The identity disc felt heavier than it should have in Alex's pocket as he hauled himself out of the crevasse. The metal was cold enough to feel through his insulated gloves, a small frozen coin of mortality. Mikhail Orlov. Lieutenant. War criminal. Corpse.
Jo reeled in the rope harness while Ida packed away her field kit. The wind had picked up, driving needles of ice against their masks. Alex could see the station lights in the distance, a cluster of amber pinpricks that seemed impossibly far away.
"Did you mean what you said to Voss?" Jo asked, her voice muffled by the wind. "About finding nothing definitive?"
Alex hesitated. Jo was sharp. She'd caught the discrepancy immediately. "I wanted to see his reaction."
"And?"
"He didn't give one. Which is a reaction in itself." Alex started walking, his crampons crunching in rhythm. "If someone told me we'd found a named war criminal buried under our station, I'd have questions. A lot of them. Voss acted like I'd reported a broken valve."
Ida caught up with them, her breath fogging in the night air. "You suspect him?"
"I suspect everyone." Alex paused. "Except you two. You were with me when the quake hit. You couldn't have planted the body."
"That's a cheerful standard for trust," Jo muttered. "Geographic proximity."
They reached the station's outer airlock and cycled through the decontamination sequence. The warm air inside felt almost suffocating after the brutal cold, and Alex's glasses immediately fogged over. By the time he'd wiped them clear, Voss was already there, waiting.
"Debrief in ten minutes," Voss said. "Control room. I want everyone present." His gaze flicked to Alex. "You're sure there was nothing else on the body?"
"Just the disc. The pockets were empty." It wasn't exactly a lie. Alex had checked the pockets. They were empty. The disc had been in the waterproof pouch, which was technically separate from the pockets. A distinction that would hold up if anyone asked.
Voss studied him for a moment longer than was comfortable. Then he nodded. "Ten minutes."
The control room was the nerve center of Ishtar Station, a cramped hexagonal space lined with monitors and control panels. By the time Alex arrived, most of the crew had already assembled. Polzin was tapping his fingers on a console. Dr. Kaito Murakami, the station's marine biologist who had been studying extremophile bacteria in the subglacial lakes, sat quietly in a corner with a tablet. Dr. Soren Lindqvist, the Swedish astrophysicist whose research on cosmic rays seemed increasingly irrelevant given their situation, was rubbing his temples.
And there, in the back, half-hidden in shadow, was Lena Hvald.
She looked worse than she had that morning. Her face was drawn, her eyes ringed with dark circles. She was holding a mug of something that had stopped steaming long ago. When Alex glanced at her, she met his eyes for a fraction of a second, then looked away.
"All right." Voss stood at the central console, his hands clasped behind his back. "Here's what we know. The icequake opened a crevasse near the runway and exposed human remains. Dr. Mirza has identified the deceased as Mikhail Orlov, a former lieutenant in a paramilitary organization active during the Lysian Civil War. Orlov was indicted by the International Tribunal in Novigrad and has been missing for approximately ten years."
A murmur rippled through the room. Polzin stopped tapping his fingers.
"The body shows evidence of execution," Ida added, her voice clinical. "Two gunshot wounds to the chest. Close range. No defensive wounds, which suggests he was restrained or taken by surprise."
"So we're dealing with a murder," Polzin said. "A ten-year-old murder of a war criminal. That's... complicated."
"It's not our problem," Voss said firmly. "Our responsibility is to document the find and preserve whatever evidence we can until the authorities arrive. We are not investigators. We are not prosecutors. We are scientists on a research station with limited resources and no outside contact. Is that clear?"
Heads nodded around the room. But Alex noticed that Lena didn't nod. She was staring at the floor, her knuckles white around her mug.
"There's another issue," Jo said. "The icequake. I've been analyzing the seismic data, and there's something off about the signature. It doesn't look like a natural fracture event. It looks like a controlled detonation."
The room went very quiet.
"You're saying someone blew up the ice shelf?" Lindqvist asked, his voice incredulous.
"I'm saying the data shows a secondary pulse consistent with an explosive charge. Small, precise. Almost surgical."
"Who would do that?" Polzin demanded. "We're in the middle of nowhere. There's nothing here to blow up."
"There's a body," Alex said quietly. "There's a body that someone went to considerable trouble to hide. And now it's not hidden anymore."
The implication hung in the air like smoke. If someone had planted explosives to expose the body, they wanted it found. And if they wanted it found, they had a reason. And if they had a reason, they were probably still on the station.
"We should search the station," Polzin said. "If there are explosives—"
"There are no explosives on Ishtar," Voss interrupted. "I oversaw the inventory myself. The only charges we have are the small detonators used for seismic surveys, and those are locked in the geology lab storage. They're accounted for."
"You're sure?"
"I'm sure."
Alex watched Voss as he spoke. His posture was relaxed, his voice steady. If he was lying, he was exceptionally good at it.
"What about the communications?" Murakami asked. The biologist had a soft voice and a habit of asking the most practical question in the room. "Have we made any progress on the uplink?"
"The dish is destroyed," Alex said. "The backup transmitter is functional but limited. I've been trying to bounce a signal off the ionosphere, but the polar conditions are making it difficult. Best case, we might get a burst transmission through to the Aurelian relay satellite in about three days, when the orbital window opens."
"Three days," Lindqvist repeated. "And then another two weeks for rescue. Assuming anyone hears us."
"Assuming anyone is listening."
Voss clapped his hands together, a gesture of finality. "We have our tasks. Jo, continue analyzing the seismic data. Ida, preserve the remains as best you can. Alex, keep working on the transmitter. The rest of you, maintain your research schedules. Routine is important. It keeps us focused."
The meeting dispersed. Alex lingered near the door, watching the others file out. Lena was among the last to leave, still clutching her cold mug. He fell into step beside her.
"Lena."
She flinched. "Yes?"
"Can I ask you something?"
She didn't stop walking. "I suppose."
"During the quake. When we were all in the mess hall, right after. You looked..." He searched for the right word. "Relieved."
She stopped. Turned. Her eyes were pale blue, almost colorless. "Relieved?"
"It was just a moment. I could have imagined it."
"You imagined it." Her voice was flat, but there was something underneath it—something that sounded almost like fear. "I was terrified. We all were."
"Right." Alex nodded slowly. "Sorry. I didn't mean to—"
"I have work to do." She turned and walked away, her footsteps quick and silent on the metal floor.
Alex watched her go. She was lying. He was almost certain of it. But people lied for all sorts of reasons. Fear. Shame. Self-preservation. The question wasn't whether Lena was hiding something. The question was what.
He found Jo in the comms alcove, where she'd been most of the day. The backup transmitter was a squat, ruggedized unit that looked like a piece of military surplus, which it probably was. A tangle of cables connected it to a jury-rigged antenna array that Alex had assembled from spare parts and desperation.
"Any luck?" he asked.
"I'm not trying to reach the relay satellite." Jo didn't look up from her screen. "I've been scanning the shortwave bands."
"Shortwave? There's nothing out here for thousands of kilometers."
"Exactly. So imagine my surprise when I picked up a signal."
Alex leaned over her shoulder. On the screen, a waveform danced across a spectral analyzer. It was faint, almost buried in the static, but it was unmistakably artificial. A repeating pattern. A burst of data, then silence. Another burst. Another silence.
"What is it?"
"Encrypted. Probably military-grade. The signal strength suggests it's coming from somewhere on the ice shelf, maybe fifty kilometers away."
"Someone else is out here?"
"Someone else is transmitting." Jo finally looked up, and her expression was troubled. "The transmission pattern matches the log I pulled from the external sensors. The ones that recorded the secondary seismic pulse. Same timing. Same modulation."
"You're saying the explosion and this signal are connected."
"I'm saying someone on this ice shelf detonated a charge, exposed a corpse, and is now broadcasting an encrypted message to someone. That's too many coincidences." She rubbed her eyes. "Alex, I don't think we're alone out here. And I don't think the icequake was an accident."
Alex stared at the pulsing waveform on the screen. In the dim glow of the monitor, it looked almost like a heartbeat. A mechanical heartbeat, sending a message into the darkness.
"Can you trace it?"
"Not accurately. But I can give you a rough direction."
"Then let's find out who's on the other end."
That night, Alex couldn't sleep. He lay in his bunk, staring at the ceiling, listening to the hum of the station's life support systems. The CO2 scrubbers cycled on and off with a rhythm he knew by heart. The heating elements in the walls ticked as they expanded and contracted. Everything was working. Everything was nominal.
Everything was wrong.
At two in the morning, he gave up on sleep and made his way to the medical bay. The lights were dimmed, but Ida was still awake, her face illuminated by the glow of a computer screen. She was scrolling through a database—the International Tribunal's public records, from the looks of it.
"You should be asleep," Alex said.
"So you keep telling me." She didn't look away from the screen. "I've been researching Mikhail Orlov. His Tribunal file is extensive. Fifteen counts of crimes against humanity. He was Karst's operations officer, responsible for logistics and personnel. He knew everything. Every operation, every safe house, every supply route."
"What happened to him?"
"According to the official narrative, he vanished three days before the siege of Varna Gap. Deserted his post. The assumption was that he'd been killed by Aurelian peacekeepers, but his body was never found." She paused. "Until now."
"Someone executed him. Someone caught up with him and put two bullets in his chest."
"Yes." Ida finally turned to face him. "And there's only one person who would have had both the motive and the opportunity to do that."
"Karst."
"Viktor Karst." The name hung in the air between them. "Orlov knew everything about Karst's operations. If Karst wanted to disappear—really disappear—he would need to eliminate anyone who could identify him. Anyone who knew his safe houses, his contacts, his new identity." She gestured at the screen. "Orlov was the last loose end. And someone tied it."
"But if Karst killed Orlov ten years ago, why is the body surfacing now?"
"That's the question, isn't it?" Ida removed her glasses and rubbed the bridge of her nose. "Someone wanted that body found. Someone planted explosives to expose it. And someone is transmitting a signal to an unknown recipient."
"Jo told you."
"Jo told me. We're not keeping secrets from each other, Alex. We can't afford to."
Alex sat down heavily in the visitor's chair. "What do we actually know about the people on this station? Really know?"
"Voss recruited most of us. He's the senior scientist, the project lead. He had final approval on all personnel assignments."
"Voss." Alex turned the name over in his mind. "What do we know about Voss?"
"He's a respected geologist. Published extensively. Before Ishtar, he was at the University of Novigrad. Before that..." She paused. "Before that, there's a gap. Three years. His CV says he was doing field research in the Kestria region."
"During the war?"
"After. Immediately after the ceasefire."
Alex felt a cold tendril of unease curl in his stomach. "The same region where Karst operated. Where the massacres happened."
"Yes."
They sat in silence for a long moment. Outside, the wind howled against the station's insulated walls. Somewhere in the distance, the ice shelf groaned and shifted, a sound like a living thing in pain.
"We need more information," Alex said finally. "We need to access the sealed portion of the Tribunal database. The part that isn't public."
"That requires authorization from Novigrad. Which requires functional communications. Which we don't have."
"Then we find another way." Alex stood up. "Voss has a personal satellite phone in his quarters. All senior staff do. It's for emergencies."
"You think Voss has been hiding a working phone?"
"I think it's worth finding out."
He made his way through the darkened corridors to the senior staff quarters. The station was silent, the only sound the steady hum of the environmental systems. Voss's door was closed. Alex pressed his ear against it and heard nothing.
The lock was electronic, but Alex had overseen the installation of every system on the station. He knew the override codes. He'd written half of them himself. Ten seconds of work, and the door clicked open.
Voss's quarters were immaculate. The bed was made with military precision. The desk was clear except for a laptop and a small framed photograph of a woman Alex didn't recognize. The bookshelf held geology texts and a collection of classical literature. Nothing unusual. Nothing incriminating.
But the satellite phone was gone.
Alex searched the room twice. Under the bed. Behind the books. In the small closet. The phone was simply not there. Which meant Voss had moved it. Which meant he didn't want anyone else to use it.
Which meant, Alex realized with a sinking feeling, that Voss had something to hide.
He was about to leave when he noticed something on the desk. The laptop was closed, but a small LED indicator on the side was blinking. It was the wireless activity light. The laptop was transmitting data.
Alex opened the lid. The screen flickered to life, and he saw a command-line interface running an encrypted transmission protocol. The same protocol, he recognized, that Jo had detected on the shortwave band.
Voss was the one sending the signal.
And at that moment, Alex heard footsteps in the corridor outside.
The door began to open.
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