The Antarctic Discovery (Novelette) Read Online Free Page A

clearly knew that he was there and had intended to kill
him!
     

Chapter 3
     
    The Gun Battle
     
    Behind them,
below the horizon, the sunlight vanished and the early Antarctic
night engulfed the soldiers and Weaver studied his surroundings
trying to explain why they had made such a mistake! The entire
mission had been planned down the smallest detail!
    The ice station
was further away and the snow deep and terrain virtually impossible
to get quickly through! It was incredible that they had actually
not landed earlier than when the sun was going down. The incident
with his parachute had been a major incident and he knew there was
someone there against him and perhaps the mission, and he wondered
who had access to the parachutes!
    When a loud
blast exploded out and a bullet hit and killed one of the front
soldiers, beside Commander Craven, Weaver was not fully surprised,
and realized that someone was attacking them!
    It was lucky
there was cover and they rushed below two small hills as bullets
flew in hitting the snow all about them, and he realized that there
were at least six of them, and that they had made the mistake of
being too far away. The bullets were off and they had been lucky
that they had hit the soldier.
    None of them
could see who was there though, and they were hidden away at
different locations and moved around, and they were unable to
recognize anything! Were they professionals and had planned the
whole thing well before they had arrived?
    The whole
terrain was unfamiliar too them and they had the advantage over
them! How could they move forward and get to the ice station
without receiving many deaths?
    He was unsure
if they could survive there the night! They had no proper food or
cover, and the temperature was dropping dramatically and none of
them had adapted to the environment.
    He wondered if
they got lost if they could find the ice station there! The place
was very hidden away! It was lucky they had seen it from the air
and knew the direction.
    He even
wondered if it was the people from the ice station actually firing
on them! If they had not known of their arrival and the situation
there was worse than stated they could believe that they were being
attacked!
    He considered
the region and what must be one of the most desolate regions of the
world. They had not seen anyone since they had flown over the
Antarctic sea, and was sure planes even avoided flying there.
    What was
staggering was that they were taking on so many soldiers! What did
they actually intend to do? They surely could not expect to kill
the entire group of soldiers, and if they had been informed about
them they would have realized how trained they were! Yet could they
be trying to scare them away? Yet that was absurd also, as they
would have to go there! There was no where else out there to go
to!
    The mission now
seemed flawed! Why had they not brought far more soldiers and more
powerful weapons? The soldiers were shooting away unable to hit
anything and their hidden enemy was ignoring it!
    Yet they had
put together a good team of everyone needed to carry out the
mission at the ice station, and if they had landed next to it as
planned nothing would have gone wrong! He wondered if it had been
the captain of the plane who had landed them there or if it had
been a mistake as it had looked at the time?
    The adventure
brought him back to life after such a long length of inactivity and
lack of anything of interest. At times he still could not believe
that there was anything out in such a desolate region, and that
anything worthwhile existed there!
    It was winter
and deep snow shrouded everything around them, and he realized
again that they would have to camp there. And having not slept
outdoors in winter he gasped at sleeping in such thick cold snow,
and considered if they would find his remains there one day, and
wonder why they had done it. There had been accounts in history of
vast drops in temperature and entire groups of soldiers and