The Nexus Colony

The Nexus Colony, G.F. Schreader, Outskirts Press, 2007

This story is set in present-day Antarctica, where The Ice is almost a living thing that pervades all aspects of daily life. On a scientific mission, unknown items are found embedded in the ice. They are brought back to McMurdo base as scientific oddities, then quickly snatched up by the US Government when they are found to be not of human origin. Immediately, the bureaucratic nonsense begins. Should the high-level expedition to see what else can be found be military-run or government-run? Should the scientists who found the artifacts be included? The problem with trying to run a top-secret anything in Antarctica is that, in a small world like that, nothing stays secret for very long.

The expedition is led by Colonel Abbott, someone with considerable experience concerning retrieved
spaceships. While checking a nearby crevasse for stability, Mike Ruger, mountaineer and the group's
Antarctic survival expert, finds a very large something buried many feet under the ice. After much diligent digging and ice-chopping, an entrance is found into a large alien spaceship. In one of the ship's inner rooms, Abbott and Ruger finally meet the aliens. They are suddenly consumed by a feeling of absolute, primal terror. It's the alien's way of saying that the sooner the humans leave (not just the ship, but the whole area), the better. On the military transport plane taking the members of the group back to McMurdo, the aliens are, shall we say, not yet done with them.

The author has a background in military intelligence, and is a lifelong UFO enthusiast. He must have done a lot of research on living in Antarctica, because this scores very high in the Plausible and Feels Real department. It's a thrilling story, too. Not all aliens have any desire to talk to humans.