Showing results by author "Greig Beck" in All Categories

Down there, beyond the deepest caves, below the crust and the mantle, there is another world. An old woman locked away in a Russian asylum has a secret - knowledge of a 500-year-old manuscript written by a long-dead alchemist that will show a passage to the mythical centre of the Earth. She knows it’s real because 50 years ago, she and a team travelled there. And only she made it back. Today, caving specialist Mike Monroe leads a crew into the world’s deepest cave in the former Soviet Union.

The dragon plague has scoured the land of living things, and Troyson Strom lives on his small boat, staying on the move, and gathering supplies when he can. But he has a plan – save enough provisions and sail back to the coast of Greenland and search for the mighty rift in the ice wall that leads through Odin’s Gate, and then on to Lemuria.

This short story collection will take you into the depths of Beck’s dark imagination: from what happens when the deepest bore hole on Earth has just passed nine miles and hits a strange open space – and it's hellishly hot down there; to an Antarctic research team examining fragments from a deep ice glacier and discovers a tiny seed that, once thawed, grows into something terrifyingly unexpected.

The Silurian Period, approximately 420 million years ago. A time even before the dinosaurs. Evolution was just beginning to flex its muscles, and on land and in the sea, new creatures were evolving. In this strange world arrive a team of time travelling North Korean agents with one goal – change the past and alter the future. And if they are successful, the United States may never exist. Following them back in time are Alex Hunter and his team of elite HAWCs. And for Alex Hunter, this mission is personal.

When a plane crashes into the Antarctic ice, exposing a massive cave beneath, a rescue and research team is dispatched. Twenty-four hours later, all contact is lost. Captain Alex Hunter and his highly trained squad of commandos are fast tracked to the hot zone to find out what went wrong - and to follow up the detection of a vast underground reservoir.

A ghostly, sobbing voice is detected from the depths of Russia’s Kola super deep borehole - nine miles down. A Russian team is dispatched in a desperate rescue mission to find the woman. But how did she get there? And how is she still alive? Meanwhile, the Americans prepare their own expedition after a new rift leading to the center of the Earth has been discovered at the bottom of the Mariana Trench in the Western Pacific Ocean. Mike Monroe and Jane Baxter agree to accompany the team of soldiers and scientists to seek a compound that is potentially a cure for cancer.

Mike Monroe and Jane Baxter barely survived their terrifying journey to the centre of the Earth. But a burning curiosity still tormented them about the origins of the pale creatures in the stygian darkness of the caves, and why were their dreams also haunted by something huge and monstrous that seemed as old as time itself? Now, news of a Russian military expedition has forced their hands and also meant they must go back to a place they swore they’d never return. But this time they’re going with a team of highly skilled mercenaries and scientists to help them track the Russians.

The Arcadian returns to the dark ice in a reprisal of one of his first and most deadly missions. But this time the stakes couldn’t be higher. In 2008, a top-secret US submarine went missing on its test voyage off the coast of Antarctica. After years silent, its emergency beacon is suddenly activated, but strangely, the beacon is emanating from a point miles below the ice sheets of the frozen continent. The race is on.

100,000 years ago the object hit the lake at the deepest point, quickly sinking into its mile-deep Stygian darkness. The sheets of ice closed, time moved on and the land forgot. But over the centuries, legends grew of people vanishing, of strange, deformed animals and of an unexplained luminescence down in the lake depths. When Marcus Stenson won the lucrative contract to create a sturgeon fish farm on the site of disused paper mill on the shore of Lake Baikal, he thought he had won the lottery and refused to listen to the chilling folktales....

An ancient evil awakens ... Alex Hunter has been found – sullen, alone, leaving a path of destruction as he wanders across America. Only the foolish get in the way of the drifter wandering the streets late at night. Across the world, something has been released by a treasure hunter in a hidden chamber of the Basilica Cisterns in Istanbul. Something hidden there by Emperor Constantine himself, and deemed by him too horrifying and dangerous to ever be set free.

A sudden burst of radiation is detected beneath the desert in Iran. Alex Hunter – code name Arcadian – and his highly trained incursion team are dropped into the ruins of Persepolis. All they find is an empty underground facility – nothing to explain the gamma spike. It is as if a black hole has swept everything away.... Israel is threatening nuclear war. And someone, or something, is draining the fluids from the bodies of Iranian soldiers in the desert.

Below the English town of Ipswich a tunnel boring team is digging through solid rock when unexpectedly, they break into an ancient cave system filled with animal bones. Strangely, there were also the remains of men, knights in armour. And there was one more thing found – a huge egg-shaped ruby that glowed like a setting sun. Just over 2000 miles away, still trapped on the lost island of Lemuria, Troy and Anne know that the time of monstrous beings long thought only existing in our legends or lurking in our nightmares, was returning.

A small change today can change our tomorrow. A small change 100 million years ago can change everything. No one really noticed when things started to change. Some animals vanished. Some new ones appeared. Then some things appeared that were monstrous. No one seemed to notice except Ben Cartwright and the other survivors of hidden plateau in the depths of the Amazon jungle. Only they were aware of the growing threat to the human race.

Alex Hunter - in the mission that turned him from a normal man into the weapon known as the Arcadian - and the elite team of soldiers known as the Hotzone All-Forces Warfare Commandos must enter a hostile country to rescue a defected Chechen researcher from the centre of a country at war. But the HAWCs are not the only ones looking for the rogue scientist and the mysterious package he carries with him. A brutal and relentless killer and his death squad are on the trail, too - and they bring a savagery with them that Hunter and his team have never witnessed before in modern warfare.

In the forbidden deserts of Yemen, a structure has been found—a buried pyramid—thousands of years older than anything previously known. And indications are, it was buried on purpose. What is discovered inside could prove that we’re not alone in the universe. And terrifyingly, after 7,000 years, there is a biological obscenity that remains, not yet dead. Ancient writing suggests the pyramid’s builders have been taking humans, and when evidence is found that in remote corners of the world people are still disappearing, the HAWCs are called to action.

The legend of Lemuria, the Mysterious Island, and all its wonders and dangers were all too real. And it has been found. But the ancient stories of the great treasure and horrors that existed through the ice rift and beyond Odin’s Gate could never have prepared them what they discovered – monstrous creatures that lived in the sea, in the air and on land. And now Troy Strom and Anne Walsh are trapped there among them.

On a desolate beach in far northern Scotland, the winter storms have been washing up all manner of things since time began. But buried in the centre of one smaller iceberg is a shard of ancient Viking pottery telling a partial tale of a hidden mysterious island beyond the ice and mist, that was home to a great treasure and even greater horrors. Thawing in the same block of ice was a rotting flap of skin that refused to be identified but had similar skin patterns to a creature not seen for 100 million years.

Klaus and Doris have just made the discovery of their lives - a complete Neanderthal skeleton buried in a newly opened sinkhole. But on removing it, something else tumbles free. Something that switches on, and then calls home. Soon the owners are coming back, and nothing will stop their ruthless search for their lost prize.

Deep in the steaming jungles of Paraguay, Aimee Weir is in trouble. The petrobiologist has found what she was looking for - a unique microorganism in a natural gas deposit - but it proves to be more destructive than anyone could have imagined. A contagion is striking down all in its wake. The camp is quarantined, but workers start to vanish in the night. Is it fear of contamination - or has something far more lethal come to the surface? Something that has been trapped beneath the miles of stone, waiting... for us.