“Fifty knots? That’s impossible; nothing can travel that fast underwater.” Cate looked back at the camera feed. There was nothing but the halogen’s glow on a crystal clear empty blackness — the lights not even showing the snowy particle debris usually seen in warm waters.
Bentley leaned forward. “Holy shit, closing in, coming right at us.” He shook his head. “Whatever it is, it just accelerated to eighty knots.”
The other scientists jostled behind Cate, pushing and shoving like teenagers at a rock concert.
Carl Timms, lead engineer, and the only game fisherman in the group, had wide eyes behind thick glasses. “That’s an attack run.” He nodded at the screen. “And we’re sitting ducks.”
“500 feet, 400, 300, 200…” Bentley’s voice was becoming shrill. “In range of the cameras… now.” He pointed.
The crowd surged back to the screen showing the black void miles beneath their feet just as Flipper swirled as something shot past it, creating a liquid tornado around the probe. The motion sensors ignited secondary flashes as the still camera captured image after image.
“Can we stabilize?” Cate felt the knot in her stomach start to tighten again.
“No, we just have to ride it out and hope to god we don’t rupture a buoyancy tank and sink. All we can do is pray Flipper slows enough for us to… oh…” Bentley’s mouth hung open.
A huge eye momentarily filled the screen. It was lidless, round, and white-rimmed, and its pupil was a goat-like slit. Cate sat back, not being able to help feeling that there was a cold intelligence behind the momentary gaze.
The image changed to a furious, boiling movement, and then there came a sound like an electronic scream, as if the probe was shrieking in fear of its life. The screen went dark, then there was nothing.
“It’s gone,” Bentley said into the silent room. “Everything’s gone. It’s all over.”
Cate sat down slowly, feeling dispirited, but also elated. All over? she wondered. Hardly, she knew, feeling a swelling in her chest.
Bentley rewound and then froze the last of the images. He whistled. “Oh my god.” He sat back.
“Alpha predator,” Cate said softly. Framed and frozen on the small screen was the eye. There was no real way to judge scale, but she knew she was seeing something of titanic proportions.
“Now that, is an eye.” Bentley clapped his hands and rubbed them together. “That’s a big blimmin’, beautiful eye.”
“Oh, it’s much more than that, Ark. It’s proof.” Cate stared off into the distance, as she slumped back into her chair, a dreamy smile on her lips. “My proof of life.”
CHAPTER 3
Chief mining engineer, Zhang Li, knelt among the debris. The vibrations from the huge rock cutter ran through him, even making the old fillings in his back teeth ache. But he felt or heard none of it as he broke apart and examined the heavy rock he held in his hands.
Gold, he grunted and broke away the shard of stone with the gleaming metal streak. A good rich vein, he thought, letting the gold nugget piece drop to the tunnel floor, keeping the other. Gold wasn’t the type of riches he sought, but instead, substances worth a thousand times more — REEs, or rare earth elements, the small but vital components used in computers, lasers, and also sophisticated military hardware. It was this scarce treasure they sought from the ancient Antarctic mineral beds.
He grinned and rubbed at the rock piece he still held, knowing what he had was a speck of dust compared to the magnitude of what he had found. He looked around at the tunnel walls, ceiling, and floor — the deposits were old, rich, and very high quality — probably the largest undiscovered deposits left on Earth.
“Hiyaa.” The yell and its echo was lost among the monstrous drilling. Zhang Li’s heart swelled — he’d done it — potentially, billions upon billions of Yuan worth of raw material for the People’s Republic of China. He would be famous, and feted, maybe even by the president himself.
He pushed the rock into his pocket, already planning his country’s and his own future. China was rising to adulthood, and growing with it was a hunger for raw materials, prestige and power, and also, for risk taking. Five years ago, in breach of the global Madrid Protocol’s Antarctic Treaty, he and a team of engineers, geologists, and miners, along with a military support contingent, had been dispatched to the Antarctic.
Week by week, over the years, they had built their machines, and then commenced their digging below the snow and ice. It had been difficult, and lives were lost — but below the ice, that’s where the value lay — in the ancient bedrock. Much of Antarctica was composed of rocks almost four billion years old. It contained nearly all of the Earth’s history locked away, and hidden below a thick blanket of white snow and dark ice.
Secret mining here would be an engineering feat beyond comparison. Zhang Li’s grin widened. But engineering was what Zhang Li lived and breathed. He had graduated with honors from Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and then he, and another student, had been hand-picked straight off campus, to work for a small research company called GBR. That company specialized in fossil fuel research, and he still wondered what happened to the tall girl with the ice blue eyes and night-black hair — Aimee, he remembered, Aimee Weir — brilliant, and better at her job than he could ever be. Everyone expected it would be her to become famous. But now he was here, and it would be him that would be remembered.
Mile after mile below the Antarctic ice Zhang Li and his team had tunneled, first following the signatures from the satellite spectrometry and ground penetrating satellites, and then once locating the mineral traces, following them down to their lodes. Along the way there had been accidents, and there had been mysteries.
He remembered one particular core sample: the drill-pipe had been withdrawn from two miles below the snow, ice, and rock, and its contents laid out on the plastic sheeting for examination. There had been silence for several minutes, as the scientists, geologists, and engineers had stared in confusion, their steaming breath rising around them.
The previous core samples were laid out on tables like long rods of sparkling diamond — some green, some blue, some brilliant white, all displaying the varied and magnificent mineral colors that had accumulated miles below the Antarctic’s surface. But the new sample was different — the stone gave way to something else at the tip… something that bled.
The flesh, if that’s what it was, was mottled green, and the liquid, the blood, that leaked from it, had a bluish tinge. But it was the eye-watering smell — ammonia, and near overpowering, that had chilled the men far more than the freezing temperature.
“We hit something,” Zhang Li had said, wishing he could wipe at his streaming eyes, but the huge gloves made it impossible.
Sho Zhen, their head geologist, and his only friend on the mission, frowned down at the congealed mass. He ran two fingers over the sticky sample. “Something alive.”
Zhang Li saw the sudden alarm in his friend’s face. “Pah.” He stared at Sho. “More likely some sort of fossilized animal preserved in the ice.”
“But, we were below the ice.” Sho Zhen looked up into his face.
Zhang Li shook his head. “The Russians have been bringing up lumps of mammoth flesh from their frozen tundra for centuries.” He glared for several moments, until the man nodded. “We need to move the drill location, and then recommence.” He headed for the door. “See to it.”