Ice Hunt

Despite her momentary flare of guilt, she wanted nothing at this moment but to see Co

She climbed out of the loop and into the maze. Nothing was here. “Just tricks,” she whispered to her own heart, “just ice, light, and shadow.”

She followed the orange markers, like beacons in the night. Twisting one way, then another. Then, from far down in the dark well, her light reflected back at her. Two red spots glowed.

Lacy knew what she was seeing.

Eyes, unblinking, large — dead of emotion.

She braked to a stop, kicking up ice.

Fear shook through her. She felt her bladder give way a little, the trickle hot in her skin suit.

She backed a single step, then another. Legs trembled. She wanted to turn and run, but she feared turning her back on those eyes. She continued her halting retreat.

Then in a blink, the eyes vanished — whether because her light had pulled back or the presence was gone, she didn’t know. Free from their paralyzing stare, she twisted around and fled on her blades.

She raced, fueled by terror. Her arms flailed, her legs kicked, digging out chunks of ice in her panic. She fled blindly into the maze of passages. Her markers were all designed for a counterclockwise circuit, orange arrows pointing the safe way. Now, as she ran backward through her course, the markers were meaningless. They all pointed back toward the creature behind her.

In a matter of moments, she was lost.

She raced down a narrow passage, one she had never been in before, more a crack in the ice than a true tu

Crying, tears flowing and freezing on her cheeks, she scrabbled with her blades. The tu

She craned around, shining the light over her shoulder. Through the pinch in the tu

Polar bear, her mind screamed.

She remembered the whispers of something picked up on the DeepEye sonar. Movement on the scope.

She cried out and raced away.

As she fled around a sharp corner, the floor vanished a few yards in front of her. The bright ice ended at darkness. As a geology student, she knew the name for this: ice shear. Like any crystal, when ice was exposed to stress, it broke in clean planes. On glaciers, this led to ice-shear cliffs. But the same features could be found inside glaciers, too…or inside ice islands.

Lacy dug in her blades, but her momentum and the downward tilt of the tu

The shear pit was not a deep one, no more than fifteen feet, and she struck the ice floor with her blades. The impact was too much. Despite the Kevlar ankle guard, one ankle cracked. Her other knee struck so hard that she felt it in her shoulder. She crumpled to the floor in a heap.

Pain drove away her fear, traveling out to all her nerve endings.

She looked upward, to the cliff’s edge.

Her light rose in a beacon.

At the precipice, the beast hesitated. It peered down at her with those dead eyes, glowing red in the reflection of her light. Claws dug into the ice. Shoulders bunched as it leaned over the edge. Rapid huffs of mist curled from each slitted nostril as a deep rumble flowed from it, seeming to vibrate the very air.

Staring up, Lacy knew she had been mistaken a moment ago. With this realization, terror drove sanity to the edges of her consciousness.

It was half a ton in mass, its skin smooth, shining oily, more like a dolphin’s skin. Adding to this appearance, its head was sleek, earless, but domed high, sweeping down to an elongated muzzle, giving it a stretched appearance. The slitted nostrils rose too high on its face, almost above its wide-spaced eyes.

Lacy stared numbly. It was too large, too muscular, too primeval for the modern world. Even in her madness, she recognized what she was seeing: something prehistoric, saurian…yet still mammalian.

The beast studied her in turn, its lips rippling back from its long snout to reveal rows of jagged teeth as bright as broken bone against pink gums. Razored claws sank into the ice.

Some primitive part of her responded to the age-old instincts of predator and prey. A small mewling whimper escaped Lacy’s throat.

The beast began its slow climb into the pit.

Matt was tired of having guns pointed at him. An hour ago, he and the others had been corralled into a mess hall and were now seated at one of the four tables in the room. A small kitchenette occupied the back half of the space. Empty and cold. Breakfast must have already been served.

They had been offered leftover coffee — and though it was as thick as Mississippi mud, it was hot and welcome. Craig hunched over his mug, clutching it with both hands as if it was all that stood between him and a slow, painful death.

Je

As Matt had suspected, after the attack on Prudhoe, no one was taking any chances. The chain of command had to be followed. Matt knew this only too well from his own military days.

He stared over at the two guards — from their uniforms, a petty officer and a seaman. Each bore a rifle across his chest and a holstered pistol on his belt. Je

“What is taking them so long?” Je

“Communication is still bad,” Matt said. The head of the security team had left twenty minutes ago to verify their identification. But that meant reaching someone on the coast, who, in turn, would surely need to reach Fairbanks. They could be here all morning.

“Well, who the hell is in charge here?” she continued.

Matt knew what she meant. The entire security team seemed to consist of the six men who had escorted them to the station. Where were the other Navy perso

“What submarine?” Craig asked, perking up from his mug.

Matt explained what he saw from the air. “The old SCICEX stations were serviced by Navy subs. This is surely no exception, especially as deep as we are into the polar pack. I’d bet my eyeteeth that the senior Navy perso

“What about the head of the research team?” Craig asked. “There has to be a chain of command among the civilians. If we could get someone to listen…”

Since their arrival, a handful of men and women had drifted through to gawk at the newcomers. Their faces were a blend of scientific curiosity and raw need for news of the outside world. One of the men, a researcher with a NASA group, had to be forcibly escorted away by one of the guards.

“I don’t know who’s in charge of the civilian researchers, but I’d wager that person is gone, too.” Matt nodded to their guards. “I’m sure the civilian head of the drift station would’ve barged right past these two.”