Alex stared at the woman. “Understood?”

Cate didn’t flinch. “
HUA!
’

They remained locked together, staring at each other for several more moments, before she finally turned away, shouting over her shoulder, “Get me the thermal sheeting, a dive suit, flashlight, flares, and survival pack. Launching
Orca
in ten minutes, people.”

The wind screamed and the Ellsworth team braced themselves against the furious cold, as they gathered around the silo shaped structure. A door, or rather, a panel, had been lifted free, revealing a dark space inside. Alex stuck his head in – it was like a cross between a cylindrical steel telephone booth and giant vitamin capsule. There was not a lot of space even though Bentley and the other scientists had removed some of the compression packing.

The wind was rising, and Alex could feel it trying to work its way to his skin. He ignored it, knowing it would be nothing compared to what was to come. Beside him, Cate shivered with several silver thermal sheets wrapped around her body, and another hanging over her shoulders. Underneath, she wore a black wetsuit, with goggles around her neck as well as small breathing tanks slung over her back.

“Gonna be snug,” she said and grinned through clamped teeth.

Alex bet it was either nerves or to stop them chattering.
The woman has guts, I’ll give her that
, he thought.

Schmidt pushed his head into
Orca
’s rear cavity, and yelled, “I removed some of the cladding to create a space for you. The bubble here was so the capsule would create neutral buoyancy and float midwater, this end up. That way the submersible would be able to launch in open water, and not end up buried in the silt on the bottom. There is a rim inside,” – he said, pointing – “you can use it to crouch on, but for the love of god, try and keep your big Yank feet off the end of the submersible. Though it’s toughened steel, if you bend any of the struts, we won’t be able to maneuver it.”

Alex ignored him, so Schmidt looked to Cate, his expression gloomy. “You know what to do, Cate.” He clasped her shoulder, the silver sheets crinkling. “Those thermal covers can take temperature extremes. Stay away from the walls, and you’ll be fine.”  His eyes slid away before she could meet them.

Alex climbed in, and moved to the side so Cate could enter and then crouch in front of him. Both hung onto the side struts, and balanced on a metal rim above the probe’s fins. There were bracing bars on each side that they could use as handholds.

Bentley leaned inside. “It’s only little more than an hour, Cate, but it’ll be the longest hour of your life.” He smiled sadly. “It’ll be tough, but you can make it.” He turned to Alex, his expression hardening. “Keep her safe.”

Alex didn’t respond – he couldn’t – he knew what to expect down there. He would make no empty promises.

Bentley went to turn away but stopped, and instead grabbed Cate’s arm. “Cate,
please,
this is mad.”

“I’ll be fine.” She shrugged him off. “Whatever happens, learn from it.”

Bentley seemed to want to lean in further, but Alex held up a hand. “You heard the lady. Go back and do your job.”

Bentley’s jaws clenched momentarily. “Listen, the body of water you’ll find yourself in is about the size Lake Ontario – about two hundred miles long, by fifty wide. Also, a mile deep in places. It’s a bloody ocean, and it’ll be blacker than hell.”

Alex checked the tracker he had – the sub’s signal was faint, miles away, but it was there. He knew when he got down inside the ice and rock mantle, it would be a lot stronger. He looked up at the scientist. “There’s an air pocket above the water, and there’s dry land. So, as long as I can get to a shoreline, then I’ll be fine.”

“You’ll be fine? I don’t give a damn about you, mister.” Bentley grimaced. “You know we have proof of life down there. And you know we’re not talking about some tiny shrimp or blind eel. The thing that knocked out our previous probe was big, real big, and you’ll be in the water with it.”

“I’m counting on it,” Cate said. “Just keep
Orca
’s onboard cameras rolling, and we’ll make history.”

Alex looked down at her and smiled. He admired her. The thought of dropping into the black water, miles below ice and rock, and knowing what was down there, must have filled her with dread – but she was going anyway.

“Let’s get on with it,” he said.

“Never met anyone in such a hurry to be sent to hell.” Bentley pulled his head out of the capsule. “Insane, the pair of you,” he shouted.

One after the other Schmidt, Timms, and Sulley either gave the thumbs-up, or knocked on the skin of the capsule. Sulley came back quickly and stuck his head in. “Wish I was going … ” he grinned, “… not.” He then sealed them in. Immediately there was total darkness. Alex heard Cate take a huge shuddering breath.

“Hey Hawk, I must be mad, you know.”

“You can only die once,” Alex said softly. “But it won’t be today. And by the way, it’s Alex.”

“Okay, thanks, Alex … and call me Cate.” She hunkered down.

Alex’s eyes were able to pick up the minutest particles of light, and his wristwatch numerals became little beacons, making everything an alien green. He saw her look up at him, her eyes blind in the dark.

There came a double knock against the outer skin of the probe.

“Here we go, ready or not,” she said with a tremor in her voice.

Alex reached down, pulling the thermal blanket up over her head. “Cover yourself. Try and leave no gaps at all, and do not touch the exterior of the capsule. Oh yeah, and breathe through your nose. That will at least cool the air down a little, so it doesn’t scorch your lungs.”

“What about you?” Her voice was muffled under the insulation sheets now wrapped tightly around her.

“Me? Do this every day.” He smiled and gripped the steel bracing tighter. Already, he could feel the bone-chilling cold through his gloves – against bare skin his flesh would have freeze-bonded to the steel.

Starting like the buzzing of an insect, and then growing in intensity, there came a small hum from below them. It reminded Alex of an electric drill starting up. He smiled again. In effect that’s what they were jammed into, a giant electric drill about to screw its way down through snow, ice, and rock to a hidden world miles below.

Alex remembered that the first stage of the process was to just employ the drill mechanism to move easily through the surface snow and ice. But when they entered the compacted ice zone, the dark ancient ice that was dark blue and as hard as stone, then the thermal-heating units would kick in.

It would be over in little more than an hour. He just hoped he could withstand it – a lot of lives depended on it. There came a jerk, a thump, and then a sensation of sliding.

“Going down,” Alex said, tilting his head back. “Next stop, the lair of the leviathan.”

“What?” A muffled voice, from down in front of him.

The cold became more intense, like a physical weight settling around them. Alex shut his mouth as his teeth began to ache. He screwed his eyes shut to ensure that the delicate membranes didn’t freeze solid in his head.

His skin began to prickle and sting, and he felt his arms and legs growing heavy. His body was pulling the blood away from his extremities as it automatically rushed to save the brain and internal organs.

His own body’s temperature burned hotter than a normal person’s, but he knew Cate would suffer if the intense cold continued for much longer, no matter how many thermal blankets she was wrapped in. He reached down to circle her body with an arm, the outer blanket crinkling as it became brittle.

The vibrations that were just a tickle beneath his soles now became a thump, then a grinding, as they struck the first of the dense ice sheets. Pleasant warmth wafted up towards Alex’s face as the huge silver bullet’s thermal engines kicked in.

He flexed his hands to get the blood flowing once more, and then adjusted his grip on the probe’s infrastructure struts. His feet were braced on a three-inch rim running around the interior. Cate was in a similar position, but was facing him, head down, and her smaller body was now folded into his. She was just a lump of silver sheeting. He looked at his wristwatch – already they had been traveling for twenty minutes.
So far so good
, he thought.

He felt the air tickle the hair in his nose. It was getting warmer. He looked up towards the dark rear of the capsule, and heard the sound of turbulent liquid – the boiling water that was created by the ice-melt would first cool behind them, and then freeze, effectively creating a solid plug. This was designed to ensure that no more contaminants could enter the pristine environment below. But it also meant there would be no return journey via this way.

The capsule thumped, slowed, and then shuddered as it impacted with the dark ice. There came a grinding that had Alex clamping his teeth as the vibrations shook every atom in his body –
shake your teeth loose,
Bentley had said – now he knew what the guy meant. The drill sensors must have engaged more of the heat unit’s source, as the temperature jumped and an oven-like blast rushed up past Alex’s face, searing his skin.

He leaned forward, yelling, “Keep your eyes and mouth shut.”

He let go of one of the struts to pull goggles down over his face. His eyes were the only soft organ exposed to air, and would suffer first from the heat. Alex concentrated on his breathing –
in and out, in and out
. Through his gloves, he felt the heat start to make the Kevlar-woven material begin to soften. It could withstand significant heat, many hundreds of degrees, so he felt confident it wouldn’t burn or melt. But it was the mask that worried him. If it melted and then degraded, he would enter the water near blind.

Alex concentrated on a soothing image – Aimee Weir, her face, her voice, and her shape. He counted the seconds and ignored the pain, the pressure and the heat. He felt Cate against him. The bulky thermal material seemed flimsy on her now, but as long as she stayed cocooned inside her thermal sheeting shell, she might just be okay … for a while.

Cate had brought a sheet for him, but he had refused it, making sure she kept them all. He knew that what he could take, she could not. Instead, he crushed his eyes shut and took himself somewhere else. Part of the HAWC training in regard to physical pain was twofold – on one level they were taught how to tolerate extreme discomfort, and to be able to simply ignore insults to their body that would have normal people screaming. The second level was the prolonged agony of significant physical trauma –
torture
. In the event of this happening, they were taught how to place themselves in a state of near hibernation, and mentally remove themselves, leaving their bodies behind, and viewing the insult to their flesh and bone as something that was happening to someone else. Death then became not something to be feared, but a doorway to a blessed release.

Seconds passed, minutes, and then more minutes – each new moment attacking his body and mind. Inside, deep in his cerebral cortex, something stirred, something rebelled at the torment.

Get out!
The voice was furious, and created more pain, this time from deep within his skull.

Alex breathed rhythmically, and clenched his eyes even tighter. He tried to focus, but the pain ripped him back, and allowed “the Other” to stir. If it gained control now, he,
it
, was liable to simply try and exit the capsule, destroy it while it was burning its way through ice that was harder than rock.

Aimee
, he whispered. His hand on the internal metal strut vibrated, and then his fist tightened, increasing pressure. The steel-titanium blended structure began to bend inwards under his force – it wasn’t him doing it, but the other being deep inside him. “
Not now, please not now
,” he whispered over and over, through clenched jaws.

The blistering heat, the ever-present grinding vibration of the drill, and the sensation of pressure on his ears became Alex’s world. There was nothing else, until …

They hit stone, and Alex only just reached out in time to grip Cate and hold on tight to stop them being thrown onto the probe’s maneuvering struts. The thermal drill tip retracted, and the circular cutting blades were brought to bear on the rock. The noise was near deafening, and Alex gritted his teeth, and then screamed his anger and pain, fighting back against the thing that wanted to let loose its fury inside the confined space.

You’ll die. It’ll all be for nothing …

…
unless you use the woman,
a sly voice whispered, deep inside his head.
Use her as a flesh cloak – shield yourself – and live!

Alex moaned. The
flesh cloak
was an extreme Special Forces survival tactic – you used the body of an animal, gutted, and worn as a cloak to stay warm, or cool.

It will work
, the voice again, sneering.

Alex shook his head, trying to fling it away. He knew it wanted to take him into its world of anger and madness. The cynical laugh started, taunting him, jeering and mocking, wanting him to let go, surrender to it, and then … it was gone,
everything
was gone, and he felt like he was floating.

Alex opened his eyes in confusion, and it took him a few seconds to determine what was happening, and then it came in an instant:
they were free-falling
. They had broken through the crust that acted as a ceiling over the underground sea.

“
Hang on!
’ he yelled, and was relieved to feel Cate cling to him a little tighter. In turn, he jammed his breather in his mouth and then wrapped a large arm around her head – he knew what was coming – if they struck rock, they were dead. But even if they hit water, the surface tension would make the landing traumatic on soft tissue.

He braced himself, gripping on with every ounce of strength he possessed. The longer the capsule fell, the greater the velocity, and then the greater the impact. How long had it been –
five heartbeats, ten?
– eventually they would reach thirty-two feet per second, and they had been falling now ten, fifteen, twenty …

They hit the water at a slight angle. Alex, one arm down and around Cate, was thrown to the side. His head connected with the armor plating of the outer shell. There was nothing after that.