Ice Station by Matthew Reilly. Readers might have picked up by now that my taste in reading is fairly omnivorous, but techno-thrillers are outside my normal range. However, given that the author is Australian, I was struck by the introduction which seemed to promise an evil genius role for a character named Otto Niemeyer, and decided to read on. In fact, he remains peripheral. As compensation, though, you get to encounter (I am not making this up!), mutated sea-elephants. Despite the absence of laser-beams, they are very ill-tempered. If you can overlook this kind of thing, and like the genre, Reilly is actually pretty good.