Robert Williams - Ice Fortress

Perhaps the design flaw wasn’t his, he thought, but instead some pathetic attempt at rebellion or a foolish prank by the inmates responsible for chiseling the tunnel through solid rock. It can’t have been coincidence that they had built it just inches lower than the general’s height. Kammler would have punished them for their brazenness, but they were already dead. The testing of the device had seen to that. Which was a problem, not because of the fast rate at which the device annihilated inmates, after all, the camps swelled with test subjects and new arrivals were squeezed into the overcrowded camps each day, but because the device was not designed as a weapon. Word had quickly spread through the nearby camp as thousands of Polish Jews told of the horrors they had witnessed deep underground where the monster they knew as Waffen-SS General Kammler conducted his insidious experiments using the weapon they called The Bell.

Kammler laughed when he heard the stories about his weapon and the torturous, cruel death it was able to deliver. If they knew what it was really supposed to do, they would have been far more terrified. For the sake of maintaining a cloak of security around his project, he was pleased with the rumors that spread like wildfire. Kammler only wished he could take the credit for such misdirection. Unfortunately, it was his inability to harness the power of the device that resulted in so many accidents . Once he perfected the device, the results would be entirely different.

Through the foot thick glass window, the eerie blue haze increased in hue as the counter rotating hemispheres of the bell shaped device gained momentum. Half as tall again as Kammler himself, the mass of the object took time to reach operating revolutions and the lights in the bunker dimmed noticeably as the power from the generators was diverted to the experimental chamber.

A rail thin man with hollow cheeks was manacled to an iron ring embedded in the concrete floor beside the spinning device. He wore only his filthy, threadbare prison clothes. Despite the bluish reflection from the aura of the device, his eyes were haunted with fear. Behind the protective glass, Kammler wore a heavy lead lined apron and dark goggles. He looked more like a demonic blacksmith than an engineer as he watched the light begin to reach its peak, the high pitched whine of the machine penetrating the three feet of concrete wall separating him from the test chamber.

“Revolutions?” he asked a bespectacled prisoner at his side.

The prisoner, a physics professor a lifetime ago, wiped the sweat from his face with the sleeve of his filthy prison uniform before glancing at the panel of instruments before him.

“One thousand, five hundred per minute, general.” The professor kept his eyes affixed to the instruments. Better that than seeing what was happening inside the chamber, of that he was sure.

If the latest consignment of Xerum 525 was as well refined as Kammler had been assured, at two thousand revolutions per minute the transfer rate of electrons through the spinning plates inside the machine would increase to the point that a nuclear fusion reaction would finally be achieved.

“Two thousand, general.” The professor didn’t wait to be asked this time, all the while his eyes remained glued to the instrument panel.

Kammler couldn’t resist a better view and pushed the dark goggles to his forehead and peered through the thick glass into the chamber. A shimmering blue haze blurred the image of the terrified man whose hands bled as sheets of skin peeled away from them as he tore frantically at his chains. In an instant the man vanished altogether and Kammler leaned closer still to the glass, his senses heightened in anticipation. Then just as suddenly, a bright red, jelly like mucus was slammed against the glass with a savage velocity. Both men could swear they heard the impact, which of course was impossible given the thickness of the radiation proof glass.

“Shut it down,” ordered Kammler. “We will try again this afternoon. Next time increase the Xerum 525 volume in the central chamber by twenty five percent.”

Throwing his apron and goggles onto a nearby bench, Kammler turned on his polished boots and made his way to the door. Without turning, he called over his shoulder, “And clean up that mess before this afternoon.”

Unfortunately for the professor, the general wasn’t talking about his abandoned protective clothing. Through squinted eyes he risked a glance at the red sludge on the glass. If his stomach wasn’t empty after three days without food, he would have vomited on the spot.

“Son-of-a-bitch.” Juan Alvarez hadn’t shoveled a pretzel into his mouth for over an hour. His fingers were too busy blurring across his keyboard to waste time dealing with low priority tasks like stuffing his face.

“What have you got Juan?” asked Leah who was massaging her temples and beginning to wonder when she had last slept. When any of them had last slept.

A faint snore came from Dave Sutton’s workstation. The man could sleep anywhere, through anything.

“No idea, but I’ve now got a much more detailed 3D image to work with if Dave wants to join the land of the living, again and take a look.” Juan hurled a pretzel at Dave, hitting him square in the face.

“I wasn’t asleep. I was… um… visualizing the last sonar scans,” he protested.

“I’m not going to say anything,” said Juan with an earnestness that surprised both Leah and Dave. He continued, “I want you to look at these renderings and tell me what you conclude for yourselves.”

Their interest stirred, both leaned into the console and digested the images Juan had been working on from the sonar data uploaded before they lost contact with Nellie.

Leah was the first to voice her opinion. “I’m going to say aloud what I was too afraid to say before. This structure isn’t natural, at least not in its present configuration. It’s man-made but it can’t be because it’s beyond a scale that’s even possible, at least in this hostile environment.”

“I agree,” were the only words Dave could find as he studied the images, mouth agape.

“With which part?” asked Leah.

“All of it.”

“I have one word that covers all of that and explains this weird cigar shaped object over here.” Juan’s finger stabbed at the section of the image containing the mystery object that seemed to cause the captain enough concern that he’d been quietly studying charts on his computer ever since.

With eyes ablaze with expectation, Leah and Dave stared at Juan, willing him to continue.

“Are you ready for it?” asked Juan, drawing the moment out.

“If you even think of making a drumroll sound, I’ll slap you,” warned Leah.

Instead, Juan mimed a drum roll with imaginary drumstick in his hands.

“One word — Extraterrestrial!”

Dave and Leah slumped visibly with disappointment and looked at each other as they rolled their eyes. How many times had Juan shared his UFO conspiracy theories with them during long nights at sea?

“I’ll see your UFO, Juan,” said the captain with a tone that suggested he was serious, “and raise you.”

“Raise what?” asked Leah, looking from the captain to Juan. It was clear that Juan had no idea what the captain was talking about, either.

“I’ll raise you one Type XXI Elektroboat.” The captain folded his arms.

“You’re not bluffing, are you?” Dave was making a statement, not asking a question.