Icarus Rising - Kindle Fiction

Icarus Rising
by Dominic Carney

Icarus Rising is a challenging environmental adventure story about Global Warming. It is a story of individual redemption and collective salvation and renewal. It addresses with optimism and hope a topic that is all too often viewed with fear and despondency.

We first meet two of our heroes, David Stirling and Steven Vine, and the brutal Lionel Chadson over thirty years ago. They are in central Antarctica on a clandestine drilling mission for EXO, a huge oil corporation. They do not strike oil and have to abandon the eery site after two members of the crew perish in a terrible fire.

Fast forward to the present day and we meet Dr Ged Flynn, son and brother of the men who died and now a scientist working on Global Warming for the UN in New York. His research points to a startling and hidden cause of Global Warming - the undersea venting of huge methane deposits. However, he has little evidence for his thesis and is shunned and vilified by many of his colleagues.

His only support comes from Stirling and Vine, now senior academics. They introduce Flynn to Dr Claire Serafino, an alluring marine biologist who provides him with an amazing record of the evidence he seeks, linked to historic sightings of fabulous sea creatures. Flynn is immediately smitten by Claire and jumps at the opportunity to work closely with her.

Flynn manages to obtain funding for further research and the two scientists travel to the deep ocean off Bermuda. Strange sea creatures have been spotted and the pair hope these creatures will guide them to sites of methane venting.

They do not go alone. Chadson, now the chief executive of EXO, sees Flynn’s work as a threat and he orders Thacker, an honourable but cowed manager, to track Flynn’s every move and to disrupt his research. Unknown to Thacker, Chadson authorises the murder of Flynn and Serafino.

The two are saved from Chadson’s henchmen by Al Morton their ship's captain and an ex-special forces commando.They return with clear evidence of massive methane venting.

On analysing the new data, Flynn and Serafino realise that Global Warming is being caused by the concerted actions of nature and mankind, moving the earth towards an imminent tipping point of no return. Methane venting is rising dangerously, and carbon dioxide output is about to peak as the huge demands of the American summer cut in.

In a moment of inspiration Flynn realises that what killed his father and brother was their drilling into a huge oxygen reservoir and that the only solution is to release this into the crozzled atmosphere.

It is now a race against time. Out in the Atlantic, Al Martin embarks on a seemingly suicidal mission to ignite the undersea methane vents. Flynn must lead a team to the Antarctic, and to the mysterious Lake Vostok, a huge body of water two miles below the ice. Chadson is intent on stopping Flynn and recruits sinister Russian mercenaries to hunt him down in the frozen wastes.

The Vostok project is immensely complex and only EXO has the skills and capability to do the drilling in time. Jolted by his daughter’s illness, Thacker stands against Chadson and throws EXO’s vast resources behind Flynn.

The team must now fight through Chadson and his mercenaries, the worst weather conditions on earth and two miles of ice in order to get to their goal.