Matthew Reilly: Ice Station

"Gant! Where's the vectored thrust?" On modern vertical-takeoff-and-landing-capable fighters like the Harrier, vertical lift-off is achieved through directable, or "vectored," thrusters.

"There aren't any," Gant called from the missile bay. "It has retrofiring jets instead! Look for the button that starts the retros!"

Schofield searched for it. As he did so, however, he came across another button. It was marked: cloak mode. Schofield frowned.

What the hell?

And then suddenly he saw the button he was looking for:

RETROS.

He hit it.

The Silhouette responded immediately and began to rise into the air. But then abruptly it jolted to a sudden halt. There came a loud grinding noise from behind it.

"Huh?" Schofield said.

He looked out through the back of the cockpit canopy, and he saw that the two tail fins of the Silhouette were still firmly embedded within the ice wall behind it.

Schofield found the button marked afterburner. Punched it.

Immediately a white-hot spray of pure heat burst out from the twin thrusters at the back of the Silhouette and began to melt the ice holding the rear of the plane captive.

The ice melted quickly; the tail fins soon came free.

Schofield checked his watch.

10:53 p.m.

The entire cavern lurched downward again.

Come on, now; don't go yet. 1 just need a couple more minutes. Just a couple more minutes....

Schofield kept warming the engine. He looked down at his watch as it ticked over to 10:54. Then 10:55.

All right, time's up. Time to go.

He hit the button marked retros again and the eight retro jets on the underside of the big black ship fired as one, shot out long white puffs of gas.

This time, the Silhouette rose off the icy ground, and began to hover inside the enormous underground cavern. The cavern around it rumbled and shuddered. Chunks of ice rained down from the ceiling, banged down on the back of the big black plane.

Chaos. Absolute chaos.

10:56 P.M.

Schofield looked out through the tinted-glass canopy of the Silhouette . The whole cavern was tilting crazily. It was almost as if the whole ice shelf was lurching forward, moving into the ocean ....

It's falling off the mainland , he thought.

"What are you doing!" Renshaw called from the missile bay.

"I'm waiting for it to flip over!" Schofield called back.

Suddenly Schofield heard Gant groan with pain. " Renshaw ! Help her! Fix that wound! Kirsty ! Get up here! I need you!"

Kirsty came forward into the cockpit and climbed up into the high rear chair. "What do you want me to do?"

"See that stick there?" Schofield said. 'The one with the trigger on it?"

Kirsty saw a control stick in front of her. "Yeah."

"Pull that trigger for me, will you?"

Kirsty pulled the trigger.

As soon as she did so, two dazzling-white pulses of light shot out from both wings of the big black fighter plane.

The two tracer bullets slammed into the ice wall in front of the Silhouette and exploded in twin clouds of white. When the two clouds dissipated, Schofield saw a large hole in the ice wall.

"Nice shootin," Tex," he said.

He pulled back on his stick, and the Silhouette rose higher in the middle of the collapsing ice cavern.

"All right, everybody, hold on, this thing is gonna go any second now," Schofield said. "Kirsty, when I say so, I want you to press down on that trigger and hold it down, OK?"

"OK."

Schofield peered out through the canopy, looked out at the crumbling ceiling of the ice cavern, looked out at the pool of water through which they had all entered the cavern?the water in the pool was sloshing madly against the ice walls.

And then at that moment, it happened. The whole cavern just dropped ?straight down?and then tilted dramatically. In that instant, Schofield knew that the whole of the ice shelf containing Wilkes Ice Station had come completely free of the mainland.

It had become an iceberg.

Wait for it , Schofield told himself. Wait for it ....

And then, abruptly, the whole cavern tilted again.

Only this time, the tilting was much more dramatic. This time the whole cavern rotated a full 180 degrees, right around the hovering Silhouette!

The iceberg had flipped over!

The whole cavern was now upside-down."

Suddenly a torrent of water came rushing out of a wide hole in the "ceiling" of the cavern?the hole that only moments before had been the mouth of the underwater ice tunnel that had led up into the cavern.

The underwater ice tunnel no longer led to the depths of the ocean. Now it led upward . Now it led to the surface.

Schofield maneuvered the Silhouette so as to avoid the cascade of water pouring out of the ice tunnel. After a good twenty seconds, the rush of water abated and he pulled back on his stick. The Silhouette responded by rocking backwards in the air and pointing itself up at the wide hole in the ceiling.

"All right, Kirsty, now !"

Kirsty jammed down on her trigger.

Immediately the Silhouette's wings spewed forth a devastating burst of tracer fire. The relentless wave of bullets disappeared inside the hole in the ceiling and assaulted any icy crags or outcroppings that dared to jut out of the walls of the ice tunnel.

At that moment, Schofield hit the thrusters and the Silhouette shot up into the tunnel, just as, behind it, the ceiling of the enormous cavern spectacularly collapsed in on itself.

The wing-mounted guns of the Silhouette blazed away, blasting at any imperfections in the ice tunnel as the big black plane flew upward through what had once been the underwater ice tunnel.

Schofield guided the sleek black plane up through the tunnel, shooting through puffs of white cloud, rolling the big plane onto its side when the tunnel narrowed, praying to God that the tracer bullets were clearing the way.

Up and up the Silhouette went, blasting away at the tunnel in front of it. Explosions boomed out all around the big black plane. The sound of its wing-mounted guns firing away was deafening.

And then suddenly the tunnel behind the Silhouette began to collapse at a phenomenal rate.

Boom! Boom! Boom!

Massive chunks of ice began to rain down from the ceiling of the tunnel behind the speeding plane. The Silhouette raced upward through the tunnel, blasting away at the walls of the tunnel in front of it while at the same time outrunning the collapsing tunnel behind it.

Through the cockpit canopy it looked like some kind of video-game thrill ride. The tunnel swept past Schofield at phenomenal speed, and occasionally the world nipped upside-down as he rolled the big plane to avoid falling chunks of ice.

Schofield watched as the barrage of tracer bullets decimated the walls of the tunnel in front of him, widening it, smoothing it, and then suddenly? voom !?the walls of the ice tunnel vanished and in a single, glorious instant he saw the sky open up in front of him.

The Silhouette burst out of the iceberg and flew up into the clear open sky.

The Silhouette shot up into the air, almost vertical, and Schofield looked back over his shoulder and saw that the ice shelf that had held Wilkes Ice Station within it was indeed no longer an ice shelf. It was now an iceberg.

An absolutely massive iceberg.

It had flipped over and Schofield saw the eroded underbelly of what had once been the ice shelf?the thin, icy stalactites, the glistening-wet mountain peaks?rising like spires above the new berg. He also saw the jagged black hole through which the Silhouette had blasted out of the berg.