BZRK: Apocalypse (BZRK 3)

She didn’t see the edge of the precipice until she was practically on top of it.

“Whoa.” Antarctica had millions of square miles of same-old, same-old, but hidden here and there in the largely unexplored continent there were features that would take your breath away. This was one of those times.

The ice fell away in a sheer cliff just beyond the toes of her boots. Spread out below her was a narrow valley shaped like a boat hull—pointed at the near end, rounded at the far end. Suarez’s position would correspond to just off the starboard bow.

The topography was not complicated; it was effectively a big, oblong hole in the ice, maybe two kilometers long, a quarter that in width at the widest point. The floor of the valley was reddish gravel and looked like an abandoned quarry. About where the cabin would be on a yacht was a series of structures—four buildings, one quite large by polar standards, and, sure enough, under a plastic dome there was unmistakably a swimming pool.

Somebody really liked to swim.

Suarez carefully absorbed the layout. The structure with the two stubby towers would be the power plant. The largest building was some sort of hangar or factory space, unmistakably utilitarian. The third, a two-story L-shape, would be a barracks. Room for, what, fourteen, sixteen rooms plus a common space? So not a huge contingent.

And finally what looked very much like a private home, done with a reckless disregard for energy conservation, a three-story, ultra-modern, Scandinavian-looking thing with the kind of floor-to-ceiling windows you just didn’t see in Antarctica, and a plastic tunnel running to the pool.

Instead of the inevitable Sno-Cats there was a pair of Audi SUVs parked outside the house, as though the occupant might have kids and pets who needed transportation to the nearest soccer field or dog park.

Craziness. Suarez had to laugh. It was nuts. And whoever had built it was nuts. They were hundreds of miles from the coast, which was to say a whole long way from even the thinnest edge of civilization. This might easily be the most isolated house on planet Earth. Sure as hell the furthest from a Starbucks.

Two helicopters lay all tied down and shipshape on a well-marked pad. One was an EC130, a species of chopper found all over the ice. But the other was an Apache, with missile pods on the stubby wings and a swivel-mounted thirty-millimeter cannon.

Who had the kind of political juice to get hold of a freaking Apache?

How had this place even been discovered? Either someone had amazing luck, or they had some amazing satellite imagery. Speaking of which, a satellite would have to be directly overhead to see the valley at all.

Suarez peered off to the far end of the valley. Was that a road? It looked like a road cut into the ice wall, rising at a steep grade up to the outside. Could she drive the sleigh down there? Bigger question: Could she get it back out?

The smart thing to do would be to take some pictures and get the hell out of here, get back to Tanner and let him take it from there. That was definitely the smart move.

Yes.

So Suarez, face already numb and hands getting there, climbed back into the sleigh and drove at safe speed around to the head of the road. It was definitely a road, hopefully just wide enough to allow a large truck—or the sleigh—to avoid going off the side.

“All in now,” she said to herself, and sent the sleigh creeping down the incline. This proved to be as tricky as she’d thought it might be. There was no pavement, of course, just icy gravel, dropping what looked to be about one hundred meters in the course of a quarter mile, one heck of a grade. The sleigh, like any hovercraft, was not well suited to going downhill in a controlled manner and started to slide sideways almost immediately, but Suarez got the hang of it and made it to the valley floor without plunging off the side of the ice ramp.

Still no one came rushing to greet or confront her. Either would almost have been welcome merely for the purpose of ending the suspense. The sleigh was more than capable of crossing gravel, but now, down inside the rift, it was a high-strung Thoroughbred in a too-narrow paddock.

Was the whole place abandoned? Obviously anyone there would have heard, if not seen, the sleigh. You don’t exactly sneak up on people when you’re in a jet-powered hovercraft.

She throttled forward, creeping along at walking speed, aiming for the bizarre house—which was no less bizarre down here at eye level. The glass windows were mirrored, so Suarez could not see inside and instead saw the reflection of herself scowling from beneath the canopy.

Finally, lacking any better idea of what to do, she parked the sleigh, killed the engines, and climbed out again. There was no wind, which did not make it any warmer but did reduce the effects a bit. Her breath rose as steam but her face, while cold, regained some of its feeling.

Now what? Ring the doorbell?

She crunched across the gravel to the door of the house. There was no bell. So she stripped off one glove and knocked.

Bad idea. The door was steel and very, very cold. Had she knocked any slower she’d have left knuckle skin behind.

No answer.

“This is insane.”

The next likely target was the large—quite large—building fifty meters away.

There would presumably be a satellite phone in the buildings, or an Internet connection—some way to inform Tanner. The question was whether there would also be men and women with guns. It all had an empty but not-quite-abandoned feel.

The building was not locked. Well, why would you lock a building that was a million miles from nothing much? But it bothered her. This was all too easy.

She pushed in. Lights were on, illuminating a single large open space populated by machinery of a sleek, white-coated type. She recognized only the 3D printers, monitors, and touch screens. The other objects were not familiar, and might have been anything from manufacturing to medical gear. But one particular type of equipment predominated: a chest-height, white rectangle with inexplicable slots outlined in green light. There were a lot of those. Dozens. Maybe a hundred. These definitely were some kind of manufacturing equipment, not computers. Probably automated, given that the machines were backed too closely together to allow for people to move easily around them.