Code to Extinction Read online

  Code to Extinction

  By

  Christopher Cartwright

  Copyright 2017 by Christopher Cartwright

  This book is protected under the copyright laws of the United States of America. Any reproduction or other unauthorized use of the material or artwork herein is prohibited. This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, brands, media and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. All rights reserved.

  Table of Contents

  Prologue

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  Chapter Thirty-Eight

  Chapter Thirty-Nine

  Chapter Forty

  Chapter Forty-One

  Chapter Forty-Two

  Chapter Forty-Three

  Chapter Forty-Four

  Chapter Forty-Five

  Chapter Forty-Six

  Chapter Forty-Seven

  Chapter Forty-Eight

  Chapter Forty-Nine

  Chapter Fifty

  Chapter Fifty-One

  Chapter Fifty-Two

  Chapter Fifty-Three

  Chapter Fifty-Four

  Chapter Fifty-Five

  Chapter Fifty-Six

  Chapter Fifty-Seven

  Chapter Fifty-Eight

  Chapter Fifty-Nine

  Chapter Sixty

  Chapter Sixty-One

  Chapter Sixty-Two

  Chapter Sixty-Three

  Chapter Sixty-Four

  Chapter Sixty-Five

  Chapter Sixty-Six

  Chapter Sixty-Seven

  Chapter Sixty-Eight

  Prologue

  Oymyakon, Eastern Siberia – 20 Years Ago

  They buried his mother under a bruised sunset of purple, red and ochre.

  It had taken the better part of a week to dig the grave. A task made strenuous and painstakingly slow by the ground’s constant state of permafrost. Through a process of lighting a bonfire, letting it burn for hours and then shifting the coals to the side, they were able to dig, inch by inch into the soil until the hole was finally big enough to hold the crude hewn coffin. When it was all done, they all went inside his father’s log hut, and he was left all alone.

  Ilya Yezhov stared at the raised mound of soil and snow where his mother now lay. It seemed like the pitiful evidence of a wretched life. His solemn blue-gray eyes, almost silver in the shade of the horizon, remained dry, but his throat felt the unfamiliar thickness of grief choking him. She was the only one who’d ever been kind to him and he would miss her. Oymyakon was a hard place to live, and his family had been dominated by hard men.

  It was one of the coldest permanently inhabited locations on Earth.

  Nestled into the bend of the Indigirka River, the village of Oymyakon translated to the words, non-freezing-water, in reference to a section of the river warmed by thermal pools where the fish spent the winter. Despite the local thermal pools, the village endured an extreme subarctic climate, competing with the town of Verkhoyansk for the title of coldest inhabited place on Earth. In 1933, the town recorded a temperature of minus ninety degrees Fahrenheit, the lowest officially recorded temperature in the Northern Hemisphere. Locked between the Verkhoyasnk Range in the north and the Stanovoy Range in the south – both peaking at nearly ten thousand feet – Oymyakon remained covered in snow all year round. In summer, days lasted twenty-one hours, and in winter, they were less than three.

  Jobs were in short supply, with most of the five hundred odd villagers subsisting on reindeer-herding, hunting and ice-fishing for survival. Ilya’s father was an exception. He labored in a diamond mine in neighboring Yakutsk, staying there to work for up to two months at a time, before coming home for a week, as he had recently, to help bury their mother. Tomorrow morning, he would leave them again.

  Besides the obvious issues of remoteness, the cold itself forced the village to be a simple place with few conveniences. Cars were hard to start with frozen axle grease and fuel tanks, unused pipes could freeze within five hours, and batteries lose life at an alarming speed. Block heaters were used when the vehicles were turned off to keep the engines from freezing permanently. Electronics, including GPS, fail at anything below minus 35 degrees Fahrenheit. Thick fur coats, and multiple layers were a must, even to step outside for a few minutes.

  His eyes swept the snow-covered landscape. The Indigirka River ran in a gradually southeastern direction. Frozen solid, large chunks of ice nearly ten feet high met the edge of the river, where natural hot water springs warmed the water until it flowed at a trickle. White mountains rose nearly to an altitude of 3,600 feet on opposite sides of the river, causing cold air to pool in the valley below, with Oymyakon freezing at its center. A road of ice ran parallel to the river, and a thick forest of pine continued from the road to the bottom third of the mountains on either side of the river. The trees were twisted and dwarfed as their roots were unable to penetrate the permafrost. On the outside, the entire place looked wicked and cruel in its stark emptiness. A world God had forgotten.

  But that was just an illusion.

  In summer, the taiga forest, densely populated with stunted spruces, firs, pines and larch, provided a floor of grass, moss and lichen, where berries and mushrooms grew and reindeer flourished. In the nearby rivers, fish were plentiful. Below the inhospitable surface, the land was well endowed with raw materials. The soil contained large reserves of oil, gas, coal, diamonds, gold, silver, tin, tungsten and many other valuable gemstones. The nearby region of Sakha where his father worked produced ninety-nine percent of all Russian diamonds and over twenty-five percent of the diamonds mined in the world.

  One day, he smiled, he would be rich – but first he would need to live that long.

  At the age of twelve, with a diet of fish and reindeer, he was barely able to meet subsistence for nine months of the year. Ilya’s growth had been stunted. A fact worsened by his older brother, Demyan, who at the age of fourteen had already reached puberty and was well on his way to becoming a strong man like his father.

  And like his father, Demyan was quick to enter a fight and even faster to end it. They were only two years apart, but Ilya had never won a battle. One day, he swore, he would catch up, and when that happened he would be the toughest man in Oymyakon – then he would teach his big brother a lesson he’d never forget.

  “Ilya!” Demyan shouted. “Come inside before you freeze to death.”

  He smiled. Until that day, he would answer to his brother. “Yes, Demyan.”

  “Yes, Demyan.” Resolve burned in his hazel eyes. Until that day, he would an
swer to his brother.

  Ilya glanced at the pitiful remains of his mother’s life and turned to go inside. He promised himself that his life wouldn’t end here, his body lying sadly buried in a pathetically shallow grave. No, he would make something of his life. He would be different. He would be a rich and powerful man, feared by everyone around him.

  “Goodbye mother,” he murmured, then he turned and left.

  *

  It was late in the winter. The sun was starting to make its presence known on the edge of the horizon for short periods each day, after nearly four months of nearly permanent darkness. At three a.m. the sun was still far from rising.

  Demyan Yezhov listened as his father prepared to leave the house in silence. They’d said their goodbyes last night. His father was due to return to the diamond mines in Yakutsk. It was dangerous work, but the money it provided made it worth it. Their risk of starvation without the income it provided was much greater than the chances of a mine disaster.

  Through dark eyes – almost black with gold flakes, he watched his father leave.

  It would be the last time he’d see him for the next month. Ever since he could remember, he’d been secretly waking so he could watch him walk out the door. It was somehow stranger this time around, now that his mother was gone. Demyan was head of the house – although that was a strong word for the small ten by ten-foot log hut they called their home – and now they were on their own.

  It wasn’t lost on him that in the harsh environment of Oymyakon any failure on his part would easily lead to their starvation or freezing to death well before his father came home. His father had grown up in the tough snow-filled lands, and accepted death with the rare equanimity of a man with a strong belief in a future already written – his boys would survive, or they wouldn’t.

  He grinned. This one would survive, even if he had to kill a neighboring household to do it. Demyan was less confident of his little brother’s survival. The kid was a runt. Tenacious and filled with a raw underlying violence in his eyes. If he made it to adulthood, his little brother would end up becoming an underground mine manager, like his dad – in a position of power over a lot of weaker men. He’d probably end up hurting a lot of people in the process. Demyan held his breath as he thought about it. His brother would most likely end up hurting the hell out of him, if he lived that long.

  But they’d both have to live that long. His mind returned to the task at hand.

  He’d promised his little brother he’d take him fishing today, in the new lake. Previously unfished, it was said to be full. Despite their differences, he’d never really wanted to hurt his little brother. He knew the kid had taken their mother’s death the worst out of the whole family. She was probably the only person who’d ever shown him any kindness.

  Demyan made a mental note to try and change that, although the simple fact in their village was that life was not kind, and the sooner Ilya learned to live with that, the better. Still, he wanted to make his life a little easier, and they needed to eat, so if the fish were indeed plentiful, it would be worth it. Let him forget their miserable existence and tomorrow they could both learn the true hardship of survival in their desolate and unforgiving land.

  The door opened again and the solid outline of his father entered the room. He picked up a second duffel bag, one he hadn’t used before. It was bigger and appeared full. Normally, everything he needed while at the mine was stored on site, so his luggage from home was generally negligible.

  Demyan watched his father reach the door, only to stop and look directly at his open eyes in the dark. “You’re awake. Good. I need to talk to you.”

  “Yes, father?” Demyan asked, obediently.

  “You’re now in charge. Do your best to keep Ilya alive. If you get into trouble, ask for help, the rest of our community will help.”

  “Yes.”

  “Good man. Next year you will be big enough to work in the mines. Maybe all three of us can move to Yakutsk. Would you like that?”

  “Yes.” The mines were notoriously dangerous, inside men died nearly every day, but until he worked in the mines, they would live permanently on the edge of famine. Demyan could think of worse directions for his life to take.

  “Good.” His father moved toward Ilya who appeared to still be asleep, and kissed him on the forehead in an uncommon show of fatherly affection. “Goodbye, my son. Obey your brother and he will look after you.”

  Demyan watched as Ilya squeezed his eyes shut. It was probably for the best. Neither of them quite knew how to take their father like this. Perhaps the death of their mother had somehow softened him.

  He watched as his father left in silence.

  The goods truck came by and picked up his father on its way to Yakutsk. He waited a full ten minutes in silence. Then removed his sleeping bag, crossed the floor of the single small room and opened the door a crack to look out. He watched the truck leave the Oymyakon village in darkness. Demyan closed the door and woke his brother.

  Ilya opened his blue-gray eyes. “Has he left?”

  Demyan nodded. “I watched the truck leave.” He looked at his little brother. The kid was a runt, but despite his frequent beatings, he was filled with a natural ability and a tendency to fight, that ran in his family. For all his faults, he had to give it to the kid, he was brave and tough to the point of stupidity. “Are you sure you still want to go see it?”

  “The mysterious lake?” Ilya sat up, now wide awake. “Of course.”

  “Good. Then get your stuff together. It’s a long walk and you know we’re not supposed to know about it.”

  *

  Ilya slipped out of his sleeping bag.

  He pulled up the two layers of thick snow-pants and slipped his arms into a fur coat. Like most people in his village, his heavy coat was long, reaching all the way to his midcalf. Below which he wore boots made of reindeer leather, with the fur still on. He grabbed his fur hat and then wrapped layers of knitted scarves around the lower part of his face. He then rolled his heavy fur coverings from his bed, and placed them inside his large rucksack. A hunter’s cabin they would use for shelter was a few miles short of the lake. They could stay there overnight and then fish tomorrow.

  Demyan had already planned it out, including packing a small bag of food and cooking equipment. At times like this, he wondered why he and his brother fought at all. They both shared the ruthless will and defiant bravado of his father, even if his big brother had the physical size to back it up. They both knew people weren’t supposed to know or talk about the new lake, because of its close proximity to Boot Lake. But he and his brother wouldn’t listen to such nonsense. The lake was thawing and there were fish, so they would go and see it.

  The lake had formed below an old ice field, twenty miles to the south-east of Oymyakon’s village. It was once used by the Alaska-Siberian air route as an airfield during World War II as a stepping stone to ferry American Lend-Lease aircraft to the Eastern Front. Now, part of the icy ground below had melted, making way for a large lake. The surface of which was still frozen solid, but below the ice, there was talk of a massive labyrinth of warm water, filled with fish.

  The lake had appeared a few months ago, thawing during the start of winter as if by magic. Ilya had no superstitious doubt about where the lake had come from. It was clearly caused by a recent shift in the Earth which leaked hot water from deep thermal springs far below. His father had talked about these ancient moving plates on which the Earth rested like a house on its piers. It was how the hot springs formed near Oymyakon, and without them, their village would have perished years ago.

  His mind turned to his father down the mine shafts. He’d once said that it was the movement of these plates that caused tremblors and mini-Earthquakes that were unable to be felt on the surface, but catastrophic to those down in the mines.

  Oymyakon had plenty of such hot water pools. There was nothing mysterious about it. The thermal springs would spurt boiling water to the surface, thawing the ice,
and making it warm enough for fish to survive all year round. If there was water, there would be fish, and he was hungry. Always hungry. So, he was excited to go to Lake Mysterious, as they had decided to call it.

  It was midday by the time they reached the peak of a three-hundred-foot hill and stared down at the western edge of Boot Lake. The entire lake was approximately ten miles long from north to south and somewhere between two and five miles wide at varying parts, in such a way that it appeared to form the shape of a giant boot made of ice, superimposed on a sea of snow. The entire thing was angled downward, and a little askew. At the back of the field of ice were two smaller lakes that formed the shape of the heel. Two-thirds of the way up, an outcrop of dark igneous rock jutted out from the ice to form an island, almost in the shape of a boot buckle.

  The rocky island jutted out of the ice in sheer walls of vertical stone, at least fifty feet high. On the top of which, were two man-made structures. One was an older building made of thick concrete with a heavy dome on top, from which multiple modern antennas protruded. To Ilya, the structure looked sinister, like some sort of old prison – a remnant of Stalin’s Death Camps – although no one in his village or elsewhere had ever been able to tell him what the island had once been used for. He had no doubt the building was just the tip of the iceberg, and that a series of hollowed out stone tunnels, penetrated deeply into the stone below, where he had no doubt, many men had once lost their lives.

  To its right was the second man-made structure. This one much more modern. Its construction was completed nearly two years ago, and it was supposedly used for the sole purpose of producing the world’s largest geothermal power station.

  In the distance behind it, right there in the middle of the lake, a cooling tower rose out of the sheet of ice, nearly seven hundred feet into the air and over a hundred feet long in a wide hyperboloid shape. They said the station was going to power all of eastern Siberia and most of the heavily populated west, too. But that was all some bullshit story. It had been running for two years and there still weren’t even any powerlines running out from it. In fact, although steam rose from its crest, there was no sign of where the power could have possibly been going – yet still, like some sinister neighbor, the monster seemed alive, and continued to breathe dark clouds of steam into the skies.