The Vostok Revelation

CHAPTER ONE

Vostok Station, Antarctica (78°27′ S 106°52′ E). February 24, 2014. 1300 Hours.

Peering through a window from the warmth of the storage shed, Artur Solovyov watched as the blue Kamov helicopter descended slowly toward the area of compacted snow, which acted as the stations landing pad, roughly forty-five meters from where he stood.

This helicopter was the last before the winter season set in. It was to deliver much needed supplies for the thirteen people who would remain at Vostok Station throughout the winter season and extract the remaining twelve who were headed home. At the behest of the Russian Academy of Science in Moscow, the crew’s departure would be delayed up to seventy-two hours to accommodate the delivery and deployment of the stations newest asset — a swimmer mini-drone specifically engineered to overcome the unique obstacles presented by Lake Vostok. Accompanying the new drone was the device’s mechanical engineer, an attractive woman from the Russian Academy of Science at Irkutsk named Elena Babanin. Apparently the RAS believed that her drone and the information it could provide outweighed the risk of potentially stranding twenty-five people in Antarctica for the winter with provisions designed to sustain only a twelve-man crew.

Artur watched the helicopter gently set its tires on the landing pad. Instantly, the side door opened and three androgynous figures bundled in orange parkas, thick black pants, mid-calf black boots and mittens stepped out into the frigid Antarctic environment and quickly began making their way toward the storage building. Behind them, Artur could see two more people, clothed in dark blue parkas, exit the helicopter and begin offloading the supplemental supplies that would help to carry the station’s skeleton crew through the winter.

“Elena,” Artur said to himself, eying the orange-clad shape that was dragging a large metallic suitcase across the compacted snow with some degree of difficulty. A winsome smile spread across his bearded face as he recalled the picture of Elena Babanin from the Academy of Science at Irkutsk’s website. According to her online profile, Babanin was an accomplished mathematician and mechanical engineer credited with designing several highly successful drones and probes for Russia’s deep drilling projects in the Arctic Circle and near the island of Cuba. But it wasn’t her intelligence that made many of the men at the remote station look forward to her arrival. After four months of looking at the same two-dozen weatherworn faces, the combination of the woman’s high cheekbones, shoulder length jet-black hair, and hazel-gray eyes helped to overlook some of the risk of lingering so close to the departure deadline.

Artur could no longer see the orange parkas as they drew closer to the storage building. He began toward a certain stack of boxes placed near storage bay’s far wall. He navigated the labyrinth of columns formed by the many pallets of supplies, keeping an eye of the three yellow lights above the chamber door. The first light was already lit — the external door had been opened. By the time he reached the boxes and withdrew the stations final bottle of зеленая марка (green mark) vodka the first bulb had been extinguished and the second bulb, the one indicating that the party was in the buffer room removing their heavier outer garments, had lit. Artur knew there was only seconds remaining before the third light would come on and the party would enter the warehouse. He hurried back through the maze of palleted boxes to welcome the new arrivals.

“приветствовать (welcome) to Vostok Station! I am Artur Solovyov, Vostok Stations chief electrician and secondary diving officer.” Artur said with a wide smile that, because of his thick brown beard, made him look more like a bear than a man. Without hesitation he leaned forward to relieve Elena Babanin of her heavy suitcase. But Elena Babanin, with an icy glare, jerked the suitcase away from his hand.

“I’ve been told the window to deploy my drone is somewhat erratic. It is better not to waste time,” She said flatly. “Let us go inside.”

“Very well,” Artursaid in a tone more serious and professional than he’d used in many months. “I’ll take you to Commander Lebedev at once.”

“No, take me to the drill tower,” Elena Babanin said authoritatively. “Inform the Commander that we have arrived and where we will be.”

“Very well,” Artur replied.

“I will need you to help Losif attach my drone to a redundant power source,” Babanin commanded Artur as he led them through the narrow corridors. “After power is established, Anton will need the assistance of your communications officer to attach the drone to the station’s satellite up-link. The faster these things are done, the faster we can all leave this place and the sooner I can conduct my work.”

“Understood,” Artur replied.

In under an hour Elena Babanin, having traveled nearly nine-thousand miles in less than a week, was standing in cramped quarters of the Vostok Station drill chamber, unpacking her swimmer mini-drone and preparing it to be lowered into the five-inch, two-mile deep, kerosene and antifreeze filled bore hole that took her country more than two decades to complete. Now, two years after the lake had been breached there was still very little data despite four drone deployments. Although its initial water samples had been taken to Moscow for analysis, there was still insufficient information about what may have created the largest sub-glacial lake on the subcontinent. Aside from theories, Lake Vostok was as much a mystery today as the day it was breached. It was for this reason that Elena pushed for her drone’s immediate deployment. If she, as an engineer, could succeed where others had failed, she would no longer be denied the respect she deserved from Ministers at the Russian Academy of Science.

Elena had shrewdly designed her drone to avoid the failures of its predecessors, equipping it with excessive L.E.D lighting, six independently controllable, multi-spectral cameras, a four-foot clawed retractable arm, and a casing made of a custom epoxy specifically engineered to shield the drone’s instrumentation from electronic, magnetic, and radio interference. After twenty-two years, the Russian Academy of Science would have Elena Babanin to thank for unlocking the secrets Lake Vostok.

Elena frowned as she waited for Anton and Losif to inform her that their tasks had been completed. Elena had designed her drone with hard-line power and communication capability specifically to avoid sitting through a winter at the bottom of the world. Once deployed, managing her drone’s movements, conducting its many experiments, and harvesting its data for analysis could be done from anywhere on Earth. There was absolutely no reason to be in this forsaken wasteland more than the twenty-four hours she requested.

Forty-five minutes? Where the hell are they?

“Elena,” Losif called out just as she was considering using the station’s intercom to find them. He, Anton, and another heavily bearded man were slowly navigating the cluttered passageway toward her. “The power and communication up-link is ready.” Losif turned sideways to face the man behind Anton, “This is Stepan Voloshin, the stations mining engineer. He will be lowering the drone for us. Commander Lebedev will be along shortly.”

Stepan nodded to Elena as he stepped past her and approached the done resting on the workbench. Immediately, he reached above his head, seized a dangling power cable and pulled down several feet of slack. Grabbing a screwdriver, he flipped open the drone’s rear access panel and began attaching the power wires. Moments later he flipped closed the access panel, tightened it down with screws, and toggled a power switch on the panel above the workbench. Instantly, dozens of pinpoint L.E.D.’s embedded into the housing of the drone began to flicker. Several seconds passed before all of the flickering lights began to solidify and then slowly fade to black.

“Are there diagnostics you need to run before I seal this shut and place it on the track?”

“No, the onboard L.E.D.’s would have indicated if anything preventing deployment,” Elena said smugly. “You may lower it immediately.”

Stepan shrugged his shoulders and then hefted the drone. Cradling it in his arms he rotated 180 degrees and carefully placed the drone into an open fifteen-foot cylindrical container on the bench behind him. After ensuring that the power cable was properly resting in the channel leading out of the container’s top end, he closed the sheath and attached a slender hose from the bench to a fitting on its side. Stepan flipped a switch and a vacuum compressor roared to life. A few noisy seconds later the rubber seal of the payload chamber door was pulled firmly against the knife-edge of the sheaths base. Content with the seal, he switched off the motor, detached the hose, and began wrapping the sheath in a weighted metal harness. Lifting the sheath, he took several careful steps and placed it onto horizontal segment of guide track hinged to its vertical sister.

Stepan turned to look at Elena, “You are certain that everything is ready for insertion?”

“Yes.” Elena responded impatiently.

“Very well.” He raised the segment of track containing the sheath until it clicked into its vertical position. Stepan reached up with both hands, found the two buttons he was blindly searching for, and then pressed and held them to begin the drone’s 2.2 mile descent to Lake Vostok.

Elena Babanin watched as more than a year of her life slipped into the soupy black mixture of chemicals that kept the two-mile deep bore hole from refreezing. “How long before it penetrates the lake?”

“Three hours,” Stepan’s eyes never left the cable feeding into the hole. “It will take two hours to descend the shaft and about an hour for the harness to melt its way through the final twenty or so feet of ice.”

“The anti-freeze will not contaminate the lake?” Elena asked, already knowing the answer but feeling the need for verbal assurance.

“Quite certain.”

“Artur!” Stepan called out as he suddenly turned away from the track, “You still have the vodka, yes?”

“Of course,” Artur replied. “We just need glasses.”

“To the cafeteria!” Stepan called back.

Hastily the Vostok Station crew members departed for the cafeteria leaving Elana and her people behind. They would spend the three hours smoking tobacco, drinking vodka, playing cards, and arguing, as had been their regular routine for the last five months.

It took slightly more than two hours for the drone, weighted in its sheath, to come to rest on the ice blocking the final twenty-five feet of the bore hole. Within seconds, thanks to the warming of the mesh harness, the sheath gradually began sinking into the fresh water puddle it had created.

As if on cue, the men of the Vostok crew returned to their station accompanied by a gaunt looking man with an enormous burly black beard. Stepan returned to his computer console to monitor the drone’s descent.

“Babanin,” the bearded man began before he could be introduced. “I am Commander Lebedev. I do hope this deployment goes well. My crew has not seen their families in months. Considering the tight quarters and the limited provisions, it would not go well for all of us to be stuck at this station for the winter.”

“The Academy has given us up to 72 hours, Commander.”

“Yes, I understand. But the Continent, she doesn’t care about what the Academy thinks, says or assigns,” Lebedev said, his blue eyes firm below his bushy, unkempt eyebrows, “There is no game to play here; no political will forcing things to start and stop as planned, only nature. We are on the edge of the winter season in Antarctica. Should a storm develop before your 72 hours has expired, I will not hesitate to order the evacuation.”

“I understand, Commander Lebedev. The window given by the Russian Academy of Science in Moscow is more than triple what I requested.” Elena placed her laptop on the workbench next to the monitoring console. “If everything is in order and all goes well with the descent,” she continued as she powered on her laptop and attached a data cable between her system and the device monitoring her drone, “we should be able to depart in approximately twelve hours.”

“By morning?” A liquored-up Vostok crew said in surprise. The rumble of the news spread quickly throughout the compact compartment.

“The sheath has penetrated the ice.” Stepan said barely loud enough to be heard over the revelry. The chamber instantly became silent. Stepan looked intently at the readings on his screen. He pecked at several keys, gave a slight approving grunt, “Releasing the drone.”

Everyone in the room stared at string of yellow flashing circles that extended from the top left corner of the monitor. After several flashes the first circle solidified to green to indicate that the drone was clear of its sheath. The second light flashed several more times before it too turned green. In the center of the second circle a number appeared that steadily began to grow. The drone was descending quickly.

A cheer erupted from the Vostok crew. Stepan, his part in the deployment completed, smiled slightly as he stepped back from his workbench. Elena, with a series of deft keystrokes on her keyboard, began turning the remainder of the yellow circles green.

“Initiating final onboard diagnostics,” Elena said quietly to herself. Without expression she watched the monitor looking for any indication that a problem existed. A minute passed before a tight-lipped smile spread across her face.

“Diagnostics complete.” Elena said, oblivious to anyone else in the chamber. “Beginning transformation.”

Moments later, the four foot cylinder, having received its signal from miles above, began to change. A two-foot, quarter-inch strip of the drone’s outer shell thrust outward and angled to create two fins. The aft end of the cylinder split into four equal parts and folded back over its casing. A thick post quickly extended from the center of the drone, the skin of its sides unfolding and locking into position to form the drone’s propeller. Simultaneously, a three inch, foot-long metal post extended out of the nose of the swimmer drone and began to unfold to create the drone’s sturdy arm, complete with a three tined claw. Lastly, from out of the top and bottom of the drone rose four two-inch posts which, once fully extended, bowed forward to initialize the swimmer drone’s fiber optic video cameras.

Elena Babanin’s heart leapt when the first real-time images of Lake Vostok appeared on her laptop screen.

“Time!” Stepan called out as he pressed a button to activate the timer function on his prized Sunnto watch.

Already aware that no other drone had survived more than three minutes in the distant lake, Elena ignored Stepan’s declaration and reached into her hip pocket to produce what appeared to be a pen. She inserted the tip of the pen into a receptacle in center of her keyboard. Two counter-clockwise twists fastened it into place. Elena held down the alternate key and tapped F8 to enable the swimmer drone’s control stick.

The drone, now fully transformed and under Elena’s complete control, began to slow its decent.

“Halting descent.” Elena said and then turned to Stepan, “Pay-out all the slack you have before the bore hole refreezes.”

“We have 260 kilometers of cable spooled throughout the station.”

“Good, I will need all of it,” Babanin replied, pleased that the Academy, despite the enormous expense of fabricating the conductive carbon-nanofiber tether, had delivered more length than she had requested.

Elena tapped on her keyboard and her screen split into four equal quarters. A few more taps and each quarter filled with the real-time images of the drone’s immediate surroundings. Cognizant of the moment’s historical significance, everyone huddled as close as they could to Elena to be among the first humans ever to see Antarctica’s largest subglacial lake.

As the cable continued to pay out, Elena began testing the drone’s vertical and horizontal movement. To ensure the drone’s camera functionality, she tipped its nose upward and shone light on the general location where the bright yellow sheath should be sticking through the ice. The four sections of her monitor filled images of the cloud-like white sheet of ice except camera two, which also contained the protruding yellow spear.

Content, she leveled off the drone, tapped a few keys and stated, “Switching to thermal.” Elena’s pleased grin faded as she repeated the keystrokes she’d done a thousand times — still nothing.

Anton, who was standing to Elena’s left, quickly moved beside her, “Let me have a look.”

After opening a console window and bringing up a list of the active routines running on the drone it didn’t take him long to isolate the problem — critical subroutines had failed to load which caused the thermal imaging module not to initialize.

Anton could feel Elena’s eyes scorching the back of his neck. He knew that his future at the Russian Academy of Science was resting on his ability to fix this problem quickly. Tense seconds passed before his expression eased. He fished a USB drive from his pocket, inserted it into a port on the laptop and entered in his password. He accessed two folders from the grid that populated the entire laptop display and then opened two files, each containing columns of computer code.

“Ah-ha!” Anton exclaimed after twenty-seconds of intense scrutiny. Large segments of code appeared and disappeared in each of the open files. With a cocksure grin, he closed all of the open files and rested a his hands on the bench beside the laptop.

“The problem was in a core module. I have removed the segment. I replaced it with an older version that was a little slower to execute but always reliable.”

“Then the problem is fixed?” Elena’s hazel eyes conveyed her displeasure.

“Yes, I rewrote this section to improv—”

“Will the older code prevent any of the subsystems from running?”

“No, the rewrite was strictly to streamline the code to make it execute faster.”

“Obviously that did not work,” Elena’s eyes locked on him. “When will we be ready?”

“Thirty minutes.” Anton replied, painfully aware of the level of annoyance hiding behind his boss’s placid expression. “Once the drone reboots it must run a full systems check. Provided there are no additional problems, we should be up and running in twenty or thirty minutes.”

“Get it done.” Elena Babanin commanded.

Two hours later, Elena Babanin, the fury in her eyes betraying her placid demeanor, was again standing before her keyboard and in control of her drone. She quickly entered in a series of keyboard command to assure herself of her drone’s integrity. Pleased by the drone’s responses, she activated the outer shell’s carbon-nanofiber differentiator panels. She then waited as the fifty-thousand receptors registered the surrounding water temperature, averaged their numbers for each of the drone’s fifty panels, and then transmitted that average back to her console. The water surrounding the drone was 7°C.

Pleased, Elena entered the commands to initialize the drone’s bathymetric cartography module. While she and the crew of the station were safely moving away from the subcontinent, her drone’s sonar would begin mapping and transmitting the topographical information of Lake Vostok’s northern and southern basins and its dividing ridge. It would be days before sufficient data were collected that would allow for a complete and accurate representation of the largest subglacial lake in Antarctica. Once complete, Elena would locate the hydrothermal vent thought to have created the freshwater lake, provided it actually existed, and assume her place in history.

After a flurry of activity on her keyboard, Elena’s expression softened and a satisfied grin spread across her face, “Gentlemen, the drone is fully operational and the mapping of the lake has begun. We can leave whenever we are rea—”

The lower-right quarter of her display began to flash red.

“What the hell?” Anton asked, his eyes wide and riveted to the red dot on the laptop screen.

“I’m not sure,” Babanin replied, her fingers quickly entering the command that allowed the red quadrant to fill the entire laptop display. Placing her mouse pointer on the red dot in the center of the display, “Sonar has located something solid sixteen meters off the port side and thirty-five meters below the drone.”

Artur Solovyov could only grin like a school boy at the emergence of the Turkic beauty he recognized from the Internet.

“Thirty-five meters? Thats is far short of the lake bottom or any of the valley walls.” Anton said.

“Perhaps it’s the top of a mountain?” Losif suggested.

“It’s too narrow for a mountain top,” Elena said absently as she turned the drone and tipped its nose downward fifteen degrees.

Elena pressed down the button on wall intercom, “Commander Lebedev, sonar has detected an object.”

“Ms. Babanin, I apologize but there is no time for exploration,” the Commander said sternly. “We’ve been tracking a condition-two storm on radar for the last hour. Should that storm strike this station it could seriously impede our ability to safely leave this continent. Set the drone to do its automated mapping, gather your belongings and get to the helicopter. Your exploration can be done from the safety of a warm hotel room in Argentina.”

“You are absolutely right, Commander,” Babanin replied professionally. “But surely we have thirty minutes or more before the helicopter will be ready for departure? There is no sense wasting what time I have here. I will continue to work until I’m told that the helicopter is ready to depart.”

“Not a moment longer, Ms. Babanin,” the intercom clicked to end the conversation.

“He’s pissed.” Stephan told the mechanical engineer and her staff.

“He’ll get over it,” Elena replied absently as she guided the drone to move the sonar hit to the center of her screen.

Several seconds passed, the sonar hit grew larger on the laptop display.

“Look!” Losif exclaimed, his finger pointing to a stack of numbers in a rectangular window on the screen, “The arm receptors are recording a .001 degree centigrade increase in water temperature. Whatever that is, it is giving off heat.”

“Five meters,” Elena said absently, “Switching on the lights and the cameras. Recording.”

The primary window on the laptop display instantly changed to a deep black background with a square white dot at its center.

“That is not a mountain crest.” Losif whispered in amazement.

Elena leveled the drone and allowed it to slowly descend beside the object. A dozen ten millimeter LED lights illuminated the four meters surrounding the drone.

“Tha… Tha… That looks like an… an… antenna.” Anton stammered in disbelief. ”How can an antenna be at the bottom of a lake that hasn’t seen daylight in more than twenty million years?”

“Very simple,” Elena said, “It is not an antenna. It is likely just stone formation that has been eroded by the lake current.”

“No, this is not natural,” Losif replied. “Erosion doesn’t shape squared objects. Whatever that is, it was made by someone.”

The three could only look on in wonder as the drone continued its descent. The side view of the shaft now made up three quarters of the display width. The object was a nearly 22 centimeters wide and still possessed its sharp edges.

“Ms. Babanin,” The Commander called out through the intercom box. “We are prepared to depart. You and your people need to report to the heli-pad at once.”

Elena, still in a daze, pressed the intercom button, “Commander, I think you should see this.”

“This is not a game, Ms. Babanin. The storm we have been tracking is headed our way. There is a fair chance it will develop into a category-one storm. You need—”

“Commander, get down here now!” Elena released the intercom button and returned her attention to the screen.

A few minutes later a very annoyed Commander Lebedev with five of his personnel in tow stormed up behind Elena Babanin. Before he could vent his anger the image on the screen captured his eye.

“Wh… What is that?” The Commander leaned closer to the display.

“It looks like an antenna,” Anton said.

“Impossible,” the Commander replied.

“Whatever it is, it appears to be manufactured.” Elena added.

“I read once that the Nazi’s may have created a secret bunker in Antarctica at the end of World War Two,” Artur offered from behind everyone.

“You always believe the craziest things,” Commander Lebedev said over his shoulder.

“Is that so? Tell me then, what are we looking at?” Artur replied as he wedged himself through the crowd toward the Commander. “That sure looks like an antenna to me. If Hitler didn’t create it, then who did? Space people?”

“Enough!” The Commander said impatiently with a wave of his hand over his shoulder. “The lake has been beneath kilometers of ice since the Aquitanian Stage of Miocene Epoch, which is 20 to 23 million years ago. Whatever that is down there, no matter what it looks like on that screen, is something natural.” Commander Lebedev fixed his eyes on Elena, “Take a sample of the object, set the drone on automatic and let us get out of here. If this storm strikes we could become stranded here. You can analyze the composition of whatever it is from Argentina.”

“I didn’t think it wise to make contact. The object is giving off heat.”

“Heat?”

“Yes. The drone is registering a .001 degree increase in the water temperature surrounding the object.”

“.001? That could be a temperature variation caused by its mineral composition and proximity to a hydrothermal vent.” The Commander said. “This storm will soon be upon us. No matter how compelling, there is simply no time to study this object. Either take a sample or set the drone on auto and get yourself and your people to the helicopter.”

All eyes were fixed on Elena.

She stood there, eyes riveted to the screen as she weighed her ambition and curiosity against her safety. Could she leave on the cusp of a monumental discovery that could reshape history?

“I will take a scraping and then set the drone to begin its mapping,” Elena told the Commander.

Elena maneuvered the drone closer to the object and dipped its nose slightly, hoping to locate an optimal place to take a scraping. The brilliance of a dozen LED lights caused several meters of the structure to boldly contrast its environment. In plain view, just above the camera’s primary focus, a raised diamond-shaped area housed a recessed lightning bolt arrow pointing down.

“Holy shit!” Commander Lebedev placed a hand on Elena’s shoulder. “What have you found?”

“It’s a Nazi radio tower!” Artur called out triumphantly.

This time no one made reply.

“Bartnev!” Commander Lebedev barked, “Take Ms. Babanin to the communications center and connect her to the Academy.” He then turned to Elena, “Ms. Babanin, please follow Victor to report your find and to learn how they’d like you to proceed.”