Alex saw Aimee shake her head as if to clear away some fuzzy thinking. There’s that impulsiveness again, he thought. Her eyes softened; even in the darkened cave he could see an almost physical colour change in them as her anger dissipated.

“Sorry, I should have known better. I’m just a little on edge and nervous. Um, I was also probably out of line with that earlier jarheads crack as well.”

Alex smiled for the first time. “Dr. Weir, I have a boss who uses language that would make a drunken pirate blush; you don’t need to apologise.” He went to shake her hand, then drew back and removed his toughened black glove. Seeing him remove his, Aimee did the same before they shook hands.

“Captain, please call me Aimee.”

“It’d be a pleasure, Aimee. You can call me Alex.”

He kept hold of her hand and looked into her eyes and smiled again. She’s beautiful, he thought. He mentally shook his head; forget it, that’s not why I’m here, maybe next life. He let go of her hand and she returned to the group and the smell of brewing rehydrated coffee.

Alex turned around and caught his men smiling at him broadly. He gave them a look that made them freeze and drop their heads to continue checking and rechecking their equipment before calling to his Second Lieutenant.

“Takeda.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Inform HQ we’ve touched down and will be starting a first sweep at twenty-one hundred hours. Also request any final instructions. Once we enter the cave depths we may lose signal strength.”

With that he turned and looked around the cathedral-like vault. Though the all-clear had been given on gases, there was a strange smell he couldn’t place. Alex hadn’t felt anything like fear for a long time, but something down here was making him feel very unsettled.

“Johnson, take Benson and Tank and recon the crash site. Be back here in twenty minutes. Mike, with me at the science team. Takeda, join us when you’re finished with the communications. Everyone stay alert, something’s not right.”

Aimee handed Alex a small cup of steaming coffee. “A peace offering,” she said.

Alex accepted the hot drink and replied, “No need, we were never at war.”

“Dr. Silex and I will need to move farther away from the interference of the cave opening to get any meaningful readings from the stratigraphic scanners. It’s going to be hard enough being so close to the pole as the magnetic waves will create a lot of distortion; we’ve got to move a little deeper and at least shut out the ionospherics.”

Alex could see there was something else on her mind. He gave her time to work up the courage to ask.

“Um, I’ve been talking to your medivac team. It seems there’s one military medic, who is also an engineer, and the other has a biomedicine background—a strange selection for a rescue mission. What gives?”