 First edition | |
| Author | Matthew Reilly |
|---|---|
| Country | Australia |
| Language | English |
| Series | Shane Schofield |
| Genre | Techno-thriller novel |
| Published | 1998 |
| Publisher | Pan Macmillan |
| Media type | Print (Paperback) |
| Pages | 541 pp |
| ISBN | 0-7329-0956-2 |
| OCLC | 39079754 |
| LC Class | A823.3 |
| Followed by | Area 7 |
Ice Station is Australian thriller writer Matthew Reilly's second novel, released in 1998.
Ice Station was presented as a live audio drama at the 2016 Adelaide Fringe Festival. [1] [2] [3]
After a diving team at Wilkes Ice Station is killed, the station sends out a distress signal. A team of United States Force Recon Marines led by Shane Schofield, code named Scarecrow, arrives at the station. At the station he finds several French scientists have arrived, and several more come after the Marines' arrival. The French reveal themselves as soldiers and a fight ensues in the station, claiming the lives of Scarecrow's men Hollywood, Legs and Ratman, along with several scientists and most of the French soldiers, while Mother loses her leg, Samurai is badly injured, and two French scientists are captured.
Schofield decides to send a team down to find an object below the ice where the diving team was going. Later, Samurai is found strangled, leaving the only people he trusts to be one of the scientists, Sarah Hensleigh and another soldier named Montana as he was with them at the time of Samurai's death. Hensleigh, Montana and two other Marines, Gant and Santa Cruz, are sent down to where the diving team vanished. While alone, Schofield is shot and killed. He later wakes up, found to have been accidentally resurrected by his attacker, and is in the care of scientist James Renshaw, the believed killer of one of the other scientists at Wilkes. Watching a video of Schofield's death, they see the attacker and discover it to be one of Schofield's men, Snake. The two capture Snake before he is able to kill the wounded Mother.
Meanwhile in the United States, Andrew Trent and Pete Cameron meet, Cameron being a news reporter and Trent being a former Marine using the alias of Andrew Wilcox to avoid being found by the U.S military who a few years back had tried to kill him. They hear the distress call from Schofield and Trent realizes that what happened to him was happening to Schofield.
The team learns of an impending attack by the British SAS and decide to flee the station. During the escape via stolen vehicles, Schofield and Renshaw's is pushed off a cliff, Schofield's close friend Book and the step-daughter of Sarah Hensleigh, Kirsty, are captured, while Rebound escapes with four of the scientists. Schofield manages to destroy a French submarine and he and Renshaw begin their journey back towards it. Meanwhile, the SAS Brigadier Trevor Barnaby kills the two remaining French scientists and feeds Book to a pod of killer whales. Schofield returns to the station and manages to kill all of the SAS and Snake, and save Kirsty. Schofield receives a message from Trent with a list of members of a secret service known as the Intelligence Convergence Group (ICG) which includes Snake and Montana.
Gant and her team find what appears to be an alien ship, but which turns out to be a spy plane. Montana kills Santa Cruz, but is killed by mutated elephant seals. Schofield and the two others arrive and Hensleigh reveals herself to be an ICG agent, but is soon killed by a wounded Gant. Remembering the station is about to be destroyed, Schofield, Gant, Renshaw, Kirsty and her pet fur seal named Wendy escape on the spy plane and land on the USS Wasp. They later destroy the spy plane using a guided missile fired earlier. It is revealed that Mother had escaped Wilkes before its destruction and was saved by US forces.
The survivors get to Hawaii where they are nearly killed by an ICG agent before being saved by Andrew Trent, Pete and Allison Cameron, and the captain of the USS Wasp. Renshaw assumes custody of Kirsty since he is her godfather, and Schofield doesn't leave Gant's side until she recovers.
The orca, or killer whale, is a toothed whale that is the largest member of the oceanic dolphin family. It is the only extant species in the genus Orcinus. Orcas are recognizable by their black-and-white patterned body. A cosmopolitan species, they are found in diverse marine environments, from Arctic to Antarctic regions to tropical seas.
Whales are a widely distributed and diverse group of fully aquatic placental marine mammals. As an informal and colloquial grouping, they correspond to large members of the infraorder Cetacea, i.e. all cetaceans apart from dolphins and porpoises. Dolphins and porpoises may be considered whales from a formal, cladistic perspective. Whales, dolphins and porpoises belong to the order Cetartiodactyla, which consists of even-toed ungulates. Their closest non-cetacean living relatives are the hippopotamuses, from which they and other cetaceans diverged about 54 million years ago. The two parvorders of whales, baleen whales (Mysticeti) and toothed whales (Odontoceti), are thought to have had their last common ancestor around 34 million years ago. Mysticetes include four extant (living) families: Balaenopteridae, Balaenidae, Cetotheriidae, and Eschrichtiidae. Odontocetes include the Monodontidae, Physeteridae, Kogiidae, and Ziphiidae, as well as the six families of dolphins and porpoises which are not considered whales in the informal sense.
The narwhal, is a species of toothed whale, and the only member of the genus Monodon. Its closest living relative is the beluga whale, and a single case of interbreeding between the two species has been recorded. It is sexually dimorphic, as adult males are larger than females and have a single tusk that can be up to 3 m (9.8 ft) long. The narwhal has a mottled pigmentation, with blackish-brown markings over a white background. It has a short dorsal ridge in place of a dorsal fin, which is thought to facilitate movement under the ice, or reduce surface area and heat loss. An adult narwhal is typically 3.0 to 5.5 m in length and 800 to 1,600 kg in weight. Carl Linnaeus scientifically described the species in his 1758 work Systema Naturae.
Marine mammals are mammals that rely on marine (saltwater) ecosystems for their existence. They include animals such as cetaceans, pinnipeds, sirenians, sea otters and polar bears. They are an informal group, unified only by their reliance on marine environments for feeding and survival.
The beluga whale is an Arctic and sub-Arctic cetacean. It is one of two members of the family Monodontidae, along with the narwhal, and the only member of the genus Delphinapterus. It is also known as the white whale, as it is the only cetacean to regularly occur with this colour; the sea canary, due to its high-pitched calls; and the melonhead, though that more commonly refers to the melon-headed whale, which is an oceanic dolphin.
The minke whale, or lesser rorqual, is a species complex of baleen whale. The two species of minke whale are the common minke whale and the Antarctic minke whale. The minke whale was first described by the Danish naturalist Otto Fabricius in 1780, who assumed it must be an already known species and assigned his specimen to Balaena rostrata, a name given to the northern bottlenose whale by Otto Friedrich Müller in 1776. In 1804, Bernard Germain de Lacépède described a juvenile specimen of Balaenoptera acuto-rostrata. The name is a partial translation of Norwegian minkehval, possibly after a Norwegian whaler named Meincke, who mistook a northern minke whale for a blue whale.
The sperm whale or cachalot is the largest of the toothed whales and the largest toothed predator. It is the only living member of the genus Physeter and one of three extant species in the sperm whale family, along with the pygmy sperm whale and dwarf sperm whale of the genus Kogia.
The toothed whales are a parvorder of cetaceans that includes dolphins, porpoises, and all other whales possessing teeth, such as the beaked whales and sperm whales. 73 species of toothed whales are described. They are one of two living groups of cetaceans, the other being the baleen whales (Mysticeti), which have baleen instead of teeth. The two groups are thought to have diverged around 34 million years ago (mya).
Several groups of tetrapods have undergone secondary aquatic adaptation, an evolutionary transition from being purely terrestrial to living at least part of the time in water. These animals are called "secondarily aquatic" because although their ancestors lived on land for hundreds of millions of years, they all originally descended from aquatic animals. These ancestral tetrapods had never left the water, and were thus primarily aquatic, like modern fishes. Secondary aquatic adaptations tend to develop in early speciation as the animal ventures into water in order to find available food. As successive generations spend more time in the water, natural selection causes the acquisition of more adaptations. Animals of later generations may spend most their life in the water, coming ashore for mating. Finally, fully adapted animals may take to mating and birthing in water or ice.
Area 7 is a novel written by the Australian thriller writer Matthew Reilly. It is his fourth book, published in 2001, and is the sequel to Ice Station.
Cetacean stranding, commonly known as beaching, is a phenomenon in which whales and dolphins strand themselves on land, usually on a beach. Beached whales often die due to dehydration, collapsing under their own weight, or drowning when high tide covers the blowhole. Cetacean stranding has occurred since before recorded history.
CaptainShane Michael Schofield, callsign Scarecrow, United States Marine Corps, is a fictional character, whose exploits form the basis of a series created by the Australian author Matthew Reilly. He appears in Ice Station (1998), Area 7 (2001), Scarecrow (2003), The Four Legendary Kingdoms, and the spin-off Hell Island (2005). While the plot differs from novel to novel, it is mainly based around Schofield's legendary reputation as a strong Marine, revered by the Marines that serve under his command, and is known for his high-risk tactical manoeuvres.
Scarecrow is the fifth Matthew Reilly novel, and the third to feature the main character Captain Shane Schofield, USMC. It was released in 2003.
Hell Island is a horror/adventure novella, written in conjunction with the Australian Books Alive promotion, by thriller writer Matthew Reilly While it is the fourth book released in the Shane Schofield series, it is a standalone novella in the Shane Schofield universe, supplementing the storylines in the novels Ice Station, Area 7, Scarecrow, and Scarecrow and the Army of Thieves. In the interview at the back of Scarecrow and the Army of Thieves, Matthew Reilly stated that "Hell Island exists as a nice side adventure for Scarecrow and Mother, and a great short book for new readers who might wish to try my work." Hell Island was released in retail stores in 2007 after only being available through the Books Alive program.
Jean-Michel Cousteau is a French oceanographic explorer, environmentalist, educator and film producer. The first son of ocean explorer Jacques Cousteau, he is the father of Fabien Cousteau and Céline Cousteau.
Orcas are large, powerful aquatic apex predators. There have been incidents where orcas were perceived to attack humans in the wild, but such attacks are less common than those by captive orcas. In captivity, there have been several non-fatal and four fatal attacks on humans since the 1970s. Experts are divided as to whether the injuries and deaths were accidental or deliberate attempts to cause harm.
Monty Halls is a British TV broadcaster and marine biologist best known for his BBC Great Escape series Monty Halls' Great Escape, Monty Halls' Great Hebridean Escape and Monty Halls' Great Irish Escape, during which he lived and worked in remote parts of the UK and Ireland with his dog Reuben. Halls' other TV programmes include WWII's Great Escapes, Great Barrier Reef and Lost Worlds with Leo Houlding for Discovery Channel.
Morro Bay State Marine Recreational Management Area (SMRMA) and Morro Bay State Marine Reserve (SMR) are two marine protected areas that provide protection for Morro Bay Estuary on California's central coast. The two marine protected areas together encompass 3.31 square miles (8.6 km2). The SMR protects all marine life within its boundaries. Fishing and take of any living marine resources is prohibited. nWithin the SMRMA, fishing or taking any living marine resources is prohibited with the exception that, with a valid state water bottom lease and permit, the recreational taking of finfish and the aquaculture of oysters is permitted north of latitude 35° 19.70′ N. Recreational hunting of waterfowl is allowed unless otherwise restricted by hunting regulations.
Scarecrow and the Army of Thieves is an action thriller novel released on 12 October 2011 by Australian author Matthew Reilly. It is the latest installment in the Shane Schofield series.