The Antarctic Discovery (Novelette) (3 page)

He wondered
what it had been designed to do! Had they built it to make contact
with something that they had detected? Perhaps the radio signals
from it had been detected?

He wondered if
it was in a probe of immense proportions, as there was no mention
of any humans!

There were sights of it exploring
worlds, but he could not grasp its mission
. He knew that it had to be more than for doing
what normal probes did and that alien contact and deep space
exploration had to be part of it! Had something made contact with
them? Did they have a real Star War program hidden away?

Why
did this voyager end up there, embedded in
ice in the Antarctic? Was it there as it would not be detected by
the rest of the world? It surely would be detected coming down even
at the Artic! Yet he could not even imagine such a large object not
being detected coming down anywhere!

Willis gasped as new visions appeared
and he saw nothing but a vision of blackness, and
it
hurtled through
the outer limits of space and time, racing
into this universe, and he watched,
staggered, realizing that it had traveled beyond the universe, and
he realized it had a way of making vast leaps through space with
it, but it was inaccurate, and that star traveling was needed to
carry out the majority of its voyage!

For some reason
its form was a mass of energy and it became unstable and it created
vast unstable energy explosions across space and time, which he
realized were so powerful that they ripped at the fabric of space
and time and made regions temporary unbalanced and warp, with only
its protective energy shield holding it from the effects.

S
tar formations flashed by, as it continued
its pursuit of something, with
its
sphere of white glowing energy floating by
like a colossal ghost. Voyaging through billions of stars, while
transforming its energy states further from their original
states.

Willis watched the visions vanish and the
normal surroundings there emerge, and felt himself being moved away
and was left standing at the entrance hole, where he gasped and saw
the two gunmen standing below at his vehicle, who aimed their guns
at him and ordered him to climb down!

Chapter 2

The Secret Military
Operation

Once the
military aircraft neared Ice Station X1 the soldiers aboard swiftly
fitted on their parachutes and adjusted their gear, while receiving
updates for the mission from Commander Craven.

Weaver gasped
considering the dangerous mission ahead, and gasped again at what
had occurred already! Certain things that had occurred interested
him greatly!

There was more
action than he could believe! What were the events that they were
on the trail of? Were the soldiers on the plane being intentionally
secretive or covering not knowing things for reasons? What had he
let himself in for?

He was to
masquerade as a soldier to get into the Antarctic ice station and
basically find out what was happening there without getting caught,
and to take any action if needed!

Sunlight
blasted through one of the windows of the plane, giving him some
warmth. The Antarctic conditions were slowly entering the plane and
digging deep into his body, and he gasped at the temperatures
recorded there and at the fact they were at such a height, which
increased it! Normally he did not mind the winter but he liked to
get use to low temperatures, and he had not been anywhere as cold
before!

So when the
plane door was opened for them to parachute and the winds hit them
he shuddered and put his helmet over his head!

He
automatically dived out with the others gritting his teeth!

He started
getting his body use to it, and could still hardly believe the
location below and that he would be trapped there without help if
anything happened! There was nothing for miles going into the flat
white horizon! They had not even seen anything below since they
passed the last ship over the sea.

He realized
that they had made a mistake! They had been too keen to enter the
mission and they had dropped down a greater distance away from the
ice station than they should have! And he could barely even see it
and only recognized it from the secret intelligence photos of the
highly confidential underground base.

The fact that
he had been a soldier and his military record and his keenest,
fitness, and record of successful spy missions for the intelligence
agency were the main reasons for him being chosen for the mission
and to infiltrate the soldiers to enter the ice station.

They had given
him little and he knew they had little to give! Basically they had
little of what was happening and he was to get information!

He discovered
little in what he had been told and really only knew that there
were deaths occurring all over the ice station, and most had been
killed by military weapons, which was why the soldiers were sent in
to stop, and he was put there by intelligence agencies to find out
more on.

Nothing added
up! Who wanted to kill anyone at such a place? It was basically a
military and scientist ice station and he could only think that
another country was behind it! Yet who had done it and why had they
been done it? There were no known cases like it on record, which
they or he could find, and he had also unsuccessfully searched for
comparisons!

Who could
profit from it? They clearly would replace the people killed, and
what good would it do for them! There had to be far more behind it!
Surely other countries would not have any reasons or be able to
profit from it with it being there.

It was there to
cover that region of the world if needed.

Someone that he
knew had been sure that they had discovered something and that the
military and scientists there that knew about it were being killed,
and if that was true he believed that he might be able to find
something or someone with something.

He gazed over
at the underground ice station gleaming with sunbeams and wondered
what the hell was there! The case was important and something had
to have occurred!

He recalled the
immense size of it below the ground as he watched the others let
out their parachutes, and he copied them and was left staggered
when his entire parachute shot straight upwards, and flew away into
the distance!

He gasped and
examined the straps and saw that they had been deliberately
cut!

He instantly
dived towards the only person directly below him, where he could
properly reach, and realized that the speed that he was traveling
at by diving might be too fast to do anything, and that he would
have only one chance and less than a second to grab hold of the
other parachutist to save his life!

As he shot down
he saw the plane vanish beneath the horizon and grasped the full
dangers and loneliness of the Antarctic, and again realized the
dangers!

He made himself
move over towards the parachutist below and swiftly and powerfully
grabbed his waist, and realized he could not hold on and swiftly
grabbed a strap from him and tied it to the other soldier’s
parachute straps.

Close to the
ground he rested and considered his chances of survival and gasped!
Someone clearly knew that he was there and had intended to kill
him!

Chapter 3

The Gun Battle

Behind them,
below the horizon, the sunlight vanished and the early Antarctic
night engulfed the soldiers and Weaver studied his surroundings
trying to explain why they had made such a mistake! The entire
mission had been planned down the smallest detail!

The ice station
was further away and the snow deep and terrain virtually impossible
to get quickly through! It was incredible that they had actually
not landed earlier than when the sun was going down. The incident
with his parachute had been a major incident and he knew there was
someone there against him and perhaps the mission, and he wondered
who had access to the parachutes!

When a loud
blast exploded out and a bullet hit and killed one of the front
soldiers, beside Commander Craven, Weaver was not fully surprised,
and realized that someone was attacking them!

It was lucky
there was cover and they rushed below two small hills as bullets
flew in hitting the snow all about them, and he realized that there
were at least six of them, and that they had made the mistake of
being too far away. The bullets were off and they had been lucky
that they had hit the soldier.

None of them
could see who was there though, and they were hidden away at
different locations and moved around, and they were unable to
recognize anything! Were they professionals and had planned the
whole thing well before they had arrived?

The whole
terrain was unfamiliar too them and they had the advantage over
them! How could they move forward and get to the ice station
without receiving many deaths?

He was unsure
if they could survive there the night! They had no proper food or
cover, and the temperature was dropping dramatically and none of
them had adapted to the environment.

He wondered if
they got lost if they could find the ice station there! The place
was very hidden away! It was lucky they had seen it from the air
and knew the direction.

He even
wondered if it was the people from the ice station actually firing
on them! If they had not known of their arrival and the situation
there was worse than stated they could believe that they were being
attacked!

He considered
the region and what must be one of the most desolate regions of the
world. They had not seen anyone since they had flown over the
Antarctic sea, and was sure planes even avoided flying there.

What was
staggering was that they were taking on so many soldiers! What did
they actually intend to do? They surely could not expect to kill
the entire group of soldiers, and if they had been informed about
them they would have realized how trained they were! Yet could they
be trying to scare them away? Yet that was absurd also, as they
would have to go there! There was no where else out there to go
to!

The mission now
seemed flawed! Why had they not brought far more soldiers and more
powerful weapons? The soldiers were shooting away unable to hit
anything and their hidden enemy was ignoring it!

Yet they had
put together a good team of everyone needed to carry out the
mission at the ice station, and if they had landed next to it as
planned nothing would have gone wrong! He wondered if it had been
the captain of the plane who had landed them there or if it had
been a mistake as it had looked at the time?

The adventure
brought him back to life after such a long length of inactivity and
lack of anything of interest. At times he still could not believe
that there was anything out in such a desolate region, and that
anything worthwhile existed there!

It was winter
and deep snow shrouded everything around them, and he realized
again that they would have to camp there. And having not slept
outdoors in winter he gasped at sleeping in such thick cold snow,
and considered if they would find his remains there one day, and
wonder why they had done it. There had been accounts in history of
vast drops in temperature and entire groups of soldiers and others
being found frozen solid and dead! What if temperatures hit far
lower than had been recorded, with there being no recorded proof or
witnesses left alive!

The snow
landscape was untouched by humans everywhere, and at times empty
and hollow with no sound, and had a deep haunting silence that he
had only heard before in thick winter snow landscapes. It reminded
him of another world! An empty lost world absence of life with
faint mists surrounding regions.

What was
shocking was how easily they had trapped them, and he was unsure if
they even knew how they could avoid any large amount of deaths. If
only they had taken a small landing airplane
, and kept
it there, but they could not have traveled there with the amount of
soldiers and at that distance!

There was
nothing to recognize anywhere, and he watched some of the men
attempt to use communication devices to the ice station, and when
they failed they tried to see if there was anything to pick up on
it!

Another problem
was that they had experienced a long exhausting day and had got
more exhausted wading through the deep snow, and a peculiarity he
noticed was a distant hum, similar to a distant engine whirling,
out at an unknown place, and it started to drive him insane trying
to identify it.

It was no
surprise that Commander Craven eventually made them blast them with
as many well aimed rounds to force some form of reaction, but they
seemed to ignore it, and he knew that they would have to hit them
with something or force them away!

It was
incredible when thick snow piled down, and he knew that they could
use it as it was virtually impossible to see through in the dark,
and he realized he had a thermal weapon sight in his equipment and
he used it to see what he could find through the darkness and
blizzard! Yet they were too good at hiding!

“
What are we going to do
...?
”
one
of men finally spluttered, fighting for air, furious that they had
been put in a situation.

Commander
Craven
stopped checking their weapons and showed how
annoyed he was at his reply and at the way things were going, and
walked towards him.