Wassail! (That's ancient English, its another way of saying hello). Sputnik here, with yet another exciting chapter of more quality ice age disaster. In this chapter we find out that Chris is the long lost relative of Sam and is going to go rescue him…

Just kidding. I wouldn't do that to my fans with their ardent anti-Sam/Laura fluff vitriol. I hate that crap too, which won't stop me putting it into the sequel (currently in pre-production).

Just kidding again, but not about the sequel, I really do have a plan for that. Seriously, I have some good ideas which don't work in this story but could go in some action/adventure sequel.

Cheers!

P.S. www.joinme.info

R.R.S. James Clark Ross, Aberdeen, Scotland, November 2004

Their time was up, and they knew it. Three days had passed, and the Doppler radar showed that the monster storm coming down from above the Artic Circle was now upon them. For the past three days they had been feeling the effects of the storm system for two days now, displayed in the extreme weather across northern Europe, the most spectacular of which was the tornado that had destroyed a big chunk of the city of York. They had been getting reports from Scandinavian weather services of record snowfalls, and Tony Willis had informed the crew that whatever was going on up there was heading their way.

And now it was a matter of hours away. Maybe less, and Marvin was frantic with worry. Every hand had been pressed to the patching up of the hull. The captain was vaguely aware that an awful lot of incredibly expensive equipment was going all to hell and unless the Ross got away soon he and his crew would be following it. So everyone who could handle cutting and welding equipment was slaving away at the hull, while everyone else was frantically getting stores from a nearby supermarket using B.A.S. credit cards. Normally the provisions they received at Portsmouth was more than enough for their extensive trips, but now Marvin had no idea as to when the ship would be reprovisioned, so he had ordered shuttles of Transit hire vans to and from the supermarket.

So now he was on the bridge, peering out into the rain-lashed night and very close to hyperventilating. He knew that in the path of this storm was the inevitable surge and right now he was directly in the path of it. Although nobody was sure, it was being surmised that this surge was going to be huge. And it was going to hit them, and when that happened the crew of the Ross were really going to wish they were somewhere else.

The clomping of heavy boots coming onto the bridge interrupted his train of thought. He turned around to see the sweat-streaked form of Chief Engineer McIntyre. He was dressed in a filthy boiler suit and looked utterly exhausted.

As well he might, Marvin reflected. McIntyre had got about four minutes sleep in the past three days, having spent the rest of time working frenetically to cram ten days worth of heavy work into the ever-closing window of escape. Often during that time he had pushed dockyard workers – who hadn't grasped the urgency of the work at all – out of the way and picked up the cutting torch or welder himself in an effort to get the job done. Twice the foreman had threatened to pull his men off the job unless McIntyre stopped hassling them, and it had taken hurried reassurances from Marvin that the B.A.S. would pay them substantial bonuses if only they would work faster. Privately Marvin thought that these men would not live to receive their money, but if he told them of the danger they were all in then he knew for a fact that this ship would be going nowhere.

"We're all done Marvin," McIntyre said, almost beyond exhaustion and in no mood for formalities. He was on the point of collapse and from what the science blokes had told him then this was only the beginning of a very long and equally exhausting period. Well, he was used to hard work and was never going to shirk a task such as this.

"Ready to go?" Marvin asked.

"The seal won't pass any safety inspections but yeah, we can go."

"Thank Christ." Marvin closed his eyes in silent thanks and felt the knots in his stomach loosen fractionally. "Right, someone ring up Will, tell him that we cast off as soon as the last of the vans unloads so for fucks sake tell him to hurry, I don't know how long we have…"

"Aye, Captain."

"Chief," Marvin said, addressing McIntyre. "Get the engines started, we have to be moving as soon as we can."

"I'm on it," McIntyre confirmed.

It happened as the engineer turned to leave. Through the driving rain nobody saw it coming, but it was there all the same. Towards the coast it came, the largest storm surge in the history of the British Isles, a thirty-foot high wall of water, caused by the pressure of the storm displacing the water and moving slowly with the unstoppable force of the ocean. There was no warning whatsoever.

The James Clark Ross rose with the wave, shooting almost vertically thirty feet into the air. With no warning everyone on the bridge was knocked off the feet by the power of a billion tonnes of ocean rolling into several hundred tonnes of sea-going vessel. The lines tying the ship to the dock all snapped instantly, and Marvin's first thought was for the dockworkers dismantling the scaffolding around the hull patch. He knew by the motion of the ship that this was the dreaded storm surge, and that they had left it too late and that they were all finished. He grasped frantically at a stanchion and his jaw dropped in slack-mouthed terror.

Now the Ross was helpless in the grip of the surge its stern swung round until it was broadside to the wave, and McIntyre grimaced as the sound of groaning metal rose over the sound of the storm. He knew that the ship had been carried over the edge of the dock and now the hull was crashing over and into buildings and cars and anything else on land that by now was underwater. With barely a thought he leapt to his feet and staggered desperately against the bucking motions of the deck. He knew he had to get below decks, if they were taking on water then they were all dead, he had to stop it before they were sunk.

The groaning and grinding as the huge red hull continued as the ship was carried on by the surge, and Marvin gave a wail of panic. He was sure death was but moments away.

It was the Ross' anchor that saved her. Initially yanked off the harbour bed it dug in like a tick into the solid walls of the dock. The ship wallowed alarmingly as the surge ground on past it, but suddenly they were stopped, the stern now wedged into the façade of a building the surge had driven it into.

Marvin opened his eyes and stared out into the storm. From all around the James Clark Ross came the sounds of violent destruction as the wave came up short where the land rose sharply away from the docks but for now they were safe. But he could see where a massive dredge had been capsized, and another, possibly a trawler which had been driven bodily into the shopping centre which overlooked the harbour. His eyes widened in fear.

"We have to get out of here."