“Arsehole!” Sulley yelled, and turned back to his screen. He narrowed his eyes. “What would Cate do?”
“Never give up,” Schmidt said softly. “We can give it a while and then try a reboot.”
“Good idea. Okay, we wait then.” Sulley turned in his seat. “Who’s making the tea?”
Colonel Jack Hammerson read the data squirt intercepted from the Ellsworth team’s update to the UK Ministry of Science. There was no information on Alex Hunter, and he didn’t expect there to be. But the two words he dreaded were there: Probe destroyed.
Even though Alex Hunter’s vital sign monitor was now flat-lining, did he think the man was dead? Probably not. Just well out of range, he bet. Hammerson sat back, jaws clenched. Could he risk it all on a wait-and-see approach? Absolutely not.
He had no choice, he needed to initiate his backup plan. If the front door was shut, then he’d need to kick open the back one, and forge right in.
The backup team’s mission was no longer a stand and hold assignment that he originally planned for. Their role had suddenly changed from defensive to offensive and they now needed to go in, and go all the way down to hell. He just needed one more member — a guide.
Hammerson picked up the phone, hating himself already.
“Margie, get me Aimee Weir.”
Cate couldn’t breathe. She knew that the Pliosaur could have easily grabbed prey from shallows and even from the shoreline. She and Alex were a tempting morsel of meat, just a few feet from the deep water. She waited, and then surprisingly, a hundred feet further out, the striped hump rose, whale-like, and then slid away, fast.
“Not that hungry, huh?” She snorted softly, but then sobered and quickly looked over her shoulder. “Or did something scare you off?”
A metallic clank from the rocks farther down the shore drew Cate’s attention back to the waterline. She grinned.
“Well, hello, you tough little bastard.”
It was Orca, the probe had beached. The ten-foot toughened metal body looked like it had been run over by a truck. It was crushed in places and had some rips in its super hardened steel skin, showing wires and circuitry.
She nodded to the mangled machine. “Thank you.” Then she lay down, aching, still on top of Alex.
Cate felt him stir beneath her, and she unclipped her belt and rolled off him. He groaned and she reached across to grab his hair and lift his head. He was breathing and there was an actual dent in his forehead that was so dark it looked black.
Ouch, she whispered, and pushed him over onto his back. She knelt beside him, and used a thumb to open one of his eyes — the pupil dilated. Good, she thought, no brain damage. But don’t know how with that damned ding in his noggin though.
Alex moaned again and his head raised a few inches. “Wha…?” his lips continued to move.
“Take it easy. I think you’ve suffered a concussion.” She wiped debris from his cheek. “Just breathe, we’re okay now.”
She shrugged out of her own oxygen tanks, and eased Alex’s off his shoulders. He lay back, and Cate turned to the forest, looking along the line of huge trunks. Alien, was her first thought. It was hard to think of them as trees, as most were up on multiple stilts, twisting and slimy looking, like in some sort of haunted forest. Maybe they weren’t trees at all, but something vastly different, she wondered. Many rose at least fifty feet in the air, and ended in stubby palms, but their tips looked more akin to polyps rather than fronds. There were more at ground level, all of them looking soft and damp.
It was strangely quiet, with vapor hanging in the air. It reminded her of a haunted forest, and all that was missing was the hooting of an owl or a headless horseman lurking in the shadows. She continued to search the dark spaces as her gut told her that there was life in there. She inhaled deeply. There was the ever-present smell of warm saltwater, but permeating it was another odor — mushrooms, she thought. That’s what it reminded her of — composting mushrooms.
Above her the ceiling was black velvet, but speckled with blue dots that lit the environment in a soft twilight. Looking back at the subterranean sea, it was almost an endless flat surface of inky black liquid that swirled and popped as things broke the surface or swirled just out of sight beneath the warm, dark blanket. To one side of them, a huge cliff rose up hundreds of feet, to then curve up and over them as a ceiling. In among the blue lights there were hanging fronds that looked like upside-down corals of all differing hues.
Alex groaned again, and she turned back to him. She frowned. Did the huge dent look different? She placed her fingers gently onto it, and then immediately snatched them back — his skin was hot, damned hot. She leaned forward, and as she watched, the sunken contusion rose and flattened, and after another few moments the deep blue-black bruise lightened to purple, red, and then vanished.
“What the hell?”
Alex sat up, staring straight ahead for a few moments. He got to his feet without a trace of unsteadiness.
“Take it easy.” Cate followed him up.
He continued to stare out over the flat water. “It’s gone now.” He turned slowly, his eyes catching sight of the mangled probe. He half smiled. “Close encounter of the worst kind, huh?” He looked at her, his brows raised.
She shook her head. “Yeah, and you slept right through it, Mr. Big Hero.”
Alex inhaled, filling his chest with air. “You got us in safely. Good work, Cate.” He smiled. “I owe you a drink.”
“You owe me more than that, pal,” she said, scowling.
Alex reached for a pouch at his waist, and pulled out a small box. He fiddled with its dials, looking at the screen, and then turned to the forest. “We’re not far.” He started up the rocky shore.
“Hey, wait, you were just…” She scoffed. “I don’t believe this.” Then: “Ah, goddamnit,” she said, and started to follow.
CHAPTER 20
There came a knock on the door, and Hammerson’s PA, Margie, stuck her head in.
“Jack, Aimee Weir to see you… and she’s brought Joshua.”
Hammerson nodded. “Thanks Margie, but just Aimee for now. You can take our little friend for a walk around the base. Show him the planes, and the canteen. I think it’s mac and cheese day.”
Truth was, he wasn’t ready to look the kid in the face again. How could he see that countenance — Alex Hunter all over, after he’d just sent his father below the Antarctic ice, and was about to do the same to his mother?
After a few more minutes Aimee knocked and came in. Hammerson got to his feet, and took her by the hand, noticing she looked tired, haunted.
“Good to see you Aimee. How’s life been treating the pair of you?”
“Life is okay, and we’re good, Jack,” she said. “The safe house has small rooms, but at least I don’t wake up feeling like I need to be checking Josh every ten minutes. It’s safe, I guess.”
“Just every ten minutes, huh?” Hammerson smiled, but noticed the sharp look in her eye, and held up a hand. “No, no, I’m not watching you. Just a joke, Aimee.”
“It’s okay.” She relaxed, but still looked strung tight.
“How’s Peter?” Hammerson asked, already knowing how her partner, or ex-partner now, it seemed, was faring.
“He’s getting better. The doctors say he’ll make a full recovery. He thinks it was just a break-in that went wrong.” She smiled weakly.