By Philip A. Kramer
Originally published by Baen Books in ROBOSOLDIERS: THANK YOU FOR YOUR SERVOS
Click here to learn more about the inspiration for this story.
The first thing Dr. Dale Stratford learned as a scientist was that no experiment ever went exactly to plan. Now, four years into the most anticipated experiment of his career, he was still waiting for the ball to drop. The anxiety chilled him more than the bitter cold of the Antarctic.
His technician did not share his concerns. Gideon sat in a lawn chair, cradling a tablet in his arms. Occasionally he would withdraw a gloved hand from the warmth of an armpit to probe or swipe the screen with a finger.
“We just passed five hundred meters,” Gideon said. Smiling like a schoolboy at lunch bell, he sprang from his lawn chair and approached a flimsy rope barrier.
Dale pulled the collar of his survival suit tighter and shuffled across the hard-packed snow after him.
Steam billowed up from a two-by-two-meter hole on the other side of the barrier. At one corner, a ten-centimeter-wide hose snaked up and away to deposit millions of liters of meltwater at a distance.
Their NASA prototype, HESTIA, melted through the ice at a rate of two cubic meters per minute. The cube-shaped probe, named after the Greek goddess of the hearth and its fire, contained a fast nuclear reactor with highly enriched uranium and a molten lead-bismuth coolant. By directing the flow of coolant into the probe’s ceramic composite exterior, they could melt through the ice in any direction they chose. Between its thermoelectric generator and steam turbine, it produced more power than its onboard instruments and sensors would ever need.
Back at its earliest inception, the project had been little more than a chance to bring in non-dilutive capital for his scientific instruments company. NASA was planning an exploratory mission to Enceladus, the icy moon of Saturn, and they needed a probe capable of tunneling through the ice. Before he knew it, they had completed phase three of the grant and signed a contract with NASA to construct the final prototype. Now, a year before the planned launch, he stood with his assistant and a small team of NASA engineers just outside the eightieth parallel, putting the prototype through its paces. The East Antarctic Ice Sheet was their closest analogue to the frozen moon, with ice as pure and nearly a third as deep.
Beyond the ice pit, a small geodesic dome stood alone on the featureless windswept plains. From this distance, it looked like a faceted blue gem on a glittering white sand beach. For the next two weeks, it would be their base of operations and the only escape from the cold.
“What’s the matter?” Gideon asked, glancing away from the column of steam and at his mentor’s pinched features.
“Waiting for something bad to happen.”
Gideon chuckled.
“You worry too much. Lighten up a little and enjoy the success.”
That was easy for him to say, Dale thought as he grumbled. Gideon had had the luxury of experiencing only the golden years of their endeavor. He never knew the sour taste of a project’s failure or the endless months of wondering what he could have done to prevent it.
Dale, on the other hand, had a life-time’s worth of failure and all the intuition it granted. Even now, as he blew warm air into his gloved hands, that sense niggled at him, urging him to take notice.
A moment later, he finally pinpointed the source of his unease. About thirty meters away, where the pump disgorged over 2000 liters of water a minute, stood one of the three NASA engineers. She held the nozzle of the hose in one hand as she oscillated back and forth like an enthusiastic yard sprinkler. The thing had to be exerting as much force as a fire hose, but she had been at it since they began a little over four hours ago. How strong was this woman?
Now that he thought of it, all the NASA engineers seemed a bit off. He had worked with his fair share of engineers over the years, but he did not recognize the three they had saddled him with. They carried about their tasks with a silent efficiency, setting up the shelter, unpacking the equipment, and aiding him and his technician without question. Quiet, strong, and obedient were certainly not the qualities of any engineer he had ever met. If he did not know any better, he would guess they were soldiers.
Unable to shake the thought, Dale casually circled the pit in search of the second NASA engineer. A man stood on the other side of the steam column, quietly regarding his own tablet. His name tag identified him as Adrian Hendricks. He was a few centimeters taller than Dale, with a crooked nose and cold blue eyes.
“Doctor,” Hendricks said without looking up from his screen. “Can I help you with something?”
“I thought I’d get to know the people I’ll be bunking with the next two weeks. What’s your opinion on nuclear reactors under the control of autonomous systems?” It was not a baseless question; he and Gideon had been arguing about that very thing for the past hour.
“I don’t have an opinion.”
“Really? I’ve never met an engineer who didn’t have a lot to say on the regulation of AI.”
“Sorry to disappoint,” he said. Still not looking at him, he promptly turned and walked toward the humming water pump a dozen meters away.
“Now hold on. I have another question,” Dale called. He shuffled after him in his baggy survival suit.
“What’s that?” he said, not turning around or slowing in the slightest.
“What’s your opinion on military interference in purely scientific endeavors?”
There was a slight stutter in Hendricks’ step. Dale had finally scored a reaction, but he did not celebrate. If he was right, what did it mean for their project?
“You think I’m with the military?”
“Tell me you aren’t.”
This time he stopped and turned to face him before answering.
“I can tell you with complete honesty that I am not, nor have I ever been, associated with the military.”
Dale drew up short. He had not expected that response.
By this time, their conversation had carried to the woman holding the hose. She anchored its nozzle into a bracket hammered into the snow and approached at a brisk walk. Just as the crunch of her boots became audible, Hendrick’s right hand extended a few inches from his side and squeezed into a fist. Within a fraction of a second, she came to a complete stop.
“Then explain that,” Dale said, pointing to the offending hand.
Hendricks looked down at the “freeze” signal, then over his shoulder at the woman standing stock still behind him. He shoved his hand in his pocket and the woman developed a sudden fascination with her boots.
“Look, I don’t care,” Dale said with a dismissive wave. “I’m relieved you’re here, actually. I’m sure you have loads of survival training and enough guns to give every blood-crazed penguin second thoughts. I just want to know why NASA sent the military to help me instead of the other project’s engineers. Wait, is it because Ryabov is Russian?”
Hendricks tensed at the mention of the Roscosmos scientist. Anton Ryabov had helped design their fast reactor to meet the heat and power requirements. It was an area in which the Russians excelled. Or was it the mention of Anton’s motherland that put Hendricks on edge? NASA had gone to great lengths to convince the Russian government to allow them to test their prototype on the deepest ice in the Antarctic. Nearly everyone disputed Russia’s claim on the southernmost continent, but so long as they allowed scientists access, Dale could not care less.
“We are not military, and we have no problem with the Russians,” Hendricks said, with a menacing tone.
Just then, the voice of the third NASA engineer sounded on the small radio attached to Hendricks’ belt loop.
“Sir, two Russian birds inbound at ninety-eight degrees. Forty klicks. ETA ten minutes.”
Dale crossed his arms and raised his eyebrows. They did not meet his eyes.
“Just tell him, Sir,” the woman said, stepping forward. “He’ll find out as soon as we deviate from the plan tomorrow.” Beneath the NASA logo, her name tag read April Drake.
What had she said about deviating from the plan? This was his project. He would not let them take it from him so easily.
“Okay, fine,” Hendricks said, holding out a hand as if to ward off a rabid dog. “We are military engineers. But officially, we work for NASA and are here to test a prototype. You don’t need to know more.”
“I don’t need to know? I am the head of this project. I built this probe myself,” Dale said, pointing unhelpfully to the space where the prototype had sat a few hours ago.
Beside the hole in the ice stood Gideon, his mouth agape as he watched their exchange.
“Sir, we don’t have much time. If they knew the gravity of the situation, they’d be more willing to keep our identities a secret when the Russians show up.”
“Thank you, April. If that is your real name,” Dale said, trying to inject equal amounts of gratitude and derision into the words.
Hendricks stripped off his cap and raked his hand across his bristly hair.
“Let’s head inside,” Hendricks said, motioning to their shelter with his cap.
“The prototype—”
“Drake will handle it.”
April shrugged in apology as she took the tablet from Gideon. The device practically fell out of his technician’s slack fingers. He continued to stare in awe as she settled into his lawn chair and flicked through the HESTIA’s readouts like she had been doing it for years.
Together, Hendricks, Dale, and Gideon followed the narrow trail of footprints to the shelter. The shallow angle of the sun made the solar panels gleam on each of the structure’s faceted surfaces. It had only taken thirty minutes for the engineers to unload, unfold the triangular pieces, and raise them into a dome that morning. It was a good thing, too. As soon as its hold was empty, their cargo plane had promptly departed, leaving them with no other shelter to speak of.
Once inside, Dale took stock of all that had changed since that morning. Collapsible tables, cots, and dozens of crates took up most of the rubber-tread floor, and drawn curtains divided the space into a dining, bathroom, and sleeping area.
The third engineer sat at a small desk constructed from empty crates and covered in radio equipment. He had stripped out of his survival suit in the heated confines of the shelter and was tapping at a computer with fingers that flashed over the keyboard. He too seemed unreasonably well-muscled. His computer displayed a map of the Antarctic. Surrounding the lone blue dot in the center of the East Antarctic Ice Sheet was a scattering of red dots against the white expanse. Two of the dots were moving in their direction.
Hendricks sat at the dining table, propped up his elbows, and tented his hands. Dale flashed back to his thesis defense nearly three decades ago. Like his thesis committee, Hendricks held the fate of Dale’s career in his hands, and he knew it.
“You should sit down,” Hendricks said.
Gideon’s knees bent as if he might sit directly on the floor. When his wits caught up with him, he cautiously took a chair. Dale stood stubbornly in place, taking satisfaction in the act of slowly pulling his gloves off one finger at a time.
“We were not made for this weather,” Hendricks began, glancing significantly at Dale’s gloves. “The Russians were. They’ve occupied Siberia and a full half of the Arctic circle since the age of the Vikings. For the last hundred years, they’ve had more arctic-capable vehicles and icebreakers than any other country in the world. We should have known they weren’t going to decommission all of that hardware when the last of the arctic sea ice melted. When the Antarctic treaty expired in 2048, the Russians finally had the chance to expand their military operations to this continent. Seemingly overnight, they had such a strategic foothold, nobody could dislodge them. With China’s conditional aid, they began stripping the Antarctic and its surrounding seas of oil, minerals, fish, and krill, and choking all trade and military traffic south of Cape Horn. If they retain control over both poles, they will have the mobility advantage in any conflict. And we believe conflict is what they’re after. Until now, the United States and its allies had no way to turn the tables.”
“Until now?” Dale asked as he began piecing the puzzle together. “You plan to use NASA as your passport onto the continent? And then what? Spy on them? But why not do this years ago? Why wait for HESTIA?”
“HESTIA is the Mission, Doctor.” Hendricks waited for Dale and Gideon to share a look before elaborating. “They didn’t send military engineers on a lark. This was planned years in advance. NASA’s funding opportunity announcement and the proposed mission to Enceladus was all orchestrated to get us onto the Antarctic ice sheet with a probe capable of rapidly melting through the ice.”
Dale’s knees felt weak, and he decided he would like to sit down after all.
It had all been an elaborate lie. He knew the grant and the resulting NASA contract had been too good to be true. They were doing what the military had always done, stealing groundbreaking innovations in science and using them for war.
“Don’t worry,” Hendricks said. He met Dale’s angry glare with a placating hand. “You’ll still get to Enceladus. It’s an important mission and there’s nothing the government likes more than killing two birds with one stone.”
The assurances had the desired effect, and the cold knot of despair in his chest melted away. Once he had a tight rein on his emotions, he voiced his next question.
“And how is the HESTIA supposed to solve your problem with the Russians?”
Hendricks smiled, an expression that looked uncomfortable for him.
“We’ll be using it to construct a military bunker under the ice.” He paused a moment to let that sink in. “When the conflict starts, and it will start soon, we will use it as our foothold in the Antarctic. Nothing they throw at us, not even a nuke, will reach us that far under the ice.”
Dale shook his head in disbelief. It all made sense now. The original designs for the HESTIA had changed dramatically once NASA obtained them. At first, he had seen their odd modifications as a challenge and had integrated them with little thought. After all, they knew more about the challenges they would face on the icy moon than he did. Now, he saw them in a new light. They had to make sure the probe could carve out an entire military bunker in the span of a couple weeks.
“This is better for us, isn’t it?” Gideon asked tentatively. “I mean, if we could build a base here in the Antarctic, couldn’t we do the same on Enceladus? Prepare the moon for colonization?”
Gideon was right for a change. Dale had been thinking too small. A part of his subconscious was already drafting a proposal to NASA to add a subsurface base to the mission objectives. They would be fools not to approve it. It was not an ideal location for colonization with the gravity so low, but all that ice would protect colonists from radiation and any other dangers space could throw at them. The base could also serve as a refueling hub for the entire outer solar system.
This was not the terrible event he had feared. It was another stroke of good fortune. Better still, in testing the prototype, they would do something meaningful instead of boring a useless hole in the ice.
There was still one missing piece of the puzzle.
“Why go through NASA? Why not build the probe yourself and keep everything classified?”
“As you have seen for yourself, melting through the ice results in a lot of steam. The Russians have eyes in orbit monitoring every inch of the Antarctic. We were never going to be covert about it, so why not hide in plain sight and recruit the world’s most brilliant scientists to build it for us?”
Gideon, who had been cowering like a turtle in its shell since learning the engineers’ identities, emerged at the unexpected flattery. Dale stroked the white stubble on his chin.
That explained why they did not seem surprised by the inbound Russian forces.
“And when the Russians get here?” Dale asked.
“ETA Becket?” Hendricks asked, glancing at the back of the third engineer.
“One minute, Sir.”
“They will search the place, but they won’t find anything to alert them of our intent,” Hendricks continued. He leaned forward as if to impart the most important information of all. “And all of us will play our roles. Just be the scientists you came here to be. With any luck, they will leave us to our business and never come back. When we reach three and a half kilometers, Drake and I will take over the design of the base. It is top secret after all, and we can’t have a couple civvies knowing the layout.”
“You expect us to sit back and do nothing for the next two weeks?” Dale asked, disheartened. The rollercoaster of competing emotions was dizzying.
“You will have access to all the sensor data on the probe. That should be more than enough to keep you busy.”
Just then, a rumbling sound in the distance reached a volume he could not ignore. The Russians had arrived.
Becket stood and shrugged into the top half of his survival suit.
“We should meet them outside.”
Picking up his gloves, Dale gave one last look at their shelter. Sure enough, he saw nothing that could be construed as military hardware. That also worried him. If the Russians discovered their purpose here, Dale and his small team would have nothing with which to defend themselves.
His mind swimming with uncertainties, Dale followed Gideon out the door and into a biting wind. The snow kicked up by the helicopters’ rotor wash formed long streamers under their feet. Dale pulled his hood around his neck and face as he examined the two rusted relics settling onto the packed snow. The feet of six soldiers hit the ground a second before the helicopters’ wheels. Between their large goggles and balaclavas, their faces were completely concealed, and the fur-lined hoods had all the appearance of a lion’s mane. Dale barely noted those details, his attention drawn to the large guns dangling from slings on the Russians’ shoulders.
The speed and grace with which the soldiers ran across the snow spoke of many years of practice and perhaps one or two artificial enhancements. Before Dale knew it, they were standing in front of them.
“Welcome to NASA’s temporary prototype testing facility,” Hendricks said, shouting over the roar of the helicopter’s blades. A packet of paper fluttered madly in his outstretched hand. “I believe all of our paperwork is in order. Please feel free to have a look around.”
The forward-most Russian soldier removed his goggles and balaclava. Instead of acknowledging Hendricks, his eyes lingered on the distant column of steam billowing up from the pit and the growing lake nearby. April was a mere silhouette against the white cloud of vapor. With a quick flurry of hand signals, he sent two of their number toward her and two inside their shelter. Only then did he reach out and grab the packet of papers.
“If we can wrap this up quickly, we have several sensitive experiments to…” Hendricks began before trailing off under the soldier’s glare.
The two remaining soldiers consulted the paperwork for a few minutes as their comrades made a racket inside the shelter. After a moment, one soldier pointed at a line on the paper while the second withdrew a tablet from his jacket’s interior.
A few moments passed as the soldier connected with someone over the tablet. A lengthy conversation followed in Russian, which Dale could not understand. He did, however, hear his name mentioned a few times.
Just when Dale and the others started to shuffle on their feet, the leader of the Russian outfit stepped forward and flipped the screen of his tablet around. This placed Dale a half meter away from the imposing soldier, who stared at him with narrowed eyes.
Dale tore his eyes away from the grim face and immediately brightened at the sight of his long-time colleague on the screen.
“Anton! What a pleasant surprise.”
The Roscosmos scientist wore a magnificent grin on his chubby face.
“You look chilly, my friend. I hope the Antarctic is treating you well. How is our HESTIA performing?”
“Better than we could have expected. We reached five-hundred meters in a little over four hours. I worried the torque of the serrated wheels wouldn’t stand up against the pressure of the steam, but it’s performing admirably.”
“I told you it would.”
“I shouldn’t have doubted you, Anton. Of course, we have a long way to go before three and a half kilometers and we still have to test the coolant transfer during locomotion along the X and Z axes.”
“Don’t forget to send me the cosmogenic nuclide dating from the descent.” Anton said as he leaned forward, his interest piqued.
“Gideon still thinks counting the strata will be superior to beryllium ten dating.”
“At that depth? Imbecile.”
“But Dr. Ryabov,” Gideon whined as he leaned into frame. “That might be true on Earth, but Enceladus doesn’t have an atmosphere to support significant cosmic spallation. The low gravity and regularity of its plumes should…”
Despite the soldier’s poor grasp of the English language, he seemed to detect the start of a long and unproductive conversation. He cleared his throat.
“Yes, well. How long before we can get back to it?” Dale asked, eyeing the soldier warily. He nudged Gideon out of frame with an elbow.
“They just worry. Ignore them,” Anton said, waving a hand as if they were a few mosquitos and not six anxious soldiers with big guns. “You are close to Vostok. It is their…” he took a moment to find the right word. “… their hub of operations. They see this is nuclear powered. They can’t sleep until they know more.”
“Where else could we go? The deepest ice is right here. Anywhere else would be a lesser analog.”
“They know this. Vostok was a research station once. It collected some of the deepest ice cores on record.”
“You told them what the HESTIA is then? They know it will be several kilometers down and dozens of kilometers away? Radiation could never get through that much ice.”
“They know this now. I tell them so they can sleep, but they want to keep someone there to monitor. Will this be acceptable? There is no Russian there. They worry.”
“We wouldn’t be having this problem if you were here, Anton. HESTIA is your project too.”
“I will be there for the real thing. For Enceladus. You do the hard work in the cold.”
“Alright, my friend. You take it easy.”
“Easy. That is what I like. You, don’t blow up the south pole.”
Anton’s cherubic face disappeared and after a moment, Dale nodded to the soldier with a nervous smile.
Hendricks had fished out his own tablet by then and held it up to his mouth as he spoke.
“You stay here?” he asked as he first motioned to the Russian soldiers and then the shelter. The Russian translation followed a moment later. Whether from an inaccurate translation or a sullying of his mother tongue, the soldier scoffed and turned his back to them. On his way back to the helicopter, he barked a few orders, and his subordinates came running out of the shelter and back from the rim of HESTIA’s pit. Their brief huddle ended with the leader and three of the soldiers piling onto a single helicopter and leaving back toward Vostok. The remaining two soldiers and the last helicopter’s pilot set about unfolding long awnings from the side of the helicopter. The thick fabric stretched all the way to the snow to form a sort of tent.
Hendricks led them back inside the shelter. The once orderly interior was now a jumble of supplies, with crates on their sides and MREs strewn across the floor. Hendricks did not appear to notice the mess as he motioned to the four of them to create their own huddle.
Holding his tablet between them, the military engineer typed out a message for all to read.
“Could have planted something. Assume they are monitoring everything we say. No word of our mission here. It’s business as usual.”
With that, he deleted the text and broke the huddle.
A part of Dale wished they had never told him of their mission. Now he had nothing to do but worry and plenty of time to do it.
The next week passed in what felt to Dale like one extremely long day punctuated by monotonous data collection, stress, and exhausted naps. The perpetual sunlight was the primary culprit. This time of year, it never fully set but skipped off the flat horizon like the ball on a spinning roulette wheel. Their three Russian neighbors brought with them as much stress as their own particular brand of roulette. They would frequently walk into the shelter unannounced, perform a circuit around the room, and leave. In one particularly nerve-racking encounter, one of them asked to see, in halting English, the display on April’s tablet and then stood mutely over her shoulder as she worked.
The drone was the most intrusive of all. The small device was about the size of Dale’s palm. It came out of nowhere on the second day and maneuvered throughout their shelter. It appeared to be controlled by the helicopter’s pilot, though not by any means Dale could see. The man simply stood there, tilting his head this way and that in time with the drone.
“Neural interface,” April told him one afternoon by HESTIA’s pit. Between the blanket of fog and the noise of the water pump, it had become the only place nearby with any privacy. The one time the drone had come to explore the area, the wind emerging from the pit had sent it off into a tailspin to clatter against the ice. “Corneal implants too. If you get close enough, look for a glimmer in his dilated pupils and a small red wire in his sclera that looks like a vein. He’s controlling the thing with his brain waves and seeing everything it sees.”
“Do you have any implants?” Dale asked as he leaned forward to look into her eyes.
Gideon snickered from where he sat in his lawn chair nearby.
April winked, but then glanced away. She went back to wrangling a length of the hose down into the pit. Addressing Gideon, she asked, “How did you plan to deal with all this water on Enceladus?”
“Liquid water doesn’t exist under low pressure. Without an atmosphere on Enceladus, the ice will instantly transition to a vapor when heated,” he said absently. “It’s in HESTIA’s name, Hexahedral Enceladus Surveyor with Thermal Ice Ablation.”
She lay down the hose and brushed the snow from her gloves.
“Funny. I just thought it was a forced acronym.” With that, she set off toward the ever-expanding lake of meltwater, examining the hose as she went.
She had struck a little too close to the truth for comfort. Being the scientists they were, though, they would defend the acronym to their dying breath.
“Go make me a coffee,” he told Gideon before the man’s blush robbed him of all the blood in his limbs. His technician slumped, stood, and set off for the shelter.
Alone, Dale had nothing better to do than analyze data from the thermal ionization mass spectrometer. True to Hendricks’ word, he and April had taken full control of the HESTIA, leaving Dale with little to occupy himself. A day earlier, he had noticed an anomaly in the isotope readings and had been spending the day trouble shooting. Best he could figure, the HESTIA was slowly climbing back toward the surface. While the incline would allow water to drain back toward the entrance and the inlet for the pump, he cringed at the thought of a military bunker with steep hallways and sloped floors.
He powered off his tablet and headed back to the shelter and the coffee that awaited him. He secretly hoped Hendricks bungled the job. That would teach him for not consulting Dale on the bunker’s design.
By the time their two-week stay neared its end, the poor sleep quality, lack of stimulating work, and the close quarters of the shelter had left their mark.
Dale’s relationship with Gideon had taken a turn for the worse. Little things like the way he breathed at night, the order in which he prepared the coffee and rehydrated the freeze-dried meals made him want to strangle the man. Their conversations quickly devolved into arguments, requiring him to distance himself lest he be tempted to test the depth of HESTIA’s pit with his technician’s corpse.
He was on his third sanity-preserving excursion of the morning when he noticed Hendricks kneeling beside the pit. A rhythmic clanking sounded with each rise and fall of his arm. He was pounding stakes into each corner of a toaster sized device that looked uncannily like a large fishing reel. Instead of fishing line, it contained several kilometers worth of a thin metal wire.
A winch to help pull out the HESTIA, Dale guessed. This came as a relief. While the prototype should be capable of extending its many serrated wheels and driving up the pit on its own, he worried the heat of the steam had enlarged the pit’s diameter. The presence of the winch also signified the end of their time on the god-forsaken continent.
“Time to haul out the goddess?” Dale asked, using a phrase for the probe he had heard the military engineers throw around. “I saw you switched it into idle this morning.”
“Just about,” Hendricks said, without looking up. He finished pounding the last stake into the ice and pulled out a short length of wire from the motorized winch.
“Becket said the cargo plane is due to arrive tomorrow night. Well, as night as it gets around here. It’s a shame, you know. I always wanted to see the stars of the southern hemisphere. The southern cross is …” Dale’s train of thought completely derailed when Hendricks stood to his feet. He had clipped the wire to a harness around his waist. “What are you doing?”
“I need to inspect the probe before we bring it up. It’ll take me most of the day and maybe some of tomorrow.”
“You’re going down there?” The thought made Dale shudder. It would be about as hospitable as Dante’s ninth circle of Hell. Before he could ask why he would do such a thing, the reason for the risk became obvious. He was going to inspect the military base to make sure it had taken shaped with no mishaps. “Do the others know?”
“Becket will monitor the radio. I’ll be on the same frequency as the HESTIA, so we know the signal will get through the ice.”
Hendricks bent to pick up a small backpack Dale had not noticed. He recognized the familiar bulge of MREs and a tablet inside.
“And our guests? What do I tell them?”
Hendricks glanced to where the Russian helicopter sat. One of the men was shoveling away a bank of snow that had accumulated in the lee of its tent.
“You don’t tell them anything. Let Drake do all the talking.”
As if her name had summoned her, April pushed through the door of the shelter and hurried toward them. She was not wearing her survival suit, but the one-piece thermals they all wore beneath. She looked less than happy. At first, he thought Gideon may have said or done something to offend her. Maybe Dale was not the only one who hated how the technician ground the coffee beans before heating the water. Then she drew close enough for Dale to see wet hair and skin pinkened by a recent shower. In her left hand she clutched a small drone.
The Russian pilot stormed out of his tent a moment later. Even from a distance, his face looked red with fury. He caught sight of April and immediately gave chase.
“He sent his drone into the shower,” April spat when she reached the pit. She threw the drone to the ground where it fell into two pieces.
Hendricks set his jaw.
“Did he see them?”
It was the last thing Dale expected the man to say. He opened his mouth to rebuke him, but the words fell away when he noticed the fear in April’s eyes. She let out a steadying breath through her nose and pinched her lips together.
“I’m not sure.”
“Uh, see what?” Dale asked lamely.
They said nothing more as the enraged pilot stormed up to them. He did not spare a glance at his demolished drone; instead, he stepped close to April and searched her eyes like he might see something in them. Then, faster than Dale could follow, he grabbed her wrist and stripped off the unassuming smart watch all the engineers wore.
Barely visible against the pale skin of her forearm was a pattern of raised pink welts. If not for their number and regularity, he would have dismissed them as small veins. These looked more like a circuit board.
The Russian looked just as surprised as Dale felt. He took a step back, his hand reaching over his shoulder to grab the ever-present assault rifle. He trained it on each of them as he created some distance.
Dale did not realize his hands were in the air until Hendricks and April followed suit.
The pilot stopped his retreat when he spotted the motorized winch at Hendricks’ feet. Glancing between the pit and Hendricks, his brow furrowed. A few lateral steps took him past the safety barrier and to the edge of the pit. He held out his hand as if to search for a breeze, then he smiled. Even if the HESTIA hadn’t been on idle, its depth prevented any steam from emerging. Instead, all that moist air reached its dew point and crystalized into a downy white blanket along the inside of the pit.
“I. See. Down,” he said, emphasizing each word as he pointed to his own eyes and then into the pit. Those same eyes dilated, and his hand reached into his breast pocket to pull out the twin of the broken drone. With no controller Dale could see, the drone activated and lifted from his hand. In seconds, it had disappeared down the pit, its steady whirring slowly fading to nothing.
Dale gulped. This was the worst-case scenario, the moment he had experienced in his nightmares every night. It was the moment their guests learned the NASA engineers’ true identities. Somehow April’s implants were the giveaway, and now the Russian pilot was about to discover the military bunker beneath the ice. Dale resigned himself to the terrible reality. He would not be returning home. They would lock him in some frigid prison cell for the foreseeable future.
When the pilot squinted and stepped closer to the pit, Dale experienced a flicker of hope. If the drone could not travel that far, or if its radio was incapable of penetrating the ice, all might not be lost. So long as they stayed friendly and came up with an excuse for April’s implants, they could…
Hendricks darted forward, his body a blur in Dale’s peripheral vision.
The pilot, his eyes narrowed in concentration, failed to react in time. The gun let out a rapid staccato, and chunks of snow sprayed into the air near Dale’s feet.
Then Hendricks was flying through the air, tackling the pilot to the ground. Except there was no ground. Before Dale could register what had happened, they were both gone. The gaping hole HESTIA had left in the ice looked much the same as it had before.
April was faster on her feet. She slid across the snow to kneel beside the motorized winch. The reel was spooling out at a rapid pace. She turned it on, and the motor let out a loud squeal as it applied torque to the line. The thin wire cut deep into the rim of the pit.
April scuttled forward on her hands and knees to peer over the edge.
“Sir? Can you hear me?”
Dale finally let his limbs respond to signals from his brain and went to lie on the snow beside April.
“… got me in the leg,” came a calm but pained voice from below. Looking down, he saw nothing but light blue walls fading into an impenetrable black curtain.
“The pilot?” April called back.
“Gone. But his friends will have heard the shots.”
Sure enough, a commotion was stirring at the helicopter. The man Dale had seen shoveling snow was rushing toward them with rifle drawn. The last soldier had also emerged from the tent. He wore little more than April, his white thermals creating the illusion of a disembodied head and floating gun against the snow-covered landscape.
The pilot was dead, and his fellow soldiers would make them answer for it. The analytical part of Dale’s brain argued that the pilot would not be dead for another minute. It would take that long for him to hit the bottom of the 3.5 km pit.
“They heard it all right,” April said. “The motor is on, come back up and we’ll deal with them,”
“They have guns, Drake. And we don’t. The mission is the priority.” His voice trailed off for a moment and then returned, quieter than before. “Becket, do you copy? Operation Meltwater is a go, I repeat, Meltwater is a go. Call for backup and get yourself and the civvie out of there.”
April did not stay to hear Hendrick’s instructions. She had rolled across the ice to snag the small backpack and then returned.
“I’ve got the gear. I’m coming down.”
“Negative. You don’t have a survival suit.”
“With all due respect, Sir, you don’t have two good legs anymore. You can’t complete the mission on your own, and like you said, the mission comes first.”
Dale, unsure what they were talking about but absolutely positive he wanted no part in it, was pushing away from the pit.
Apparently, seeing April make her escape down the hole in the ice was all the excuse the Russians needed to open fire.
Reversing direction, Dale mindlessly fled toward cover. The sight of Dale making to escape the same way prompted another spray of bullets.
April, having no means by which to grip the thin wire, looped her arms and legs around the bloated water hose. Dale followed and quickly lowered his feet over the side. Seeing the wall of darkness beneath him nearly made him take his chances with the bullets, but April reached up to grip his boot and pulled him out of harm’s way.
Hugging the water hose for dear life, he slid down at a terrifying speed. Whenever his momentum slowed, April tugged his boot harder, and he would start sliding again.
The powdery snow on the walls of the pit fell away when he brushed by to reveal a remarkably smooth surface of ice, its strata depicting years of Earth’s history in every inch. In a very real way, many millennia flew past every second.
Then it was too dark to see anything.
The square-shaped section of blue sky above them had shrunken to the size of a postage stamp. Two shadows passed over its surface as the Russians arrived at the edge of the pit. They called for their comrade and waited long enough to be certain of his demise before opening fire. The sound issuing from the flashing barrels was barely audible, but the bullets ricocheting off the ice were harder to ignore.
A bullet struck the hose above, raining water down on them. The hose shrank in size as air rushed in through the puncture and gravity pulled the contents of the hose back down into the pit. The diminished size of the hose had the unexpected benefit of being easier to grip, but he was not about to call out his thanks.
After several seconds of near constant fire, the shooting stopped. Either they were out of ammunition or confident they had hit their targets.
“Don’t slow down,” April called from below. “They could sever the hose any second.”
Reluctantly, Dale loosened his grip and began descending again.
“You brought the scientist?” Hendricks asked incredulously, as if Dale were an extra bag she had brought on their vacation.
“We were under fire,” April said in her defense.
“Give me the backpack.”
A light flickered on from below and then Dale was passing it. It was Hendricks, who conveniently had a headlamp and a line of his own with which to descend. For some inexplicable reason, he had snatched the bag from April and let them pass. As soon as they were beneath him, the military engineer reached over to grab the deflated water hose and began hammering something into it. It had the familiar metallic clang of a stake being driven into the ice.
A moment later, something struck Dale’s back. It thumped and thrashed for several seconds until it stopped and settled beside him. Confused, Dale reached out and felt it with a gloved hand. It was another hose. No, it was the same hose. Despite all odds, Hendricks had staked their hose into the ice before the Russians had severed it from above. Not a second too soon.
Then the Russians severed the line holding Hendricks. Had he not had a grip on their hose, there would have been two bodies lying at the bottom of the pit. They now had only one anchor to the wall, and it no longer reached the surface. Unless the rescue party brought an insanely long rope, Dale might never see the sunlight again.
Above him, the patch of sky had shrunken to the size of a bright but dimming star. This is what the HESTIA will see when it flies away from the sun and out to the dimly lit moons of Saturn. It was a peaceful thought, but he hoped it would not be his last. He needed to survive this. He needed to make sure his probe made it that far.
The pressure built in Dale’s ears until finally, April told them to slow. When they came to a stop, she asked for Hendricks’ headlamp. Dale transferred it between them without dropping their one and only light source. With their eyes focused on the illuminated shaft below, they continued down at a more sedate pace.
A few minutes more, and the glimmer of water reflected up at them. It was about time. Dale’s hands cramped with the strain of holding on to the deflated hose. He was about to voice the complaint aloud until he saw the prone form of the Russian pilot floating face-down on the surface. His aches and pains seemed trivial all of a sudden.
April landed in the water and let out a gasp as she sank to her neck. The light from her headlamp revealed an opening in the wall of ice. It appeared to be a long tunnel with just enough of an incline to channel the water back to the pump’s inlet. On her way up the tunnel, April grabbed the Russian’s collar and dragged him with her.
Dale gritted his teeth and made the plunge. He swam as fast as possible to prevent water from seeping into his survival suit. Hendricks followed and soon they were both staggering out of the water.
When Hendricks had nothing but the ice beneath him, he pressed his back to the wall and slid down. Blood oozed out of a hole in the pants leg of his survival suit.
“Don’t bother. It’s already taken care of,” he said, waving Dale away as he came to help. He tapped at the watch on his wrist instead of applying pressure to the wound. Then the man’s face relaxed, and he started breathing easier. A few second more, and the blood oozing from his leg eased to a stop. At Dale’s confused expression, Hendricks elaborated. “Implant. I just got a dose of its anesthetic, artificial blood, and coagulants.”
“Implant? Like the one in April’s arm,” Dale asked, less out of curiosity than desperation. If his companions had any superhuman enhancements, they might be able to get him out of this alive.
A few steps away, April had stripped the Russian of his outerwear with concerning efficiency and donned it just as quickly. That the clothes had just been on a dead person seemed irrelevant to her when faced with hypothermia. Fully clothed, she curled up on the ice on the other side of Dale.
“No, this one’s more of an artificial spleen. Here, give this to her.” Hendrick’s took off the ever-present watch at his wrist and handed it to Dale.
April took the watch from him with trembling fingers and strapped it on. She tapped the face of the device a few times and then instantly stopped shivering. It was as if every muscle in her body had tensed.
“That’s the subdermal muscle stimulator. And it’s not just the arm. That’s just where it converges on the watch, the power supply, inductor, and controller. The circuitry extends into all major muscle groups. We use it during training to stimulate the muscles opposite of the ones being used. It makes you feel like you’re moving through molasses, but it’s great for building muscle and generating some heat. In combat, it stimulates more motor units than your nerves can at any one time, allowing for bursts of speed and strength.”
“You all have these?” Dale asked, seeing the faint trace of lines on Hendricks’ now exposed wrist.
“And corneal and neural implants. They all work together. I can see my team’s biometrics on my HUD, assign targets, and if I’m looking down the sight of a gun, it will coordinate with my muscle stimulator to steady my aim and center the reticle on my target.”
“Don’t they make exosuits and helmets that do all of those things? Why implants?”
“Those aren’t exactly non-descript for a covert mission specialist.”
Dale nodded as he too settled against the wall of the tunnel. Despite the layers of insulating fabric, the ice seemed to suck the heat right out of him. None of their implants would help keep Dale warm. Deciding he could just huddle close to the HESTIA until rescue arrived, he looked for the NASA probe. It was nowhere in sight.
“Where’s the HESTIA? We were scheduled to bring it out tonight. It should be right here. Is it somewhere deeper in the bunker?”
He realized then that nothing in the circle of light looked remotely like a bunker. There was just the single long tunnel extending into the darkness.
“About that…” Hendricks said, grunting as he shifted and pointed up the tunnel. “It’s about forty kilometers in that direction.”
“What? How?”
“We aren’t building a bunker,” April said. Her teeth no longer chattered, but her words sounded strained.
“You lied? About all of it?”
“We are military engineers, I was not lying about that,” Hendricks said. “But there is no military bunker. We told you that in the event something like this happened. If they made the two of you talk, you wouldn’t give away our actual goal.”
It was the best kind of lie, Dale admitted, so attractive he could not help but believe in it. But did Becket get Gideon out of there? Or was his technician even now spilling the beans like the first time he had made Dale coffee?
“Then why did you need the HESTIA?”
“We are Sappers,” April said. “We clear the way.” It had all the ring of a mantra, but not one Dale had ever heard before.
“Is that like a plumber or something?” His frustration only mounted at the lack of a straightforward answer.
“Military engineers aren’t only good at building bridges and fortifications on the fly. We are experts in tunnel warfare. That means building covered trenches or tunnels under enemy fortifications and planting loads of explosives. As Sappers, our job was to clear the way for the rest of the troops. And that’s what we plan to do here.”
Dale closed his eyes, wondering why he had never considered the possibility. Two weeks was a long time in the field to test a prototype, even considering the to-do list NASA had given them. They never needed all those tests; they needed the time. At two meters a minute, it would take the whole of two weeks to move forty kilometers under the ice. The same distance away as Vostok.
“You’re going to blow up the Russian base.”
Hendricks sighed.
“Another war is about to start, and like it or not, you’re going to help us deal the first blow. The first thing the Russians did when usurping the continent was to surround it with enough antiair defenses to make sure the Antarctic will never see a penguin that flies. We would never sneak a missile past them. But they’ll never see it coming from below.”
“It’s not possible. I’ve been through every crate in the shelter twice by now. I would have seen explosives.”
“Oh, there are explosives,” he said, patting the backpack beside him. “But not nearly enough to do what you’re thinking. I hate to be the one to break it to you, Doctor, but your prototype is the bomb. The fissile material in the reactor is not weapons grade, but near enough. Packaged with a bit of neutron reflector and some plastic explosive to bring it all together, it will reach criticality.”
Dale’s heart sank. From the angle at which the tunnel climbed, he guessed the probe was right beneath Vostok. They were planning to turn his HESTIA into a primitive atom bomb under the Russians’ feet. The greatest invention of his career would be used to kill hundreds of people.
April had dialed down the settings on her watch enough to regain some motor control. She sat up and gave Dale a sympathetic look before addressing Hendricks.
“We need to beat feet, Sir. We’ve lots of distance to cover.”
“You’ll have to do the dirty work I’m afraid. I won’t be able to keep up. It’s best I take the gun and follow at my own pace, cover the rear.”
“You sure?”
Hendricks took back the watch in exchange for the backpack and then picked up the Russian’s assault rifle.
“You’ve got the explosives training and you know how to make it work. Take the backpack and get moving. And take the Doctor with you. He’s no use to me back here, but he might be able to help you disassemble the probe.”
Dale blinked. They could not really expect him to go along with this. He wanted to be right here when the rescue team arrived. Then again, Hendricks seemed convinced the Russians would come looking for them before that happened. Thinking back on the previous gunfight, he wanted no part of that action. Reluctantly, he stood up to follow April.
“Catch up when you can, Sir.”
“Clear the way, Drake,” Hendricks replied.
April grinned and nodded before setting off down the tunnel. Dale staggered as he tried to keep pace. Unlike the tunnel walls, the floor was uneven, a deep runnel having formed to carry the meltwater down the slope from the NASA probe.
Behind them, Hendricks switched on a light on the rifle and was checking to make sure it was in working order. That light soon became a dim spark as they ascended the shallow incline.
They walked for five hours. In his younger years, he had once run a marathon in that time, but this made that experience feel like a relaxing jaunt along the beach.
“You have food in there?” Dale asked, eyeing the backpack bouncing lightly off April’s back as they walked.
“Not exactly. It’s plastic explosive. They added a funky smell so it would look like a package of noodles gone bad. Their heater packs work, though.”
“Great. Maybe you can use them to thaw my emaciated corpse.”
“You really are a pessimist, aren’t you? Gideon’s said it more than once.”
“It seems I wasn’t pessimistic enough,” he said, breathless from their strenuous hike. He slowed to a stop and leaned against the wall. The fuzz of ice clinging to the surface fell away at his touch.
April frowned and returned to his side. She withdrew the hammer from her bag and used the spiked end to chip some ice from the wall and into a metal cup. Placed on an activated heating pack, the ice quickly melted.
Dale took a grateful sip.
“You know, the last time this was liquid water, humanity didn’t exist.” Dale’s voice became longing. “There were no wars back then.”
“There weren’t hammers or heating packs either,” April reminded him. “Don’t forget that it was the need for war that brought about many of these innovations, including your HESTIA. Civilization needs soldiers as much as scientists.”
Dale did not like it, but he did not disagree.
By the time they got moving again, Dale had decided not to assist her with Operation Meltwater. He would not help her dismantle the HESTIA, use it to take hundreds of lives, or destroy this pristine albeit detestable environment. Those same principles told him that doing nothing was just as bad as making them happen. Common sense told him he could not stop her if he tried.
It was another five hours before they made it to the end of the tunnel. Dale could barely feel his legs and considered removing the survival suit to keep from overheating. But the heat wasn’t entirely from the exertion. The walls of the tunnel were no longer covered in frost but a thin film of water. The white ceramic cube of the HESTIA sat directly ahead. On idle and with its control rods lowered and coolant distributed equally throughout each side of its cubed surface, its radiant heat had melted a small chamber out of the ice.
When April’s light fell across it, he nearly cried with relief. The sight of the probe was only half of the reason. He knelt and began scooping water into his parched mouth. They had run out of the heating packs hours ago.
While he slaked his thirst, April went to work on the probe. At first, all she did was take out a tablet from the backpack and type in commands. She must have ordered the coolant purged from the top-most face of the cube, as she immediately started splashing water on the steaming surface. When it had cooled sufficiently, she unbolted the ceramic cladding with a wrench from her backpack.
Dale, steadfast in his decision not to help her, could not resist getting one last peek inside before it was reduced to a cloud of ionized particles. He leaned over the half-submerged cube to see the imposing sight of over a dozen circular saw-like wheels. Ryabov’s team designed them to grip the icy surface and propelled it forward against the force of the steam. Beyond them were innumerable insulated wires and pipes. His focus, however, was on the reactor housing.
It was unremarkable on the outside, but the three-foot-wide metal cube held all the control and fuel rods within. Enough power to level an entire Russian military base.
April unbolted a strut to access the housing and immediately set to work opening it. After removing the metal casing, she reached into her backpack to pull out four MRE pouches. She ripped them open and stuck them down into the four sides of the reactor core. As promised, the stringy substance inside had a rank odor, like a spoiled noodle dish. Jumping back down to the discarded cladding, she collected some of its radiation shielding, thick metal sheets of tungsten carbide. She deftly slid these into the housing between the fuel rods and the plastic explosive. If Dale had to guess, they would serve as both the tamper and neutron reflector of a nuclear bomb. Lastly, April attached a lead from the HESTIA’s radio receiver to the plastic explosives.
The idea that someone might trigger the explosives remotely and without warning made him feel sick. At least the control rods are still in place, he thought. Those would prevent a criticality event. So it was with some trepidation that he watched April raise and detach the control rods and throw them into the water. She then did the unthinkable and lifted out one of the fuel rods to insert it in the vacated space, bringing all the fissile material closer together. It was as if all the components had been designed to slide perfectly into place, converting a NASA probe into a nuclear weapon in under ten minutes. He could see now why NASA had been so adamant about some of the component’s dimensions and not others.
It was getting hot in the small ice chamber and more and more water dripped down from the rounded walls and ceiling. He hoped none of it got inside the exposed reactor core. Adding a neutron moderator to the core of a fast reactor was a quick way to cause a meltdown and boil them alive.
He was so on edge that when a gunshot sounded in the distance, he dove straight into the water at his feet.
Spitting out a mouthful of the tepid water, he splashed over to the nearest wall, out of the tunnel’s line of sight.
April’s brow drew together as she jumped from the top of the HESTIA and placed her back flush to the wall opposite him.
Several tense minutes passed as they listened, and more gun shots rang out. Then Hendricks stumbled into the chamber, falling flat into the water. He breathed raggedly, like he had been running for hours. The gunshot wound in his leg had started bleeding again, turning the water pink around him.
“They’re a few minutes behind me. No more ammo. You need to… hurry.” He wheezed out the words in April’s direction. His eyes fluttered closed as he fell into unconsciousness.
As Dale stumbled forward to help April pull Hendricks out of the water, the man’s words tumbled through his head. They were trapped between an armed nuclear weapon and armed Russian soldiers. And they were defenseless.
April had also run the odds. She yanked the radio from Hendricks’ belt.
“Becket. This is Drake. Operation Meltwater is still a go. The goddess is armed,” she squeezed her eyes shut, and let out a shuddering breath. “If you don’t hear from me in ten minutes… detonate.”
Dale shouted over Becket’s solemn confirmation.
“What are you doing? That’s not enough time to get out of here. Are you trying to kill us?”
“I’m sorry, Doctor Stratford. This mission is too important. If we fail here, if we don’t get them off of this continent, the coming conflict will not end in our favor.”
“But the reinforcements may already be here. We just have to—”
“We can’t afford to wait. They only need a few minutes alone with the probe to disarm it. I really am sorry.”
He could not tell if the streak of water running down her face was a tear or dribble of water from the ceiling.
“That’s it then? We’re just going to die here?”
The sorrow in his voice seemed to get through to her. Her jaw tightened and she clenched her fist.
“Maybe not. If I can take them down, we’ll radio Becket, tell him not to activate the bomb.”
“You heard Hendricks. That gun is useless.”
“I don’t need a gun to deal with them,” she said, hefting her wrench in emphasis. “I can ambush them when they come out of the tunnel. We have a chance.”
As April stared down the dark tunnel, Dale took in the chamber. Shame welled up in him when he realized he was looking for something to hide behind. That was not him. He was a scientist. Whenever he encountered a problem, he would troubleshoot the hell out of it. That was all this was. A problem.
As he examined the half-submerged HESTIA, pieces of an idea formed in his mind. When they finally came together, goosebumps cascaded over his skin. Maybe there was a way to give them both what they wanted and earn them a ticket out of this pit. It would be crazy, but it just might work. Unless April tried to stop him.
“What are you doing?” April asked when she noticed him fumbling with something at Hendricks’ wrist.
Dale examined the watch in his hands and flipped through some settings.
“Hendricks said this thing makes you faster and stronger. That should improve your odds, right? Okay. I think I got it. Give me your wrist.”
Psyching herself up with some rapid breathing, she absently held out her arm.
Dale latched the watch to her wrist.
April froze in place, every muscle in her body going rigid.
“What the hell,” she growled through gritted teeth. When she tried to retract her arm, her triceps flexed and resisted the motion.
“I agree with you, you know,” he said as he pried the wrench from her stiff fingers. “The world needs people like you to go to war for us. But the world needs people like me too, to give you other options.”
He loosened the bolts holding a piece of HESTIA’s outer cladding in place until it sprang a leak. As water slowly filled the interior of the probe, he reached inside to remove the open MRE pouches containing the explosives and plucked free their trailing wires. He did not think he was missing anything, but it was hard to concentrate over the stream of imaginative curse words coming from April.
Dale splashed over to the castoff pieces of the HESTIA and dragged the ceramic lid to the entrance of the tunnel. With some effort, he levered the limp and stiff forms of Hendricks and April on top. April tried to fight him, but it was no use. Her body trembled in impotent rage.
The last thing he did was turn off April’s headlamp. Without it, the Russians would never see them coming. When the light went out, several flickering lights became visible down the tunnel. The dread the sight caused was nothing compared to what lay behind him.
The iconic blue of Cherenkov radiation illuminated the HESTIA from within. Water had risen to the level of the reactor’s housing and was pouring inside, sending steam billowing into the air. Far more heat radiated from the probe than it ever had before. And it was only going to get worse.
He knelt and pushed on the edge of the cladding and then jumped onto the makeshift sled.
The smooth, still-warm ceramic surface slid along the ice with little friction. On the eight percent grade, they quickly built up speed as they raced down the tunnel.
Dale threw his arms over the two other passengers and ducked when he glimpsed the lights of the Russian soldiers just ahead. They plowed right through the men without slowing, the sound of breaking bone and muted screams all that marked their passage.
The wind rushed past them as they barreled onward. He could not see what lay ahead in the darkness, and that scared him more than the bomb ever had. Dale tried to slow down by raking his fingers across the floor of the tunnel, but they skittered uselessly off the slick surface.
After endless minutes of heart-thumping terror, Becket’s voice came over the radio at April’s belt.
“Drake. That’s ten minutes. I’m so sorry. I’m detonating. It was an honor to serve with you.”
Dale squeezed his eyes shut, and an instant later, he was flung into the air. When coldness enveloped him, he feared he had miscalculated, that a thermonuclear explosion had just incinerated him. Then he recognized the cold for what it was. He thrashed until he broke the surface of the water and breathed in a lungful of fresh air. The jumble of hose floating around him and the pinprick of light above told him all he needed to know. They had reached the base of the tunnel.
He did it. He had prevented the detonation. It would be another few minutes before he knew if his plan had succeeded. That was assuming April let him live that long.
April.
Dale dove. He found both Hendricks and April by feel a meter below. Unable to haul them both, he unstrapped April’s watch and then grabbed the collar of Hendricks’ survival suit. Together they swam to the surface.
“What the hell did you do, Dale?” April said between fits of coughing. She switched on her headlamp and swung the beam toward him. The sight of him struggling to keep Hendricks’ head above the water must have reordered her priorities. From the way her eyes blazed as she swam over, he thought she might try to strangle him just as soon as Hendricks was seen to.
“I did you a favor,” he said as she checked Hendricks’ vitals on her HUD. “Atom bombs are hugely inefficient. Little Boy, the bomb that detonated over Hiroshima, resulted in less than two percent uranium fission. And it was designed to blow up, not pieced together from a fast reactor. My way is much more efficient and it won’t kill anyone. Unless the Russians can’t swim. Oh God, they will know how to swim, right? Tell Becket to send over some rescue teams. Take lots of towels.”
“What are you talking about?” she growled. Her eyes outshone the headlamp in their intensity.
Dale took a calming breath.
“I stopped your nuclear explosion and gave you a nuclear meltdown. All it needed was a bit of water. It’s the neutron moderator of choice in most nuclear power plants. It slows down fast neutrons, releasing enormous amounts of heat and gives the resulting thermal neutrons a better fission cross-section with U235. The HESTIA has more enriched uranium than any nuclear power plant in the world and is surrounded by a nearly infinite supply of water.”
“You’re saying…?”
“I’m saying that in a few hours, Vostok will be the name of the largest freshwater lake in Antarctica.”
Her eyebrows climbed into her mop of wet hair.
“I suppose that’s something,” she said grudgingly. “But I’m not the one you have to answer to. Assuming we ever get out of this hole.”
“About that…” He gestured up the tunnel where a wall of fog rolled toward them. “That should be our lift now.” In seconds, the air became thicker than the muggiest day in Texas, and all he could see of April was a halo of light from her headlamp.
The sound of water trickling into their small pool came next and steadily grew until it was a turbulent river. Before he knew it, the tunnel entrance sank beneath the surface and they rose ever so slowly up the pit. Dale tried to swim, but whenever he strayed too close to a wall, an undercurrent threatened to pull him down. Once again, the water hose came to the rescue. With air now in the line, the slack of the hose formed a tangled raft for them to cling to.
They shot higher and higher up the pit until at last, their speed slowed. The white haze of fog no longer appeared in the cone of April’s headlamp, but seemed to come from all around them. Then there was blue sky.
Dale, April, and Hendricks rose out of the pit on a cushion of water and partially inflated hose. It gently spilled them onto the snow and ice and under the ever-present sun.
A literal army of people stood nearby, all wearing the uniforms of one branch of the US military or another. They all turned to stare in slack jawed amazement at the people they had given up for dead. As several uniformed personnel splashed over to aid April with the still unconscious Hendricks, Dale stood on shaky legs and staggered away from the pit.
Gideon stood a few feet away, water sloshing over his boots. He did not seem to notice. His wide, tear-brimmed eyes looked as though they had just seen a ghost.
Dale took the steaming cup of coffee from his limp fingers and collapsed into the lawn chair.
“Who’s the pessimist now?”
