The human-built ship, a sleek, dark arrow against the blinding white, descended silently through the frigid Antarctic air.
Below them, vast, pristine plains of ice stretched to the horizon, dotted with the subtle, unsuspecting signs of multiple national research bases – isolated islands of human endeavor, oblivious to the alien presence. The vessel, cloaked by an advanced human-developed stealth field, shimmered faintly from within, a ghost in the hostile environment, invisible to every sensor and detection method Earth's nations possessed.
Their target was not a landing strip or a hidden hangar, but the largest known hole in the Antarctic continent – a colossal, perfectly circular chasm, hidden by ancient glacial formations and obscured by a complex network of electromagnetic interference fields. The descent was deep, plunging them into a vast, hidden starport carved from the very ice and rock.
