Just fifteen years from now, the world has become polarized along ethnic and religious lines. Regional low-intensity wars have now been raging for thirty-five years. In the midst of the conflict, an Allied forces team from the 9th Mountain Squadron, being airlifted from the Northern Front for a long-awaited period of R&R, are shot down over the Nordic wilderness. With no way of communicating with the outside world, the aircraft’s captain, Natasha Kavolsky, and the commander, Major Alexander Burton, lead the squadron out of the wilderness only to discover that a genetically engineered plague virus has been unleashed leaving just one person in a thousand alive and that the Allies have responded with nuclear, chemical and biological weapons. Remnants of enemy forces are now roaming at will across Europe. When all seems lost, the squadron stumbles across a group of students, two of whom, against all odds come from the same French village. This discovery prompts the squadron’s two medical officers to recall research that showed people with a certain genetic mutation were immune to the plagues that swept across Europe in medieval times. But will this discovery mean the possibility of survivors, or is it just giving them false hope...?

Dan Jayson is the co-founder of an underwater search and salvage company. He is a Fellow of the Institute of Marine Engineers and served in the British Territorial Army. He is based in south-west London.