Chapter 32

32

May 14, 2:17 A . M . ANAT

Aboard the Polar King , East Siberian Sea

Gray crossed through the belly of the eighty-thousand-horsepower beast. The steady rumble spoke to that power, while the nail-on-chalkboard grind of ice along the ship's hardened hull was a near-constant reminder of the harsh seas they traveled through.

He strode alongside Oliver Kelly, the Australian captain of the heavy icebreaker. The Polar King was a commercial ship, part of the ESKY shipping conglomerate, whose CEO William Byrd owed Sigma a big favor after events a few months back. Director Crowe had called in that favor, arranging for the use of the icebreaker to conduct the upcoming search.

The Polar King had already been in the neighboring Chukchi Sea, repositioned there from the oceans around Antarctica. The busiest seasons for icebreakers in the northern Arctic were spring and fall. A few weeks ago, the King had finished a stint with ConocoPhillips, aiding in oil and natural gas exploration near the North Slope of Alaska. The ship had been headed next to the Barents Sea, via the Northern Sea Route, to do the same for a Norwegian firm—until Painter had commandeered the vessel.

From the heavy stride of the former navy officer, Kelly was not pleased with this change of course, especially as it aimed his vessel toward the thicker ice of the polar cap. The current waters were crowded with ice floes, requiring little of the near-bottomless power of the ship's two nuclear reactors. But before long, they would need to strain the upper limits of those powerhouses.

"I don't know what you expect to find out there," Kelly said as he led Gray toward a conference room below deck.

"I'll do my best to fill you in."

Gray intended to explain once everyone was gathered. His team—which included Seichan, Jason, and Sister Anna—had landed on the icebreaker's helipad two hours earlier, just after midnight. They had taken an early morning commercial flight from Moscow to the coastal city of Pevek, which sat at the edge of the East Siberian Sea. There, Painter had arranged for the Polar King 's helicopter to meet them and ferry them to the ship. It had required stopping on Wrangel Island to refuel before crossing the last four hundred miles out to sea.

It was still going to be a long night, but at least his team had time to rest as they crossed the breadth of Russia. He had napped with Seichan during the flight. She kept hold of his hand, as if ensuring he stayed in his seat. Yesterday, she had looked both relieved and furious when he had walked through the hotel room door. As waterlogged as his gear had been, he hadn't been able to radio the others. The little jubilation of their reunion quickly died away once he told her what had happened to Yelagin and Bailey. It was also a short reunion, just the one night, as afterward their group had split up again.

Voices rose ahead of them, coming from an open door at the end of the passageway.

"Our conference room," Kelly said with a nod. "My navigator will be down shortly with the map you requested. I've also asked another crewman who might be of assistance to join us."

"Thank you, Captain Kelly."

The pair of them passed through the doorway into a wide, shallow room. A large table was bolted in place, running down the room's center. Across the expanse of the back wall, a bank of windows overlooked the bow of the ship.

Gray was momentarily taken aback by the sight. Dark seas spread in an endless stretch to the horizon. Rafts of ice covered the water, reflecting the moonlight. The skies blazed with a sweep of stars, but what truly stole his breath was the shimmering veils of blues, crimsons, and green. They danced and rolled over the starscape, as if a rainbow had been melted across the sky.

Seichan stood limned against that view, looking equally captivated by the lightshow.

"Spectacular, isn't it?" Kelly said. "You're getting a rare display due to a solar storm from a coronal mass ejection, coupled with an X-class flare. It has been raging for the past half day. One of the strongest in a while. We almost didn't get Byrd's satellite call due to the geomagnetic interference."

Kelly looked disappointed that the call had come through.

Gray drew his attention from the skies to those seated around the table. Jason stood up from where he had been whispering with Anna. He waved Gray to the side.

Gray excused himself while Kelly poured a cup of coffee from a steel carafe.

"What is it?" he asked Jason.

"I reached Kat in D.C. via the ship's radio. Communication is spotty due to the solar storm. It's probably why we haven't heard from Monk and Kowalski directly. But they were able to phone Sigma Command. Kat relayed their message."

Gray's shoulders tensed. "And?"

"The others are en route to the naval base. Should be arriving in another forty minutes or so. Everything is going smoothly so far."

"But what comes next is the hard part."

Jason nodded, crossing his arms, looking as worried as Gray felt.

"Keep me informed if you hear any further word."

"That's just it. Why I wanted to talk to you. I lost that call with D.C. at the tail end of it. And as we head farther north, the interference will grow worse. The radio tech said to expect a total comms blackout. For several more hours."

Gray sighed.

So much for trying to keep our two operations coordinated.

"We'll have to manage as best we can." Gray waved Jason back to the table. "First, we need to get everyone up to speed aboard the Polar King . Decide if what we're attempting is even possible."

As Gray headed to the table, a lanky Black man with a handlebar mustache swept into the room. He wore crisp blue coveralls with the ship's logo on the pocket.

"Our navigator," Kelly introduced to everyone else. "Byron Murphy."

The man lifted a rolled map, a printout from the look of it. He nodded to Gray. "I studied that strange overlay of maps you shared up on the bridge. I was able to chart out a rough approximation of the region that you had blocked off."

"Can you show us?"

Everyone gathered as he rolled out his work across the tabletop. Seichan joined them, stepping next to Gray.

The map showed a cross-section of the East Siberian Sea, along with the northern coast of Russia and several islands. Far out in the water, deep into the Arctic, was a hatched circle.

Byron tapped that marked spot. "That's the search zone, as near as I can assess."

Gray pictured that small mountainous island on Mercator's map. It must lay somewhere in that region. There was only one problem. "That's still a big area."

"Around thirty thousand square kilometers," the navigator confirmed.

Jason stared across the map at Gray. "Kat was still working on acquisitioning satellites equipped with magnetometers to pick up micro changes in the Earth's magnetic field. The ideal choice is the European Space Agency's SWARM satellites. They're in low polar orbit and outfitted with both vector field and absolute scalar magnetometers. But the solar storm is wreaking havoc there, too. We may have to wait out this flare."

Gray sensed they did not have that time.

Kelly frowned and tapped a finger on that hatched circle. "What are you looking for here? And what does it have to do with the Earth's magnetic field?"

"You'll have to bear with me." Gray removed his digital tablet. "It's a story going back centuries, if not millennia."

He started at the beginning and laid out all they had learned. Both Anna and Jason added or confirmed many of the details. The captain and the navigator's expressions went from incredulousness to wary curiosity, but never settled on complete acceptance.

Can't blame them.

"And you believe some island is out there," Kelly said. "One with strange magnetic properties. A place that could be the birthplace of the legends of Hyperborea."

"And one that holds a dark secret," Gray added. "A danger that required hiding a lost library and burying its location in an ancient map."

Byron shook his head. "Such an island might not require some mysterious threat to be a problem. The marked search area is in troublesome waters. While it may be international , the zone sits between Russia and the United States. In fact, the basin of the East Siberian Sea is shared between those two countries."

"That's why we intend to find it first. Not to plant a U.S. flag, but to try to keep the site international , like the waters it sits in."

"Plus, we need to identify the nature of the danger out there," Jason added. "Before it falls into the wrong hands."

Gray turned to Kelly and Byron. "I recognize the risk we're asking you to take. Russia will not sit idly by during all of this. They're already fortifying and arming their northern coast. This is what we could be facing if we're not careful."

Gray brought up a map onto his screen. Two dozen stars marked the locations of the new and refurbished Russian bases. They spread across the breadth of the country's northern coast.

He studied Kelly as the man reviewed the map. Gray wanted the captain to get a better visualization of the stakes at hand before the man fully committed himself and his ship to the task ahead.

"I won't direct you to go along with this," Gray said. "If you wish to countermand the order from your CEO, I'll support it."

Kelly turned to the navigator, seeking his insight, the sign of a good captain. "What do you think?"

"That path leads into deep ice," Byron warned. "Old ice. Centuries old. I looked into it. The last time those waters thawed was the middle of the 1700s."

Gray shared a look with Anna.

That was the period of Catherine the Great's reign, when it was said she sent out expeditions searching for Hyperborea, based on Lomonosov's research in the Golden Library.

"What difference does it make if the ice is old?" Jason asked, drawing back Gray's attention.

Kelly answered, "Newly formed ice is easier for our ship to cut through. Older ice is more stubborn, compacted, harder to crack. We risk getting trapped."

Yet another danger...

"From my charts and satellite maps of ice thickness, the King should be able to make that transit," Byron judged, rubbing at his mustache. "Just don't suggest we hang around there long."

Kelly continued to study both the map on the screen and the printout from his navigator. "The East Siberian Sea is one of the least explored regions of the Arctic. Also, one of the most treacherous. With its shallow waters, barely mapped sea ridges, and persistent fogs, sailors despise it, and ships wisely avoid its northernmost reaches."

Byron added to the gloom. "Keep in mind, beyond a few rocky islands near the Russian coast, those seas are empty of any land."

From these statements, Gray could guess where the scales on this decision would tilt.

A voice rose behind them, from the doorway. "That's not necessarily true."

Gazes swung to the short form of a leathery-faced man of swarthy complexion and flat black hair. His eyes were squinted by epicanthic folds, as if the man had been staring too long at the midnight sun of the polar north.

"Omryn Akkay," Kelly introduced. "One of the ship's engineers. He hails from this region, so I asked him to join us. We hired him last year for his knowledge of these waters."

"I am of the Lygoravetlan people. Or Chukchi , as the Russians call us. Most of my people live inland and are nomadic reindeer herders, but my family has always lived along these coasts. We were the Ankalit , the Sea People."

Gray gave a slight bow of his head in greeting. "And why do you disagree with your ship's navigator about there being no islands to the north?"

"Our stories tell of a place, a warm and misty land where undying gods dwell—along with kelet, evil spirits that kill any trespassers who approach the gods without proper sacrifices."

Anna spoke up. "That sounds very much like the Greek description of Hyperborea."

" And the warnings written about the place," Jason added.

"Have you ever been there?" Gray asked the engineer.

"It is forbidden... even to look. But my grandfather, in his youth, was hunting walruses, spent an entire season on the pack ice. He says one morning the low fogs lifted, and far in the distance, he spotted black cliffs rising out of the frozen sea. It so frightened him that he fled home, where he sacrificed many deer to the sea gods to ask forgiveness for his trespass."

Gray remembered the stories of Peary and others spotting distant Arctic lands.

Is this just a similarly wild claim?

To the side, Anna whispered a name to Jason, one inscribed in Latin on Mercator's map, marking a magnetic mountain. " Rupus Nigra et Altissima ."

Or in English... "Very High Black Cliff."

Like Omryn's father had described.

Maybe it's not so wild a claim after all.

Gray turned to Kelly.

The captain ignored Gray's inquiring look and faced his navigator. "How long would it take to forge a path to the location marked on the map?"

"To its edge?" Byron shrugged. "With a full head of steam, five or six hours. But as I warned, there's a lot of frozen sea to search after that."

"Understood." Kelly faced Gray. He was silent for a long stretch, then came to a decision. "We'll give it a go. But we'll stay no longer than a day."

Gray didn't object to the time limit. He feared they might not even have a day before the Russians intervened. He stared out the windows, at the swirling Borealis, whipped by a gale of solar winds.

He sensed the truth of this moment.

That's not the only storm that lies ahead of us.