Ice Station

Ice Station

2000 St. Martin's Paperback cover
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.

Plot summary

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 ship. 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 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.

Audio Drama Adaptation and Live Performances

In 2015 Matthew Reilly commissioned Benjamin Maio Mackay's production company, Preachrs Podcast OnLine & OnStage, to turn Ice Station into an audio drama. The audio drama was piloted with a series of sell-out live readings in the 2016 Adelaide Fringe Festival.^[1] The live shows featured a cast of 12 Australian actors who portray a variety of roles in the show.^[2] Australian actor, director, producer, podcaster and writer Benjamin Maio Mackay was chosen by Reilly to direct and adapt the audio drama.^[3] Josh Mensch and Mary Rose Angley were cast as "Scarecrow" Schofield and Elizabeth "Fox" Gant respectively, the first actors to take on Reilly's iconic heroes.^[4] The production began previews on February 16 and opened on February 19 2016. The live shows received audience and critical acclaim with Fringe Review saying "This is a powerful audio performance that is beautifully controlled to draw out all the drama and characterization of the original novel. Benjamin Maio Mackay has done an outstanding job translating a complex and exciting novel into a strong audio play. The pace is just as fast and the action just as exciting as in the original novel. The cast have stunning focus and the voices are clear and convey the narrative beautifully. Stand-out performances were given by Josh Mensch (Scarecrow), Benjamin Maio Mackay (Book) and Scott Reynolds (Rebound). Their commitment and voice control were just stunning." ^[5] The Adelaide Advertiser praised the show, saying, [it's an] "edge-of-your-seat performance", and called it "exceptional."^[6]

This was the first adaptation of a Reilly book in any format. While the first three parts were recorded in 2016 no release date has been set and no further updates on the project have been provided by Reilly or Maio Mackay.

Characters

References