The Kestrel VTOL fought the wind. Isabelle Moreau’s hands were steady on the controls, her knuckles pale but her movements economical. Outside the armored cockpit glass, the world was a screaming vortex of white. Snow and ice hammered the composite skin of the aircraft, the force of the impacts transmitted through the frame as a constant, drumming vibration. The patches they had applied in the Norwegian fjord, cold-bonded composite over the 12.7mm holes, held but groaned under the strain.
Moreau kept the tilt-rotor aircraft low, a scant fifty meters above the churning, ice-choked surface of the Barents Sea. The gale-force winds were a physical wall, but she found the seams, the momentary lulls, and pushed the Kestrel through them. She was not fighting the storm; she was dissecting it, her mind a cold processor of wind shear, rotor torque, and fuel consumption. Every kilometer gained was paid for with fuel and risk.
In the cramped cabin behind them, Nadia Petrova was oblivious to the violent struggle for control. She sat cross-legged on the cold metal deck, a portable data slate resting on her knees. The young archaeologist, picked up from a desolate airstrip on the Kola Peninsula less than three hours ago, had a fierce, unwavering focus that Sineus recognized. Her specialty was pre-Scythian symbolic languages, but her mind was a razor for any form of archaic data. She traced the glowing glyphs from the Logbook with a stylus, her lips moving silently.
— The resonance patterns in the Logbook’s script aren't just navigational, — Nadia said suddenly, her voice cutting through the engine’s roar. She looked up at Sineus, her eyes bright with discovery. — They correlate with geothermal and magnetic anomalies. This place wasn't just a listening post. They were mapping Memorum currents.
— Tactical relevance? — Moreau’s voice was sharp, cutting in over the internal comm. She did not turn from the controls.
— The Soviets who built this place knew what they were looking for, — Sineus answered before Nadia could. He pointed to the main console. — Which means their archives will be shielded. Not just with concrete and steel. Switch the forward sensor array to the ground-penetrating radar. Broad-spectrum pulse.
Moreau’s fingers moved, and a section of the main display flickered, replaced by a cascading green waterfall of data. The radar began to paint a ghostly, three-dimensional image of the landmass hidden beneath the ice and snow ahead. Kilometers of permafrost, then the faint, hard lines of buried structures. A ghost of the Cold War, rendered in phosphorous light.
Sineus leaned forward, his eyes tracing the geometric patterns. He saw the sprawling complex of a submarine pen, the deep channels now frozen solid. He saw barracks, power conduits, and then, deeper, a separate, isolated structure. It was a perfect cube, buried sixty meters down, connected to the main base by a single, narrow tunnel. Its walls were unnaturally thick.
— There, — he said, pointing. A single touch on the screen locked the coordinates. — That’s the vault.
— The main complex is a maze. A perfect kill-box for any ground assault, — Moreau observed, her tactical assessment instant and bleak. — But the vault has only one door.
— They never expected anyone to come from above, — Sineus said.
The radar image showed no vertical access shafts. The only way in was a horizontal tunnel from the main base, a tunnel that would now be a frozen tomb. Their only option was a direct, vertical breach.
Moreau banked the Kestrel, following the coastline of Novaya Zemlya. The storm howled, but she guided the aircraft with a surgeon’s precision into a narrow ice ravine, the rock walls rising steeply on either side. The wind was baffled here, the air almost still. With a final, delicate adjustment of the rotors, she set the aircraft down. The landing skids crunched onto snow-covered ice with a sound like breaking bones. The roar of the engines spooled down to a low hum.
— We are one kilometer from the vault entrance, — she announced, her hands already moving across the shutdown sequence. — We walk from here. Leaving the VTOL exposed at the target site is an unnecessary risk.
The price for the aircraft’s safety was a kilometer of exposure in one of the most hostile environments on Earth. It was a price Sineus was willing to pay.
— Nadia, you’re on analysis. Once we’re inside, you find the parallax tables. Ignore everything else, — Sineus commanded, his voice low and firm. He turned to Moreau. — You and I will breach the hatch and provide security. The plan is simple. We go in, we take the data core, we get out.
He pulled the hood of his arctic gear over his head and sealed the collar. The small team checked their weapons and gear, the clicks and snaps of buckles and magazines loud in the sudden quiet of the cabin. Nadia packed her data slate into a thermally insulated case. Moreau racked the slide on her pistol, the sound clean and final.
Sineus cycled the main hatch. It hissed open, and the cold hit them like a physical blow. The temperature was -20°C, but the wind that sliced over the top of the ravine made it feel like a blade against the skin. The air was so cold it hurt to breathe, each inhalation a sharp pain in the lungs. The world outside was a study in grey and white, the sky a low, oppressive ceiling of bruised-looking clouds.
He stepped out onto the ice, his boots crunching on the crystalline snow. Moreau and Nadia followed, moving with the grim purpose of people who understood the stakes. There was no turning back.
They began the trek toward the vault, three dark figures against an endless expanse of white. The wind tore at them, trying to steal their warmth and their resolve. The cold was an enemy, silent and absolute.
But Sineus knew it was not the only one waiting for them under the ice.
