J.T. Brannan
Origin
About the Author
J.T. Brannan trained as a British Army officer at Sandhurst, before deciding to pursue a writing career. A former national Karate champion, he now teaches Karate, MMA, and his own system of reality-based self-defence. He lives near Harrogate with his wife and two young children. ORIGIN is his first novel.
For more information about the author, visit his website at www.jtbrannan.com
Dedication
For Jakub and Mia
Acknowledgements
I would like to thank the following people for their help on the road to publication: my parents, for their long-standing belief in me; my fantastic agent Luigi Bonomi, as well as Thomas Stofer and the rest of the team at LBA; my superb editor Alexander Hope and everyone at Headline Publishing; Dr Jeffrey D. Means at the University of Wyoming; Matthew B. Barr and the staff at the Institute for American Indian Studies; my friend Tom Chantler for his valuable assistance and scientific advice; and my wife Justyna, without whose constant support, drive and creative input this book would never have been written.
‘Three may keep a secret, if two of them are dead.’
PART ONE
1
Lynn Edwards opened the base-camp door and stepped straight into a frozen hell.
‘Where did you last see him?’ she shrieked over the howling wind, panic in the eyes of the man before her.
‘The ridge!’ Stephen Laverty screamed back, pointing into the vast, ice-covered wilderness behind him.
Lynn looked over Laverty’s shoulder. The ridge was over four hundred metres away — not far in the real world, but out here on the Antarctic Pine Island Glacier, it might as well have been four thousand. What had he been doing there?
As if reading her mind, Laverty shouted to her, ‘He just went out to find a better site for his readings. But the ridge slipped, and he went down.’
It wasn’t time for recriminations, but the missing man should have known better. Lynn was the lead investigator for the NASA team that was investigating the rapidly melting glacier, and Tommy Devane was responsible for the hot water drilling that was a major part of that mission. The sites had already been painstakingly selected, but Devane had obviously wanted to explore further. In the Antarctic, Lynn knew such foolhardiness could prove fatal.
She sensed movement behind her, and turned to see four other members of her team join them. She nodded, and gestured at the ferocious landscape beyond Laverty. ‘Over there,’ she told them. ‘Past the ridge.’
‘What the hell was he doing over there?’ Sally Johnson wanted to know, to murmurs of general agreement.
‘We can argue about that later,’ Lynn yelled. ‘Right now, we’ve got to get him back.’ She turned to face the brutal Antarctic wind. ‘Now let’s go!’
Pine Island Glacier, otherwise known as the PIG, is one of the two largest glaciers that drain the West Antarctic ice sheet into the Amundsen Sea, a large ice stream that flows down the side of the Hudson mountains into Pine Island Bay. Satellite imagery has shown that it has undergone a noticeable acceleration in recent years, making it disperse more ice into the sea than any other drainage basin on the planet.
The team led by Lynn Edwards was tasked with gaining an understanding of the interaction of the ocean and the ice by taking complex sets of measurements and then modelling the results to give an overall ‘virtual’ image of the action of the entire glacier.
The PIG itself was in one of the most remote areas of the vast ice-bound continent, eight hundred miles from the nearest permanently manned research station. Lynn and her team had arrived just a week ago from the large US research base known as McMurdo Station, some thousand miles south. They had flown in a small Twin Otter aircraft and landed at the old Matrix base camp, which they had reopened.
The week had gone well, and Lynn had established the base camp quickly and efficiently with the help of her team of eight hand-picked scientists.
They had discovered the ridge on the second day. Just four hundred metres from base camp, the ridge rose over one hundred metres from the surface of the glacier in a long, pristine line across the frozen horizon. The drop-off at the other side — which Devane had apparently fallen down — was nearly three times that distance, a slightly angled cliff left by the action of the ice calving away.
The basic sameness of the bleak white scenery made navigation and assessment of distance an almost impossible task, and Lynn could only pray that Stephen Laverty would be able to lead them back to the place where he last saw Devane.
If he couldn’t, Tommy would be dead within the hour.
Tommy Devane adjusted his body, testing each limb in turn, then his neck. Nothing broken.
He sighed in relief, looking back up to the top of the ‘ridge’, which appeared to be more of a mountain when seen from this angle. He counted his blessings — his thermo-electric suit had cushioned the fall to a large extent — and then cursed himself aloud for being so stupid. He was a professional! What had he been doing?
He cleared his mind. Feeling sorry for himself wouldn’t help in any way, he knew that for certain. He also knew that, even though base camp was a mere four hundred metres away, if he couldn’t get back over the ridge, he would soon be dead. He looked up at the towering mountain above him, its sheer sides mocking his hopes. Fat chance. He wasn’t getting back up there without a lot of help.
He knew Laverty had gone to get help, but he also knew that there was always the haunting possibility that he would never be found.
Unwilling to give in to panic, he pulled himself to his feet and started to examine the ridge. The slope was almost sheer, with nothing but ice to hold on to. Instinct told him to continue along the ridge, try and find some way of climbing it, but his head told him to stay where he was. If Laverty led the team back to the point where he had fallen and he was no longer there, he would be in a world of trouble.
And so he would wait. He would wait, and—
What on earth?
Devane’s eyes went wide as he saw the ghostly image, just a little further along the base of the ridge.
Could it be?
He shook his head, his eyes transfixed. It was a body, seemingly buried in the ice.
Wise move or not, he knew he would have to go and investigate.
2
Lynn and her team had finally arrived at the ridge. They skirted the edge, careful to avoid any calving ice, not wishing to go the same way as Devane.
‘Is this where you last saw him?’ Lynn asked Laverty, the lowered wind allowing them the luxury of communication without having to scream at one another.
Laverty nodded his head. ‘Yeah, I’m sure.’ He pointed to the readout on his weather-proofed GPS. ‘As sure as I can be, anyway.’
Lynn nodded her head in return. ‘OK.’ She turned to the rest of the group. ‘Otis?’
A small, wiry man came forward. Otis Burns was the principal oceanographer on the team, and also the most accomplished climber. At a trim one hundred and forty pounds, he knew he was the obvious choice to go over the edge. He grinned at Lynn. ‘Rope me up, baby,’ he said with a wink.
‘Steady!’ Lynn called to the three team members who were belaying the rope over the edge of the ridge. ‘Slowly does it!’ She peered over as far as she could. ‘You see anything yet?’ she called to Burns, who was now at least a hundred feet down over the other side.