Natalie Goes

Chapter 1

All those people flocking to tropical beaches didn’t know what they were missing.

Noelle squinted at the breathtaking view in front of her. With the bright sunlight reflecting off the ice and sea, the massive icebergs in the distance appeared otherworldly. Majestic. Even magical, if you believed in such things.

And what were those oddly-shaped dark masses in the middle of the half-frozen ocean? Islands? Mountains? A different type of iceberg?

One mystery at a time, she reminded herself, zipping her jacket all the way up and picking up her suitcase, its neon green zippers really clashing with the pristine landscape untouched by civilization. Noelle hadn’t come all the way to northern Greenland to gawk at icebergs. Believe it or not, she and the other interns were here for something even more exciting. Their destination wasn’t out at sea, but on land, frozen solid most of the year and a mix of icy slush and gritty mud for a few weeks of arctic summer.

But what was a little cold in exchange for and adventure of a lifetime? And boy, did Noelle need this, especially after—

Loud throat-clearing brought her back to the present. Noelle glanced over her shoulder. Alex, a fellow intern, stood right behind her, his tall frame bent uncomfortably in the tiny charter jet’s doorway. She definitely needed to move.

“Sorry!” She threw him a sheepish smile and motioned to the icy landscape. “Isn’t this something?”

He smiled back with a nod. Apparently, even Norwegians like Alex, with their famous fjords, weren’t used to a sight like this, especially in summer.

Just as Noelle reached for the railing, a gust of icy wind hit out of nowhere, throwing her hair in her face.

“Whoa!”

Her feet slid off the step, and Noelle frantically fought to regain her balance. But the suitcase in her other hand and the backpack on her back weren’t exactly helping.

Once a klutz, always a klutz.

They say you get a glimpse of the future right before it happens, and Noelle definitely saw an embarrassing face-plant in hers, a painful landing in the mud right in front of the other interns and the head of their expedition, who were waiting a few steps away.

Just then, strong hands grabbed her from behind.

Noelle froze. Logically, she should be relieved, having avoided an embarrassing fall and probably a few bruises, but…

Alex eyed her with concern. “Are you all right?”

Now was definitely not the time or the place to unpack the “fight-or-flight”, or, in her case, “freeze” response to any unexpected physical contact.

Noelle mumbled her thanks and attempted to grab the railing again. But Alex’s hand on her backpack held her back.

“Need some help with your suitcase?”

“Apparently.”

Noelle forced a smile and let him take it. It wasn’t even a huge suitcase. She had learned to travel light growing up in a military family and moving across oceans on a short notice. But a petite, scrawny college student like her, who looked younger than her twenty-two years, must have appeared pathetic struggling with her luggage, especially given the strong wind and rickety steps.

She sighed and discreetly snapped a black hair tie around her wrist, reminding herself not to freak out for no reason. Alex just wanted to help. As she made her way down the steps, holding on tight to the railing this time, she hoped he hadn’t noticed her deer-in-the-headlights look.

Alex deposited both his and Noelle’s suitcases on a cart with the others and joined the group with a tall woman at its center, her salt-and-pepper hair cropped short. Professor Doctor Dagmar Lindt, their welcoming committee and the head of their expedition, looked just like her photo in the recruitment flyer.

Alex nodded to Doctor Lindt, then nudged the dark-haired guy next to him with his elbow. “Any sign of those little green men yet, Brian?”

Brian grinned. “No, but I don’t see any Viking settlements, either.”

Noelle rolled her eyes. Those archeologists had wild imaginations. But her new co-workers had a point: their new surroundings could inspire any number of myths, legends, and conspiracy theories. Or conceal a mystery that could potentially re-write history, according to the flyer for this expedition that had enticed even Noelle, a non-archeologist, to sign up.

Doctor Lindt chuckled. “I see you brought the right attitude. Let’s get you all settled in.”

***

Station Nord, a tiny Danish military base with a state-of-the-art polar research station, where the charter jet had dropped off Noelle and the other interns, was just a speck in the huge frozen desert of northern Greenland. For the next six weeks, it would serve as the expedition’s “home base”.

The archeologists’ actual destination lay several kilometers up the coast, where a few years earlier, the soldiers of the Sirius Patrol, while surveying the Greenland coastline with their dog sleigh team, had stumbled upon something unusual.

As Noelle picked her way around large half-frozen puddles, following Doctor Lindt and the rest of the interns to the main building of the Villum research station, easily the largest building on this tiny base, she couldn’t help wondering about the soldiers’ first reaction to their find. They obviously hadn’t dismissed it as just a frozen cave or a lair of some large arctic predator. Any sign of civilization this far up north, other than their own tiny base, must have come as a shock.

And the frozen tunnel the soldiers had discovered definitely hadn’t been built by polar bears. A handful of Danish archeologists had examined the soldiers’ find the previous summer, before the cold temperatures had forced them to decamp back to the continent, and declared it “extraordinary” and possibly capable of upending existing history canons.

“So, when are we actually going to the dig?” asked Brian, as he dragged his suitcase up the few steps of the research station building.

Malu Petersen, a PhD candidate from the University of Copenhagen, dropped her suitcase and backpack on the porch and snorted. “Newbies!” she said, throwing her long, shiny black hair over one shoulder and crouching down. She unzipped her backpack and rifled through it. “You’re not going anywhere until you complete your survival training with Sergeant Andersen.” She pulled out a pair of shoes and raised an eyebrow at the interns. “You read the base rules, right? So, what are you waiting for? Get your indoor shoes out. Here, we like to keep the outdoors, well, out.”

Doctor Lindt nodded. “The same rules apply at the dig, when you go inside the mobile lab. And I want you all to take the training with Sergeant Andersen seriously. We are hundreds of kilometers away from the nearest town, so even in emergencies, help may take hours, if not days, to arrive.”

Brian, who had had the interns cracking up with his outrageous alien theories on their two flights over, was all serious now. “Of course. And I’ve had plenty of experience with cold weather, living in Minnesota and all.”

Malu, who had already changed her shoes, held the door open. She shook her head. “It’s not the same. I was born and raised in Greenland, but things are quite different in my home town, a thousand kilometers south of here. We have internet. And roads. And a hospital.”

Needless to say, Station Nord had none of those. No cell phone reception, either. So, sharing all those pictures of amazing archeological discoveries and maybe, if Noelle was lucky, a snapshot or two of a polar bear, would have to wait until they all got back to Europe.

“Things are even more basic at the dig,” said Doctor Lindt, ushering the interns through the door. She motioned to what had to be the hub of the building, furnished like a living-room-slash-kitchenette, with a sofa and several comfy armchairs grouped around a coffee table. “Compared to our trailer, this is fancy. Last year, there were only five of us, so we lived in the mobile lab on-site, and only came here for supplies every few days. This time, we will rotate between the mobile lab and Station Nord, since the trailer can only fit a handful of people comfortably.”

Malu cracked a smile. “Consider yourselves lucky. The showers at Station Nord are way better than in the trailer.”

Malu would know, of course. She had been a member of the previous expedition, together with Doctor Lindt and Professor Eriksen, who had also signed up to work at the dig this summer. But unlike the previous expedition that consisted of a handful of Danish archeologists, this new one was bankrolled by several prominent archeological societies on both sides of the Atlantic and included participants from five different countries: three professors, one PhD candidate, and five interns.

And only one of the interns wasn’t an archeologist. All those universities and archeological societies sponsoring the excavation had required the expedition’s paperwork to be filed in English, and Noelle, a linguistics major, was definitely qualified to do that. She wasn’t afraid of getting her hands dirty, much less of paperwork.

Her new coworkers didn’t need to know what she was afraid of.

She pushed that thought away. Nightmares had a lot less power in a place where the sun wouldn’t set at all for weeks. Gorgeous views of icebergs in July, lots of fresh air, and good old hard labor at the dig practically guaranteed that she would fall into dreamless sleep the minute her head hit the pillow at the end of each day. Hopefully.

She followed Doctor Lindt and the rest of the group to the back of the building. Doctor Lindt nodded to several people in passing. Scientists, probably. Apparently, summer was a busy season for arctic research of all kinds.

The head of the expedition stopped at the end of the corridor. “We’ll work out a rotation schedule later, but tonight, you’re all staying here. Rest up before the real work starts tomorrow. Besides, Professor Eriksen, Professor Dahlberg, and I prepared a presentation to show you what to expect at the dig.” She cracked a smile. “A picture is worth a thousand words, right?”

“Not the one we got,” grumbled Brian.

He had a point: the single artifact photo in the flyer for the expedition had featured a bunch of rusty nails and jagged ceramic pieces. What was so special about them, other than they had been found thousands of miles away from any known civilizations?

Doctor Lindt shrugged. “It was an accurate ‘before’ picture. But now, we have the newest images from the lab in Copenhagen.” She flashed a grin. “Oh, and Professor Eriksen found something really interesting inside the tunnel this morning, and took a few pictures for our presentation.”

Something cooler than rusty nails and broken dishes? Noelle was all ears.

Edita, a tall blonde, opened her mouth, but Doctor Lindt held up her hand. “I don’t want to ruin the surprise. You all have to wait a bit.”

There was a collective sigh of disappointment, and Malu rolled her eyes. “Now imagine waiting a whole year to return to the place where you just scratched the surface of at least a few ancient mysteries.” She smiled, wistful. “If we keep this up, maybe I can finally convince the University of Greenland to open their own archeology department. Nothing against the University of Copenhagen, but Greenland is my home.”

Noelle couldn’t help feeling a bit envious. Malu knew where she belonged, as did the rest of Noelle’s new co-workers. Edita, Noelle’s new roommate, hailed from Lithuania. Brian came from Minnesota, and Alex and another young archeologist, Jan, from Norway. Things weren’t as clear-cut for Noelle herself, who had grown up on various US military bases around the world, with an American father and a German mother.

To her, the question “Where are you from?” didn’t have a simple answer. Noelle always had to specify what exactly people wanted to know: where she was born? Where she started kindergarten? Or maybe they wanted to know where she graduated high school? Because those three places weren’t even on the same continent.

But Noelle did have something in common with the rest of the expedition members: she was just as ready to dig into those mysteries hiding in the ancient tunnel. Adventure was in her blood, and she wouldn’t let anyone or anything, not even the horror of last summer, take it away from her.

***

At the tiny Station Nord cafeteria, the interns had barely finished their mashed potatoes and something that looked like a cross between Salisbury steaks and German Frikadellen, when Malu introduced them to Sergeant Andersen, a tall man in Danish military uniform.

“Have fun!” she said with a mischievous smile, heading out.

Fun. As if. The gruff sergeant didn’t look like he knew what that word meant. Noelle, no stranger to the ways the military ran things, braced herself for a long, slow “death by PowerPoint”.

To her relief, Sergeant Andersen believed in a more hands-on approach. The muddy boots went back on, and the interns got busy building an emergency shelter right outside the Quonset hut-like garage where the soldiers stored ATVs and emergency equipment. Once they were done with that, the sergeant had them practice with emergency beacons and radios, while he walked around with a clipboard and checked items off his long list.

Their work was punctuated by barking in the distance. When the interns asked about the Sirius Patrol dog teams, Sergeant Andersen’s response was, predictably, short and to the point.

“The dogs don’t pull sleighs in summer,” he said. “And they are working dogs, not pets. Don’t feed them, don’t pet them, just… don’t.”

The gruff sergeant conceded that snapping a picture of the dogs was okay. From a distance, he emphasized, then not-so-subtly directed the interns’ attention back to the emergency beacons, quizzing them on the correct ways of using them, as well as on the base safety rules.

Finally, when the interns packed up and put everything away, Sergeant Andersen motioned them to a folding table with a long box on it.

“Most of you indicated on your application forms that you know how to handle firearms,” he said, opening the box to reveal a heavy, old-school-looking rifle inside.

Brian whistled. “Cool! We get to shoot, too?” He stepped closer, looking hopeful, but the sergeant held up his hand.

“Not today. Hopefully, not at all during your entire stay. But your excavation site is almost ten kilometers away from Station Nord. You may need to defend yourselves against, say, an animal attack, until help arrives.” He frowned. “Even though it’s unlikely where you’re going.” He motioned to the weapon on the table. “Your professors are all trained on this type of rifle, modified for use in the Arctic, but, just in case, I’ll walk you through the basics.”

Needless to say, the sergeant wouldn’t even let them touch the rifle, while he pointed out different parts and explained the differences between this particular weapon and the ones used elsewhere, like in the military, or by civilian hunters.

Judging by the questions the other interns peppered him with, they all had at least a working knowledge of firearms. It turned out that Edita came from a long line of hunters and snipers and had accompanied her grandfather on multiple hunting trips growing up.

Noelle stifled a groan. Unlike Edita, she was descended from at least three generations of nearsighted people on her mother’s side. And even though her father, a combat veteran, could probably shoot a rifle standing, kneeling, or lying down, Noelle herself was completely useless with firearms, even with her glasses on.

And yes, she was probably the only expedition member who had answered “no” to the question about firearms skills on the application form. Great. She wasn’t just the smallest and weakest member of the expedition, but also the one with the fewest survival skills, at least the ones that mattered here. Noelle still remembered how to use a gas mask from emergency drills on several bases, but what good would it do in the icy desert?

Sergeant Andersen finally put away the rifle and nodded to the interns. “We’re done for today.”

Brian raised his hand. “One more question: why did you say that animal attacks are unlikely where we’re going?”

“Animals seem to avoid that place,” replied the sergeant with a frown. “Even our dogs act strange when they get close to it. How do you think the soldiers found that tunnel?”

Hmm. Why would the arctic wildlife avoid a huge, cave-like opening in the rock that could offer them shelter from the harsh elements? And why would the soldiers’ dogs act strange around it?

Since the gruff sergeant refused to elaborate, Noelle hoped the professors would.

And she’d bet Brian was way off with his wild theories of aliens and ancient magic.