Vostok (30 page)

Leaning against the sub, I looked back and saw the bear-dogs. The adult was sniffing and pawing at the blood-drenched snow, her offspring following the trail toward the sub.

I gripped the bow and pushed.

I could see the charging adult in my peripheral vision as my boots hit water. Another shove and I climbed inside, my feet straddling Ben as the animal struck the sub.

The bow spun in the water.

I fell into the middle seat and managed to seal the dome as the predator stood up on its hind legs and pawed at the acrylic,
pushing us into deeper water.

I tried the engine.

No power.

For a second, I panicked; then remembered Vostok Command had us on their override.

The radio crackled. “Vostok Mobile Command to
Barracuda
. Colonel Vacendak here. Report.”

“Wallace here. Captain Hintzmann’s seriously wounded, and Dr. Liao’s in bad shape. We’re all suffering from exhaustion and hypothermia. Start the engine so I can crank up the heat.”

The sub powered on, sending a rush of cold air pouring out of my vent.

“Dr. Wallace, what happened to the sensory devices? We’re registering Dr. Liao’s and your devices, but Captain Hintzmann’s was never activated.”

“I’ll ask him about it when he comes to. Right now you need to get us to the extraction point before he bleeds to death.”

A moment’s pause. “Dr. Wallace, I’m going to turn you over to Captain Eric Schager. He will pilot you into the northern basin. We’ll have a medical team waiting for you back in the dome.”

“Thank you.” I laid my head back, then peeled off my gloves. Raising my dripping wet left boot, I attempted to unbuckle the straps with my half-frozen fingers.

“Dr. Wallace, this is Captain Schager. I’m tracking your position using our SAT feed, but there are going to be biologics along the way that I can’t see. I’m going to take you out of the bay at five knots just to make sure that whale’s moved on, but don’t go active on sonar.”

“Acknowledged.” I struggled to remove my climbing boots so I could warm my feet, hoping the pain of their thawing out wouldn’t affect my piloting.

The
Barracuda
submerged, moving at a slow pace through the black sea.

Rotating my seat around, I leaned over the aft console to check on Ming. Her breaths were shallow, her lips violet-blue.

Climbing back with her, I stripped off her coat. Searching through the storage compartment, I located a wool blanket and wrapped it around her, then used the aft compartment’s microwave to heat some water for tea.

“Ming, sip this.” I held the cup’s built-in straw to her lips, but she was unresponsive.

I pressed the hot plastic to her face, and she moaned but still wouldn’t drink.

I took a long sip myself, reminding me of the emptiness in my stomach.

Gently lifting her left leg, I unlatched her boots and gently worked them off. I peeled her wool socks from one blue bare foot and then the other. Her toes were dark purple with frostbite. Warming my own hands with the cup, I sandwiched her foot in my palms, transferring the heat. I repeated this with the other foot, which was in far worse shape. She’d probably lose her two smallest toes.

Then I saw the ECW iPhone case lying on the seat.

It must have fallen out of her jacket pocket when I pulled it off her. Obviously, there was no reception in Vostok, but there was the device’s camera.

I removed the phone from its extreme weather case and pressed PHOTOS.

What in the hell… ?

“Well, now that we have seen each other,” said the unicorn,
“if you’ll believe in me, I’ll believe in you.”

—Lewis Carroll

The images were of the southeast face of the mountain, the photos taken from an elevation halfway up the snow-capped peak. Ben was in most of the photos, which were shot from below as he made his way up to the summit, a climbing axe in each hand.

They were working together
.

The first dozen shots zoomed in on his ascent. The rest attempted to capture an object he had exposed at the summit.

Find Ben’s camera. He’ll have taken the money shots
.

“Dr. Wallace, you have reentered the main river. I need you to take over.”

“Stand by.”

I climbed over the aft console to the middle seat. Searching through Ben’s stash of food, I consumed a container of raisins and a protein drink to raise my blood sugar and stave off the hunger pangs. My bladder signaled it was back on the job. Wincing at having to share Ben’s plastic urinal, I relieved myself.

“All right, Captain, I’m ready.”

I felt the console’s joystick come to life in my right palm, the foot pedals responding beneath my thawing feet. Following the main river, I kept our speed at ten knots, allowing the current to carry us.

We had traversed several miles when Vostok Command relayed new instructions.

“Dr. Wallace, in half a kilometer you’ll come to a tributary off
your portside bow. Follow that waterway; it flows into the north basin.”

“Acknowledged.”

The swift current bled north into a deepwater inlet, and I knew the basin had to be close. And then my headphones were accosted by clicks, the bizarre underwater acoustics coming from multiple sonar contacts in the water directly ahead.

I slowed to five knots, my heart pounding in my chest.

Ben moaned something in his delirium as he regained consciousness. “Are we topside yet?”

“We’re close to the extraction point, only something’s between us and the northern basin. Whatever they are, there seems to be a lot of them.”

“To hell with ’em. Just pound the horn and scare ’em outta the way.”

Before he could switch our sonar from PASSIVE to ACTIVE, I overrode his console. “Stay quiet. It could be another whale.”

In fact, there were dozens of them, and they were bobbing vertically in the water, taking long, rhythmic breaths as they slept. The adult sperm whales were all female, their hides lead-gray or black except for an albino pigment that bleached their bellies and terrifying lower jaws white. The borders where dark met light were patterned differently, serving to distinguish one
Livyatan melvillei
from the next.

The young bobbed next to their mothers, many suckling in their sleep.

Using only my night-vision glasses, I maneuvered between these living logs of blubber at a crawl. The females were about forty feet long, their enormous heads comprising a third of their anatomy and half their mass. Husking breaths echoed in my headphones, the sounds coming from blowholes positioned at the very upper left corner on the top of their skulls. The eyes were elliptical and
remained closed, situated in the middle of that tremendous head, followed by the ear hole and a relatively small swim flipper. A dorsal hump separated the box-shaped upper torso from the powerful tail, the flukes divided by a median notch.

We passed close enough to one female to glimpse deep prune-like wrinkles running down her dark back.

The calves were longer than our sub, weighed over a ton, and were mostly albino.

It took more than fifteen minutes to pass through the forest of sleeping whales. Finally, we were through, moving past the plateau’s cliff face into open water.

“This is Schager. Well done. You’ve entered the northern basin. Come to course zero-three-seven. The extraction zone is less than six kilometers away.”

I kept the Barracuda ninety feet below the surface, maintaining our northeasterly heading at twenty knots. I was beyond tired and kept nodding off every few seconds, my drooping head snapping me awake.

“Wallace, it’s Schager. There’s two things you need to know. Dr. Liao has passed away—”

“Huh?”

“—and your sonar just detected a very large blip.”

I glanced behind my seat at Ming, then back at my sonar monitor. The blip was shadowing us, matching our course and speed as it moved along the bottom, 1,266 feet below the surface.

It was another
Livyatan melvillei
. A bull, most likely the elder male. Sonar estimated his length at a staggering ninety-three feet, his girth at forty to fifty tons.

“Schager, how close are we to the extraction point?”

“Less than two kilometers. Vostok’s external pressure is rising as the ice sheet drops. Keep it nice and easy, I want you to descend to three hundred feet as you power up both lasers. Then turn the sub back over to me. Once you reach the extraction zone,
I’ll launch you on a ninety-degree vertical plane and begin a countdown.

“At zero you’ll pop up out of the water and melt the ice directly above you. The hole you’ve created will cause a vacuum effect, and the low external-pressure zone you create above you will suck the
Barracuda
straight up through the borehole, forcing the sub up through the ice sheet. By the time the water freezes behind you and reseals the hole, you’ll be halfway home.”

Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzt!

“Shit.” I pushed down on the joystick, watching in horror as the blip rose away from the lakebed to meet us.

“Okay, Moby Dick, let’s see if you like
my
noise.” Going ACTIVE, I let loose a chorus of
pings
, backing the monster off.

“Schager, you there? I’m at three hundred feet. Lasers are powered up and on high. Turning over control on my count: three… two… one!”

I pushed the button beneath my console… and prayed.

“Cease all sonar pings and hold on to your balls.”

I stopped pinging and gripped my armrests as Vostok Command rolled the
Barracuda
into a steep 2-G ascent, driving us back into our seats while slingshotting us into a vertical ascent.

“Two hundred feet until surface. Counting down: five… four… three—”

Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzt. Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzt
.

“—two… one!”

We launched out of the water and instantly hit a ceiling of ice, only we never actually
hit
the ice. It simply washed away into a progressively evaporating tunnel of mist and water while a geyser exploded upwards through the borehole from behind the sub, driving us faster, its wave pushing past around our acrylic dome.

“Congratulations, gentlemen, you’ve achieved orbit and are headed home. Stand by, Colonel Vacendak wants to speak with you in private. See you topside. Schager, out.”

I hyperventilated gasps of relief as I checked my depth gauge, which was already resetting to accommodate the ice sheet. A little less than four thousand meters, about thirteen thousand feet, until we surfaced. Ascending at a steady fifty feet per minute, I estimated our ascent would take a little more than three hours.

And then we stopped moving.

I checked the Valkyrie gauges. “Something’s wrong. The lasers powered off.”

Colonel Vacendak’s voice crackled over the radio. “Good afternoon, gentlemen. I thought we might have a private conversation before you arrived topside. Answer my questions honestly, and you’ll enjoy a steak dinner on me. Lie to me, and you’ll end up as dinner for that magnificent creature still circling below.”

The engine shut off. A wave of queasiness hit me in the gut as the
Barracuda
plunged twenty feet tail-first through a funnel of icy water.

The propeller re-engaged, the spinning blades halting our descent.

I heard Ben wheeze a pained breath.

“This is Wallace. Quit your head games, Colonel. Captain Hintzmann’s in no shape—”

“Captain Hintzmann is dead.”

“What?” Unbuckling my harness, I stood on my seat and leaned over to check on Ben. His face was ghostly pale, his eyes glazed over. I checked his neck—no pulse.

I flopped back in my seat, feeling numb. “Take me home… please. I’ll do whatever you say.”

“Glad to hear it, Dr. Wallace. Did you know the captain and Dr. Liao were working together?”

Don’t tell him about the photos
.

“What do you mean by working together? Aren’t we all working together?”

“You’re lying, Dr. Wallace. I think you know exactly what I mean.”

Damn uniform. It’s registering my heart rate. Vacendak’s using it like a lie detector. Don’t get excited. Take slow easy breaths. Answer in truths that keep him off-balance
.

“Yeah, so they had sex. So what? We thought we were going to die. Why do you give a shit? Don’t tell me you’re a jealous lover.”

I climbed back to Ming’s cockpit and glanced outside the ship at the tailfin. The umbilical gave the Colonel complete control.

Was there any way to disconnect it?

“Zachary, when you ventured down that crevasse, what did you find?”

“I didn’t venture, I fell.”

“And?”

“The crevasse led down to an old magma tunnel.”

“Nothing unusual?”

“There was a glow, I went to check it out. It was caused by a vein of sphalerite. It’s a mineral that, under pressure, creates its own illumination. The force of the crevasse opening generated friction. By the time I left, it was dark.”

“I see. And this glowing tunnel, where did it lead?”

“It dead-ended at volcanic rock. Why are you asking me this?”

I gripped the seat, clenching my teeth as the propeller ceased and the sub dropped another thirty feet.

“Are you insane? Bring me back up to the surface, you psychopath!”

“Zachary, did you know that the suit you are wearing contains sensors that allow us to track all sorts of things. For instance, changes in your blood pressure told us the moment you had descended another two atmospheres to access that tunnel. Thirty-three minutes elapsed between the time you went down and
whe you climbed back up.”

“Now you’re judging my climbing skills?”

The rope!

Climbing back into the third seat, I removed the eighty-foot coil of nylon from Ming’s backpack.

“Time, Zachary, can be deceiving. As you probably know, time is a concept limited to our physical third-dimensional perspectives. It doesn’t exist in a fourth-dimensional vortex—say, a wormhole. Or, theoretically, a vessel capable of interstellar travel.”

“Colonel, no offense, but if you want my opinion about quantum physics, we could just as easily have this conversation back in the dome.”