Armen Gharabegian - Protocol 7

Roland stopped for a moment and contemplated the motto etched in the wall over the door to the monitor room: Abditus perpetuo…Forever secret. Ultimately, secrecy was the motto of Vector5, a privatized military force designed for this-one of the greatest heists in human history. Its primary mission was to extract valuable minerals from the core of Antarctica, exporting them to a classified location in the US and covering their tracks forever. Vector5 was so secret that not one of the leaders of the Pentagon, the White House, the Kremlin, or the Chinese Central Committee knew of their existence. Not even the world government in waiting that called itself UNED had a clue.

It was the most daunting international smuggling operation the world had ever known-vast and deadly in its scope and sophistication.

If the rest of the world-especially China, with its great interest in Antarctica-discovered what was going on in Antarctica, it would mean instant, inevitable, and unending global warfare. This wasn’t simply an economic scandal of monumental proportions; the scarcity of minerals and the planet’s depleted resources made this exploitation a matter of life and death for billions of people. It would not go unpunished.

So it could not be discovered. It was that simple.

Roland shook off his rare contemplative mood and turned back on his team. He was the very picture of barely controlled rage.

“What are the fucking cameras looking at here? Tell me what the hell has entered Fissure 9!”

The officers monitoring the information scrambled to answer the question, but nothing made sense. Some of the digitally enhanced images of Station 35-one of twelve separate entrances to Fissure 9-were absolutely blank. Others showed ghost images, or flickers of heat that disappeared as quickly as they came. One radar scanner showed a blob as big as a beluga whale; another showed a writhing tentacular thing that looked like a weather balloon with fingers.

No one wanted to tell Roland that they had absolutely no idea what they were looking at.

Finally one of the specialists at the far end of the room cleared this throat and said, “Sir, I think I’ve got a prelim signal, but the cameras are having a hard time reading it.”

“What the hell does that mean?” Roland replied. “We have the most sophisticated camera system in the world, and you can’t tell me what the fuck has entered the tunnel?”

“It seems to be iridescent, sir-almost invisible. The computers cannot analyze the exact material makeup, or even gauge its size or mass.” He dared to glance at the commander, and then wished he hadn’t. “Assuming, ah…assuming it’s there at all.”

“Invisible?” Roland asked and pushed the officer to one side as he moved closer to the console to check the screen himself. He tried reading the information for himself, but he wasn’t satisfied by the answer. The holo-display didn’t make a damn bit of sense, and he had more than thirty years of experience reading output like this. It’s beyond them, he realized. Instead, he turned toward the center of the room where a large table showed the sophisticated tunnel system in a ten-by-twenty-foot holo-display.

“Expand Fissure 9 five to one, Station 35 to three miles.” The AI responded to his verbal command instantly, and the image zoomed forward and in, bringing the long tunnel of Fissure 9 into sharp relief.

This section of Fissure 9 looked like a digital worm ten feet long floating above the surface of the table. There was the entrance in question: Station 35, one of the digitally camouflaged entrances to the Southern Sea.

“Give me an infrared readout and locate movement of anomalies,” said the commander. Instantly, the computer analyzed the tunnel, showing a small speck of…something…moving at a rapid speed, deeper down the submarine feeder-tunnel toward the main corridor of Fissure 9- moving toward them, as it happened.

Roland tapped a small patch on his left shoulder and spoke distinctly, “This is Fissure 9 Command. Connect me to headquarters.”

He heard the response in his ear through the tech implanted there years ago: “Roger that.”

Two seconds later, he heard the voice of the computer on the other side, “Central Command, verify password.”

“Fissure 9, 9005105,” said the commander, looking at the tunnel with the flickering things moving forward at a steady-and impressive-speed.

“Hold on, sir,” the computer said, instantly analyzing the password and connecting him to the voice on the other side.

“What the hell are you doing going audio?” the voice on the other side asked.

“We have an incision,” said the commander. That was all the explanation the other side would need.

The voice belonged to the man designated as Mathias, the commander’s counterpart in Central Command. Although Central Command was miles away and over five thousand feet deep in the ice, it was also the point where everything converged. Most of the transport tunnels that crossed underneath the ice connected there, and Mathias would be just as displeased at hearing that word as Roland had been. The moment Roland pronounced it, the other man’s tone changed.

“Are you sure?”

“Yes, I’m sure,” replied Roland. “We’re still working on the recognition sequence, but I’m convinced it’s not one of ours.”

Roland hadn’t taken his eyes off the multiple screens, but he was no closer to understanding what he was seeing than he’d been five minutes ago. “Command,” he said, hating the decision even as he made it. “I am requesting a dispatch.”

Mathias responded immediately, “You do realize how long it will take for the DITVs to get up there?”

“We’ve got a situation up here,” Roland said, biting it off. “I need assistance.” Dispatching Vector5’s Deep Ice Transport Vehicles (or DITVs) were the biggest, most decisive response he could think of. It was important to hit hard and hit fast. But that wasn’t all.

“Central,” he continued. “Can you send the Spiders up Dragger Pass as well?” Dragger Pass was a three-thousand-foot-long crack in the ice, an incredibly dangerous crevasse as wide as two-hundred-feet in certain areas, which opened on the Fissure at various points along the way. The CS-23s, or the Crevasse Spiders, were the perfect tools for forcing unwanted intruders to stop or die, and the only machines capable of navigating the vertical fissure.

Mathias humphed at the request, thinking it through. “We haven’t used Dagger Pass in years,” he said. “There are easier ways to travel now. It’s going to take some time.”

“We don’t have time,” Roland said. “While you’re deploying, I’m dispatching the Drones to get a better visual of what this thing is.”

“I haven’t said if we’re deploying-”

“Roland out,” he said and tapped his shoulder one more time to disconnect from Central Command. He didn’t have to repeat himself; he saw the surveillance duty officer was already at work.

“Sir, I’ve dispatched eight underwater drones along the cord,” he said, referring to the Fissure 9 tunnel. The tiny robotic cameras no larger than baseballs would travel to their assigned destinations at speeds exceeding thirty miles an hour. Once they reached their goals, they would dig in and remain dormant until activated.

Roland nodded and allowed himself a tiny moment of satisfaction. He walked outside of the monitor room in search of a decent cup of coffee. “Good,” he muttered to himself. “Once we get a look at this thing, I’ll know how to deal with it.”

He only knew one thing for certain: whoever, or whatever, had entered Fissure 9 had a death wish…and he was more than sure he would make it come true.