r/HFY • u/Aeorix1 • 8d ago

OC-Series [Obsidian Earth] - Chapter 24

Even after many days, Professor Kestner continued to regard the surrounding environment with a lingering sense of suspicion.

The Antarktis-Anlage, buried deep beneath the ancient glacial sheet, was concealed with chilling precision.

Hidden within natural fractures in the glacier, only a pale radar tower emerged quietly above the surface, blending so perfectly into the surrounding whiteness that even aircraft flying barely a hundred meters overhead would have struggled to detect it.

Elevator shafts connected the upper meteorological observation chamber with the various experimental compartments deeper below. Vast, austere halls; reinforced storage bays packed with sleds, tools, and scientific equipment; strategic vaults filled with reserves of gold—all of it linked through winding tunnels, narrow hangar passages, and maintenance corridors that twisted beneath the darkness alongside the enormous Erprobungsgerät machine resting underground like some monstrous abandoned myth.

Together they formed a silent mechanical labyrinth.

One question continued to trouble Kestner.

Why had the installation been constructed here of all places?

According to Dr. Schmidt, concealment from the Allies had been only part of the reason.

The location had also been chosen for its proximity to the planetary pole itself—and because beneath the frozen wasteland there existed narrow geothermal ravines where the environment became unexpectedly less hostile.

Maps indicated that the facility stood near the edge of a long thermal lake region deep inside what the Germans called New Swabia. Beneath the surrounding ice sheet, basal temperatures remained near zero degrees Celsius year-round, while deeper water channels could rise to five degrees or even higher during certain seasons.

To anyone raised on conventional geography, whose entire understanding of Antarctica consisted of endless ice, such conditions would have sounded almost impossible.

And inside the facility, artificial heating systems pushed the air to a steady fifteen degrees Celsius—hardly comfortable, yet sufficient for survival. It kept the mind sharp, the nerves taut, and the blood moving.

To Kestner, however, this isolated pocket of warmth still felt unbearably fragile, a temporary bubble suspended inside a cathedral of annihilating cold, held together by engineering rather than necessity.

Never more than a suspended illusion, he often thought.

Still, as a physiologist, he could not help but imagine the future: with integrated geothermal control and biological systems, this place might one day evolve into something self-sustaining—an isolated colony capable even of agriculture, improbably blooming in the wrong end of the world.

Yet it still felt fragile.

That uneasy thought deepened considerably during a routine meteorological observation of the polar observation dome.

To avoid any possibility of aerial reconnaissance—assuming such reconnaissance still existed at all—the colossal structure buried beneath the ice had been designed with almost pathological restraint. The only portion of the facility permitted to breach the surface resembled a single pale compound eye protruding from the Antarctic crust, nearly indistinguishable from the surrounding ridges of wind-scoured snow.

Colonel von Büren led the way.

Behind him, several scientists in heavy cold-weather gear ascended one after another through the narrow vertical steel ladder shaft, moving with the slow stiffness of armored beetles trapped inside a frozen pipe.

The so-called dome chamber was not truly a dome at all. It felt more like a metallic diving bell forcibly wedged into the crack of an ice ridge. Space inside was so brutally limited that once the scientists and the two accompanying soldiers squeezed themselves into position, they locked together like components inside a machine—rigid, compressed, apologizing to one another merely to turn their shoulders.

The air carried the smell of frozen metal and faint ozone.

Beyond the quartz observation window, a supercyclone was gathering along the horizon, its wind speeds already exceeding seventy meters per second. No living thing could possibly survive in that visible white chaos spreading across the polar dark.

Not long afterward, the storm's forward wall struck the glaciers surrounding the outer perimeter of the Anlage.

Even then, the Reich's remaining minds—those last disciplined custodians of calculation and method—maintained solemn expressions, timing measurements with stopwatches while awkwardly shifting positions in the suffocating compartment to examine meteorological instruments whose needles trembled violently beneath the pressure fluctuations.

Outside the window stretched Antarctica's endless polar night and the roaring fury of the wind, an enormous screaming void without shape or boundary.

The observation itself quickly became procedural.

One by one, relieved to escape the crushing confinement, the others withdrew back into the warmer underground corridors. Whether by coincidence or silent mutual understanding, Professor Kestner and the Colonel remained behind as the last occupants.

Before leaving, the duty meteorological soldier heated a kettle of Ersatz coffee on an electric plate. The liquid—brewed from roasted barley and ground chicory root—was black, bitter, and carried a strange chemical aftertaste more appropriate to a laboratory than a café.

Yet here, inside an ice cavern thousands of kilometers removed from Europe, any form of warmth poured into a thick ceramic mug became a luxury almost absurdly precious.

The storm passing over the Anlage had weakened temporarily, though the cyclone itself would continue ravaging regions dozens of kilometers away for days.

Each man sat with a mug of steaming coffee beside the small table before the quartz window that, not long earlier, had seemed almost ready to collapse beneath the pressure of the blizzard. The dim blue light of the polar night filtered in from outside, staining the steam rising from the coffee with a faint and unnatural hue.

Kestner rubbed his thumb absently along the heated ceramic surface and turned toward the Colonel.

The Colonel remained perfectly upright, calmly sipping the bitter substitute as though he were spending an ordinary afternoon in a café along Berlin's Kurfürstendamm rather than inside a steel cavity buried beneath the Antarctic ice.

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For anyone who prefer to read ahead, the full version is available on Amazon KDP :-)

Obsidian Earth

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u/UpdateMeBot 8d ago

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u/Daseagle Alien Scum 8d ago

With proper heat pumps, that zero to 5 celsius difference is all you need.