Robert Williams - Ice Fortress

Each system came back online, one at a time, and only after a successful diagnostic did she attempt to initiate the next system startup. If any systems failed the diagnostic, Nellie would return to her stasis and await recovery.

With the final systems check complete, all systems were fully operational and in the green.

As if she’d never had a high-tech Russian deep sea Futlyar torpedo fired at her, chasing her down at 50 knots, Nellie resumed her grid pattern, pinging the ice shelf above her. Just as she had been programmed to do.

What Nellie had no way of knowing was there above her, encased in the ice shelf itself, was the huge, steel hull of a submarine. Like the torpedo designers, Nellie’s creators had never envisaged what the effects might be if their depth probing pings should hit a large steel mass above the ice. After all, under what circumstances would there ever be a ship or submarine above sea level in the Antarctic?

Jack made the decision not to engage the snow camouflaged enemy in a stand up fight. Their equipment lay in cargo pods strapped to the one remaining pallet on the ice and the only ammunition available to them was what each man carried in his pack. In no time at all they would be dry firing and in all likelihood, they’d be lucky to hit anything, given the conditions and visibility.

Fighting wasn’t an option. For now.

Surrendering wasn’t in Jacks DNA.

They had a new mission. Survival. If they remained where they were, the severe wind chill would render them hypothermic in less than an hour. Their thermal tactical suits were designed to keep them alive under combat conditions when they’d either be moving to stay warm or huddled in one of the high-tech tents DARPA had equipped them with. The conning tower protected them from the worst of the biting Antarctic wind, but it was still open to the elements and they had no way to stave off hypothermia while pinned down there.

The snow suited force of their adversaries surrounded them and Jack sensed they were closing in, but interestingly, they were no longer firing weapons at the sub. Jack knew that an outfit professional enough to catch him off guard wouldn’t be the type to go on a mission with too little ammo. They had to have a reason for holding fire.

“I think it’s over to you, now that they’re taking a break from trying to blow us to bits.” Jack placed a reassuring hand on Sam’s shoulder. As he did, he noticed a trail of blood oozing from his cuff.

“You’ve been hit,” Sam observed.

Jack bit back a sarcastic retort. They need to work together right now. Survival. If they couldn’t do that, then there was no mission. Survive, and then worry about securing the sub.

“I’ve had worse. A lot worse. Right now, we need a plan. It won’t be the bullets that kill us, it’ll be the cold.”

“So why is it… over to me, all of a sudden?” asked Sam, his teeth chattering comically.

“Because,” Jack smiled, despite the grim situation, “we’re onboard a submarine and if I’m not mistaken, we’re on your turf, now.”

“You want to crack the hatch and hunker down in the sub until help arrives?” Disbelief showed on Sam’s face.

“Unless you have a better idea…”

“This thing has been exposed to the elements for over 70 years. The hatch is probably rusted and frozen solid. We’d need cutting equipment to get it open.” Sam shook his head as he brushed snow from the dog wheel used to open the hatch.

“This… ain’t right,” he stammered but only partially from the cold.

“You’re talking about this thing looking like it rolled out of dry dock six months ago, not half a century ago?” Jack had noticed it, too.

“Something like that,” Sam gasped as he heaved on the release wheel trying to unlock the hatch.

An intense crack of thunder filled the air, loud enough to be felt as well as heard over the howling wind that buffeted the conning tower.

“What did you just do?” Jack’s eyes narrowed with suspicion, his steely gaze fixed on Sam.

“What did I do? I did what you told me to do. I tried to open the friggin’ hatch,” he shouted. It wasn’t as if the enemy didn’t know exactly where they were, anyway, so low voices seemed kind of pointless.

Jack peered over the top of the tower, toward the surrounding force. As he expected, they were falling back and in quite a hurry about it, too, he noted.

Another crack of thunder filled the air, this time louder and closer than the last.

“Great, so a blizzard isn’t enough, we have to have a thunderstorm to top it off,” Sam moaned.

“That’s not thunder, you idiot!”

Jack knew the sound of breaking ice. He’d been caught in mountain avalanches at high altitude and he’d been on missions to the Arctic ice shelf. Nothing else sounded quite like a gigantic piece of ice cracking open for the first time in a million years.

The section of deck below them moved. A perfectly natural movement for a submarine in its natural ocean environment, but far from normal when they were fully ice bound and above the water.

An even louder crack echoed across the ice pack and both men scrambled over the icy steel to cling to the ladder as the deck below them fell away, their stomachs lurching as they plummeted with it, into a frozen abyss.

One second they were weightless and in freefall like skydivers, the next, they were slammed into the steel decking within the conning tower. With years of training and practice jumping from aircraft, Jack’s instincts took over and without conscious thought he tucked and rolled, absorbing the impact.

Navy man Sam wasn’t so well prepared. The big man had his knees driven up into his face, smashing him in the nose as he collapsed onto the deck. A spray of blood spattered the white snow that covered the conning tower. Through the tears that stung his eyes, Sam looked over to see that Jack was getting to his feet, unhurt and not bleeding.

A familiar feeling rushed through him as he wiped the blood from his face and stood up. A comfortable and familiar feeling. The deck was moving and this time, in a good way. The German U-Boat was back in the water, where it belonged. Soon it would be decks awash….

“Oh, shit,” cursed Sam.

“Don’t you ever stop complaining?” Jack rolled his eyes. “We’re out of the line of fire, at least and that buys us time to work on the hatch. And a plan for getting out of this mess. I thought you’d be happy on the water?”

“It’s not on the water that’s the issue. Pretty soon, we’re going to be in the water.”

Jack shook his head, brow pinched. He didn’t see the problem.

“We’re already low in the water and I can feel us getting lower. I don’t know how it’s possible, but this boat got iced in way up there,” Sam pointed up to the gaping chasm through which the sub had collapsed before hitting the water, “without blowing all of its tanks.”

Jack shrugged but said nothing.

“Do you army boys know nothing? It’s simple physics… positive buoyancy, submarine floats. Negative buoyancy, submarine sinks. These tanks were blown negative at some point underwater so the sub could hold its position. That’s neutral buoyancy. Now, the laws of physics are pulling her down to the depth she was at when the tanks were blown enough to level her off.” Panic was plastered all over Sam’s face.