“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?”

Alex looked at her for a few seconds, weighing up whether he should lie, and then made a decision.

“Dr. Weir, Aimee, look around.” He paused as she briefly looked over both shoulders. “Over thirty people came into this hole over the last seven days. What do you see?”

Aimee looked around again and saw the crashed plane, rock debris and impenetrable darkness leading off to both the left and right of them. She looked back at Alex. “OK, so where are they all?”

“This is not a rescue mission. I don’t think there are any survivors to rescue. There are no bodies, no remains, nothing on the motion sensors or heat scanners. It’s just us down here. Primary mission objective is unchanged; we are to support your work and then evac in, now, twenty-three hours.” Alex paused a moment to let this sink in. “Secondary objective is determine location of initial party and the reason for communications breakdown. But there will be no remains or body retrieval, unless required as forensic samples for further investigation. I’m sorry.”

Alex could see the anger building in Aimee’s eyes. Here it comes, he thought.