Kraken Rising: Alex Hunter 6 Read Online Free PDF Page A

a cold intelligence behind the momentary gaze.
    The image changed to a furious, boiling movement, and then there came a sound like an electronic scream, as if the probe was shrieking in fear of its life. The screen went dark, then there was nothing.
    “It’s gone,” Bentley said into the silent room. “Everything’s gone. It’s all over.”
    Cate sat down slowly, feeling dispirited, but also elated. All over? she wondered. Hardly, she knew, feeling a swelling in her chest.
    Bentley rewound and then froze the last of the images. He whistled. “Oh my god.” He sat back.
    “Alpha predator,” Cate said softly. Framed and frozen on the small screen was the eye. There was no real way to judge scale, but she knew she was seeing something of titanic proportions.
    “Now that , is an eye.” Bentley clapped his hands and rubbed them together. “That’s a big blimmin’, beautiful eye.”
    “Oh, it’s much more than that, Ark. It’s proof.” Cate stared off into the distance, as she slumped back into her chair, a dreamy smile on her lips. “My proof of life.”

CHAPTER 3
Chinese Antarctic Research Outpost – Xuě Lóng Base – Yesterday
    Chief mining engineer, Zhang Li, knelt among the debris. The vibrations from the huge rock cutter ran through him, even making the old fillings in his back teeth ache. But he felt or heard none of it as he broke apart and examined the heavy rock he held in his hands.
    Gold , he grunted and broke away the shard of stone with the gleaming metal streak. A good rich vein, he thought, letting the gold nugget piece drop to the tunnel floor, keeping the other. Gold wasn’t the type of riches he sought, but instead, substances worth a thousand times more – REEs, or rare earth elements, the small but vital components used in computers, lasers, and also sophisticated military hardware. It was this scarce treasure they sought from the ancient Antarctic mineral beds.
    He grinned and rubbed at the rock piece he still held, knowing what he had was a speck of dust compared to the magnitude of what he had found. He looked around at the tunnel walls, ceiling, and floor – the deposits were old, rich, and very high quality – probably the largest undiscovered deposits left on Earth.
    “ Hiyaa .” The yell and its echo was lost among the monstrous drilling. Zhang Li’s heart swelled – he’d done it – potentially, billions upon billions of Yuan worth of raw material for the People’s Republic of China. He would be famous, and feted, maybe even by the president himself.
    He pushed the rock into his pocket, already planning his country’s and his own future. China was rising to adulthood, and growing with it was a hunger for raw materials, prestige and power, and also, for risk taking. Five years ago, in breach of the global Madrid Protocol’s Antarctic Treaty, he and a team of engineers, geologists, and miners, along with a military support contingent, had been dispatched to the Antarctic.
    Week by week, over the years, they had built their machines, and then commenced their digging below the snow and ice. It had been difficult, and lives were lost – but below the ice, that’s where the value lay – in the ancient bedrock. Much of Antarctica was composed of rocks almost four billion years old. It contained nearly all of the Earth’s history locked away, and hidden below a thick blanket of white snow and dark ice.
    Secret mining here would be an engineering feat beyond comparison. Zhang Li’s grin widened. But engineering was what Zhang Li lived and breathed. He had graduated with honors from Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and then he, and another student, had been hand-picked straight off campus, to work for a small research company called GBR. That company specialized in fossil fuel research, and he still wondered what happened to the tall girl with the ice blue eyes and night-black hair – Aimee , he remembered, Aimee Weir – brilliant, and better at her job than he