Amy did not dignify his concern with a reply as she sealed the door shut and began heaving the pressure wheel over and over until it would go no further.
‘Sealed,’ she said. ‘Now, get us overhead the signal.’
Ethan complied as he advanced the power lever and the submarine inched forward. He adjusted the hydroplanes and the submarine began to ascend gently through the darkness as a fresh bloom of bioluminescent creatures shimmered past the Seehund in the darkness, and Ethan finally caught a glimpse of something ahead on the seafloor before it was obscured by the bow of the submarine.
At first, in the brief moment that he could see it, Ethan’s brain could not quite understand what he was looking at. A trembling haze of heat seemed to surround it, the heat causing the water around it to billow and shiver in much the same way that heat bent the passage of light through the air and distorted it.
A black shape, angular, unnatural, resting on the ocean floor and surrounded by a vibrant cloud of pulsing bioluminescence. Dense clouds of krill and other marine creatures swirled around the object, which was half as large as the Seehund itself and enshrouded in a casing as black as oil and completely unreflective, as though the submarine’s lights did not exist despite their illumination of the object’s surroundings.
Ethan lost sight of the object as he climbed the submarine upward and over it, going by gut instinct as he tried to maintain a reasonable distance from the device and prevent the submarine from losing power again. He knew that he had very little compressed air remaining and with Black Knight shackled beneath them he’d need every last bit of buoyancy he could get.
‘Almost there,’ Amy whispered.
Ethan gradually levelled the Seehund out as he quickly peered down into the hull and saw Amy’s screen denoting the signal’s origin, almost right below them.
‘A little further,’ she gasped.
Ethan eased the controls forward, one hand hovering over the power lever to bring the submarine to a dead stop as soon as Amy gave the word.
‘Now!’
Ethan pulled back on the lever and the Seehund came to a stop before drifting away again from the signal.
‘It’s the current,’ Ethan said as Amy cursed. ‘We’re going to have to use power to stay in position.’
‘Hurry it up then,’ Amy shot back. ‘We need to grab this thing and get the hell out of here.’
Ethan turned the Seehund to the left, angling her into the current to minimize the drift as he advanced the power once more and crept overhead the signal.
‘There!’
Ethan pulled off a small amount of power to hold their position as he looked down into the hull.
‘Now, cut it loose!’
Amy hurried to the bow and hauled on the lever to detach the bow charge casing. A dull clunk shuddered through the hull as the locking mechanism thumped through a quarter-turn and the nose section was released.
The Seehund tilted slightly bow-down and Ethan eased the hydroplanes back to keep them on station as he waited. There was a long silence and then a distant clanging sound, that of metal striking metal.
‘You think that’s it?’ Amy asked.
‘I damned well hope so,’ Ethan replied.
He checked his compass and then began turning the Seehund gently through a hundred or so degrees until he was pointing her back the way they had come. Silently, he prayed that the submarine’s motor could produce enough power to draw the Black Knight away from the seabed and up toward the docks a few hundred yards behind them.
‘Here goes nothing.’
Ethan pushed the power lever fully forward as he pulled back on the hydroplanes to prevent the bow from being pulled down toward the tethered weight now attached to them. The Seehund’s electric motor hummed loudly and then she began to move slowly forward.
‘It’s working!’ Amy clapped in delight.
Ethan reached down and twisted the oxygen valve open, bleeding more compressed air into the saddle tanks. The Seehund rose up gradually, and then the speed began to increase as Black Knight broke free from the seabed. The submarine’s bow dipped precipitously and Ethan pulled fully back on the hydroplanes as he fought to keep the Seehund level.
‘It’s holding,’ he said, ‘that thing must be a lot lighter than it looks but this isn’t going to be easy. All the weight’s under the bow.’
Amy understood immediately and she abandoned her seat and moved past below and beside him toward the amid ship position. Ethan felt some of the stress on the controls ease as Amy’s weight shifted aft, and he realized that he could have done with the moveable ballast weights originally fitted to these kinds of submarines.
He peered up out of the dome and saw the underside of the glacier above him dimly reflecting the submarine’s lights as it ascended toward the base.
‘Full steam ahead, cap’ain,’ Amy chortled from somewhere below.
‘Will you cut it out?’ he said as he tried to control the submarine and account for the drift pulling him toward the south. ‘We’re moving with the stream, going faster, but if I don’t time this just right we’ll miss the dock entrance and continue on because we don’t have enough power to fight the current with Black Knight attached to us. Get your hands on the ballast lever and be ready to pull on my mark.’
Amy’s gloved hands appeared on the lever near Ethan’s knee and she peered up at him from the hull.
‘Ready when you are, skipper.’
Ethan ignored her frivolity and kept his eyes peeled ahead, and within a couple of minutes he saw the shadowy form of the vertical shaft that led up into the Nazi base concealed within the glacial ice.
‘Stand by,’ he warned.
Amy’s grip on the lever tightened as Ethan pitched the submarine as bow high as he could and prepared to pull off the power.
‘Nearly there,’ he said.
Amy’s scream shattered the silence as something loomed outside the viewing dome, and Ethan flinched as a huge white and bulbous form slammed into the submarine and rocked it from side to side as an alarm claxon rang out inside the hull and huge white fangs slammed against the dome.
***
XL
‘What the hell was that?!’
Amy’s terrified scream rang in Ethan’s ears as he saw the huge creature lunge directly at the dome and a set of massive fangs slam into the acrylic inches from his face, a deep, red mouth lined with razor sharp teeth that scraped down the acrylic and left deep gashes in the surface.
The Seehund rocked to one side and threw Amy from her seat, her body slamming against the pressure hull as Ethan struggled to maintain control.
The fearsome teeth and massive body vanished instantly into the blackness, the submarine’s lights illuminating a vortex of disturbed sediment and phytoplankton that swirled in eddies through the freezing black water.
Ethan’s heart hammered in his chest and his breath came in short, sharp gasps as he struggled to recover from the attack. He peered out into the gloom, suddenly fearful of what might be out there in the darkness.
‘I think Chandler was right,’ he said finally. ‘We’re not alone down here.’
Amy climbed back into her seat but kept one hand pressed against the hull for balance as she sat in silence and stared into the blackness, listening for any sign of the creature that had attacked them so viciously.
The silence deepened, as did it seemed the darkness as they waited. Ethan flinched as he realized that they were still drifting with the current, the underside of the glacier moving past above them. He cursed as he realized that he had lost track of their position.
‘Can you reach Chandler?’
Amy did not respond, sitting frozen in silence inside the submarine.
‘Amy?’
She shook herself awake and turned to the laptop as she keyed the microphone.
‘Doctor Chandler, can you hear us?’
A soft static replied to her with its empty hiss. Ethan bit his lip and cursed again as he peered up at the glacier’s underbelly and
sought any sign of the shaft that would bring them up into the docks.
‘Damn it,’ he snapped finally. ‘I think we’ve missed it.’
Amy began to panic, her voice trembling as she replied.
‘But what are we going to do? We can’t stay down here Ethan, our air won’t last long enough and…’
A deep boom reverberated through the Seehund’s hull as something massive slammed into them once again. Ethan’s forehead smacked into the acrylic dome as he saw something move below them in the glow of the lights. His guts convulsed as he saw the immense body of the creature move swiftly through the lights, its back a dark and mottled gray and a stream of bubbles left in its wake. Deep lesions in its surface betrayed the scars battles with other creatures both dangerous and perhaps unknown.
‘Can you see it?’ Amy asked fearfully.
Ethan nodded, his hands gripping the controls tightly. ‘It’s big,’ he replied, ‘maybe eighteen feet or more.’
Amy turned to her laptop and re-wound the footage. A silence consumed the submarine once more as she surveyed what her camera had detected, and to Ethan’s amazement she breathed a sigh of relief.
‘Thank God,’ she uttered.
‘Are you kidding?’
‘It’s a sea leopard,’ she replied.
‘A what?’
‘A sea leopard,’ Amy repeated. ‘They’re common predators in the Antarctic.’
Ethan peered out into the gloom. ‘There’s nothing good or common about that thing out there, it’s huge!’
‘It may have grown large due to the unusual amount of nutrients and food down here.’
‘We lost our chance to surface in the dock shaft,’ Ethan said, ‘and I have no damned idea where we are now.’
‘Did you see where it went?’ Amy asked.
‘The leopard seal? Yeah, south,’ Ethan replied, quickly able to orientate their position and the direction in which the animal had departed.
‘Good,’ Amy said, ‘follow it.’
‘You want me to do what?’
‘Follow it,’ Amy insisted. ‘Seals are mammals, they have lungs.’
Ethan stared down at her for a moment and then he got it. ‘They breathe air.’
He turned the submarine around to point in the same direction as the current and immediately they began to accelerate as they joined the natural flow of the water.
‘How are they getting their air?’ Ethan asked. ‘We didn’t see any of them in the submarine pens.’
‘No, but we did see one of Veer’s men dragged into the water by something,’ Amy said, ‘and leopard seals are known to be large enough to kill humans. The ice in this channel beneath the glacier is highly oxygenated, and any cavities that exist will likely have breathable air in them. All we have to do is follow that seal and hope that the cavities are large enough to accommodate the submarine.’
‘Big hope,’ Ethan pointed out, and then something caught his eye.
Through the gloom he saw a large, streamlined shape moving through the water. From the blackness emerged an enormous seal, three times as long as a man. Ethan had seen such animals on the television but he was stunned by their incredible size and he realized that they would easily be capable of taking down a full grown man.
‘That’s got to weigh at least fifteen hundred pounds,’ he said as he looked at it.
‘The leopard seal is second only to the killer whale on the Antarctic food chain,’ Amy said as she watched the animal on the screen. ‘They’ve been known to kill humans too, dragging them off the ice sheets or attacking them in the water and pulling them down to their deaths.’
‘The docks,’ Ethan realized. ‘It’s their calls we’ve been hearing, right?’
‘That and the turbines under pressure,’ Amy confirmed. ‘Leopard seals growl quite loudly both above and below the surface. Any sign of a breathing chamber yet?’
Ethan could see bubbles periodically streaming from the seal’s mouth as it swam, and then it began to ascend. Ethan eased back on the power and pulled the hydroplanes back, causing the Seehund to follow the seal up.
Almost immediately he saw a shadowy fissure above them, perhaps twenty feet wide and of unknown depth.
‘I can see surface water,’ he said.
The water rippled and glittered as the Seehund’s lights caught it, and then suddenly he saw the seal burst through the surface before diving back down into the depths again, bubbles streaming from its nostrils like shimmering chrome spheres. Ethan guided the submarine upward into the cavity and suddenly the dome broke through the surface water as the lights illuminated a concave chasm in the ice.
Ethan could tell at a glance that the formation was natural, perhaps created as the glacier had moved slowly over rocky formations on the seabed somewhere to the north and thousands of years before. Ragged, linear scars in the roof of the cave marked the glacier’s progress, dark lines scoring the ice where debris and sediments had been dragged along with the ice and frozen in time.
Ethan reached out and pulled a lever, extending the submarine’s breathing tube as he then reached out and opened a valve. He heard a hissing sound as the air outside, under high pressure from the water pinning it in place against the ice, bled immediately into the low pressure atmosphere inside the submarine.
A cold blast of pristine air rushed through the Seehund to hit Ethan’s face and he breathed it in deeply.
‘Damn, that’s so good it hurts,’ Amy gasped.
Ethan looked up at the interior of the cavity and recognized the same natural lines that adorned the ceiling of the submarine pens.
Amy joined him and managed to peer up past his shoulder to get a glimpse of their surroundings.
‘This air must be millions of years old,’ she confirmed. ‘For all we know we could have breathed in ancient pathogens.’
‘You go girl, and keep our spirits up.’
Amy did not reply for a moment, her brow furrowed in deep thought.
‘This glacier is also millions of years old,’ she said finally, ‘and glaciers move.’
‘Yeah,’ Ethan agreed, ‘so what?’
Amy dropped back into her seat as she stared at her laptop screen.
‘The Nazi base must also move with the glacier.’
‘We know that,’ Ethan said, ‘and that movement is slowly tearing up the turbines they built in the water channels.’
Amy shook her head.
‘That’s not what I mean,’ she added. ‘The Totten Glacier is the primary outlet of the Aurora Subglacial Basin and has the fastest rate of thinning in East Antarctica. Circumpolar deep water has been linked to glacial retreat in West Antarctica, so why not here? It’s been observed here all year-round on the continental shelf a few hundred meters beneath the Antarctic surface water.’
‘You’re losing me,’ Ethan admitted.
‘The warm water currents both outside the continent and coming from within it are what created these sub-glacial chambers,’ Amy went on. ‘We just saw a large leopard seal, a mammal that requires large volumes of food and a reliable air supply to survive, and yet here we are some seventy miles in from the Antarctic coast.’
Ethan realized what Amy was getting at.
‘There must be an existing channel still available to the open ocean that passes directly through the submarine pens, and it must be large enough and with consistent enough air pockets to allow large predators to reach this far beneath the glacier, perhaps even live here permanently. That leopard seal might be one of countless species here beneath the glacier, and we might be able to follow that channel out of here to the coast.’
Ethan glanced at the oxygen indicators and saw that the submarine’s tanks were full. He closed the vents and retracted the air pipe.
‘I don’t want to meet any more speciess, thanks all the same. We missed the entrance to the north dock,’ he said as he looked up at the lines running through the ceiling of the air pocket, ‘but if we orientate with those lines we might be able to pick up the m
ain pens and surface there.’
Amy shot him a sharp look.
‘The main pens are where Veer and his men are,’ she warned. ‘We show up there, it will be like handing Black Knight over to them.’
Ethan knew that she was right, but he also knew that nobody knew anything about whether they had actually recovered Black Knight or not yet. With the device tethered below the submarine and submerged beneath the water even when the Seehund breached the surface, nobody would be able to tell what had happened to it.
‘We can’t stay down here forever, and we can’t make a run for the coast and leave the rest of the team behind in there.’
‘Riggs and his men would not hesitate to leave us behind,’ Amy pointed out. ‘That’s probably why he was so keen to lead this expedition. He could have simply sailed out of here and left us behind.’
‘I think Riggs has more humanity than you give him credit for,’ Ethan said as he prepared to dive the submarine.
‘We can escape, right now,’ Amy insisted. ‘We could reach the coast in a few hours, deny Veer and his men their prize and complete our mission!’
‘And Hannah, Doctor Chandler and the others?’ Ethan demanded. ‘Either way, we can’t necessarily sail out of here. Just because a leopard seal or two can make it through seventy miles of sub-glacial ice doesn’t mean this submarine will, and we don’t have weapons to blast our way through. Either we make it back to the base and take our chances, or we’re stuck down here forever. Which would you prefer?’
Amy scowled, but she had no alternative for Ethan as he turned the Seehund in the water and then eased the throttle forward as he aimed the hydroplanes down.
Slowly, the submarine slid back into the icy blackness below and the cave was plunged once more into absolute blackness.
***
XLI
Eric M. Taylor Center, Riker’s Island,
New York City
‘It’s this way, and pardon the convicts, ma’am.’
Lopez grinned as she followed the duty sergeant into the centre. ‘I’ve visited before.’
Lopez walked down a service corridor as the duty sergeant signed them in and signalled a colleague nearby in a small booth surrounded by bullet-proof glass. A motor whined as unseen locks disengaged and a large steel-barred door rolled open.
The Black Knight Page 26
