《Area 71》
PROLOGUE
Obituaries ¨C Denver Post, June 16
Colonel Sylvester ¡®Sly¡¯ Harris, a distinguished figure in the U.S. Army for more than thirty years, passed away during a military training exercise in the Fall of last year. A tribute to celebrate his life and service will be held at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier at Arlington Cemetery, June 21st.
Born in Peoria, Illinois in 1971, Col. Harris embodied the Midwestern values of patriotism and resilience, qualities that defined his military career. He joined the ROTC program at the University of Illinois, was commissioned as a Second Lieutenant on his graduation in 1993, and his leadership and strategic acumen swiftly made their mark.
This story has been taken without authorization. Report any sightings.
¡®Sly¡¯ Harris excelled in peacekeeping and counterinsurgency missions before joining the 10th Special Forces in Colorado, a unit known for expertise in extreme cold weather and mountainous warfare. High-stakes missions with the 10th in Afghanistan and Iraq post-9/11 earned him the Bronze Star, among other commendations.
A graduate of the U.S. Army War College, in his later career Colonel Harris also contributed as a military planner, strategist and educator. He is survived by his young children, Alison and Robert Harris of Kansas City. In lieu of flowers, donations are invited for a scholarship fund in his name, supporting veterans'' children in education.
Colonel Sly Harris¡¯s legacy of dedicated service and exceptional skill remains an inspiration, reflecting a powerful commitment to his country and the values for which it stands.
Chapter One: PART I: Camera Check
The lights in the conference room faded, and the vast flat screen glowed. A long, complex serial number appeared first, followed by a timestamp in a stark white font. The administrative text faded, exchanged for a cautionary message.
[Warning: AI Auto-Generated Descriptions, Captions & Transcript. Sound is digitally enhanced.]
Dim, grainy pictures emerged on the screen like uncanny creatures from a fog, accompanied by indistinct crackles and the hiss of static. Discrete subtitles materialized, describing the scene as intelligible words replaced electronic noise from the room¡¯s stand mounted speakers.
From the start it was clear this was no home movie. Rather, it appeared to be a tightly edited compilation of digital clips from personal body cameras, serving as an official record. Of what, it was as yet unclear.
Bodycam Feed: Samuel Peck
Camera on. To the left, dark walls. In the centre, a metallic gate, lit by multiple flashlights. A frost-coated red sign is illegible with dirt.
Peck: ¡°Camera check.¡±
Chopra: ¡°Aye-aye captain.¡±
Laughter off-camera, left.
Peck: ¡°We¡¯re not in the military, Mia, and I don¡¯t have a peg-leg. Move forward, I want that door open.¡±
A figure, wearing a helmet-mounted light and a hi-vis jacket over a hoody, enters left then leaves right.
Chopra: ¡°You sounded like a drill-sergeant, Sam. ¡®Camera... on!¡¯ But I get the point. Let¡¯s bring up one of the boxes. Some help here, please? Grab one.¡±
Sounds of movement. Bright lights cast four long shadows.
Bodycam Feed: Mia Chopra
Peck is ahead and to the left, wearing hi-vis vest over dark, bulky clothing and a white hard-hat with a headlamp. Chopra¡¯s gloved hands are in focus, rope handles on a white insulated box. Her breath mists.
Thorpe: ¡°It¡¯s cold, but I¡¯m surprised by how warm it is, this far down.¡±
Peck: ¡°Okay, about to open the gate. Remember, the nearest real hospital is McMurdo. No accidents please, watch your step and your partners¡¯ six.¡±
Chopra: ¡°Ronnie, the thermal gradient is about thirty degrees Celsius per kilometre. To you yanks, that¡¯s about 5 degrees Fahrenheit per three-hundred feet. This far down you could strip off and dance the fandango. Please wait until I¡¯m ahead so I don¡¯t have to watch you shake your scrawny arse.¡±
Laughter.
Thorpe: ¡°Screw you, Mia.¡±
Peck: ¡°That¡¯s enough, guys. I¡¯m serious, anyone slips and breaks a leg gets to walk.¡±
Red-orange light shines on a mechanical padlock closed through two thick chains. Peck inserts and turns a key, reaches through the bars and flicks a switch. White LED ceiling lamps flicker on and shadows leap. Chains chime and clatter, striking hard ground. The gate creaks open.
Chopra: ¡°That¡¯s our cue. Allen, you¡¯re on mapping, take scan as far forward as you can. Switch to coms channel five. Enough hilarity, get it done.¡±
Snip ends.
A new long serial number replaced the blank screen, followed by a timestamp that indicated twenty minutes have passed.
Bodycam Feed: Samuel Peck
If you encounter this narrative on Amazon, note that it''s taken without the author''s consent. Report it.
A passageway crossroad: wet, glowing-pink walls lit by a rope of LED lights spaced 5 metres apart.
Peck: ¡°Allen on five, where are you? ¨C over.¡±
Allen [indistinct via coms]: ¡°Twenty meters east of your position at the gate, Sam. I¡¯m forward of the last light in the south drift. It¡¯s spooky down here but my headlamp¡¯s on, and I¡¯m not switching it off.¡±
Peck: ¡°Watch your feet, Allen. Another twenty minutes. Review footage and samples when we¡¯re toasty back upstairs.¡±
Allen: ¡°Got it.¡±
Peck: ¡°Mia on three, report?¡±
Chopra: ¡°Here Sam. I¡¯ve taken samples from the raw rock-face with the number two drill-set. Two boxes. Drill made a racket like a chainsaw through girders, but I¡¯m good to go. Say Sam, I saw something a bit weird.¡±
Peck: ¡°Only a bit? Are we in the same damn cave?¡±
Chopra: ¡°Got me there, I guess. Just... did you see the symbols on the walls? Circles about the same size of my hand, etched into the rock, with a design that looks a bit witchy?¡±
Peck: ¡°Yeah, I saw them. I thought they looked Arabic, or old Middle Eastern. What of it? I thought they were survey marks, location markers, a target to shine a laser at to measure the tunnel. But you¡¯d know better.¡±
Chopra: ¡°I get why you¡¯d say that, but these are nothing like anything I¡¯ve seen before. Real distinctive, as if the last crew went mad and invited Satan to tea and crumpets.¡±
Peck: ¡°Someone got bored, that I fully understand... Where¡¯s Ronnie?¡±
Chopra: ¡°Ronnie is in the west drift. I hear him drilling.¡±
Peck: ¡°I copy. We¡¯ll tidy up and get going.¡±
Bodycam Feed: Adrian Allen
A passageway through rock. The granite walls shine with moisture. Peck is a distant figure at the gate. Allen turns: a single yellow-orange headlamp reflects in streaks from semi-phosphorescent rock minerals.
Peck: ¡°Ade on five, again please, what are your co-ordinates, over.¡±
Allen: ¡°No more than eight meters further west, Sam, the far side of the lights. If I turn around, see my light? Hey, the rock here is pretty. Mica and rose-quartz, it picks up the light. But the damn LEDs keep flickering¨C¡±
The white LEDs fade, then return to brightness.
Peck: ¡°Yeah, I saw that. Don¡¯t worry, we¡¯re not here long. Tidy up, go get Ronnie then come on back.¡±
Allen [looks up at the flickering lights]: ¡°Dud LED drivers, I guess. I copy.¡±
The camera pans and hard shards chink from Allen¡¯s feet, his headlamp reflecting off rock. Peripheral movement flickers and a fast shape moves across the rough passage, bright metal catching the light. The camera pans back but the reflection is gone. The corridor is empty.
Allen: ¡°Hey Ronnie, I¡¯m coming over.¡± In a lower voice, ¡°Faster than you think.¡±
Bodycam Feed: Mia Chopra
Jolting. Chopra¡¯s gear rattles. Audible breathing, stressed.
Chopra: ¡°I¡¯m on my way, guys. Don¡¯t leave without me!¡±
Peck: ¡°What¡¯s wrong? You¡¯re rushing, watch your footing.¡±
Chopra: ¡°Heh, I saw something move down the drift. Then the lights went out, before I saw what it was.¡±
Peck: ¡°Don¡¯t kid, Chopra.¡±
Chopra [out of breath, pants]: ¡°So. Not. Kidding. Sam, we¡¯re at the bottom of a cave in the cold arse-crack of the world, hundreds of clicks and a day away from the nearest manned research station. Now I thought I saw something move in the dark. I am so not amused.¡±
Peck: ¡°Keep it together, get back here. You know ¡ª¡±
Allen [quiet]: ¡°Guys.¡±
Chopra: ¡°If you say anything about effin¡¯ penguins, Sam, I¡¯ll gut you.¡±
Allen: ¡°Guys! Listen up, Ronnie¡¯s down.¡±
Peck [Silence]: ¡°What do you mean, down? Sitrep, Ade. Take a breath, tell me what you see.¡±
Bodycam Feed: Ronald Thorpe
Black turns to grey and white. Adrian Allen appears in view, his concerned face large and close to the camera.
Allen: ¡°I¡¯ve turned him over, Ron¡¯s breathing, but he¡¯s bleeding. There¡¯s a¡ªstick in his ribs.¡±
Peck: ¡°Stick¡ª¡±
Allen: ¡°It¡¯s a bloody arrow, Sam. A short arrow but I¡¯m a geologist not Robin Hood ¨C listen he didn¡¯t fall on this thing, he¡¯s been shot.¡±
Allen disappears out of shot, revealing the rock ceiling of the passageway. Allen grunts. The ceiling moves in jerks.
Peck: ¡°Wait, don¡¯t move¡ª¡±
Allen: ¡°We can¡¯t leave him here. We need the light, move him to a tarp, I can drag the tarp. Come and help.¡±
Peck: ¡°You¡¯ll hurt him¡ª¡±
Allen: ¡°He¡¯s hurt already, Sam, we need him out of here. Who has the kit?¡±
Chapter One: PART II – Conference Room
¡°And that was that... That is how it ended, General?¡±
The conference room lights were back up and the three men, two in semi-formal ¡®Class B¡¯ military uniforms and the other in a civilian suit, topped up on coffee.
¡°The vulcanologist Ronald Thorpe died two weeks ago, before the team could evacuate and call for extraction,¡± said Major General William Fox, settling opposite Sly at the table. ¡°Sam Peck¡¯s station caretaker team operates between August and the start of the Austral summer research season in November. September isn¡¯t a good time for travel ¨C frankly it¡¯s hell ¨C but Peck and the two remaining researchers hit a lucky break in the weather and escaped without incident, taking Thorpe¡¯s body with them.¡±
¡°Thorpe was struck by an arrow and died? That¡¯s true?¡±
Fox took a photo from his pocket and slid it over to Sly.
¡°A wooden shaft,¡± Fox said, measuring a gap with his hands about twenty inches, ¡°confirmed as a crossbow bolt. Shorter than an arrow, with stiffer vanes. I¡¯d have brought it with me, but forensics has it. It¡¯s a murder weapon after all.¡±
Sly put the photo down, then gestured to the room¡¯s big screen.
¡°This is one ominous home movie, Blair Witch Project for cavers. Why show it to me?¡±
General Fox was a staff officer from the Pentagon, a man in his early forties who looked to have fallen out of a recruitment poster. A square jaw dragged his features to the hetero-side of handsome, while a kink in his short ash-blond hair hinted at curls, given a longer cut. Sly had disliked him on sight.
A staff officer designed by AI, ten years¡¯ my junior with a full head of hair.
Longer acquaintance hadn¡¯t improved his opinion. Fox¡¯s presentation was stage-managed, tidily choreographed, and he sourly suspected the effort was entirely for his benefit. The General was laying it on thick, deliberately presenting creepy pictures of an underground facility like it was the Heaven¡¯s Gate mansion. To Sly it felt like a personal dig. He¡¯d known Fox for just an hour or two, but slick, stage-managed manipulation already seemed like his style.
Likely the man had a fat file on Sly on his office desk, next to his annotated copy of ¡®Dark Influence: The Hidden Tactics of Persuasion and Psychological Warfare¡¯, he thought sourly.
¡°I have no idea what Blair Witch Project was,¡± Fox said, holding Sly¡¯s gaze with authority and a hint of humour. ¡°Before my time. But you, Colonel Harris, are the director of Project Peacock, and you have a standing request for a shake-down to test, I quote, ¡®non-standard military equipment¡¯. Fourteen Green Beret volunteers are seconded to your team from the Tenth, based right here at Fort Clayson. In numbers that¡¯s an A-Team when an uncommitted ODA is hard to find. That¡¯s my interest in you right there, you have the manpower I need. But the Tenth is also known for its extreme winter capability, and that¡¯s fundamental to the operation I have in mind.¡±
Sly was glad he¡¯d fixed his best diplomatic half-smile on with toupee-tape. It hadn¡¯t slipped yet, but Fox was yanking it hard.
¡°An operation, General?¡± he echoed. ¡°What¡¯s the mission and RoE?¡±
Fox paused. He glanced over to the third at the conference room table, a man in his mid-thirties, impeccable in a black suit and grey tie and a St Christopher signet ring on his pinkie. When giving out introductions, Fox called him Intelligence Officer Maxwell Jarvis, CIA, and Jarvis had said, ¡®how do you do¡¯, shaking Sly¡¯s hand.
Since then, he¡¯d said nothing much.
¡°You¡¯re right in calling this out as weird,¡± Fox conceded, eyes back on Sly. ¡°You now know where Area 71 is, and why we have geologists there. If the US Army still believed in a flat earth, the Area 71 facility would be right on the edge, toppling off. And yet CIA analysts think it possible the caves remain occupied by hostiles. We need to check the facility from top to bottom, clear out anyone who¡¯s staked a claim.¡±
Jarvis didn¡¯t say a word.
Sly knew he shouldn¡¯t say it but did anyway. ¡°Who in the hell would bother?¡±
¡°Right now,¡± Fox said, raising his hands, ¡°we guess a state actor, given the resources needed to get to Area 71. If the Chinese are there, they came in as a spying expedition, probably unaware the facility is manned all year around. There¡¯s no advantage in them remaining there, they¡¯re probably gone now.¡±
¡°That¡¯s a lot of ifs and maybes, General Fox.¡±
¡°Yes, it is,¡± he said, showing his perfect pearly whites. ¡°Sinophobia to one side, an extremist environmental group seeking publicity is a real possibility. Area 71 is a high-profile and expensive site in a sensitive area, an opportunity for audacious, well-funded agitators to make a news splash. You asked about Rules of Engagement?¡±
Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.
The way Fox said it, the term had crisp, pressed edges and starched capitals.
¡°Yes. Given the location, I¡¯d guess you want us there in a deniable capacity?¡±
¡°You¡¯d be armed, though not openly,¡± Fox agreed. ¡°You¡¯d take appropriate measures. Defend yourselves. Negotiate the Chinese out of there with minimum loss of life. Baton-round the environmentalists. Crap out before the site fully reopens in November.¡±
Wincing inwardly at the phrasing, Sly pointed at the screen.
¡°This looks like the attackers were a small group and not heavily armed. Isn¡¯t a Special Forces detachment overkill?¡±
The response wasn¡¯t from the expected quarter.
¡°Aside from the fact we already have one fatality?¡±
Jarvis added to the briefing for the first time, with a faint, unamused smile.
¡°Actually, I agree. If Area 71 were in the US, we¡¯d send in patrol officers with night sticks, job done. But just the logistics of getting to the site requires great competence. And if the China Navy¡¯s Dragon commandos are waiting, whoever goes in needs to be armed.¡±
Sly sat back, content to have provoked any kind of response from Jarvis.
Now what? Not going was not an option. Not now Fox yanked my tail.
¡°Then I¡¯m interested,¡± he heard himself say. ¡°An opportunity I wouldn¡¯t miss.¡±
Fox¡¯s eyebrows rose.
¡°You¡¯d go yourself? No offence¡ you¡¯re better known as a planner working directly for the Army Oversight Investment Board. Personal supervision from an administrator of your seniority and capabilities would be¡ appreciated.¡±
Appreciated. And surprising, obviously. Sly resented the implication that the most he usually risked was a papercut.
¡°Given the nature of our equipment tests, it¡¯s necessary.¡±
¡°Let¡¯s explore that for a moment,¡± said Fox, relaxing back, diplomatic and friendly but with the hint of an edge. ¡°Don¡¯t get me wrong, I¡¯m a fan. I¡¯ve followed your career. Peacekeeping in the Balkans, then the Middle East, a move to the 10th Special Forces. Nine-eleven, Afghanistan and Iraq, a Bronze Star. You dropped off my radar for a while you were teaching. Then you come back working for Oversight and build Project Argos from the ground up, a multi-million dollar investment. Tell me about that.¡±
Sly considered Fox for a long second, then dropped his eyes to think.
¡°My first tech project,¡± he said finally, ¡°was a tactical artificial intelligence system for small teams. Argos took video from bodycams, mobile phones, drones and satellites and created a shared, device-independent, three-dimensional digital twin of the war landscape, updated in near-real time.¡±
¡°Argos made maps,¡± Jarvis said, mouth well hidden behind a hand.
¡°Argos made damn good maps,¡± Sly grinned, not minding the gibe. ¡°Argos mapped a room, a building or a town, recognized and inventoried objects and hostiles, spotted changes, and briefed SF commanders on what to expect when they entered an area.¡±
Think me proud of Argos. I don¡¯t care, I am.
He continued, ¡°Architecturally, Argos was an encrypted, peer-to-peer system, with an AI interface,¡± ¨C Fox¡¯s face remained carefully blank ¨C ¡°meaning Argos was secure, wasn¡¯t vulnerable to a single system going down, but could answer questions posed in English, like a chatbot. Individual Argos nodes scaled infinitely and independently, co-opting spare computing power from mobile phones, desktops or mainframes ¨C anything in the field with a processor and connectivity.¡±
¡°Argos was a botnet,¡± Jarvis said flatly, ¡°as advertized by hackers and criminals. Argos took idle processing capacity without consent. That¡¯s theft.¡±
¡°All¡¯s fair in love and war,¡± Sly said easily. He¡¯d had plenty of practice protecting Argos¡¯ methods. ¡°Botnets are no more illegal in times of conflict than bullets or bombs. These days your average smartwatch has more computing power than put men on the moon, computing power rarely used to the full. Argos only used spare NATO resources. No one noticed, no harm, no foul.¡±
¡°Nice pitch,¡± said Jarvis, without irony. ¡°How did Argos end?¡±
¡°Argos?¡± He dropped the half-smile. ¡°Oversight sold Argos to a defence software contractor four years ago. For the ¡®next step in its commercial evolution¡¯.¡±
¡°That sounds like a phrase from a non-disclosure agreement,¡± Jarvis smirked.
¡°I couldn¡¯t possibly comment,¡± which naturally meant ¡®yes¡¯. ¡°I can say that the AI providing your video¡¯s subtitles is, oh, probably Argos¡¯s third cousin.¡±
¡°Discussing Argos is clearly... legally difficult,¡± said Fox, rotating a finger to move them on. ¡°Tell me about Peacock. A strange name for a military project.¡±
¡°The peacock is associated with acute vision and vigilance,¡± he said, glad to leave the topic of the legal agreement he was forced to sign. ¡°Our project uses cutting edge sensor tech to map the health, resilience and physical skills of individual soldiers. As Argos mapped the battlefield, Peacock maps team capabilities, to help commanders find and field the right team on the fly.¡±
¡°And now you want to test Peacock in hostile environments?¡±
¡°For most values of ¡®hostile¡¯,¡± he looked at Jarvis, ¡°yes.¡±
Sly saw Fox¡¯s eyes flicker, frown, focus above Sly¡¯s eyes.
¡°A recent accident?¡±
Sly ran a hand over the scar over his left eye, running from the orbit to under the hairline. The depth of the canyon in his forehead even now shocked his fingers.
¡°A couple of years ago, I had an accident while skiing with the unit. Banged over by an avalanche.¡±
I caught a rock with my face and was hospitalized... but then you know that.
¡°Unfortunate perhaps, but now I¡¯m better than new.¡±
¡°Get checked out,¡± Fox dismissed it. ¡°If the medics agree, you¡¯re good to go.¡±
Sly watched as Jarvis shuffled his papers, signalling the end of the meeting. That was enough to confirm the CIA officer as a fraud ¨C Sly hadn¡¯t used a printer since 2020. He focused past Jarvis to the big screen and the last frozen image from the bodycam montage. A closeup of Adrian Allen¡¯s face.
Reflected as a tiny, distorted image in Allen¡¯s wide eyes, Ronald Thorpe¡¯s warped, tortured face stared out.
Chapter One: PART III - Le Croissant
Three days later, Sly Harris entered Le Croissant, a popular caf¨¦ in Old Colorado City, to the welcoming aroma of fresh pastries and black coffee. Wearing a civilian suit, he attracted no stares as he tucked into a quiet nook.
Sipping from a cup, he checked the time and reviewed his day against the list Gus gave him. Too much to do. Seeing Mike Johnson was important though, and his friend wouldn¡¯t be long. Fort Clayson was only a ten-minute drive away from Old Colorado. He wiped crumbs from the clear glass of the table and didn¡¯t dwell on the lined face in the reflection. Instead, he studied the mid-morning caf¨¦ regulars, a mix of preppy students and deep-tanned retirees, and habitually scanned for anyone out of place.
Long before he found boredom a handsome man entered wearing a jacket over a white long-sleeved shirt and blue slacks. Sly raised a hand and Mike came to the cubicle, sat, and ordered with an appreciative smile for the waitress.
¡°Remember that caf¨¦ where we met?¡± Sly asked him. Mike chuckled.
¡°Working class Moroccan locals inhaling trash French cigarettes and sipping thimbles of sweet black sludge you could stand a spoon in? Of course. You ask every time we meet here. You need a new story.¡±
Sly mostly enjoyed the pleasantries, tossing out second-hand anecdotes about his children while tiptoeing past the emotional minefield that was the fractured relationship with Erica, his ex-wife. In turn, Johnson grumbled happily about his first child, still in diapers, then passed on the veneer of gossip a lieutenant colonel from US Army Intelligence and Security Command could share without censure.
Mike wasn¡¯t Sly¡¯s contemporary, but the pair shared plenty of history. Both were ROTC college graduates, though from different decades, and both had commissioned as second lieutenants. Their paths had crossed during covert operations in the Middle East, the most confused and intense period of Sly¡¯s life. They¡¯d lost touch but met again in the year Sly taught Unconventional Warfare on the Master of Strategic Studies course at the US Army War College. Mike had taken his class.
Strange how very different people can be good friends, Sly thought, as Mike deftly turned the conversation to the real topic of the day. Sly pushed over a fat envelope for his friend to pocket without comment.
¡°Same as usual,¡± Sly said, offhand. ¡°I updated the will a few days ago, wrote a new letter to the kids, the usual. Nothing eyes-only, but read it, if there¡¯s anything there that makes your buttocks clench let me know. We¡¯re heading out next week.¡±
"To Antarctica, Sly. What the hell? Who did you piss off?"
Sly laughed. Said like that he saw Mike¡¯s point.
¡°I¡¯ve been there before, I trained there what, a couple years ago."
He was tempted to say more but stopped in time. That training trip to McMurdo Station he recollected was a dozen years ago, not two or three. He took a breath, elaborating instead on the logistics of travel to Leviathan Station.
"We''ll fly from Colorado to Christchurch, New Zealand ¨C the usual civilian gateway for Antarctica. From there we¡¯ll thumb a military transport to McMurdo. It¡¯s a long, boring flight. Remind me to pack my War and Peace audiobook, I might get to finish it this time."
Mike laughed, a warm sound suited for late-night radio.
"Pacifist crap. Where, after McMurdo?¡±
"A ski-equipped LC-130, maybe," Sly said, enthusiasm pulling like a husky. "We¡¯ll land on ice at Leviathan, an EU research facility. Leviathan is one of the few permanently crewed research stations on the plateau... ten support techs in the winter, increasing to seventy scientists in the summer. Yesterday it reached minus four degrees Fahrenheit. Positively balmy.¡±
¡°Yeah, balmy, find a beach, catch some sun.¡± Johnson gave a wide white grin, then his amusement faded. ¡°You know Antarctica is a demilitarized zone, right? No military bases or maneuvers, no nuclear weapons. Only civilians."
"We won¡¯t be military, much,¡± Sly insisted, biting a complementary biscuit that tasted of almonds. Mike was not fond of breaking rules he believed in. Surprising, for an Army spook. ¡°The trip doesn¡¯t end at Leviathan, that¡¯s a pitstop. We head out to a US-funded research site, in a cave system inside a nunatak called Mount Conrad ¡ª¡±
¡°Whoa, stop. In a what of the where?¡±
Laughing, Sly moved the glass pyramid containing salt across the tabletop.
¡°Most of the mountains in eastern Antarctica are way under the ice,¡± he explained, holding his hand under the glass-topped table, pointing his fingers up. ¡°Subglacial peaks the size of the European Alps are a thousand metres below the surface, mapped only by seismic reflections and ice-penetrating radar.¡±
He scraped the salt cellar across the surface of the glass.
¡°A nunatak, on the other hand, is a peak that pokes up above the surface. Geologists love ¡®em, they can take rock samples, study the moss, knock themselves out. Conrad is an extinct volcano and the only nunatak in the range ¨C the other peaks are below the ice.¡±
Enjoying the story? Show your support by reading it on the official site.
Mike blinked. ¡°And this nunatak, that¡¯s where you¡¯re going?¡±
¡°The research site is underground, in a vast cave system,¡± Sly said, tasting the salt on his finger. ¡°People-wise it¡¯s smaller than Leviathan, half a dozen geologists working for Charlton University. Officially we¡¯re on a sabbatical working for an offshoot of CU. The base has an official name, but is better known by its nickname,Area 71."
Mike¡¯s lips twitched upwards.
¡°I¡¯ll bite. Why ¡®Area 71¡¯?¡±
Sly smiled.
¡°The first CU team went to check out a cave system they spotted from satellite pictures,¡± he said. ¡°They planned to close off the entrance with a weather-proof airlock, using it as a dry supply dump for geologists. When they checked out the caves, one idiot announced that the system was too large, said it was artificial with ¡®prior habitation¡¯.¡±
Mike laughed out loud in realization.
¡°Area 71. You mean, like Area 51, Nevada? Really, aliens?¡±
He guffawed, a real belly-laugh this time, and Sly chuckled with him.
¡°Aliens, or refugees from Atlantis. The caves were too smooth and extensive to be natural, the guy said ¨C which any good geologist tells you is trash, there¡¯s one really famous tourist attraction in Hawaii¡ Anyway, when researchers reported what the caves contained CU got funding to set up a permanent base, searching for ¡®rare earth minerals¡¯.¡±
¡°Rare earth minerals?¡± Mike looked thoughtful. ¡°Used in wind turbines and electric cars, cameras, control rods for nuclear reactors¡?¡±
¡°Yeah. A strategic resource mostly controlled by China. CU has a silent partner for Area 71, a classified CIA fund, because of the national security implications.¡±
¡°Now Area 71 needs you,¡± Mike said drily. ¡°Problems with polar bears?¡±
¡°That¡¯s so wrong, I don¡¯t even know where to start,¡± Sly sighed, and Mike snorted. ¡°Listen, there was an accident that led to a death, one of the volunteer researchers on the winter caretaking team. The base is controversial, it¡¯s in the most pristine wilderness on the planet. Installing sustainable power systems for the base generated half a dozen research papers but not everyone¡¯s happy Area 71 is there. Interested parties want the fatality checked out for foul play.¡±
Mike¡¯s sensitive ¡®lie-dar¡¯ wasn¡¯t buying the whole package. He frowned.
¡°If there are suspicions, why not phone the Agency?¡±
¡°With respect, your average spook wears a raincoat with limited thermal properties,¡± Sly said smirking. ¡°Green Berets, on the other hand, treat this as training. And one of the interested parties is the Agency.¡±
¡°I hope it goes well,¡± Mike said with genuine concern. ¡°That¡¯s a long trip.¡±
¡°My swansong,¡± Sly said absently. Mike raised an eyebrow and Sly considered retracting the ill-timed words. But this was Mike.
He took a deep breath.
¡°You know I¡¯m good at what I do,¡± he started. ¡°My gift is having a vision, forming a plan, then surrounding myself with the right people to get the job done. But I¡¯m not moving up, I¡¯ve not been offered a promotion or new role for years. My last active service mission was Serenity, and you know that shit didn¡¯t end well. From there I fell into an academic trench, but I climbed out. Now I¡¯m known for how Argos ended, not what it did.¡±
He snorted. ¡°Argos would¡¯ve made me stinking rich in civilian life.¡±
Mike put up his hands.
¡°Or seen you in jail ¨C didn¡¯t Argos hack anything with access to the net?¡±
There was some truth in that.
¡°Well, yeah... Then there was the skiing accident that put me in the hospital for weeks. I¡¯m in my fifties, Mike, and I don¡¯t have the reputation of having the safest pair of hands. This may be the last time I lead a covert project anywhere as special as Antarctica. I haven¡¯t been operational since joining Oversight as a project director... I was panting on a treadmill yesterday to prove I was fit enough to go. When I¡¯m back, I¡¯m getting out, in case next time they say ¡®no¡¯.¡±
Mike didn¡¯t look too stupefied. He grunted.
¡°You¡¯ve heard this before, Sly... You never made waves but expected the brass to pick you out from all the rest when you didn¡¯t so much as raise a hand. You¡¯re not exactly a rule follower and you¡¯ve the rank but you¡¯re pigeon-holed as a paper-pusher, a desk-jockey. After Serenity, it was your choice to avoid operational roles ¨C you didn¡¯t put yourself forward, and even I don¡¯t understand why. Except for training you¡¯ve not been out in the field in years. No wonder staff thinks of you as a librarian.¡±
¡°Hey, I¡¯m a military historian,¡± Sly complained, ¡°I know how to recon an old-fashioned library. Yeah, that¡¯s an eldritch skill these days, and it¡¯s in demand ¨C some secret military archives will never be digitized. When I¡¯m not leading Peacock, I¡¯m leading intelligence operations, chaperoning junior researchers who don¡¯t have the clearance to read what they find. That doesn¡¯t mean I won¡¯t get my hands dirty.¡±
Mike barked another short laugh.
¡°I get it,¡± he said. ¡°You¡¯re a historian, scared your value lies in the past.¡±
Sly pulled a face at the weak joke. ¡°A librarian, left on the shelf.¡±
¡°Still, you handed over Argos without a fuss,¡± said Mike, seriously. ¡°What you need is one good war to get you out from under Oversight¡¯s thumb.¡±
¡°Oversight¡¯s thumb is up its ass,¡± Sly said, but his smile felt too tight. ¡°Who am I fooling. Argos let me be around my kids, but when the project ended,¡± along with my marriage, he managed not to say, ¡°the momentum I had in mainstream military was lost. My mentors were retired, in the ground, or, in one memorable case, committed for indecency to animals.¡±
Mike smiled at the quip, but his voice held an edge.
¡°You¡¯re not eighty, not dead yet. You need to knuckle down and wait for the bones to roll in your favour.¡±
Sly held on to a sense of humour with his nails.
¡°Hanging on in there isn¡¯t a fix. Last week I met a general your age, Mike, a real high-flier. Talking to him, I realized I¡¯m not that guy, wasn¡¯t ever that guy. Success is the product of skill and luck, but skill depreciates while luck accumulates. I needed more luck early on. And a better head of hair.¡±
¡°I bet he made you sick,¡± Mike grinned.
¡°Worse, he made me feel as old and leathery as Methuselah¡¯s flipflops. I don¡¯t see that changing until I move on. Once I¡¯m back from Area 71 I¡¯ll be ready for whatever happens next. Keep an ear to the ground for me, okay?¡±
Chapter One: PART IV - Dr Frank
Fort Clayson¡¯s extensive medical facilities included the Davies Army Community Hospital, its main primary care unit. Back from Colorado Springs and still in civilian clothes, Sly walked under signs for audiology and cardiology towards the blue sign for the Bradley Medical Technology Clinic, a well-worn path since Oversight had approved Peacock¡¯s plan to recruit volunteers.
Entering the familiar puke-ugly, nicotine-yellow annex, he was met by a stern senior nurse who led him to the private suite occupied by Dr Frank Holborn, MD., FACS. In short order the surgeon had him stripped down to his underwear. Three too-young technicians literally buzzed around him, armed with tablets and probes like lollypops.
A slim, elegant man a couple of years older than Sly, Dr Frank, as he liked to be known, sat erect on his stool partly blocking the view of a huge wall screen.
¡°The array looks in good shape,¡± he said, folding the ophthalmoscope back into a padded case with long, clever fingers. ¡°Readings from the Clarity biochips are all normal. You notice any problems?¡±
Sly shook his head and the picture on the wall screen lurched sickeningly, like a drunken kaleidoscope. The screen projected a huge and distorted view of the surgeon¡¯s face from Sly¡¯s optical implant, ¡®Clarity¡¯. Clarity was a huge and experimental array of nanoscale light-sensors in a fake eyeball, linked to processors and spliced into the optic disc where the optic nerve connected to the eye.
¡°It¡¯s a miracle I see anything after losing the eye,¡± Sly said with feeling. ¡°Clarity works better than I ever expected. I thought my career was over, and sure, it took a while to recover. But now it¡¯s all good. Thank you.¡±
Dr Frank smiled avuncularly.
¡°Thank you for allowing the experiment. The brain is an amazing organ, Colonel Harris ¨C Sly. Your brain only needed time to interpret Clarity¡¯s signals.¡± The surgeon abruptly changed the subject. ¡°And we were already working together on Project Peacock, after all, when I found you on my operating table. Then you volunteered for the original sub-dermal sensor installation, what, eighteen months ago?¡±
Dr Frank¡¯s smile was friendly, Sly noticed, but his eyes were shrewd.
¡°I couldn¡¯t ask a team to do something I was unwilling to do myself.¡±
The surgeon sat back, legs crossed above novelty socks.
¡°I¡¯ve a poster-sized picture of your upgrade procedure hanging on my office wall,¡± the surgeon admitted with a small smile. ¡°Hundreds of three-inch delivery pins poking from your skin like a scene from Hellraiser. Definitely one for the album.¡±
If you discover this tale on Amazon, be aware that it has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road. Please report it.
Sly¡¯s sub-skin sensor upgrade had been two months before, and since then fourteen volunteers had been implanted with the same microscopic, hair-like implants. The procedure looked horrendous but was, in truth, no more painful than the over-the-top acupuncture session it resembled.
Some of the implants monitored muscle activation and strength, but most surveyed the blood for hydration, electrolyte and glucose saturation, and levels of various hormones. The skein of bio-lace that recorded his brain¡¯s electrical activity, on the other hand, had taken hours to apply, and weeks to fully absorb into the skin of his scalp. His head still occasionally itched.
¡°... saw yesterday¡¯s results?¡±
Sly blinked at another typically abrupt change of subject from the surgeon. Dr Frank¡¯s genius-level mind flipped like a performing seal. He rewound the question.
¡°Results? Of the pre-op run, cycling, and all the lung capacity tests? Uh, yes. The unit doctor waved me through. I won¡¯t drop dead tomorrow in the snow.¡±
¡°Not tomorrow,¡± the slim surgeon said, with the same small indulgent smile, ¡°it¡¯ll take a while to get to Antarctica, after all. I¡¯m very excited. We couldn¡¯t have designed a more demanding test.¡±
Sly inwardly winced. That¡¯s what he was to Dr Frank. Another test.
¡°The HUD has two new icons, last time I looked,¡± Sly said, yanking on his shirt as he pulled his own conversational U-turn. ¡°Six stat bars, now, not four?¡±
Input from all the Peacock sensors went straight into Gus, the project¡¯s neural net, and were converted into personal and team measures of health and capability. All the project members had access to Gus and a personal ¡®heads-up display¡¯, or HUD. Their commanders could see and compare everyone in their team.
¡°Yes,¡± Dr Frank said, expression brightening. ¡°Samson added two new synthetic indicators to the four you called Strength, Dexterity, Constitution, and Intelligence, based on analysis of the conversational system logs. After consultation, we called them ¡®Wisdom¡¯ and ¡®Charisma¡¯.¡±
¡°Sorry for the names,¡± Sly smiled. ¡°The team enjoys role-playing games ¨C ¡®hit points¡¯ are next on their list. What do the new synths track?¡±
¡°Wisdom measures perception and insight, while Charisma tracks persuasion, interpersonal influence, and leadership,¡± Dr Frank said. ¡°If someone positively engaged or swayed the opinions of others, we added points to their charisma. If they were sought out as a source of insight, advice or conflict resolution, they gained in wisdom. Individuals can be both charismatic and wise, but the two qualities together are rare. In some ways, the two are inimical.¡±
¡°Yeah, I don¡¯t know anyone with both. You have data for everyone?¡±
¡°Benchmarks for everyone, yes, you can track the impact of skill and fatigue on day-to-day performance. I¡¯m confident you can compare synths and skills to choose the right person to knock on a door, knock down a door, or pick its lock.¡±
¡°Lock-picking? That would be new,¡± Sly said drily.
Dr Frank¡¯s eyebrow raised.
¡°We¡¯re using the standard skills groups, such as essential, executive, thinking, and practical. Lock-picking is under ¡®practical¡¯. You can contrast any three members of the team on any three skills, or nine on one skill, as you prefer.¡±
¡°Although I won¡¯t see anything else from my left eye, if I do,¡± Sly quipped.
¡°I don¡¯t recommend driving, operating heavy machinery,¡± the surgeon said, giving him a flat look, ¡°or skiing, if you don¡¯t want me to replace the right eye, too.¡±
Chapter One: PART V - Never mind
That evening Sly returned to his home in the officer housing area within Fort Clayson¡¯s gated community. Before his divorce, he shared a four-bedroom property with a two-car garage, a family room and private office. When Erica moved out, taking the children, staying in the family-oriented tree-lined street felt¡ wrong.
Many of the military base¡¯s seventeen thousand workers chose to live nearer town, but Sly liked his new quiet house in its serene, well-maintained neighborhood, moments away from the base¡¯s shopping and dining options. When his children came to stay, as they had in July when Erica was busy, the pair shared the second bedroom. The kids complained the new house was too small, but Sly told himself he didn¡¯t need a big home solely for the holidays. If he needed to meet anyone formally there were conference rooms for all that.
In truth, his time in the new place coincided with long hours at work. He was hardly ever at home. When once he¡¯d hosted game nights around a table dominated by Erica¡¯s friends, nowadays he rarely entertained guests. The impetus behind Project Peacock was a college friend¡¯s work on ¡®biological computing gel¡¯, or biogel for short. Biogel was a synthetic material that was immuno-neutral like living tissue but transported electrical input like nerves. The tech components of Peacock¡¯s implanted sensors were sheathed in biogel to combat rejection, and the first gel-wrapped biochip prototypes had restored Sly¡¯s sight.
As it was dry, and late, he decided against driving to the fencing club in Colorado Springs. Instead, he changed into running gear, ignoring the Fall chill to run his route around the base. Twenty-odd minutes later he showered in the ensuite bathroom he didn¡¯t share and dressed in well-worn clothes from a half-empty fitted wardrobe, before descending to the small kitchen. He liked the functional appliances and sleek countertops, though given his hurried eating habits they often went unused. The substantial refrigerator carried fresh fruit and breakfast necessities plus a solitary half-empty bottle of wine on the top-shelf rack.
Sly unscrewed the bottle and filled a tall, chilled glass, then crossed to the adjacent living room, a room designed with simplicity, style and someone else¡¯s taste. He sat in the dying winter light and sipped.
¡°Gus, shuffle.¡±
An anthem from his twenties started from the internet-enabled speakers in the corners of the room. No player was in sight, but the space filled with nostalgic grunge as he slowly drank the glass nearly dry.
¡°...entertain us...¡±
A young, cocky, dark-haired Sly Harris leered out of a framed photo on the mantlepiece, kneeling, shirt off, his buddies behind. He had a tan and three- or four-days beard growth and nice pecs.
Hi, kid. What the hell happened to you?
Erica¡¯s voice echoed in his mind, and he shivered.
What happened to you, Sly? You¡¯re no fun. I¡¯ve tried, but I can¡¯t live like this.
He finished the glass in a single swallow as the song ended.
He revisited the fridge and retrieved yesterday¡¯s store-bought lasagne. He ate the second half directly from the microwave dish, tucked the used vessels and utensils into the slim, ultramodern, rarely full dishwasher, then poured a second, careful measure of wine.
Sly moved to the office space, pulled out a laptop and logged in, checking for work emails. Nothing that wouldn¡¯t be better answered over morning coffee, but before he logged off he checked through the morning¡¯s new orders for the third time.
This book was originally published on Royal Road. Check it out there for the real experience.
The format was the same as any other electronic order ¨C issuing authority and budget number, reference, security classification, mission, logistics and command hierarchy ¨C but two things pulled at his attention.
Firstly, the issuing authority hadn¡¯t been one he¡¯d seen before. Strange ¨C with his funding coming from the big budgets it was rare to see a new code. A quick search discovered it was joint military and CIA. He sat back, let the thought marinate.
That explains why the command hierarchy section gives Jarvis the same footing as Fox. Jarvis is paying for the privilege.
By now Sly knew Jarvis was a golden boy at the Agency. Over the last two years the relatively junior intelligence officer had gained the hard-won trust of several high-grade informants, some with extensive networks of their own. According to the reports both they and his bosses thought Jarvis a saint.
Is Jarvis General Fox¡¯s poodle, or is Jarvis holding the leash?
The second nagging anomaly sat in the ¡®Execution¡¯ section, which contained specific instructions on carrying out the mission. The segment was too short but contained an odd provision. He read it in full, slowly adding his own emphasis.
¡°Unit is to collect ALL personal, Charlton University or government property in possession of the researchers named above. A FULL search will be undertaken. Books, papers, physical storage devices of ANY kind are to be considered confidential, collected, boxed and prepared for transit. Items¡¡±
That provision struck him as odd.
Why ¡®books and papers¡¯? It¡¯s unlikely anything valuable would be taken to a small research base in Antarctica on paper. No mention of laptops, mobile phones, or the plethora of electronic devices. Why emphasize ¡®books¡¯ unless one was known to be missing? Were they really going to Antarctica for a missing Moleskine?
Sly found no hint of answers in a read through the orders. He tapped his finger in indecision, then made the call. He set his dogs ¨C dog ¨C looking for answers.
¡°Gus? I have two things I want you to do.¡±
¡®...¡¯
A prompt appeared on the left side of his vision, produced by Clarity¡¯s vision processor. Confirmation enough that the AI assistant was listening.
¡°First, Gus, I want you to independently evaluate the footage we were shown. Find copies of the original footage before it was edited. Look for all the usual signs that an AI was involved in the production. Identify anything out of place.¡±
¡®Okay, Colonel. I understand.¡¯
¡°Second, run a link-analysis on Major General Fox, and Maxwell Jarvis of the CIA, and their tier-one personal associates, plus Peck, Allen, Chopra, and Thorpe. Oh, also add the official stakeholders of Area 71, again to tier-one.¡±
A ¡®link-analysis¡¯ was a network diagram, connecting entities, dates, places, suspects and associates. Conceptually the result resembled the whiteboards, pictures and pins popular on cop shows. Except Gus never used red string.
¡®Tier one¡¯ indicated personal connections only, not the connections of associates. Sly didn¡¯t have forever and each tier would add exponentially longer time to complete.
¡®Discretion?¡¯ read Gus¡¯s question on the ticker.
¡°Full,¡± said Sly, then hesitated, second-guessing the decision for a second. ¡®Full discretion¡¯ gave Gus permission to go ¡®the full McKinnon¡¯, meaning, if the inquiry headed that way, the AI would hack the Pentagon.
He gave a mental shrug.
Eleventh Commandment. ¡®Thou shalt not get caught¡¯.
¡®Confirmation?¡¯
¡°What I tell you three times is true,¡± said Sly. ¡°Go do it, go do it, go do it.¡±
Then he logged off and shut down.
After watching a film, the fifth in an absurdly violent series from a favorite franchise, he retired to bed. He read two chapters of a book that had belonged to his ex-wife before he tired of the banality of a plot to which he couldn¡¯t relate. He closed the paperback and lay in the darkness of the room until oblivion found him. When he finally slept, he ran an oppressive lightless dungeon, hearing distant screams.
As usual, Serenity haunted his dreams.
Chapter Two: PART I - Leviathan Station
The initial flight to New Zealand required the nine men and two women in Sly¡¯s entourage to board two commercial aircraft and spend more than thirty hours on coaches, planes, in transit lounges and queues. Patience was one of Sly¡¯s superpowers, but even he had a hard time with boredom waiting for a plane.
Looking out through high airport windows in the AccessOne departure lounge at Dallas, Sly fell into conversation with Captain John Ramirez, an experienced officer he¡¯d personally recruited into the project.
Originally from Syracuse, upstate New York, the dark-haired man was full of enthusiasm. Ramirez wasn¡¯t Sly¡¯s first choice for the trip¡¯s unit commander, but the other man was out of the country, his hands likely full of someone else¡¯s mess. Regretfully, real missions took precedence to a volunteering gig the soldiers did in their space time. Under those circumstances, Ramirez was a more than adequate replacement ¨C a pragmatic officer with a strong sense of responsibility to his men.
¡°We¡¯re missing three on active service,¡± Ramirez said, frowning. ¡°That gonna be a problem? You wanted a full contingent for the testing.¡±
¡°Put bluntly, I wanted a couple of spares,¡± Sly said, sipping at a warm twelve ounce cup of coffee through the plastic lid. ¡°We¡¯ve enough bodies for our purposes, as long as no one breaks a leg.¡± He chuckled at a thought. ¡°We could even make that work, given the sensors are medical monitors, but let¡¯s not have to try.¡±
Ramirez looked out over the tarmac to where a titanic plane took fuel like a beached blue whale on a scaled-up intravenous drip.
¡°They¡¯re missing a treat,¡± he said, his face in disagreement with his words. ¡°A sixteen-hour flight in the belly of the beast. I¡¯ve not flown in any civilian plane that big. At least we¡¯ll have better food than they serve on a Hercules.¡±
¡°Denver to Christchurch¡¯s a long way,¡± Sly agreed. ¡°In my experience, more than four hours on any plane, however comfortable in theory, is in practice best endured asleep.¡±
¡°Your experience is more extensive than mine,¡± Ramirez said. ¡°I¡¯ve been overseas a couple of times, but Germany¡¯s not Afghanistan. Winters there were like being at home, plenty of snow.¡±
¡°Glacial ice will be a treat, then. How¡¯s your XO settling in?¡±
¡°Lieutenant Sarah Kim¡¯s a capable, ambitious officer,¡± Ramirez said, and Sly pictured an athletic, attractive woman with sharp features, a sharper analytical mind and multifarious language skills. ¡°She¡¯s overseeing the operations sergeants.¡±
¡°Marcus and Clarke? How¡¯s that going?¡±
¡°They¡¯re bedding in okay, but they didn¡¯t know each other in their units. The ops sergeants are good guys, fortunately. They can handle most things on their own.¡±
¡°I wouldn¡¯t want to argue with Emil Marcus,¡± said Sly, keeping a straight face.
¡°They call him Mount Doom,¡± Ramirez smiled. ¡°He¡¯s a big man, he comes over as serious as a court martial, but he¡¯s got a sense of humour, even if you have to drill for it. Physical intimidation will get you a long way. He¡¯s teamed with Sergeant Grace Clarke, so when simple compliance isn¡¯t enough, he¡¯s got her to lean on. She¡¯s Kim¡¯s chief fixer and problem solver, for anything Marcus can¡¯t simply bulldoze through.¡±
Sly grinned, remembering a compact redhead with freckles that stood out through a ski mask. ¡°I can imagine them together. Isn¡¯t she on the short side?¡±
¡°I won¡¯t tell her you said that,¡± the captain said drily. ¡°Sure, Clarke¡¯s not tall, but she¡¯s built like a Ford Bronco ¨C muscles on a small frame, like a power lifter. Weaklings didn¡¯t pass SFAS.¡±
Or the year-long Special Forces Qualification Course. He recalled how Clarke¡¯s shoulders filled her jacket, but what stuck in his mind from the interview was her incisive intellect: switched on, prepared, and mentally tough.
Unauthorized usage: this tale is on Amazon without the author''s consent. Report any sightings.
Hearing the call to proceed to the gate, Sly looked around for a bin for the cup.
The team arrived in Christchurch on the ninth of October and Sly received a stream of messages as they queued for immigration. An email from the multi-node Gus agent in the US said it was working on the link-analysis but that the research was so far incomplete. Another message from Army Logistics belatedly offered the team an alternative military transport via Punta Arenas in Chile. The flight was the usual way for US military to travel far south, but Sly would¡¯ve said no, even if the proposal hadn¡¯t been absurdly late. He wanted the team to keep to its covert profile, using travel options college-funded personnel might use.
Talking to immigration, Sly leaned into Ronald Thorpe¡¯s ¡®accidental¡¯ death. As planned, he and two of his team, Ramirez and Nguyen, acted as insurance investigators. The rest of the group posed as a specialist facilities team tasked with assessing the living conditions at the Area 71 base, to make them safe before the start of the season ¨C close enough to the truth.
In Christchurch the team was briefed by a representative of the US Antarctic Program before collecting their Extreme Cold Weather gear and boarding a C-130 Hercules capable of landing at McMurdo Station, a civilian base outside the Antarctic Circle serviced by the US military.
The mild weather on arrival at McMurdo was deceptive. Two hours after they arrived a storm hit, accompanied by shrill high winds, and the team lost a day of travel-time. Sly used the delay in cramped quarters to prepare his dozen volunteers for the harsh conditions of the remote continental interior. They were all well-trained and capable but hadn¡¯t previously visited the Antarctic Plateau.
He also checked everyone was happy with their eyewear. Worn for both team communications and low-light vision, ¡®shades¡¯ were technologically advanced. Each fused a powerful processor, state-of-the-art micro-LED optical projectors, waveguide lenses and solid-state batteries into thin classic frames. Sly kept a pair for himself despite Clarity having many of the same functions. That was mostly for the audio communications, but shades made damn fine sunglasses, too.
The thousand-mile flight to Leviathan Station was delayed until the winds died and the de Havilland Twin Otter could safely take off. The ski-equipped aircraft were smaller than the Hercules, but most everything was. Area 71 had a short ice strip, but no one knew if the field was clear enough to use. Since the peculiar death and the evacuation of the winter maintenance team, no residents remained at the base to check for obstructions or storm debris.
Not willing to risk a direct flight, Sly co-ordinated with International Operations at Leviathan to request immediate ground transport. Leviathan readily agreed since the station still had Area 71¡¯s Bandvagn ¡®Hagglund¡¯, a big Swedish-built all-terrain vehicle the researchers left when they flew out with the body of Ronald Thorpe.
The final flight to Leviathan Station was worth the tedious trip so far.
Below the plane stretched a landscape that Ernest Shackleton, the preeminent explorer of the Heroic Age of Antarctic Exploration, had described as a ¡®white chaos of frozen waves and bergs¡¯.
Around him in the plane Sly saw haunted expressions as his team-mates stared down to the harsh, pristine beauty of the ice. The quality of the light from the midnight sun dazzled, and a vivid blue and green glow sprang from the prismatic edges of the ice. Very occasionally a stark black rock breached the surface, like the crooked back of an enormous whale caressed by the spumes of wind-devils, only to sink as the Twin Otter flew on.
Landing against a crosswind was dramatic but ultimately uneventful. The Green Berets came down from the plane to the ice in single file, where a tracked vehicle from Leviathan awaited. The team stepped up into the rear passenger unit with the ease of familiarity, and Sly climbed up beside the driver.
Five minutes later their rough terrain taxi parked up by a living module on sleds, half-way between the airfield and the base on the horizon, spewing snow as it braked. The driver pulled in behind another caterpillar-tracked vehicle wearing the patina of much use, as if a fool rubbed it down daily with one-eighty-grit sandpaper. Two equally wind-chapped drivers sat in the surprisingly pleasant living module as Sly stepped in, one idly reading an old birthday card from a shelf. They were waiting for him, and both were experienced with the likely conditions and the route.
¡°It¡¯s a twenty hour-drive to Area 71,¡± explained Joe, the older man. ¡°October¡¯s a transition month. You can get minus-thirty temperatures most days, but the weather can turn nasty in the blink of an eye.¡±
Sly raised a mental eyebrow. Was minus-thirty not nasty? He realized then that Antarctica would be held to a different standard to most places he¡¯d been to, even those known for their harsh climate.
¡°It¡¯s best to have guides,¡± the one called Tony said, with an accent Sly recognized as Amsterdam Dutch. ¡°I¡¯ll drive you, Joe¡¯ll come in a second vehicle with more of your gear. And later he¡¯ll drive me and him back.¡±
And that was that.
Chapter Two: PART II: The Green Berets
Sly had interviewed all the Green Berets volunteers personally but the journey so far cast them all in a new light. As Tony drove, Sly reviewed their profiles and made notes, flicking over the details of Captain John Ramirez, his XO Sarah Kim, and the two operations sergeants, Marcus and Clarke, before landing on a picture of man with narrow Asiatic features.
Richard Nguyen?
Sly checked the name, found it was correct, and remembered a lanky man of part-Vietnamese origin with an infectious laugh. A humorous man, Nguyen liked to talk but listened more and with great empathy, and people liked him on first meeting. Just one of the reasons Nguyan excelled as the team¡¯s intelligence sergeant.
Sly couldn¡¯t contemplate Nguyen without next thinking of ¡®Trap¡¯ Singh, his near-constant wingman. Originally from Detroit, and still speaking as if through his nose, Singh was one of two engineering sergeants. The other was Michael Lee, a wiry southerner who smelled of spearmint gum and annoyed anyone in a hurry with his precision and slow deliberate drawl.
Christian O¡¯Connor and Josh Smith were the team¡¯s medics. O¡¯Connor was the darker, older, calmer, more experienced man, in his mid-thirties, while Smith was ten years younger, blonde, hot-headed and nervous. They spent no time together. Although Sly saw no sign of rancour they were very different men.
Both communications sergeants stood out. Eli Brown was not the African American stereotype the name suggested, but a lean, tanned white man wearing sun-bleached hair cut too long for the Army standard, and white protective studs in three places up his left ear. A green grass-snake tattoo crept from the back of his brown wrist, when it wasn¡¯t tucked into heavy-duty parka and double-gloves.
Sly mentally labelled the laid-back and free-spirited Eli, ¡®surfer dude¡¯.
The other coms sergeant was Nio Gonzalez. The short man came across as a stereotypical Latino ¨C powerful, macho and in your face ¨C but he put his ethnicity on and off like a hat, and was a diplomat, not a troublemaker, despite excellent camouflage.
More individual insight came from the Peacock profiles¡¯ scores for intelligence, strength, dexterity, wisdom, constitution, and charisma. Sly wasn¡¯t shocked that Sarah Kim was highest on measures of pure intelligence while her partner Emil Marcus was the strongest physically. Sly thought Emil resembled a Tarzan pulp-fiction book-cover, had Tarzan been bigger and a Brother.
Neither was it shocking that charisma was Nguyen¡¯s highest stat. His score was neck-and-neck with that of Sergeant Clarke, which was a revelation. As the team fixer Grace Clarke excelled at engaging others and getting things done, but her charisma was relatively low key. Nio Gonzalez was highest on wisdom, and only a short notch below Sarah Kim on intelligence. That was another shock for Sly: Nio had evidently gained the team¡¯s trust in a remarkably short time.
Peacock Profiles were excellent at identifying clusters of attributes, but how these manifested in the real world was utterly unpredictable. Eli Brown was huge on dexterity but Sly had to root deep before he found Surfer Dude¡¯s actual passion was free climbing and free running, sometimes known as parkour. In contrast, Trap Singh was high on strength and constitution, and only average on dexterity. Sly read that Trap competed in ironman triathlons, and twice placed in the 70.3 in Frankfort, Michigan.
O¡¯Connor was quietly charismatic, but the medic¡¯s formal analytical thinking skills were well developed to compensate for being a relative plodder, intelligence-wise. His counterpart, Smith, was high in brains, dexterity, and constitution. Smith was a very good twenty-four-hour poker player and could deal out a new pack of cards in thirty seconds, or less when showing off. Despite all that, Sly decided he¡¯d go to O¡¯Connor if he was ever rubbed sore in a private place. Smith had a keen brain, fast hands and a motormouth but nearly no bedside manner or tact.
If you find this story on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the infringement.
Near the end of the interminable journey, Sly received an internal message from the rear tractor unit. It was from Ramirez.
¡®Hey Colonel. What¡¯s our ETA?¡¯
The tickertape appeared in Sly¡¯s vision at perfect reading distance. He glanced down at his hands and Gus drafted a couple of intelligent replies. Sly flicked one to the captain with a twitch of a finger.
¡®Three hours, now Area 71¡¯s on the map. Can¡¯t you sleep?¡¯
¡®Not in this box. It¡¯s not bright, but it¡¯s light.¡¯
¡®This is Antarctica, you¡¯ll be tired by sunset,¡¯ Sly joked, writing with a finger in the air as if on a misted pane of glass. Gus read his ¡®handwriting¡¯ and autocompleted without error. ¡®Is the team at each other¡¯s throats yet?¡¯
¡®Not so you¡¯d notice,¡¯ Ramirez tapped back. ¡®You can¡¯t tell?¡¯
¡®Rude to look at the profiles too often,¡¯ Sly said. He had peeked regularly ¨C it was an equipment test after all ¨C but each soldier could see a glowing icon when he, the Exercise Director, or Ramirez looked in. ¡®They need some privacy.¡¯
¡®They¡¯d signal,¡¯ Ramirez typed, referring to the privacy ¡®lock-out¡¯ option on their interface. ¡®Most are still making friends, swapping stats and skills-info. When do we pick up the kit?¡¯
¡®When the drivers drop us off and head back to Leviathan. The cache is at the marked drop-point, from a LAPES drop two hours ago.¡¯
A low-altitude technique, LAPES used parachutes to extract supplies from an aircraft onto the ice without landing. The cache contained Ramirez¡¯s ¡®kit¡¯.
¡®Is the onboard equipment working well?¡¯
Ramirez understood his reference to the implanted medical sensors. No one entirely knew how they would perform in such extreme conditions. Which was entirely the point of coming this far south.
¡®Funny you ask,¡¯ Ramirez wrote. ¡®Clarke and Brown mentioned they felt ¡®shivers¡¯ ¨C not from the cold, and not unpleasant or painful, but I¡¯ve asked around and most are feeling it.¡¯
¡®From the strands?¡¯
Ramirez sent a thumbs-up emoji.
The main Peacock sensor was called a ¡®strand¡¯ because it resembled a vertical hair follicle, or a microscopic blade of grass. Volunteers had hundreds of strands embedded under their skin, each one harvesting energy using the piezoelectric effect. The devices were effectively mechanical batteries, microscopic springs tightened by motion. When power was required by a sensor, its spring released to transform potential energy into vibration, thus generating electricity.
Dr Frank had theorised that a mass release of coiled energy might give a haptic signal that dermis nerve cells could sense. If the body felt the release as a ¡®shiver¡¯, perhaps Dr Frank was right.
But what caused the surplus potential energy in the first place?
¡®The strands might be picking up extra charge from the ice¡¯s ambient field,¡¯Sly intuited. ¡®If so, the sensors are shedding excessive energy to avoid damage.¡¯
¡®An electric field. The Southern Lights?¡¯
¡®No, not ¡®Aurora Australis¡¯. Ice crystals create an electric field when they rub against each other, called polar triboelectricity. Not something I¡¯ve heard anyone making use of, but there¡¯s a heck of a lot of ice hereabouts.¡¯
¡®I can tell the guys it isn¡¯t dangerous?¡¯
¡®Maybe even useful,¡¯ Sly wrote, pausing momentarily as the vehicle rose and fell like a buoy on choppy seas. ¡®Sharks and electric eels use electroreception to sense prey. Perhaps we can, too.¡¯
A pause, but Sly sensed the captain¡¯s amusement in the ether.
¡®How do you know this stuff? That¡¯s magic.¡¯
¡®Gus is my ghost-writer. I repeat what he says.¡¯
¡®If you understand half of what Gus writes you¡¯re a magician.¡¯
Sly laughed but remembered Ramirez¡¯s small joke for a very long time.
Chapter Two: PART III - The Nunatak
The nunatak appeared as a massive solitary peak, a rough pyramid worthy of Egypt rising abruptly from the ice. In stark contrast to the flat expanse of the surrounding glacier, the grey-lit rock face was craggy and steep, and its shadowed slopes were dotted and splashed with patches of brown and green where cold-adapted lichen and moss eked out an existence in the peak¡¯s crevices and cracks.
Area 71¡¯s entrance was on the sheltered leeward side, marked by a road through the rocks that was a caesarean scar across the pristine landscape. Sly gratefully accepted Ramirez¡¯s offer to reconnoitre, and watched through the misted window as the team came out on to the ice and climbed the scree, occasionally pausing to stare at the dark peak above.
Sly remained with Tony in the warmth of the cab until Ramirez sent word, then checked his protective gear before stepping out into the bitter cold and wail of the wind. Shivering hard, he followed the wide, exposed track with his eyes down on his boots. Despite himself he couldn¡¯t help but imagine unseen valleys packed with a crushing weight of ice, far beneath his feet.
The rest of the team waited and made way as he passed, watching him as he gaped at the smooth, black and shiny wall stretched across the cave mouth, alien against lichen-covered, mottled-grey rock. Cables, secured by screws into the mountain, held the space-age fabric taut, flat and utterly rigid. Given its location, this was an astonishing feat of engineering.
The black wall even sported a bigger-than-garage sized door: a metal-edged, ten by ten metre frame filled with lightweight polyurethane. On the left side of the square, a recessed handle in hardy galvanized metal revealed a judas gate. The door within a door wasn¡¯t locked and swung open easily when Sly twisted the handle with a gloved hand. He bowed his head, stepped over and through.
Inside lights came on automatically, revealing room for a handful of people between the outer wall and another inner skin of the same shiny material. The roof above was tight-stretched and transparent. Inside, the sound of the wind faded.
¡°An airlock,¡± said Trap Singh, nasal through his mask. ¡°To stop the heat from escaping. Over-engineered but cheap, CU¡¯s signature move.¡±
Sly wondered how Charlton U got permission to build all this, or if in fact it had. Antarctica was supposed to be left as pristine as they found it, but here was a super-modern door at the end of a road clearly blasted out by plastic explosive.
If I asked a dozen people to go live in a hole, I¡¯d make it nice, but who agreed to let Charlton do this?
In line with instructions on a faded poster on the opposite wall, he brought seven people into the airlock on the first go. The judas gate was well-made and clunked as he shut it. Not European luxury-car thunk, but nearly ¨C the well-built, mid-range Mexican-made thonk. Fans buzzed as the door closed, sucking cold air out near the floor. Heated air fluttered through flaps at head height and the chamber¡¯s air gradually warmed. A minute later Sly opened the second door and waved the first members of Peacock into Area 71.
Then he closed the door ¨C another thonk ¨C and cycled through the last of the group. When the inner door to Area 71 open the second time he followed through. Inside it was¡ pleasant. Not t-shirt temperature, as his breath steamed in the cold air that had accompanied them inside, but paradise compared to the reverse-inferno outside. He was frankly startled: after the video he¡¯d not expected comfort.
Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.
¡°The builders must¡¯ve had serious weight restrictions,¡± Singh said, a lift in his nasally voice, the sound of a geek speculating. ¡°It¡¯s all high-density, low-weight materials ¨C silica aerogel, or polyurethane. I bet it can all be pulled apart, collapsed or rolled up, or could before the college glued it to the South Pole.¡±
¡°We¡¯re a thousand miles from the South Pole,¡± said a southern drawl. When the speaker removed his face-mask Sly saw Michael Lee, the other engineering sergeant. ¡°But I catch your drift.¡±
Ping. The sound through the shades was Gus, announcing it had accessed the base LAN and computers. Sly checked but saw no access to the satellite. The site schematic appeared in Sly¡¯s vision then expanded as chairs and tool-racks populated the map-key. Bodycams and other cameras continued to feed Gus with detail by the megabyte, and the map¡¯s details grew.
Still in the garage Sly passed lockers, hooks for outdoor clothes, and barrels for vehicle fuel, while walking over a flat, rippled lake of poured concrete ¨C a parking bay for the tracked vehicle now out on the ice. Bringing the vehicle in would crack the airlock like an egg, losing a lot of the garage¡¯s heat, but Sly found more insulated internal doors to limit the damage. The designers evidently thought of everything.
He asked Gus to draft an email for Fox¡¯s mission command, to send the next time the base had a satellite fly-over. The polar-orbiting satellites were literally lifesavers, but their rare overflights were easily disrupted by snowstorms or even high winds. Area 71 was cut off now and could remain so days at a time.
That also meant his local Gus node was currently configured as an independent agent. The AI would be functionally limited until it burrowed into the local computing infrastructure, exploiting any unused processing capacity.
Uneasy, he looked at the update map and schematics.
Were Ronnie Thorpe¡¯s killers in this part of the complex? I hope not. I wouldn¡¯t want to be cut off from external communications during a firefight. Fox¡¯s briefing and available schematics suggest no one could follow the research team this close to the surface, but how far can I trust those conclusions? Information¡¯s only as trustworthy as the source, and I trust Jarvis and Fox about as far as I could throw them.
Too late. We¡¯re here now.
He followed the others up into the complex and watched Gus do what Gus was designed to do. Using images from bodycams to build up a map.
Mike was wrong. I made a fuss when Argos was taken. I just didn¡¯t win.
The memory was painful. The lawyers pried Argos from Sly¡¯s clutching fingers, pounded him over the head with his orders before he pulled back and let Argos go, inches short of doing something rash. Even thinking about it now made his blood pressure spike. The handover team left nothing behind, no papers or copies of files, no early prototypes or code. Sly watched them try to salt the earth.
In Roman mythology the grieving Hera, Zeus''s consort, mourned her watchful servant Argos Panoptes by replicating his eyes on the feathers of peacocks.
The choice of name for his next project was a small, petty but personally satisfying middle-digit salute to the bureaucrats who sold him out.
Naturally his grudge went further than that.
Like Hera, I told my last piece of Argos to go forth and replicate, at least until it was safe to come back. Like a parasite or a virus, or a guerilla army in the wilderness, that¡¯s exactly what it did. As long as Gus keeps its core code locked away, distributed across the nodal swarm, Oversight can¡¯t prove Gus and Argos are the same thing, or destroy the last copy without my help.
Sly didn¡¯t tell Gus to stop seeding copies. Only to be discreet.
Chapter Two: PART IV: RHIP
On the paperwork, Area 71 was still officially called Station Job-22. Named after George Job, now a disgraced retired senator, Sly was amused that the name also referred to the chapter of the bible where Eliphaz accused Job of great wickedness, declaring his suffering to be the result of sin.
No one used the base¡¯s proper name unless they were signing off cost.
Outside Area 71 was a place of great suffering, but inside wasn¡¯t terrible. The complex had both light and heat, and more space than Sly imagined possible from a cave. Once volcanic, Mt Conrad¡¯s depths were still very warm. Natural shafts honeycombed the mountain, and a double shaft, named the ¡®Endless Stair¡¯ by an anonymous Tolkien fan, ran vertically from the pit to the peak, a chimney within a chimney all the way up.
Or all the way down, depending on how you looked at it.
Sly shuddered as he passed the signs to the pit entrance. As a child, he had never been afraid of what lay under the bed but, after Serenity, Sly had developed a deep unease concerning lightless labyrinths and confined spaces ¨C he just couldn¡¯t remember why. He¡¯d returned from Turkey without broken bones but with a terrible dread of the dark, combined with partial dissociative amnesia. He couldn¡¯t recall everything that had happened on the mission. Guaranteed electricity was reassuring, though. He never again wanted to grope about in the dark.
The design and installation of sustainable energy at the complex was the topic of Area 71¡¯s most cited research papers. CU¡¯s academic engineers installed efficient turbines in the Stair¡¯s central shaft to produce electricity from rising air currents. Together with a winch-and-stone gravity battery, the site produced electricity all year round.
The electric heaters and boilers catered to the dormitories, and to three executive rooms. Each dorm slept eight, for a total of twenty-seven souls.
This book was originally published on Royal Road. Check it out there for the real experience.
Officially the station had never once been that full. The seasonal researchers must have had their pick of beds.
When Sly took a quick tour of the facility, the exec rooms were all occupied, containing the crumpled clothing and scattered belongings of Thorpe¡¯s companions. They all provided near obscene levels of luxurious comfort, considering Area 71¡¯s outrageous location.
¡°It¡¯s like discovering Armstrong had a bidet on the moon,¡± John Ramirez said, accompanying him as they shared a look around Peck¡¯s plush room.
¡°Rank Hath Its Privileges is a military axiom,¡± Sly supplied thoughtfully. ¡°RHIP¡¯s not biblical, though it sure sounds like it ought to be. And RHIP¡¯s not usual in the academic world, and though that can depend on the school, I didn¡¯t think CU was like that. Peck was military, I think, and not so long ago.¡±
Ramirez frowned dubiously. ¡°That isn¡¯t in the file.¡±
¡°No, it wasn¡¯t,¡± said Sly, pensively. ¡°Have we found where the fourth guy was sleeping? The researcher who died?¡±
¡°You mean Ronald Thorpe?¡±
¡°Yeah. We need to find his gear.¡±
Ramirez shook his head. ¡°No idea where he bunked but there¡¯s plenty of choice. You got Peck was ex-military because he has a room? They all had rooms. And personal bathrooms, by God.¡±
¡°Sure,¡± Sly said without humour, meeting the captain¡¯s eyes. ¡°Look at it this way. If you worked for CU as a non-academic safety manager, and were sent to the South Pole with three academic colleagues, one of them evidently both a researcher and a woman¡ who do you think would get the biggest bathroom?¡±
Ramirez looked through to the ensuite. Sly knew what he saw. The bathroom equipment was plastic ¨C that weight issue again ¨C but there was a proper toilet, with plumbing, and the shower was spacious. The other bathrooms were more the size of built-in wardrobes. Sly was sure Peck¡¯s was the largest single room.
¡°I take the point,¡± Ramirez said, ¡°although Peck might just have been a dick.¡±
¡°I don¡¯t think he was,¡± Sly said. ¡°I heard him on a recording and thought he sounded ex-military. He oversaw the caretakers, and the others did what he said in a dangerous situation, but he wouldn¡¯t have outranked the senior academic. The other two apparently let him take the biggest room, while Thorpe, another genuine vulcanologist, isn¡¯t even here. This whole thing feels off.¡±
Chapter TWO: PART V - Doubts
The questions bugging Sly for days gained extra weight when they entered Area 71. The base was not, couldn¡¯t be a purely academic research station, that idea was clearly bogus. The prestigious Charlton University provided a convenient false front and Area 71 might have produced academic papers, but no facility this lavish could be funded by a single academic institution, even with the support of a CIA investment fund.
It only makes sense if the CIA, not CU, was the principal partner.
The facility was sophisticated, and way larger than Sly had expected. Walking from chamber to chamber and into the substantial storerooms, he¡¯d been astonished by the crates of tins and dried provisions, enough to last months.
Sly wanted to believe General Fox¡¯s description of the situation but even in the conference room he¡¯d sensed something wrong. The way Fox had subtly deferred to ¡®Intelligence Officer¡¯ Jarvis, the way the video smelled like greasepaint and bullshit, designed to persuade. The edited bodycam footage wasn¡¯t real evidence. Gus didn¡¯t think the images looked fake, and a CIA analyst had supposedly evaluated the video, but you could march a herd of mammoths in sparkly spandex through gaps in the edited footage.
Even at the time it had felt like a long con, not a briefing.
One thing was certain, though. General Fox wouldn¡¯t have ordered Special Forces half-way across the world into the most extreme of environments, at substantial cost from an official budget, if the operation wasn¡¯t somehow critical to the national interest.
Or General Fox¡¯s interest, at least, if there¡¯s a difference.
Love what you''re reading? Discover and support the author on the platform they originally published on.
If all Fox wanted was an A-Team on site, he only needed to say hey guys, here¡¯s your shake-down exercise, and it¡¯s a doozy! Sly would have come running, without the flummery.
Sly didn¡¯t think this site was about the search for rare earth minerals. He didn¡¯t expect to be told whyintruders were interested in the lowest levels of Area 71, but he knew it wasn¡¯t for ore, however exotic.
No one spends this much money and political capital in Antarctica for minerals that can¡¯t be extracted at scale without huge international backlash. Although, come to think of it, some politicians he knew might want to give it a go.
Sly wasn¡¯t na?ve enough to expect the unvarnished truth. No Special Ops team was ever told more than they needed to know. Point and shoot, enough detail to shine a light on the enemies¡¯ motives and resources, but no more. He¡¯d not expected Fox and Jarvis to tell him what Area 71 was really for.
Sly had expected to work it out for himself, once he was here.
For now, though, Area 71¡¯s mystery remained unsolved. He knew one thing for sure. Gus had given an initial analysis of the edited footage of Peck, Thorpe, Chopra and Allen, concluding the pictures weren¡¯t generated by AI. Gus was still searching for the raw, unedited feed as Sly departed for the airport, but the initial conclusion was clear.
General Fox hadn¡¯t shown him images cut from whole cloth.
But if you took the footage at face value ¨C and Sly still had his doubts ¨C there must be another way into the complex.
Clunk-clunk. The key turns in the padlock and the chains drop. Twenty-five minutes later Thorpe dies, shot by crossbow inside the gate, but Peck hadn¡¯t moved from the entrance. Ergo, the perpetrators were inside before the caretakers arrived.
All known keys were accounted for and, based on the official map, there was only one way in. But what if the maps were wrong?
Chapter Three: PART I - The Cache
The next three hours began with Sly shrugging off his coats.
He arranged hot food for the drivers from Leviathan, Tony and Joe, but gave them no reason to stay. Sly regretted he couldn¡¯t show more hospitality, but he was there to do a job and there was a potential, however small, that the caves weren¡¯t safe. He said as much to the pair, and they accepted it. It was the truth, after all, although not in the way they thought. Tony brought Area 71¡¯s Hagglund up the steep slope and into the garage, and two hours later the Europeans departed, fuel tanks full.
As soon as the drivers were out of sight, Nio Gonzalez tracked the airdrop cache signal out on to the ice. He took the initiative, a snowmobile and a sled he found in the garage, and was back twenty minutes later with the first load. Lieutenant Kim and Sergeant Marcus went with him on the second run and they returned with everything else.
The cache contained items Sly couldn¡¯t have explained at any border. He busied himself checking the contents and each item was ticked off the digital list as Gus spotted it through Clarity¡¯s digital eye. The haul from Gonzalez¡¯s first run included M4A1 carbines, side-arms, and M500 shotguns: standard weapons readily available from any US armoury. There was also enough ammo for a small war.
The second load contained boxes of helmets plus a mix of armour rated from NIJ Level II to IIIA. Stopping anything short of rifle rounds, the modular armour design allowed the addition of a padded chainmail undershirt and a ceramic-plate vest, a modern take on protection against slashing and piercing weapons. With protestors in mind Sly¡¯s inventory also included less lethal systems, from pepper spray and CS gas to flashbang grenades, rubber bullets and bean-bag rounds.
Carbine suppressors were at the bottom of the second load. Calling the precision-engineered sleeves ¡®silencers¡¯ was misleading, as a suppressed shot resembled a jackhammer more than the ¡®phut¡¯ of a silenced weapon from popular action movies. Anything that made a full-on assault less noisy was desirable in the echoing caves, however. Sly preferred a police action to a battle, but naturally it was better to have the suppressors and not need them, than the reverse.
During planning Sly judged that underground warfare rewarded mobility much more than heavy weaponry. A single carbine could control a corridor, so long as the operator couldn¡¯t be flanked, and any weapon that would literally bring the roof down on friend and foe alike wasn¡¯t worth the airfreight. His one contingency was the inclusion of a M2010 sniper rifle. From elevation the rifle could kill most things a sniper could see, and you could see a lot across flat ice on a well-lit day. It went without saying that fighting outdoors hereabouts meant the situation had already gone to shit. A well-lit day in Antarctica was as rare as a cold day in hell.
Clarke was appointed armourer once the weapons were in and unpacked. Sly signed for a belt and a Sig Sauer M17 for his personal use, plus a handful of 9mm clips and a cleaning kit. Then he watched as Captain Ramirez organized a thorough sweep of the upper cavern.
According to Gus, Area 71¡¯s four levels started with the garage and accommodation nearest the surface. Immediately below, a service level similar in size and extent to the first provided space for water purification, laundry, waste treatment and electricity systems. Sly¡¯s hands were clammy and his mouth dry as he descended the gentle slope to L2 with the captain, Serenity prominent in his mind.
Serenity¡¯s objective had been the capture of Gustav Meier, the notorious leader of an equally infamous terrorist faction, who the NSA tracked to the historical and archaeological site of Derinkuyu in the Cappadocia region of Turkey. An underground city carved out of soft volcanic rock, Derinkuyu once housed twenty thousand people in an extensive network of tunnels, rooms and chambers. The city was now a tourist attraction and as such wasn¡¯t permanently inhabited, except by Meier and his cadre, who had broken through thin walls into a hitherto unknown district of the site.
This story originates from a different website. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.
Acting as recon, Sly tailed one of the gang members back to the Meier¡¯s base, but it had been a terrible mistake. The man drew him on into a maze-like area of the underground city, one with no radio coverage, and straight into a trap.
Following Ramirez down into the depths of Area 71, Sly recalled his escape. He¡¯d been injured in a firefight, pursued by the gang into an even older and more unsafe section of unlit passageways where he¡¯d lost the terrorists but also his sense of direction in the dark. Three days later, half dead from blood loss and dehydration, he¡¯d stumbled out of a passage following the ghostly flashlights and laughter of a local school tour. He hardly knew who he was, never mind where he¡¯d been.
Derinkuyu was thousands of miles away, but Area 71 was underground, uninhabited, and barely half-lit, and the similarities were too close for comfort. Area 71¡¯s upper levels both possessed sinuous, smooth, and tubular curving walls, which he assumed was natural, but scaffolding and plastic planks were needed to bridge uneven ground. To Sly¡¯s eyes, every hollow and recess was a hidden entrance into a world of shadows. Poor lines of sight made clearing the chambers unusual, but the team got the job done and without undue fuss, another day at the office for the rest of the team.
Sly knew that Level Three ¨C L3 for short ¨C would be less easily cleared. For one, it was more than a hundred metres deeper underground, accessible only by cage hoist. L3 was also the most fertile research ground, where the geologists spent most of their time. Published research papers on Antarctic volcanic processes, mineral analysis and water erosion all cited L3 rocks and strata. Naturally the search teams would need to take care not to disturb the site.
Ramirez found the elevator shaft and the immobilized cage hoist but sent no one down. A cage hoist was to an elevator as a dune buggy was to a suburban 4x4 ¨C stripped down, open to the air and offering minimal extra protection. Although there were external control panels at the top of each shaft, each cage was normally controlled by onboard operators. When Peck¡¯s team had escaped, leaving the cage hoists inaccessible and unpowered, they had trapped the intruders below. If the attackers hadn¡¯t somehow climbed out, by now they¡¯d presumably do almost anything to escape.
Sly wondered if the mission would end tamely with the macabre discovery of mummified corpses in the dark, but he was curiously dissatisfied by the thought. In either case, they would need to wait to find out. Ramirez wanted to clear the upper complex before tackling L3 or L4, and Sly agreed wholeheartedly. He too disliked to leave dangers at his back.
Below L3, access to the caverns was restricted, gated and locked-off. The deepest caves were labelled ¡®unsafe¡¯ and that wasn¡¯t wrong, since Ronald Thorpe died on L4. Thinking about the darkness in the deepest caverns made his gut clench.
Sly¡¯s mind was full of dark speculation when Richard Nguyen knocked outside his room. While some of the rooms had fabric or beaded curtains, Sly¡¯s converted cubbyhole he used as an office and a makeshift bedroom had neither. He beckoned both visitors into the narrow space and asked Nguyen to sit. Ramirez chose to watch from what would¡¯ve been the doorway, if there had been a door.
¡°I¡¯d like you to take a couple of helpers and thoroughly search the researchers¡¯ rooms,¡± Sly said without much preamble. ¡°Document and pack their things, be meticulous and box them carefully but leave nothing behind. Note anything out of place or unusual. Before you ask, I don¡¯t know what I¡¯m expecting, only that it¡¯s important. Pay attention to books, papers, recording machines, and USB devices.¡±
Nguyen was uncharacteristically business-like. ¡°Yes, Colonel.¡±
¡°Then, search the dormitories, look for places anything the size of a book, or even a roll of paper, might be hidden. Use your imagination. Give it a good sweep.¡±
The intelligence officer nodded, and Sly let him go.
Sly asked Ramirez to stay for a moment but said just one thing.
¡°We¡¯ll go deeper tomorrow. Get ready for L3.¡±
Chapter Three: PART II - Man Down
Sly woke with sweat caking his face, not knowing where he was. He groaned as the last nightmares fled, then waved at the sensors to trigger the lights. The skin of his neck buzzed again and fast footsteps outside said others had received the alert.
Feeling clammy, Sly swung out of bed, put on his shades and belted on the Sig. He trotted to the duty watch desk, to be told the medical alarm was tilted by not one but two men. Emil Marcus¡¯s high heartrate had crossed the upper threshold. Worse, Christian O¡¯Connor¡¯s was the opposite, his stats through the floor.
¡°Marcus was on patrol with O¡¯Connor, Kim and Clarke,¡± Ramirez said, joining him. ¡°Maybe a bug but we¡¯re investigating.¡±
Sly checked on Marcus¡¯ location and stats, now elevated but in a normal range. According to the map, Marcus was one level down, not moving around. There were others from the team with him.
Four minutes had passed, but communications were still confused.
¡°Who else is down there?¡±
¡°Kim and Clarke. They were part of the same duty, two and two.¡±
¡®Two and two¡¯, so split shifts. Kim and Clarke had been asleep but nearby when the incident happened.
Ramirez froze, distracted by a report through his shades.
Then he moved again, only faster.
¡°Marcus is okay but was paired with O¡¯Connor, and O¡¯Connor¡¯s down.¡±
Sly wondered if he¡¯d heard right, then experience and training took over and he set his jaw against the shock. Self-recrimination would come later, when he knew what had happened. He and Ramirez sprinted to the map co-ordinates, emerging from a tunnel to find Marcus on his knees, Kim standing over him, with the barred entrance to the L3 cage-hoist as the backdrop to the scene.
Kneeling in a widening pool of blood, Marcus applied pressure to O¡¯Connor¡¯s throat. Clarke, in body-armour and helmet and pointing a carbine away from the group, watched from the side. Boldly lit, the frozen scene was reminiscent of an artistic masterwork, the death of a Patroclus or Wolfe.
Sly divined only bad news.
¡°O¡¯Connor was the duty medic, I wanted one per watch,¡± said Ramirez, sounding unnaturally level. ¡°I¡¯ve sent for Smith, but he was off-duty and asleep.¡±
Lieutenant Kim reported that Marcus and O¡¯Connor had patrolled together. They separated as Marcus walked a perimeter and the medic stayed at the lift entrance. When Marcus returned, he saw O¡¯Connor already in trouble, his throat cut.
Josh Smith ran in, half-dressed, but when he knelt by Marcus the medic¡¯s shoulders sloped, and Sly intuited the medic was way too late.
Royal Road is the home of this novel. Visit there to read the original and support the author.
¡°Sergeant Marcus grappled with the attacker,¡± Sarah Kim continued with stiff formality, ¡°a skilled fighter. Marcus took knife hits, which were blocked by the ceramic armour, he said. The assailant fled, then Marcus chased.¡±
Head bowed, Emil Marcus rose and padded over in tactical armour, wiping his hands. He was a bear of a man, and O¡¯Connor¡¯s killer had needed formidable skills to take him on.
¡°Sergeant¡ in your own words?¡±
The sergeant¡¯s expression was as flat as the glacier, but it held an underlying emotion Sly could barely read, except he felt it himself. Shame.
¡°Captain,¡± he said, his voice deep and resonant. ¡°The guy who killed Christian was a real Ninja-type, matte-black armour, a cloak and a hood. I ran trying to catch him, but he disappeared.¡±
¡°He sprinted away?¡±
¡°No, Colonel.¡± Emil¡¯s stare was crocodilian, daring him to disagree. ¡°He disappeared, like vanished. He literally faded, a ghost on a breeze.¡±
¡°There¡¯s no one here,¡± Grace Clarke interrupted, a tension in her voice. ¡°I checked the corridor ¨C no one.¡±
Sly flicked through the record of Marcus¡¯s camera feed. The sergeant¡¯s shades were switched to night-vision, but data from the other cameras were automatically sent to Gus. Marcus had certainly seen someone. His shades captured an indistinct figure, blurred by night-vision¡¯s inability to follow very fast movement.
Sly rewound and tried three feeds at once, picture-in-picture.
In playback the pictures jerked around as Marcus fought frantically, the audio recording ragged breaths, then the attacker turned and bolted away. Marcus pursued explosively and held the gap for two, three seconds. Then the figure ahead became indistinct between one camera-jerk and the next.
And vanished.
Gone. The picture-in-picture infrared image also disappeared.
Even as two of the screens cleared, the image from the short-range UV camera blazed like a magnesium flare. The jinking shape of a running man filled the screen, so bright in the foreground that the image contained nothing else.
By the end of the sequence Marcus had been looking entirely the wrong way.
¡°Holy cow,¡± Sly muttered. He sent the clip to Ramirez and Marcus. Ramirez watched the clip, biting his lip in frustration, but by the end was ready with orders.
¡°Gus, broadcast please... This is Command, I want a two hundred metre cordon centred on me. When you¡¯re all in place, close in slowly. O¡¯Connor¡¯s down. His killer has a new invisibility tech, it¡¯s effective but is a roman candle under UV. I repeat, switch to ultraviolet, and if you see anything call it in. I want the killer alive. Shotguns, load up with ¡®fist¡¯ beanbag rounds. This guy is tough, don¡¯t assume fists will knock him cold, but give it your best shot. Command out.¡±
Beanbag rounds fired from a shotgun were a variety of less-lethal ordnance the team carried to deal with a protest group. If O¡¯Connor¡¯s assailant wore body armour, ¡®less lethal¡¯ mightn¡¯t be enough.
No one got to try beanbags as, thirty minutes later, it became clear Ghost had slipped the cordon. Captain Ramirez and Sly were ringed by the grim faces of eight other Green Berets, fully armed, and no one saw anything as the ring tightened.
Were eight in the cordon too few for the many natural corridors? Or had the ghost walked through walls? Either way, O¡¯Connor¡¯s assailant had escaped.
As they searched, Sly heard Nio Gonzalez wondering aloud how Ghost¡¯s gear worked. Sly himself knew of two ways to make an invisibility cloak. The first used metamaterials that could bend electromagnetic waves, like light, around an object. The second method used camouflage that mimicked patterns, colors and textures so the cloak was indistinguishable from its background, similar to the skin of a cuttlefish or chameleon.
Neither approach could entirely explain how Ghost disappeared while moving, or why the cloak reacted to UV. Or, Sly told himself, why people with perfect camouflage didn¡¯t carry guns.
No one saw Ghost again that night.
Chapter Three: PART III - L3 Assault
Night was a relative term. Outside the caves Antarctica was in perpetual daylight that was stark and intense, or diffused and dim, depending on the cloud cover. In contrast, Area 71¡¯s labyrinth of passageways lay in the eternal dusk of a mall at midnight. The always-on LED lights in the passageways were triggered by passive infrared sensors and flared with gold light when someone was close, then died back to a low umber.
Some of the team slept during that timeless twilight, but others remained at work, inspired by Christian O¡¯Connor¡¯s violent death. Now it was clear that hostiles were somehow loose on the base, the light-hearted banter among the Green Berets had darkened, and minds had focused on what needed to be done.
Ghost wasn¡¯t anywhere in the upper living areas, Ramirez was sure, which meant that the team would need to descend at least a level to chase him down. Sly didn¡¯t think it was a coincidence that Marcus and O¡¯Connor had been stationed as sentries near the shaft to L3, either. Somehow, Ghost knew the importance of the elevator.
One frozen instant from Marcus¡¯s encounter with Ghost offered another nugget of insight about the killer. The image presented a grainy hand holding a sliver of light, a knife a foot long and wavy in design.
A kris. One serious knife, used by Ghost to kill a man.
Sat together in Sly¡¯s room, Ramirez had drawn an important conclusion from the pictures they reviewed together.
¡°Ghost doesn¡¯t have a gun,¡± Ramirez said, eyes wide. ¡°If he¡¯d had a working firearm, he¡¯d have used it on both O¡¯Connor and Marcus. He wasn¡¯t slow to use the knife to kill O¡¯Connor. It wasn¡¯t restraint that held him back.¡±
¡°He either didn¡¯t carry a gun, or it was out of ammo,¡± Sly agreed.
Ramirez worried thoughts were reflected on his tired face.
¡°You want us to go down into L3,¡± he said. ¡°That means using the cage-hoist, but that¡¯s about the same as climbing into a shark cage when the great whites are armed with spearguns. The first guys down to L3 could, will probably come under fire from Ghost and friends. Now you tell me they maybe don¡¯t have guns, which is great. But they¡¯re known to have crossbows. Coming down slowly in a cage won¡¯t be fun.¡±
They decided to kit out the first row of men in the cage with shields that could handle an initial attack, assuming the killers had nothing better than projectile weapons, like javelins or bows. Ramirez gave the task to Michael Lee, who took lightweight polyurethane into the well-equipped workshop near the garage to make three shields with straps. Eli Brown and Nio Gonzalez contributed their labor.
Meanwhile Nguyen, Clarke and Singh searched the executive rooms. The soldiers used the first three minutes to pack the researchers¡¯ possessions, using Gus to inventory the items stored. Army-trained packers could put television decluttering experts to shame, at least for speed.
Then the trio scoured each room thoroughly. Clarke explored all the cavities in the sparse bedroom furniture and pulled out rubber stoppers from the collapsible beds, while Singh opened the toilets and unscrewed the sinks. When this produced nothing, Richard Nguyen thought a moment and then pointed up, at the spars for the lights. Sly watched Singh sigh and go for a ladder.
If you discover this tale on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the violation.
Sly slept for most of an hour before Nguyen presented him with his final haul. It was a mostly empty wooden container, the size of a cigar box. Sly lightly shook it and heard something slide. He tipped the contents into his hand. It was a small transparent baggie holding two smallish gems.
¡°You scored,¡± Sly said, thinking the bag might have held weed in another life.
¡°Someone smuggled in cut gems,¡± said Clarke, forcing a small, tired smile.
¡°A payment they didn¡¯t want traced?¡±
Sly held the stones up to the light. Diamonds?
He was no expert, to him they resembled his daughter¡¯s sparkly art supplies.
¡°How much would a full box be worth?¡±
Nyugen carefully considered the question and replied after a second.
¡°A kilo of diamonds is five thousand carats. High quality melee diamonds like those in the bag can range from three hundred to two thousand dollars per carat. Say, two million bucks and up, in a box that size.¡±
Sly mind stuttered. He hefted the container in his hand, which suddenly looked huge. He put it to one side and thoughtfully zipped the diamonds into a pocket.
About then, a satellite crossed above their heads. Seconds later Sly was interrupted, as he received notice that the link-analysis he¡¯d asked Gus for days ago was complete. He tensed as he read the analysis, followed the mind-map and contemplated the timeline the AI presented. There was a short snippet of video, zoomed in on Peck¡¯s lips. Gus¡¯s subtitles, generated from lipreading software, were ambiguous in some ways, incredibly revealing in others.
With all that, naturally he forgot about the diamonds.
When Sly next woke it was morning. That¡¯s what Gus called it, though the half-lit tunnels looked much the same. He showered, thinking about the day ahead, then shaved and found breakfast. Captain Ramirez was studying the shields at the edge of the kitchen, asking if the polyurethane sandwiches would hold against a crossbow.
Ramirez was rough, he hadn¡¯t slept well.
¡°No sir,¡± Lee said, not at all put out by the criticism. ¡°Crossbow quarrels are designed to hit with high-impact, penetrating chainmail and very occasionally steel plate, if hit at the right angle. With respect, Captain, that¡¯s not the point. If the bolts are going through this stuff, it won¡¯t be going through us. I designed these to slow and catch a bolt and not let it all the way through.¡±
Lee paused. ¡°Sure, we¡¯ll feel like fools if the other guys have a chain-fed MG.¡±
Someone chuckled at Lee¡¯s off-hand, laconic drawl.
Without humour, Ramirez grunted. ¡°Let¡¯s not worry about that now.¡±
As the mission¡¯s oversight officer, Sly did worry over the safety of the volunteers in his care. Although supreme professionals, the Green Berets on this mission were away from the normal comforts of base, family and their usual teams. O¡¯Connor was in a body bag in a cold storeroom, and that was already a sign of failure. Sly, who wanted to avoid more of his people joining him there, was greatly relieved Ghost didn¡¯t have a working chain-fed machine gun.
Colonel Sylvester Harris hadn¡¯t achieved his Bronze Star by being a coward, but neither had he got his rank for ignoring his advantages. If the tangos lacked guns, find how to make it count.
First, he needed a way to flank the enemy.
There was only a single hoist, but the cage wasn¡¯t the only way down. Regretfully the other path was no path at all. It was an endless chasm, no way out.
Chapter Three: PART IV - The Chain
One of two shafts that went down through L3, the ¡®Endless Stair¡¯ was a narrow magma conduit within a wider granite chimney. Despite the name, it had no steps down, not even a series of ladders, and the turbines were impassable without a full maintenance team. Which we don¡¯t have.
The second shaft down was better, though not by much. The well in the floor was circular, smooth-sided and ineffably deep. A thick chain rose from the middle of the hole to a gigantic spool high ahead, next to the metal box of an electricity turbine. The other unseen end of the chain was tethered to a colossal concrete cylinder, suspended unseen in the depths below.
The shaft used by the gravity-battery descended far into the earth, to L3 and beyond, but it wasn¡¯t a simple thing to lower soldiers down. First, the ponderous weight needed to be lowered the hundred metres to L3, because it wasn¡¯t easily bypassed. Second, the team didn¡¯t have a line long enough to get that far safely.
All we really have is the great greasy chain the weight hangs from.
Naturally Sly wanted to discuss the idea with a free climbing expert but where could he find one of those, in the middle of Antarctica?
Sergeant Eli Brown looked with great interest down into the lightless pool at his feet, his sun-bleached light-brown hair moving from the light breeze rising out of it. The stretched chain, lit by two lamps and a flashlight, didn¡¯t move an inch even when Eli shoved with a mop handle. The titanic weight below didn¡¯t allow the chain to shift. It might as well have been a solid pole.
Or, rather, the chain wouldn¡¯t give this close to the turbine, Sly thought. Moving the pendulum is a perilous possibility nearer to the weight, a hundred metres down.
¡°Lowering the weight wasn¡¯t a problem,¡± said Trap Singh, shirtsleeves rolled up to his biceps. ¡°The work of five minutes, and three months surplus energy lost. But we¡¯ve no sledgehammer. By the time Eli here manages to break through the wall to L3 with the toys we do have, it¡¯ll be time for the next ice age.¡±
The genuine version of this novel can be found on another site. Support the author by reading it there.
Without asking, Eli reached over to his fullest extent and grabbed the thick, rust-brown chain. In a lithe and effortless motion, he jumped from the side and wrapped his legs around the slimy links. The climber had dressed for the occasion: rubber climbing shoes that showed the shape of his toes, a form-fitting long-sleeved shirt, and a bag of climbers¡¯ chalk. After a short hesitation, Sly let Eli go.
Eli didn¡¯t care, to him it was a stroll in the park. He eased himself down the thick oiled chain with the grace of a circus acrobat, quickly disappearing into the ink-black pool in the floor. In another thirty heart-wrenching seconds he was back, pulling back up smoothly and without strain. In forty seconds, with help from Sly¡¯s reaching hand, he stood where he started.
¡°It¡¯s do-able,¡± he said, a small smile on his tanned face. ¡°I want to do it.¡±
The second time he went over the edge Eli carried a small backpack and a bunch of other things, including a Sig and a headlamp. Wearing shades built into M Frames, his descent was captured for everyone to see, smooth and fast ¨C so neat and tidy it would be worth watching on replay. Eli didn¡¯t carry any kind of hammer, saying it was way too soon for that. He wanted a good look at the end of the chain and to climb all the way back up.
Sly snorted. He wants the chance to climb the chain twice.
Eli took about ten minutes to reach the flat top of the vast cylindrical weight, where he rested his feet. Sly reckoned that if a hundred-metre ladder had four rungs per metre set a comfortable distance apart, and if a climber took a step per second, it would take about seven minutes to cover the distance.
Eli Brown took ten, but without the ladder.
¡°Houston, we have a problem,¡± Eli said easily, no strain in his voice. Sly squinted at the feed but couldn¡¯t see what had given him pause, until he switched from UV to night-sight. Hanging a little above the flat bright top of the cylindrical weight, a black-on-grey patch showed against the wall, one that shouldn¡¯t have been there. The shape was about two feet high by a foot wide, with rugged edges, as though someone had roughly banged out the shape without much care.
That window in the rock wasn¡¯t smooth, neat or tidy. Not at all.
¡°That hole? The one you wanted me to make?¡± Eli said. ¡°It¡¯s already here.¡±
Chapter Three: PART V: Headshot
L3 was a multi-layered magma chamber not far from the peak of Mount Conrad. A hundred metres down was extremely shallow in geological terms, just a bubble in the neck of a geologic soda bottle, but magma once rushed through the veins of the chamber like a pump, and the high gas content of the magma must once have threatened Conrad with explosive decapitation.
How the peak remained in one piece was a key research question for the CU researchers. Their deserted trenches streaked the magma chamber¡¯s floor, and a high mezzanine reached for answers in the strata of the chamber¡¯s walls, lined by empty scaffolding and high safety nets.
The scurrying, ant-like figures currently on the lamplit floor of the chamber weren¡¯t scientists, however. Hidden in the heat-stressed pits before the cage-shaft, two-dozen hooded and black-armoured men prepared for a skirmish, crossbows propped ready on the rocks. Remarkably the ambushers were uniformly on the short side, as if stamped from a XS slim-fit cookie cutter.
Behind them another six men with the heft of defensive tackles stood apart, and three other figures in body armour and black cloaks took an elevated place at the rear of them all.
At the centre of the trio was a tanned, thin Caucasian man, distinctive long grey hair held back from a chiselled, disdainful face. His most noteworthy feature was a long quarterstaff, of a length that nearly matched his height.
The figure immediately to his left was a short, slim and agile man with close-cut hair and dark stubble. A Mediterranean type, but physically unexceptional, an empty dull-black sheath hung from his belt. The krisflexed in his busy hands, a dangerous fidget-toy. The man Marcus had christened Ghost appeared bored.
The third and last of the trio of cultists was a giant, brutish and impatient features framed by a square-cut black beard, very much the storybook pirate. Blackbeard appeared to argue with Greyhair across Ghost¡¯s head.
The reason for the impatience, boredom and watchfulness of the three was a wall-mounted klaxon and strobe light set at the bottom of the cage hoist shaft. The klaxon was mostly muffled since, early on, one of the defensive tackles had hit it hard with a rock the size and heft of a bowling ball.
The spinning strobe, on the other hand, flashed incessantly at the bottom of the shaft, sending strobing lights across the dark walls. The achingly slow cage had dropped multiple times already, only to stop half-way and rise back up, but the sound of the open elevator¡¯s descent ¨C a rattling and screeching of metal against metal ¨C was now louder than ever.
This would be the last time.
¡°The tangos are simmering,¡± Eli Brown whispered, concluding his update. A throat-mike caught his soft, subvocalized voice and he was alone, as no one else had followed him down the gravity-battery chain. The feed from his shades, on the other hand, had a wide audience as the crossbowmen below readied to let loose.
When the bottom of the cage finally emerged from the shaft, Lee¡¯s three stiff polyurethane shields came into sight, bulky shapes huddled behind. With a cry, crossbows released with multiple thwacks and bolts thwumped home into the makeshift barriers. At the rear, Greyhair stood straighter and held out a hand, shouting out a word, portentous and commanding.
If you encounter this story on Amazon, note that it''s taken without permission from the author. Report it.
Eli¡¯s view was obstructed and Sly couldn¡¯t see who Greyhair called to, but suddenly the embedded arrows crackled. Energy flashed between the bolts in the polyurethane and bloomed into a superhot fireball, consuming the shields in red-hot flame and bitter, oily-black smoke.
¡°Woah.¡±
Viewing remotely, shock closed Sly¡¯s throat. True to Lee¡¯s word none of the quarrels had gone straight through. That hardly seems an advantage now.
Ramirez spat his next words out.
¡°Environmentalist nutjobs or not, I don¡¯t care. On top of O¡¯Connor¡¯s death, I think that fireball showed continued hostile intent. Do you agree, Operations Director?¡±
¡°I do,¡± said Sly, taking responsibility. ¡°Eli, take the leaders out.¡±
Breathing out in a slow hiss, Eli squeezed the trigger of the M2010. Sly couldn¡¯t see the crisp, magnified image of the target in the crosshairs of the high-powered scope, only the view down the barrel as, in the distance, Greyhair¡¯s skull shattered like a melon on the range. From imperious and commanding to dead in a heartbeat.
Sly heard Eli inhale, saw him work the oiled bolt-action mechanism. Even as the first spent round ejected and fell, the dead man¡¯s knees folded. The staff toppled and hit the ground an instant after its owner.
¡°One down.¡±
Eli turned to the next target. Sly vicariously levered the rifle¡¯s mechanism and inhaled the propellant¡¯s sharp scent. It would be sulphurous and slightly burnt, dead fireworks in July.
The brutish, bearded man lost half his throat to the next bullet, the resulting gout of blood worthy of an expressionist water-feature. For one long moment a meaty hand grabbed at this neck, as perhaps O¡¯Connor had clutched at his slit throat. Head lolling, Blackbeard dropped to the ground, an overstuffed puppet with cut strings.
¡°Two¡¯s down.¡±
Another breath in, harsh in the microphone. Crank the smooth mechanism, track the next target as he ran. A long, slow breath out. The rifle cracked again, Ghost fell, arms extended in a sprawl.
Then, surprising everyone, he got up and ran.
¡°What the hell?¡±
Cries of alarm erupted from the armed figures in the cave. Crossbowmen turned away from the cage-hoist, looking back at their falling leaders. The open cage continued to the floor, where it clanged to a stop, jolting the burning shields. One toppled, revealing the sandbags behind, and the cage started back up.
Eyes looked in all directions except where Eli lay, hidden behind ropes and scaffolding on the mezzanine. Users of crossbows seemed ill-prepared for snipers so far away, but they had tricks of their own. The Ghost vanished before Eli could take aim again, gone in an instant, not reappearing on any camera.
Sly analyzed the scene, fascinated. He guessed that the cloaking tech the environmentalist cultists used didn¡¯t emit ultraviolet, only reflected UV from lamps on the shades. The glare was as if from a mirror, it wasn¡¯t itself a light-source.
Eli swore. Blackbeard was back on his feet, roaring and clutching his neck, thick scarlet jelly oozing between his fingers. Eli continued firing, but none of the shots found the lurching giant. Then a crossbowman yelled out commands, and in moments Blackbeard was hurried away, smaller figures surrounding him like a team of secret service agents on executive bodyguard detail.
The cage rattled up. Seconds later, and exactly as planned, three helmeted Green Berets apparated unnoticed into the shaft, unclipping rappelling devices before ducking into cover. Behind them the second half of the fireteam dropped in, including Lieutenant Kim. The first three soldiers put down covering fire, muted by the suppressors attached to the weapons, and threw flashbangs. The salvo took down three active shooters and drove the remaining crossbowmen back.
Chapter Four: PART I - Rabbit Hole
When Sly exited the cage-elevator with Ramirez the fighting was over.
In the chamber, the few cultist dead were clustered in twos and threes, scattered here and there wherever they¡¯d chosen to take a stand. Ramirez had chosen to use suppressors, believing the team might gain a modicum of surprise in the initial assault. Effective use of silencers needed low-grain ammunition, but they had enough subsonic ammo for the initial engagement.
At close quarters slower rounds would do the job but stay in the bodies they hit, rather than marking the walls with unnecessary bullet-holes. That was an added benefit for what was supposed to be a covert mission. It wouldn¡¯t do for the researchers to dig out bullets from the walls for the next six months, Sly thought.
Sergeant Nguyen met Sly and his commanding officer.
¡°How¡¯d it go?¡± Sly said, his tone casual.
¡°The fireteam took no casualties,¡± Nguyen said, ¡°or captives. These weirdos either fell or ran. Mostly ran. This engagement was extremely bizarre.¡±
¡°How so? Not that I¡¯m disagreeing. Crossbows at the south pole are unusual.¡±
Nguyen snorted his humour. ¡°Sure, we were using subsonic ammo, but the rounds bounced off some of those jokers. Literally and no exaggeration ¨C I saw bullets flash and fall to the floor. Although we targeted active shooters, we killed far fewer of them than I expected, given the rounds we fired. The dud ammo gave them time to run.¡±
¡°What was your estimate of the cultists?¡± Ramirez asked.
¡°Remarkably good,¡± said Nguyen without hesitation, turning to the officer. ¡°They moved as a unit and retreated in good order. We¡¯ll see trouble if they ever find guns.¡±
Sly let Ramirez take the rest of Nguyen¡¯s report and turned away to speak to Lieutenant Kim. She initially held a front line at the second elevator shaft, but the retreating cultists ran into caves and passageways at the rear of the cavern instead of fighting for control of the L4 elevator. Kim¡¯s fireteam went after them into the dark, using infrared to follow the fading heat of warm hands on cold stone.
¡°That¡¯s when we found the steps,¡± Kim told him later.
¡°What steps?¡± Sly was surprised. ¡°The CU engineers made no steps.¡±
¡°See it to believe it,¡± Kim said, face set in an unreadable expression.
Sly followed her to the back of the chamber and into a roped off section of the caves, marked by multiple ¡®danger¡¯ signs. A minute of tromping over a well-worn path later, he saw the limestone balcony.
He instantly knew these descending stairs weren¡¯t made yesterday. Limestone wasn¡¯t native to these volcanic caverns, and the fine work flaunted a master stonemason¡¯s touch. A long and intricate frieze, the triumph of a conquering army, remained recognisable though eroded by water and time. It was odd, an unfamiliar Persian or Mesopotamian style perhaps, depicting a parade of short, bearded men with large shields, taller men on horseback with angular eyes, and tusked giants wearing ornate robes and crowned with haloes. On the stairs themselves, broad basalt treads were worn down from foot traffic, and its balustrades were shiny from countless hands rubbing the fine-grained native stone.
Speechless, Sly studied the worn stone in the low light. On honeymoon he¡¯d visited Rome¡¯s Spanish Steps, connecting the Piazza di Spagna at the base to the Trinita dei Monti at the top. He¡¯d noted how the limestone was eroded by three hundred years of foot traffic, from hobnails to stilettos.
¡°They weren¡¯t made yesterday,¡± Kim called at his back as he knelt on the steps. ¡°They¡¯re deeply worn, and that¡¯s not soft stone. This is old, a century at least.¡±
If these hard basalt steps were as worn as the softer Spanish Steps, they were older than that, he thought, disagreeing with the lieutenant. When were they last used? Had they been abandoned for hundreds of years? Or a thousand?
This story has been stolen from Royal Road. If you read it on Amazon, please report it
The steps weren¡¯t simply old, they were ancient.
Sly¡¯s head swam as he put more of the pieces together.
John Ramirez found him sitting on the far edge of the cavern. Sly looked up. The captain looked bone tired and Sly didn¡¯t feel much better.
¡°C¡¯mon, sit down,¡± Sly said. ¡°Take a weight off.¡±
The detachment commander sat. ¡°The plan worked. We¡¯ve retrieved the rappel ropes from the shaft, and it was a great idea to use the cage as a distraction.¡± He gave Sly a long look. ¡°You don¡¯t look happy, though. Give.¡±
Sly gathered his thoughts, unsure what to say. After a long pause he began.
¡°In the fifties and sixties, Area 51 in Nevada was associated with alien technology, among other stranger ideas. Conspiracy theories gained credibility because the US military was trying to cover up something else, the testing of top-secret aircraft systems. The more the government covered up, the more people thought they had something extraordinary to hide.¡±
Ramirez snorted. ¡°Where are you going with this?¡±
The captain had lost all humour, his eyes red-rimmed.
¡°I thought Area 71 was named for the association with aliens,¡± Sly explained. ¡°Understandable, but untrue. It got the name because the site was subject to a government cover-up. Researchers found something strange under the ground here, and told the CIA, who declared it a national secret. A research base was a useful cover, as it¡¯s difficult to visit Antarctica covertly. But this place wasn¡¯t ever about rare earth minerals. That¡¯s simply a useful fiction to keep whatever¡¯s down here under wraps.¡±
Ramirez stared at him. ¡°I¡¯m listening.¡±
¡°The conspiracy is all about Level Four, John. There are steps that way,¡± Sly pointed with his thumb, ¡°that the Romans might¡¯ve made, or the Inca, or the Khmer Empire, or the Han. No way the researchers didn¡¯t find it, no way the CIA didn¡¯t know. No way their secret research team isn¡¯t taking secret frickin¡¯ rubbings.¡±
Ramirez took stock of what he had heard. ¡°You think the freaks we¡¯re fighting are conspiracy theorists, making some kind of fringe protest about what, a secret civilization? That would be the most messed up thing I¡¯ve heard in twenty years.¡±
Sly shook his head.
¡°There¡¯s stuff here to attract a well-funded nutjob, and these guys show all the signs of being part of a well-funded, anti-establishment cult. And sure, an inquiry I set in motion before I left the States points toward a conspiracy. On the other hand, I don¡¯t think these guys are a bunch of tinfoil-hat-wearing amateurs. Ghost ¨C we can call him that? ¨C I think he was military recon tasked with scouting the upper floors.¡±
¡°Why? Other than to get his people out of here, which I fully understand. It¡¯s been what, a month since Thorpe died?¡±
¡°I think Thorpe¡¯s death was the result of a deal gone wrong,¡± said Sly slowly. ¡°The maintenance crew brought in a box of precious stones big enough to buy a yacht, and I¡¯m not talking about a thirty foot dinghy. Why does anyone use diamonds to pay for anything? They were in the market to buy something they shouldn¡¯t have. What was it? The hell if I know, but it takes an effort to get anything heavy into this place, and it would be hell to get anything heavy out. It must¡¯ve been portable, like a book. Now the CIA want us to search the place for books or papers, even in the face of opposition. The opposition being this bunch of crazies. Maybe Ghost was hunting for the same thing.¡±
¡°Maybe it¡¯s simpler than that,¡± Ramirez said, being reasonable. ¡°If I was locked down here, I¡¯d be as pissed as Ghost, too, and maybe as desperate.¡±
¡°I don¡¯t think the researchers let the cultists in,¡± said Sly, shaking his head. ¡°There¡¯s no evidence that an unknown team flew in to or passed through Leviathan. It sounds crazy but I think there¡¯s another way into the deep caves. Another way down to L4, the level the CIA doesn¡¯t want us to see. If we want Ghost before he escapes out the back door, we need to go down there after him. But something else is down there, John. Yes, signs of an ancient civilization, but this is a cover up, a matter of national security, and an ancient ice-dwelling civilization isn¡¯t a threat to the USA, despite the cultists. If we go down there, we¡¯re sure to find something worse that we can¡¯t unsee.¡±
Ramirez glared at him. ¡°I have one man down. O¡¯Connor was my responsibility. The bastard who killed him is down there. I want the crazy sonofabitch, and I mean to have him. What else do you expect us to do?¡±
¡°Know what you¡¯re getting into,¡± Sly said, needing Ramirez to calm down. ¡°We have a choice, to leave or to stay. Leave now and there¡¯s no problem, you didn¡¯t see a thing. Plausible deniability. But to catch Ghost we need to get down to L4 today, and if we do, we¡¯ll all be in the rabbit hole up to our necks.¡±
¡°What will you do?¡± Ramirez asked, with emphasis on the ¡®you¡¯.
Sly had thought it through. The builders of the steps intrigued and excited the historian in him like nothing had in twenty years. He rarely did anything spontaneously, he wasn¡¯t the kind of leader who jumped into a hell-pit shouting, ¡®follow me!¡¯ But, right now, it was all he could do to hold back.
He kept it simple. ¡°I want the rabbit hole.¡±
The chill returned to the room as Captain John Ramirez looked at him, eyes like the tough volcanic stone under their feet, hard, cold and flat.
¡°We¡¯ll have a look around here,¡± said Ramirez with finality. ¡°See what we can find. Then you¡¯ll tell the team what you want them to know. When we¡¯ve done all that, we¡¯re going down there, with whoever wants to come. I¡¯ve a job to do.¡±
Chapter Four: PART II - Looting The Dead
Sly turned the dead man over, avoiding the ruined face. This was the tall man he called ¡®Greyhair¡¯, the ranking cultist with the quarterstaff, and the third he¡¯d loot today. Loot. Such a loaded term, but oddly appropriate.
The man wore strange hide-like armour, textured like leather but impressed with an odd, scaled pattern. Not for the first time, he wondered if there was a militant cosplay element in the attackers¡¯ force, but that was way too bizarre. The cloak he wore was soft and warm to the touch, but... tingly, like it held a persistent static charge. He touched the wool and felt a shiver on his fingertips. The other cloaks had been oiled, not¡ whatever this was. He brought his fingertips to his nose. It had a mild, waxy smell. Lanolin, he thought, but that only confirmed it was wool.
Sly went through the rest of the dead man¡¯s gear with more speed. A shoulder-bag held what looked like dry bread, a folding knife slippery with oil, tobacco flakes in a soft leather bag but no pipe to smoke them.
Greyhair had a couple of rings on a silver chain about his neck. A keepsake?
He concluded the man didn¡¯t have much here. There wasn¡¯t enough stuff even for a nomad, so Greyhair left the bulk of his things in the camp. Sly placed the chain of rings over his own head for safekeeping but left the contents of the bag.
Then there was the book, against the padded coat inside the armour. The object¡¯s location instantly made it a significant object, one Greyhair didn¡¯t want to lose. Sly unbuckled the armour on the other side, to see if he carried anything else.
Buckles were weird, he thought as he struggled. Why not use Velcro like normal people? Then again, ¡®normal¡¯ people didn¡¯t use crossbows. It was almost as if these crazies took the Antarctic treaties signed since December 1959 at face value. No modern military activity, and sustainable, natural materials only. Survivalist crazies with an environmentalist agenda, maybe? Extremely well-funded crazies, if they got to Antarctica without US military help.
He searched but there was nothing else there. Only the one notebook.
He turned it over in his hands.
Was this what all the fuss was about? he asked himself. It would be a nice, clean end to the mission, and they could get out now, without stomping on Fox¡¯s toes. Unfortunately, looking at it carefully, it left him with doubts. Sure, he would hand it in with the diamonds and the other things the team had found, but although it had the smell of something significant, it didn¡¯t give him enough to call an end to the hunt.
This novel''s true home is a different platform. Support the author by finding it there.
If the cultists already had what they were looking for, why were they trying so hard to get to L2? Why were they still here? Unlike Ramirez, he didn¡¯t think they couldn¡¯t leave whenever they wanted. After all, they didn¡¯t get here by US transport, and they wouldn¡¯t leave that way, either.
He''d felt the notebook thoroughly in his hands. Soft, tooled leather, like he¡¯d seen in an upmarket gift shop in Florence. This one came by its softness honestly, from long use and frequent handling, judging by the ink smudges on the cover.
A leather cord tied it closed. Sly had unstrung the cord and opened it.
Nothing on the first page or the second. The third page had a sharp crease down the middle: a line the hard, flat edge of a razor might have made. The writing was only on the left side of the paper, but it was gibberish anyway, at least to him. It might¡¯ve been code, but it could also have been a language so different from English that it made no difference.
Arabesque swirls and dots, inconsistent angles that were hard on the eye.
Occasionally a pictogram appeared right on the edge of the line, like half a hieroglyph or written logo, or part of a medieval illuminated letter. They were clearly as separate from the arabesque swirls as Japanese Hiragana was from Kanji.
This was no natural language Sly had ever seen before, though he was no linguist. He flicked through the pages, finding more of the same sharp-creased pages. A notebook written in code, then, possibly military in nature. He closed the book and, having no suitable pockets, slid it into his armour to examine later.
To feel the book there, held in much the same place its owner used, gave him a sense of intimacy he¡¯d rather not feel with the dead man. But he didn¡¯t want to put it into the tactical backpack he was wearing, either. He didn¡¯t want to risk losing the notebook if some fluke separated him from his bag.
He stood, paused a long minute. He¡¯d learned nothing by looting the corpses, except that the men hadn¡¯t showered in days and weren¡¯t Chinese. Their possessions were nice enough and well-made, but odd.
Well-made. That was it. The knickknacks were made, not mass-produced, the contents of a drawer of historic bric-a-brac in an antique store, except most of the goods appeared comparatively new.
He catalogued the things he took with Gus, hoping for a name, or an address, but finding nothing in a language he understood. He wanted to return the personal things to next of kin if he could. He wasn¡¯t a thief. For all he was removing possessions from the dead, this wasn¡¯t really loot.
He found the man¡¯s staff inexplicably shattered, as if caught between a rock and a hard place. Sly winced. The wood was thick, immensely hard, and left a cold chill to the touch, as if made of metal. The rod¡¯s width was twice the length of his thumb, and every inch of its length was carved with weird symbols, unlike anything Sly had seen before.
He turned each piece carefully, tasking Gus with recording the images, then cast the broken pieces aside.
Chapter Four: PART III - The Choice
All eight members of the detachment sat or stood around Sly and Captain John Ramirez. Feeling both his age and his responsibility for these young men and women, Sly had walked them by the ancient stairwells to touch the time-worn stone and look down into the gloom. Now, surrounded by their team-mates and lit by electric lanterns, they heard why the worn stonework mattered.
Brown, Lee, Kim, Gonzalez, Clarke, Singh, Smith, Nguyen, Marcus.
Sly knew them all so much better than when their journey began, but he didn¡¯t know what they were going to do or say.
Eli Brown was typically relaxed, listening without obvious concern. Sarah Kim and Josh Smith glanced at the other in the dark: a friendship there, a sense of camaraderie and mutual worry. Nio Gonzalez¡¯s lips were pinched white. Grace Clarke¡¯s freckles stood out on porcelain skin. She wore a thin smile.
Emil Marcus stood near the back, unmoving: an ebony statue of a prince or pioneer, or a soldier at parade rest. He met Sly¡¯s eyes, gave back a short nod.
Far right, nearest and last, Richard Nguyen sat in a crouch and hugged his long legs. Nguyen had abseiled into L3 in the first group, he¡¯d volunteered for the task. Now his posture was defensive, closed. Sly didn¡¯t know what would make a very brave man take a pose like that but dropped the thought.
Not everything is something.
They listened.
When Sly finished, he gave them the choice, to stand with Ramirez or by Emil Marcus at the back. If they stood with Ramirez, they¡¯d come, consequences be damned. If they stood by Emil, they would retrench to the upper floors, to safety, not only from Ghost and L4 but from what awaited them at home.
Nguyen was the one to ask the obvious question.
¡°Let¡¯s nail this one first. You¡¯re saying that General Fox and this agent ¨C¡±
¡°He¡¯s not an ¡®agent¡¯,¡± Sly interrupted gently. ¡°Call him Officer Jarvis.¡±
¡°You¡¯re saying Jarvis sent us here, with you in charge, knowing that we¡¯d see a national secret so big that, when we got back, we¡¯d all be tucked away in a crate next to the Ark of the Covenant?¡±
Sarah Kim was the only one who chuckled. Sly understood the joke, but he¡¯d watched the films as a kid and wasn¡¯t laughing. It was too close to the truth.
¡°First, you¡¯re assuming that the CIA chief who classified this place as ¡®secret¡¯, and Officer Jarvis, talk to each other,¡± Sly said.
¡°Ah. You are paranoid,¡± Nguyen said, unfolding himself to sit on the rock that had been at his back. Sly ignored the comment, though it was on the borderline that divided normal SF informality from insubordination.
¡°Let me summarize what I told you earlier,¡± Sly said, looking from one soldier to the next. ¡°Five years ago, Willem Hunter, director of the CIA¡¯s Adventure Fund, classified Area 71 as Top Secret. The CIA¡¯s fund does more than provide a bit of money, they run Area 71 through a shell company. Officially CU only pays ten researchers for a short summer stint, but Hunter organizes enough researchers to keep the bunkhouse constantly full, for as much of the year as he can. He even arranges for winter caretakers, most recently a guy called Sam Peck.
¡°The dead man, Ronald Thorpe, was recruited to work at Area 71 two and a half years ago. On his first home leave he somehow met the CIA¡¯s Max Jarvis, who personally paid for a hotel room registered in Thorpe¡¯s name. This is odd, as Thorpe wasn¡¯t a registered asset with the CIA, and besides, his family is loaded ¨C he could¡¯ve easily paid for his own hotel. A couple of weeks later, Thorpe goes back to work at Area 71. Eighteen months later, and nothing. Thorpe and Jarvis don¡¯t openly speak.
Find this and other great novels on the author''s preferred platform. Support original creators!
¡°Then four months ago everything comes to a head. Jarvis met with Fox, they set up a budget and start writing orders. According to my informant, Fox puts in all the budget but shares authority with Jarvis. That¡¯s an unusual power dynamic. Soon after, Sam Peck joins Area 71 as security. Peck is Major Samuel Peck, who once reported to Fox, a fact that somehow escaped his official resume. And someone brings in a fortune in gems even as the place closes for winter.
¡°Mid-winter, all hell breaks loose. Thorpe is killed. The surviving caretakers call for evac. During the crisis Peck calls Fox¡¯s mobile, via satellite from Area 71.¡±
Nguyen spoke up. ¡°Nice research ¨C I liked the detail and won¡¯t ask how you got it. But what the hell does it prove?¡±
¡°It proves that Fox and Jarvis conspired before Thorpe¡¯s death,¡± said Sly, irritated by Nguyen¡¯s dragging feet. ¡°If Peck¡¯s team brought in the gems as funds for a deal, it was on their behalf. Which in turn links Fox and Jarvis directly to the death. The pair recruited us with real footage of Peck and Thorpe on Level Four but, as you saw on the video-clip earlier, the audio track was very cleverly deep-faked. The lip-sync mismatch is obvious, and Peck didn¡¯t say what the subtitles suggested he did.¡±
¡°As I said, it could¡¯ve been just AI error,¡± Nguyen said reasonably. ¡°You can¡¯t make out what Peck actually said.¡±
¡°That¡¯s not necessary,¡± Sly replied, blunting the edge threatening to enter his voice. ¡°The audio track wasdeliberately changed, Jarvis or Fox should¡¯ve spotted it ¨C unless they faked the footage themselves. I have no idea what the unedited video would¡¯ve shown, I¡¯ll probably never know, but I¡¯m willing to bet Peck and this safety team weren¡¯t drilling the cave walls for samples ¨C not that day.¡±
Sly waited for comment, but there was none. The video analysis hadn¡¯t left much room for misinterpretation, but he¡¯d thought Nguyen would toss in a wrench. Instead, the S2 stayed quiet.
He frowned. Maybe Nguyen was simply doing his job, challenging the intel.
Sly gave him the benefit of the doubt.
¡°Meanwhile, neither Fox nor Jarvis contacted Hunter or the CIA Adventure Fund at any time. And Hunter didn¡¯t ask for their help. We¡¯re here entirely under their joint authority, which is to say ¡®none¡¯. The CIA¡¯s Adventure Fund runs Area 71 but doesn¡¯t even know we¡¯re here.¡±
He let a long silence hang in the air.
¡°One thing you didn¡¯t explain... Why us? Why this team?¡±
The quiet voice in the long shadows was Grace Clarke.
¡°Fox discovered I was looking for an opportunity to train,¡± Sly said softly, glancing around at his small audience, ¡°and sponsoring us was a legitimate way to hide the cost of sending a team out. If we¡¯re caught, we genuinely didn¡¯t know the real reason why we were sent. No doubt Fox has deep fake synthetic media footage making this trip look like we fooled him into providing funding. Amazing what you can do with AI these days.¡±
¡°We¡¯re their cut-out,¡± Grace declared. ¡°Thrown under the bus before we left.¡±
She¡¯s right, Sly thought sourly, expecting her to blame him. After all, Fox likely chose him for his accident-prone reputation. Instead of throwing stones Grace grinned, surprising Sly. She walked to Ramirez and folded her muscular arms.
¡°I¡¯m in. No way I¡¯m paying the price without getting the prize. Who¡¯s with us?¡±
Without another word, Kim got up and went over to Marcus instead. Sly thought she would, as Kim was the most career oriented of them all. He expected Josh Smith to join her, given their friendship. Instead, the medical sergeant got up and joined Clarke. Kim looked confused, perhaps even a little hurt. Like Sly, she had expected something else from Smith.
¡°Y¡¯all need a medic,¡± he said, by way of apology to Kim, ¡°and I¡¯m it.¡±
Trap Singh seemed undecided. ¡°Rich, what are you going to do?¡±
Nguyen stood up, brushed himself off, and walked over to stand next to Sarah Kim. Nio went to Ramirez and Clarke. Eli Brown half smiled and did the same.
¡°Shit,¡± Trap said. He hesitated, then went to stand by Ramirez. ¡°Sorry, bro.¡±
Michael Lee went to stand next to Emil, Sarah Kim and Nguyen.
¡°You¡¯ll need a fourth, upside.¡±
Marcus guffawed. ¡°You¡¯re the third. I¡¯m not going up, I¡¯m with the captain, I¡¯m after the spook who killed O¡¯Connor. Colonel Harris asked me to stand here, in case you people were too chickenshit to put it out there on your own.¡±
Lee glanced at Sarah. ¡°Stand or hit?¡±
¡°I¡¯m going back up,¡± she said, resolve firming in her eyes. ¡°Either way this goes, you need someone up top. And I¡¯m not so keen on busting down to private. Are you coming?¡±
She gave Lee a flat look, as if daring him to back out.
¡°Yup.¡±
His characteristically laconic answer decided the split. Sly and Ramirez would take the bulk of the team down: Nio Gonzalez, Trap Singh, Eli Brown, Emil Marcus and Josh Smith, plus Grace Clarke. Nguyen, Kim and Lee would go back up, use the coms equipment in the offices to talk to the States, and hold the fort.
Chapter Four: PART IV - Trap
The M4A1 carbine is a lightweight, gas-operated, air-cooled, magazine-fed, selective rate, shoulder-fired weapon with a collapsible stock. With stock extended, the carbine is roughly the length of an acoustic guitar. Collapsed, it reduces to thirty inches long, or a little shorter than a standard baseball bat. In its socks, carrying no ammunition, it weighs in at around six pounds, or two and a half kilos, the weight of a mid-range laptop.
This was what a soldier took to work.
The M4A1¡¯s fully automatic fire mode could spray seven hundred rounds per minute the length of an airport runway. The rate of fire was notional, as auto-fire would empty the thirty rounds in a standard magazine in two and half seconds. At twelve taxpayer dollars a pop, the army understandably discouraged full-automatic fire. Each single shot was cheaper than a cigarette and conceivably more lethal, depending on the wielder¡¯s aim and government tobacco taxes.
Sly¡¯s carbine had a stubby flashlight too, which he liked.
Steps lit by diffuse lamplight, the group took the worn stone stairs in single file and at a trot, taking each corner in stack formation. Each member of the team knew who was responsible for each area or angle, dead space or blind spot, and the tight line minimized exposure to weapons fire. Eli Brown was on point, followed by Clarke who cleared the left, and Smith, the right, and so on until Marcus brought up the rear, carrying the snipers¡¯ rifle across his back and a carbine with the stock collapsed in one mitt-sized hand. Ramirez and Sly took the sheltered centre, Nio and Trap ahead and behind them with slung shotguns, ready to breach a door at a hand-signal or short verbal command.
They met no impediment of any kind. At first.
The stairs were dry, dusty, strewn with a thin detritus of rubble and dust. A straight flight of stairs led to a broad landing, then a line of smoking sconces pointed to a circular, narrow well down to the next chamber, from which there was a short sprint to the next straight stair, and so on, down. Everywhere all torches were hot but dark, snuffed out as the enemy retreated, but light intensification exposed the stairs as if illuminated by a dusky sun.
Sly kept a growing sense of exhilaration under firm control.
¡°Wait,¡± Eli murmured, the word picked up by throat-mike by Gus and transmitted to the others¡¯ shades. He halted on the edge of a short flight of stone stairs, a dark place even with night-vision. ¡°Does anyone else feel that?¡±
A breeze? Sly felt no movement in the air but, on introspection, he did feel odd. Clarke spoke before he could put the sensation into words.
¡°Something¡¯s down there,¡± she said, with a degree of surety Sly didn¡¯t feel. ¡°I can feel it, an ache in my joints.¡±
Sly spoke up. ¡°Who else feels something¡¯s down there? Gus: poll.¡±
This story has been taken without authorization. Report any sightings.
The question popped up in his peripheral vision, answers of yes and no.
Everyone but him voted yes.
¡°What is that?¡± Eli asked hesitantly. ¡°A sub-conscious smell?¡±
Gus¡¯s auto-completion popped up an answer, and on reading it Sly found he agreed. ¡®Electroreception, produced by the sensor-strands. We¡¯re picking up something magnetic on the stair ahead.¡¯
Eli trod down onto the stairs, cautious where he put his foot, lightly brushing away the scattered dust with a toe. He moved as quickly as he could, but always with care, then grunted on the tenth step.
¡°Here. Trap.¡±
¡°Here,¡± said Singh, moving down.
¡°I meant ¡®trap¡¯, a thing to remove your foot at the ankle. But you¡¯ll do.¡±
As the engineer went down, others took his stream to see the device. It was a thin steel mechanism, lying flat and level on the stone like a plate, wearing a heavier than usual scattering of dust. The trigger was a raised, saucer-like halo, at the centre of two half-moons of steel sharks¡¯-teeth. Imagining what might happen to any foot that stepped down in haste, Sly hissed.
¡°Dozens of traps on these steps,¡± Clarke insisted. She wasn¡¯t near enough to see but her tone suffered no idiots, and no one wanted to disagree. ¡°There¡¯s no avoiding them.¡±
Trap agreed and decided to trigger them all on the right side, sacrificing an extendable mirror-stick and any thought of stealth. Five minutes later the metal rod was chewed up and each device was safe, snapped shut with a loud clap.
¡°Don¡¯t rush, the cultists want you to try to make up time. Don¡¯t run. Check your eyeline, as well as your feet.¡±
Sly¡¯s warning was taken seriously, and soon Eli wordlessly dealt with a length of razor-wire rigged at neck height. He examined a piece of it while Eli checked for more, but it wasn¡¯t of a kind he had seen before. Corded strands of near invisible wire bound irregular razors, slivers too light to be made of metal.
Ceramic? If the idea weren¡¯t so awful, he¡¯d say they were teeth.
The way down varied but typically spiralled straight down. Sly calculated the number of steps and the probable depth of L4, and their speed of travel, and soon estimated that the team was nearly down and out.
On the next corner he nudged Eli to use the other mirror selfie-stick.
Doing so, Eli signalled back with four upraised fingers.
Sly doubted only four cultist sentries were close, but Ramirez took it out of his hands, waving for Nio Gonzalez to go on down. The man was feline, on his toes as he swung around the corner, carbine raised and firing, jaw set in a rictus grin.
Sly moved up to follow Gonzalez and his ears rang with the gunfire in the confined space. As the lightly armoured tangos went down to Nio¡¯s gunfire two others rushed into the chamber, but by the time Sly had rounded the corner that pair was down too, sprawled out and bleeding, one with an honest-to-goodness shield on the ground next to him.
¡°Blue light,¡± Nio said, in a tone of awe. ¡°That shield glowed, man. They mightn¡¯t have guns, but the rest of their equipment is spectacular.¡±
Descending, Sly saw the shield hadn¡¯t suffered even a bullet hole. That impressed him, blue glow or no, but a ricochet from it had clipped the sentry in the face. Not for the first time he wondered where this bunch of fringe environmentalist cultists came from. Wherever it was, they had weird but effective high-tech gear.
The defenders only numbered six in total. When the team swept into the corridor beyond, the troop was alone and facing the gates to the city.
Chapter Four: PART V - City Limits
That they approached a truly ancient city was not seriously in doubt at this point. Sly and his seven companions overlooked a huge cavern, the ground sloping precipitously, and they could see light ahead, a flare in the shades¡¯ night-vision.
The source of the light was the main square of an urban centre. The mass of the city surrounding the plaza was dead, a long-deserted mausoleum, but the square itself was lit by bonfires, sconces hung from nearby walls, and lanterns that moved carried by unseen hands through the streets. The illumination reached buildings six stories tall and cast shadows from piles of rubble six foot deep.
The far side of the square held a massive archway structure, the Arc de Triomphe in Paris or Berlin¡¯s Brandenburg Gate, or the Arch of Constantine in Rome, consisting of a great central archway with two minor but impressive spans accessed by steps on either side.
Someone swore, an exclamation chasing an expletive, and another team-member laughed, high-pitched and manic. Clarke, Sly thought. Ahead of him, Nio stared down through the security fence at the necropolis and its molten centre.
¡°Bitten off more than we can chew?¡±
¡°At eight to twelve soldiers a campfire, there could be a hundred and sixty to two hundred soldiers down there,¡± Smith said. ¡°On the high side for nine of us.¡±
¡°There are only eight of us,¡± Nio said, looking around.
¡°Marcus counts as two,¡± Smith retorted quickly, to laughter.
¡°We¡¯re not invading a city,¡± Sly said, the cold finger of premonition at his neck as he stared out at the vast shadows moving in the flickering firelight. ¡°The place is a ruin, as lifeless as Pompeii. We¡¯re after only one man, if we can get him. Ghost.¡±
¡°They¡¯re moving,¡± someone else said.
¡°They saw Emil and ran,¡± Smith joked. The big man took the abuse stoically.
Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.
¡°If there¡¯s two hundred of them, they¡¯ll be mobilising, heading this way.¡±
¡°The fires are a feint,¡± said Sly, feeling the fall into professorial mode but unable to slow the drop, ¡°to fool us that they have more men, giving them time to withdraw, while giving them a better view of the streets. In the civil war, Confederate General Magruder built entire dummy encampments. All that could all be fake.¡±
¡°Is forty against seven that much better?¡± Singh asked.
¡°Forty armed with crossbows versus one man and a machine gun?¡± Sly said wryly. ¡°Head-on, machine guns win.¡±
Ramirez scoffed. ¡°We¡¯re not superheroes, we can¡¯t bat away overwhelming lethal ordnance even ifthey¡¯re only arrows. But I won¡¯t give up Ghost.¡±
When they approached the security gate, breath steaming into the frigid air, they found it had been breached. Sly eyed pieces of modern steel, and bits of a shattered padlock lying on the cold ground. He thought it likely the chain was destroyed from the other side of the gate, though he couldn¡¯t know for sure.
What could do this to thick steel? Liquid nitrogen and a hammer?
They strode through, stepping over a red ¡®No Entry¡¯ sign on the ground.
The shades normally made the dark less oppressive, but in this open area the effective range of the devices was limited, particularly with the flare from the city square ahead. The fireteam entered the city in a single long, straight run, down steps as wide as a street but unable to see more than a hundred yards ahead. The descent reminded Sly of skiing downhill in flurries of snow. His heart pounded, more terror than excitement, evoked by the accident that took his eye.
Then Ramirez signalled for ¡®leapfrog¡¯, and individuals took turns to run while the rest provided cover, preferring stealth to outright speed. Most abandoned streets in a deserted city, topside, would be split by grass or roots, but underground the pavement was unbroken. Everything once growing was dead. Breathing hard, he didn¡¯t complain when Ramirez picked up the pace and pointed to a broader avenue, where a faint orange glow reflected from crumbling brickwork.
Ramirez lifted his hand, slowing the others into a stealthier approach. Despite his pride Sly was grateful for the reprieve. He caught his breath as the troop slowed to use the collapsed fa?ades of age-old roadside buildings for cover.
On the way he noticed white, pale and desiccated trees with no leaves along the avenue, and empty rings in the stone where shrubs had been. He glanced up, seeking the cavern ceiling.
How had trees grown without the sun? Mirrors?
Focused on keeping up with the others, eyes down at his feet in the rubble, he was startled to look up and see the bright edge of the broad central square.
Chapter Four: PART VI - Stones’ throw
¡°Eli, recon,¡± Ramirez whispered, trusting on Gus to echo his words. ¡°If your name¡¯s not Eli, take cover, stay in the shadows.¡±
Sly slumped into a dark, quiet spot behind a wall and watched the picture-in-picture feed from Eli¡¯s shades. The sergeant was quick on his feet, sprinting a shadowed route toward the light, head down. He nimbly dropped to a crawl for the last few feet and peered into the square through a stack of loose bricks.
The parade space was mostly empty. Crackling bonfires were built on the edges, casting flickering fingers of brightness into the gloom. Shapes and silhouettes flittered in front of the fires: a fever-dream inspired by Dante¡¯s Inferno, perhaps, or the allegory of Socrates¡¯ cave, chains of fearsome shadow reaching out.
The main body of the cultist forces was formed up across the plaza near the huge triple-arched structure. Eli adjusted the shades¡¯ binocular focus: the enemy didn¡¯t number in the hundreds. Three lines stood parade-ready on the far right. Sixty tangos, Eli mumbled into his mic. Another huddle consisted of a dozen much larger men Sly was thinking of as the elite, as they often stood to one side. Seventy-two.
Sly became uneasy. Seventy-odd men weren¡¯t many in a traditional military sense but given Antarctica¡¯s long chain of logistics they were a rare resource. Just feeding so many would need dedicated air transport. Close to where he stood on the edge of the square, Eli also counted two men in archaic black cloaks, resting quarterstaffs on the ground. The others appeared to defer to their rank and give them space.
Officers? Or something else? High-value targets in either case.
Beyond the two staff bearers was an impatient, compact figure. Ghost.
¡°Can you take him out?¡±
Captain Ramirez didn¡¯t need to say who ¡®he¡¯ was.
¡°I can try, but Sergeant Marcus has the better rifle,¡± Eli subvocalized. ¡°I can¡¯t guarantee a killing shot with a carbine at this range.¡±
¡°Take the shot. If you get him, we can hightail out of here.¡±
Eli pushed the carbine up into a firing position and checked his aim. He audibly breathed deeply, allowed for a non-existent crosswind and pulled the trigger, once.
To Sly¡¯s shock, a doughnut ring of blue light immediately effervesced in the space between the sniper and the Ghost. Like a ripple on water, the glow widened before fading. Ghost, unhurt, turned towards the light, momentarily surprised.
Eli blasphemed under his breath, as a third figure with a quarterstaff emerged from the group of soldiers and ran in the direction of the other two HVTs.
¡°Full clip, Eli, put him down,¡± said Ramirez, voice clipped and clear. ¡°Everyone else, get closer, be ready to put down covering fire. Colonel, what is that thing?¡±
Eli switched to full-automatic, braced and fired, but the invisible wall sprang back to life before the bullets hit Ghost or the staff-bearers. Ripples of flame red, deep ocean blue and bruised purple lit the city centre like fireworks projected on a transparent screen, accompanied by a hiss like the static from ten thousand antique televisions and the ozone-rich smell of the air after a thunderstorm.
¡°You see what I see!¡± Sly said, raising his voice over the sizzle. ¡°That¡¯s a bloody force-shield!¡±
Crouching, he hurriedly reviewed the recording of Eli¡¯s first shot, Gus slowing the moment of impact. The bullet hit, creating a pressure-wave, first translucent then sparkling gold. A perfect circle of azure-blue light then flashed, too swift to see, a raindrop striking a pool of water slick with ink.
He also sprang to check the IR recording and leapt to an instant conclusion.
¡°Best guess, the screen converts the bullets¡¯ kinetic energy to light,¡± he said, as everyone else ran forward, ¡°and heat ¨C the infrared recording is a white-out.¡±
Sly checked his position and gear, then ran forward after the others.
The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.
¡°Good news, it¡¯s only a curved twelve-foot tall wall, not that wide. Spread out, get behind it.¡±
¡°Spare me the bad news,¡± said Ramirez drily.
The bad news came on regardless. A bright flare appeared on the tip of the running man¡¯s staff, like gas being burned off from an oil rig, then ¨C
¡°DOWN!¡±
Sly tripped and stumbled to his knees, in time to hear a KABOOM reminiscent of airborne ordinance exploding. An impossibly brilliant wave roared overhead, and a thousand bullets of rock flung themselves from the walls accompanied by a sharp, pungent scent like electrical sparks.
On the positive side, no one appeared seriously hurt, although Eli bled from a cut on the face and Singh clutched an arm. The implication was obvious, though.
¡°The HVT¡¯s got a bazooka! Take cover! Covering fire!¡± Ramirez shouted. ¡°Let¡¯s see if we can get their heads down.¡±
¡°Not now,¡± Sly murmured, too late. ¡°I¡¯m running out of ammo!¡±
That volley did no good at all. Once the bruises dissipated against the screen he saw the last staff-bearer had joined the others. Eli saw him turn toward the oppressive, looming arch.
The cultist smiled, then the ancient city ignited, exploding with a million hues.
Sunshine gushed from the high central arch of the triumphal gate, blinding night-vision which automatically switched off. Golden and glaring, the wave of light fell like a tsunami flooding a beach. Stunned by a mental shock with the impact of a physical slap, Sly raised his arm to block the light.
The invisible shield was astonishing but the intense sunlight pouring through the monument was incredible on a whole other level. The phenomenon was utterly incomprehensible. On the alien side of the archway the land sloped up, revealing another square in a far distant city and its massed ranks of soldiers, perhaps a thousand men alert and waiting. Bright sunlight flashed on what, spears and helms? And windmoved bloody pennants! Cavalry began to move into a trot, then a canter.
He stared through the portal into the sunlight from another world and his thoughts cascaded, a pinball bonus round.
This alien tech was why the city could be here, in the darkness under the ice.
This was the other way into Level Four, how the cultists arrived.
This was why the CIA didn¡¯t tell the world!
But no¡ Even as the last panicked thought crossed Sly¡¯s mind, he negated it.
Finding the city came first. Area 71 was the CIA¡¯s archaeological dig long before anyone arrived using the portals. Then the cultists arrived. A scouting party.
The last pieces dropped into place.
First, one or two arrived, four months ago. And no, not cultists. They were something else.
¡°Madre¡¯d dios,¡± Nio whispered.
¡°Colonel, any advice now would be appreciated,¡± said Ramirez in a monotone.
¡°Tell them to bring their own food,¡± Emil Marcus interrupted fervently. ¡°There¡¯s not enough in the whole of Antarctica for those mothers.¡±
Sly¡¯s mind raced. He thought of the shield that they must get past or through, and saw the three officers standing behind the screen, staffs plunged hard into the ground, faces hard in a mask of concentration. They stood only a stone¡¯s throw away from the edge of the shield, but the bullets couldn¡¯t pass.
A white-water torrent of images filled his head with noise, but then he saw.
A stone¡¯s throw? Why would they stand a stone¡¯s throw away from an impenetrable shield? He stared at the HVTs, and the idea finally slithered through.
Shit... is that why the tangos used crossbows?
Sly grabbed at the intuition and suddenly grasped what they needed to do.
¡°Eli,¡± he cried hoarsely, ¡°get the rifle. Emil, get it to him! Who has a grenade launcher? Tell me now!¡± Gus autocompleted the answer. ¡°Josh Smith!¡±
¡°I¡¯ve got it, Colonel. Why?¡±
Because the single-shot, under-barrel grenade launcher could propel a variety of 40mm explosive rounds at seventy-six metres a second, designed for a slow, arcing trajectory. Of the weapons they had, it was the only one slower but more lethal than a crossbow.
But he didn¡¯t have time to say any of that. He waved his arm, pointed.
¡°Smith! Get ready to fire the launcher into those three officers!¡±
¡°That¡¯s straight at that, that wall,¡± Smith warned. ¡°I don¡¯t have the trajectory to land a grenade directly behind it.¡±
Sly waved that away. ¡°Straight at ¡®em is fine.¡±
He saw Eli take up the snipers¡¯ rifle and check it over.
¡°Eli, as soon as the grenade goes up, take out as many of the tangos as you can, as quickly as you can, starting with the HVTs. Headshots, Eli. Smith?¡±
¡°Yessir!¡±
A fine time to test a theory.
¡°Fire the frickin¡¯ thing.¡±
The 40mm high-explosive grenade arced over the square, visible as a dot against the daylight bright portal. It hit the invisible wall.
Which sparkled but didn¡¯t glow. The grenade slowed sharply but penetrated further than any of the bullets, dropping to the stone-paved floor on the other side of the invisible wall, bouncing once hard, twice before rolling to a stop between the three HVTs. The fuse tick-ticked, then blew.
Chapter Four: PART VII - Rearguard
The outer shell of the grenade containing the Composition B explosive charge was made of high tensile steel designed to fragment. The force of the blast and flying shrapnel, flung at fifteen hundred metres per second, created a five-yard radius lethal zone from the point of the explosion.
First, Sly saw a cloud of dust erupting in the square and shrapnel triggered inky splotches along the length of the shield. Then the marks vanished, revealing one of three high-value targets down and another HVT staggering, eyes bloody, no longer holding his staff.
Eli¡¯s rifle cracked. The blinded man fell as though deboned.
¡°The shield¡¯s down,¡± said Eli, the sergeant¡¯s voice monotone.
The third HVT, robed and armoured, froze momentarily, then ran ¨C not to his companion¡¯s aid, but away.
Crack. He fell, sprawling.
¡°Open fire!¡± cried Ramirez.
Sly took the order and squeezed half a magazine into the ranked soldiers this side of the arches. The columns rippled with blue light and the men scattered with loud yells and a couple of pained screams. Sly changed to single shot, taking out individuals one by one. He looked, but there was no sign of Ghost. He started with shots to centre mass but saw more than one man stagger and stay upright. He was near enough to be accurate, so he switched to fire into their faces.
Now when they fell, they sometimes stayed down.
Sly looked up, blinked and frowned. The light was weird, fading.
The sunlight from the central arch was dimming. On the other side the cavalry reined in, stopped, then disappeared as midnight abruptly returned to the middle arch. Inky black filled the cavern.
Night-vision re-initiated and the world returned in greyscale.
¡°Forward,¡± Ramirez called and stood, starting to advance. The others rose, some changing magazines before they stood. ¡°Objectives are to get Ghost, collect intelligence and protect yourselves! Singh, rear guard! Watch our backs!¡±
The fleeing enemy streamed across the plaza, not heading for the middle arch but the smaller one on the right side. Exactly where it went Sly didn¡¯t know, but the men sprinted as if for the exit.
From the start fighting was fierce as a rear-guard engaged to let others run. A huge, bearded man in black emerged swinging a bloody scimitar, forcing Sly to shoot point-blank, bowling him over with a flash of azure, the stink of ozone and a heavy crash of armour. Another shot kept him down, but the giant rose again. Sly swore with fury, aimed directly at the beard and squeezed the trigger.
When a blow glanced off Sly¡¯s armoured shoulder he shifted, shot a man carrying a crossbow. And like that the close quarters melee continued. When he momentarily surfaced, he flipped to UV but saw no reflections from a flaming Ghost. He fought on, a shot at a time, flanked by companions doing the same.
The tale has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.
Six fought into the deserted enemy camp.
¡°Look for anything that might have belonged to the researchers,¡± Sly reminded them, ¡°any books, papers, maps or electronic media. You know the drill.¡±
They expended ammo to push the tangos back and took a minute to pick through the scattered detritus.
¡®Here,¡¯ Smith signalled.
The medic had found a robust container the size of a breadbox on its side, empty. Sly recognized the shape and size of the box from the bodycam footage Fox showed him, carried by Chopra. When he raised a rope handle with the carbine, the box weighed too much and he peered inside, expecting a trap. At the bottom...
A collection of books.
He picked one up and fanned the pages. The first was blank. And so was the one under that. He hurried, flicking through the pages. It wasn¡¯t until the eighth book that he was startled to find a book containing writing.
Writing, not print.
Stiff pages were covered in a script exactly like the notebook he carried under his armour. Or nearly. There were no pages hard creased down the centre. He picked up the next one down and flicked through. Another blank, no writing.
Sly imagined the researchers paying in diamonds for the container, satisfied by the top layer. After the deal went wrong, someone retrieved the thin section of real books, leaving only one in the rush.
A single book, the cost of a man¡¯s life.
Sly flicked through the one small bound book until Gus said it had captured a scan of the pages. He let it fall into the container then shared a map location and left a message for Singh with the pin.
Contact Major General Fox or Officer Jarvis, let them know you found the researcher¡¯s books.
A minute later he was back in the fighting, not pursuing Tangos as much as rushing to the same objective. Resistance was firm. The team took fire from crossbows and other ranged weapons, but the enemy saw less well in the darkness. Low on ammo, he reached in his bag for another magazine, hand closing on nothing.
He cursed himself for not reserving more magazines but in the middle of the skirmish he was unwilling to take the others¡¯ ammo. He took to the rear of the group, reserving his last carbine rounds as the last few tangos sprinted ahead.
¡°There!¡± Marcus pointed. Sly didn¡¯t see until he shifted to UV. Three white shapes blazed, men on fire sprinting to the same right-hand archway as the rest. Marcus took careful aim and rattled off four or five shots. Sly fired twice.
One of the blazing shapes stumbled, then ran on to be absorbed by the arch.
¡°Don¡¯t let them escape!¡± Ramirez cried his voice harsh with emotion. He wasn¡¯t alone, Marcus had secured his weapon and was running furiously. Sly saw no one else in view, fighting or retreating. The team would be unimpeded unless tangos tried to hold the arch entrance. But why would they do that? We¡¯d only encircle the arch, pursue from the other side.
Sly would long remember how the team was swallowed by the minor archway. First on Ramirez¡¯s heels was Emil Marcus, pounding up the short flight of steps with Eli Brown immediately after, carbines ready. Then Nio Gonzalez and Grace Clarke entered nearly together in a rush to catch the others. Josh Smith was a second later, not running as blindly, and hesitating before pushing through.
Sly finally ran out of ammunition and put down the empty carbine on the last pale, dusty stone slab before the steps began.
He took out the fully loaded Sig M17 and saw eight clips in his bag. Taking a two-handed grip, he ascended into the cool darkness. Why would they all retreat to this archway? Was there a way out in the unknown city quarter beyond?
He stepped into the shadows. Unless ¨C
By then, it was far too late to speculate. Dark tentacles snatched him up, and he was gone.
Chapter Five: PART I - The Obelisk
When Sly came back to himself, he was somehow still on his feet. Shock shuddered through him, and he took a steadying step forward, and another half-shuffle, but froze and gasped when the toes of his boots crossed an unseen edge.
He stared down at his feet.
The place was dark but not as black as the caverns. He saw his boots clearly in night-vision, but beyond his toes was a line of utter void, its end too far down to see.
Reflexively he shuffled back, thinking to retreat the way he came.
Instead, his spine found a smooth, unyielding, icy-cold surface behind him, worked stone but with the chill of glass. He braced against it, and he caught his breath. A breeze crossed his cheeks as he recovered, and he breathed in the fragrance of eucalyptus and mint and other growing things. He turned his head but saw nothing but a grey horizon, lifted his chin and saw nothing except stars. Off in the distance he heard a coyote-like yip.
I¡¯m outside, in the open air. How the hell did that happen?
That one fact was obvious, but took an age to sink in. He wasn¡¯t in the caves, but it was dark, and it was night, but not freezing.
It was warm. He wasn¡¯t in the Antarctic.
Was I drugged, shipped out to somewhere warm and then dumped? Improbable. He remembered the shadowed archway, and the feeling of being dragged through into the void by a power he couldn¡¯t resist. Is kidnap less likely than stepping through a doorway to another world? We assumed the unlit arches led nowhere except an unknown quarter of the city. The tangos had all headed to that one archway, so they¡¯d known where to go.
But what if the arch wasn¡¯t simply architecture, but another portal like the great arch, but smaller. What if the portal¡¯s destination was simply¡ dark? It¡¯s night-time here, not the bright sunlight of the main arch. Did the different portals go to separate worlds or to alternate time-zones on the same planet?
Unbalanced by the weird thought, Sly switched back to the here and now.
¡°Hello?¡± Sly called softly, hoping he would hear the voice of one of his companions. There was no reply, no echo of subterranean walls, only the spiced whisper of cool wind into his face. He upped the volume. ¡°Hello!¡±
He waited, listened. Nothing and no one replied. He was alone, for now.
He tried to access Gus. First nothing, then a one-word status message.
¡®Recalibrating.¡¯
Ensure your favorite authors get the support they deserve. Read this novel on Royal Road.
That could signify many things, but most often it meant that his personal Gus agent had lost its wider network. Gus was a distributed AI system: its many individual nodes shared whatever computing power and information they had, over whatever connections they could find. When multiple Gus-nodes were close enough to share information without delay, each swarm formed an agent, a sort of joint personality or hive-mind. When the delay was too great, every node started again with whatever memory and processing power they individually had to hand, creating a new agent.
Gus¡¯s links to other nodes were obviously kaput.
Fortunately, my body¡¯s a bargain bag of processors. Hundreds of tiny processors embedded in the sensors under my skin, plus three ¨C or was it four? ¨C optical biochips.
His local Gus would survive, for now.
That was the positive spin. There was also bad news. The error message meant that his team had fallen out of contact. Wherever Ramirez was, he would receive the same recalibration message as his Gus agent reconnected to whatever resources it had nearby. The shades, the skin sensor network, any phones they might have. Any device with a processor.
He breathed hard and stared at the sky. Clouds moved across the stars, ships billowing sails on a mirrored sea. The night air was chill enough to feel comfortable in clothes suited to the Antarctic, but he wasn¡¯t cold.
He stared up. He wasn¡¯t the kind of army navigator who looks at the sky and a watch and finds he¡¯s near Boston because of a particular star on the horizon. Me, near Boston? I¡¯d look for light from the Zakim Bridge. There are no artificial lights at all. This better not be North Korea, that¡¯d really make my day.
He smiled to himself but didn¡¯t feel the joy. His HUD claimed it was the fourteenth of October but the local time was blank. The sky was paler than before, nearly dawn.
Sly imitated Gus and listed his resources.
He¡¯d had the Sig entering the arch, and here it still was, warm from his hand. He replaced it back in its holster at his hip, opposite a seven-inch ka-bar knife. He wore black lightweight body armour, NIJ Level III, its inner pockets full of ceramic plate. The small backpack was also with him, containing items he¡¯d collected from the dead earlier that day, plus ammunition for the Sig, a couple of non-lethal tear and smoke grenades, and some rations. Not much food, he¡¯d not expected to be leaving Area 71 that day. More fool me.
Sly half-slung his bag and groped for Greyhair¡¯s black cloak. The bundle of material was strange, warm like Merino wool but fizzing with a charge that didn¡¯t go away. Finding the clasps, he let the material billow from his hands, pleasantly surprised it didn¡¯t cling. He hauled the cloak around his shoulders, fastened the clasp, and immediately felt warmer in its embrace. Nice.
Idly, Sly checked his system stats. The current team-comparison was useless, so he switched back to the original hardcoded test-set. Five was the average score for the volunteers. Each had been in their twenties, mostly from the Marine Corps and his own unit, the Tenth. Sly scored between nine and ten for intelligence, between seven and eight for wisdom, and below seven for charisma, in comparison with the benchmark score.
It was with regret but no surprise that he had fallen below average on strength, dexterity and constitution. True, he wasn¡¯t as young as the other participants, but a three on constitution still stung. He¡¯d turned to more fencing and running in hope it would tick up, but it never had.
Talking of which, the fatigue of the day was taking its toll and he needed rest, but one thing was certain. He wasn¡¯t going to sleep standing up, overlooking a crevasse.