Summary: [NOVELLA.] Crash landed on an ice planet, shuttle in a burning ruin, Carver must overcome the whispered, sinister guilt pulsating in his head to help his team survive. Even if it means sacrificing his own life. Carver-centric. Post-CMS Roanoke. Developed with Ragnarok666. Updated Saturdays and Tuesdays.

Rating: M, for profanity & adult themes.

Disclaimer: I don't own Dead Space.

A/N: So, here we are again, dear readers. For clarity's sake, the story is written as though Carver and Isaac had fought alongside one another up until the Crozier crashes on Tau Volantis. There they are separated, and it is at this separation that our story picks up. Please enjoy.

DASHING THROUGH THE SNOW

Chapter 1

"Dad? Hey, Dad?" His son's young, energetic voice stirred him. "Dad, are you there?"

He was tired, bone-weary, dead on his feet. "Dill, I'm trying to sleep." Lips were numb, painfully cracked. "Trying to sleep…"

"Dad. You gotta wake up. The monsters are coming."

Outside his skull, diffused, he heard an inhuman roar that shattered any illusion pinning him. The darkness flew back as adrenaline surged. A fiery inferno danced around him, flames licking up, crackling along, the Crozier's buckled metallic sides. Smoke suffocated him; heat baked his skin. Miraculously, he was still clipped into his seat, but it was half torn off its stand and leaned him into the shattered controls. After three tries with his stiffened fingers, he managed to unclip his harness. Dizzied, he collapsed to his forearms and knees and coughed.

What happened?

Bits and pieces cohered in his brain as he viewed the Crozier's mangled carcass. Santos and Buckell, Ellie, Norton, and Isaac. They'd escaped the Roanoke, dropped like a rock from the flight-path, hitting clustered mines. Then alarms, violent jolts, Isaac yelling, a horrible crack, air sucked out of his lungs, and uncomfortable free fall. It had happened so fast. Isaac's torn section spiraled in one direction; they crashed in the other.

"Carver? Carver, you alive, soldier?"

His ears rang, and based on the throb in his brain, he was sure he'd cracked open his head. He thought he might puke. As he was hauled to his feet, his stomach did an unhappy heave.

Norton's broad nose jutted out from his pale face. Blue eyes squinted over a mean scowl. "You're not too worse for wear. C'mon. I need your help with Buckell. He's trapped."

He said nothing in reply, but chose to follow the captain to a debris heap- -metal which looked like the hull, crumpled, jumbled with chunks of black mineral rock. A leg stuck out from under it. Santos hunched to peer between the metal jumble, shouted for Buckell. His feeble response was swept away in the wind.

Norton stood opposite with Santos to the side. "Grab under the top. We lift up on three."

Carver scrabbled his fingertips for purchase, hooked his first knuckle into a fissure. At Norton's nod, they strained their backs and shoulders and biceps to move the largest top piece aside. They grunted and grit their teeth as they flung off the heavy metal and stone. Enough of the weight was removed that Buckell could shove away more solid hunks and pieces. Blood soaked the man's shirt under his arm.

Carver stepped back. Every thought, every action felt detached, removed, under the buzz inside his ears. His son and wife loomed in the flames. Distant figures. Dylan. Damara? I can't…I can't hear you. Where are you? He let Santos guide him to a roaring fuel fire and ease him to his haunches. There was heat and gasoline stink and a bitter, biting coldness where the fire couldn't reach. So this is Tau Volantis.

His harness and suit had protected him from any serious trauma, but ever since Uxor, he'd had a splitting headache. It made any other ache or pain pale in comparison. Sometimes the pain shifted like a nebulous, oily mass inside his brain. He wished he could get relief from that throb. For something to do, he started the diagnostics program on his suit and waited. After a dozen pings, he canceled the diagnostic since the damage was too extensive for any repairs anyway.

Buckell groaned beside him as Santos leaned to examine the bleeding wound. From where he sat, he could see Santos's whole body tremble. In the cold, he was sure her body temperature had plummeted. All of them were in danger of hypothermia, and all of them knew it. The protective soldier in him forced him to stand, to man up. Weapons. Ammo. Useful supplies. Shelter. Wind tore between the jutted teeth of the valley, a constant, high-pitched howl. It swirled up snow, blasted it into his cheeks and eyes, a beast with insatiable hunger. Visibility was next to nothing.

Only half-recovered, Carver trudged into the broken hull to sift through any remaining compartments and lockers. Anything to keep his mind and hands busy. He skirted around Rosen's corpse, head shorn from debris. Locke had been sucked out into atmosphere. Where her body lay, no one would know.

And no one will know where your body will lay, John Carver. The dark, boiling sibilation seared into his numbed mind. He did his best to shake free of the claws. No one will care enough to search.

Shut up and leave me alone.

After a methodical search, he found an undamaged rifle. The ammo counter showed full. Then near the shorn nose, mounted on the wall, was a full container of rescue flares. Aside from these findings, everything else had been destroyed from the crash and resultant explosions. No food, no water, no warm or protective gear. They would have to scavenge as they went. Following this conclusion, his suit finished running the check- -everything seemed in working order.

From behind him, Ellie stormed onto the gutted deck, Norton one step behind her. Wherever they stepped creaked. "No, Robert. I can't give up. Just let me do this!" She looked close to tears, frantic, so Carver said nothing and stood aside to give her room to pace or an escape from Norton's presence. As a married man, he implicitly understood her need.

"Ellie! Ellie," Norton appealed to her, but Santos called his attention and he huffed. "Ellie, we're not through talking about this. Whatever you're doing, hurry it up. We gotta get somewhere warm." He shook his head with frustration at Ellie's turned back before leaving to aide Santos.

When Ellie moved for a vid-screen that showed green, she noticed him in the shadows and jolted back. "Oh God! Carver!" When she recovered, her fear morphed into warm concern. "Are you all right?" Dark smudges marred her skin and purplish half-moons drooped under her mismatched eyes. The Roanoke had not been kind to her.

"I'm alive." He stepped aside so she could access the vid-screen, already knowing the answer to his next question. "Isaac's not in the wreckage?"

She shook her head. "No. He's not. But he's alive. I can feel it."

"He's a tough bastard," Carver admitted. Their experiences fighting off the Circle on Lunar Horizons were fresh and vivid in his mind. Then both Danik's crew and the Necromorphs that came when the Marker activated, plus the work they'd done together to get the Crozier up and running so that they could land on Tau Volantis. Grudging respect flickered. "He'll be alive and searching for you."

Carver held no illusions that his life mattered to Isaac. His or Norton's or the others. Only Ellie's life mattered to Isaac, and Carver could understand that. Hell, he'd feel the same if it was his family stranded, alone and without protection. "If you're leaving a message, you better do it. Norton's in a rotten mood as it is."

"Thank you." A faint smile shone, but faded in an instant. She leaned over the vid-screen and selected the record option. Carver discreetly exited to support Buckell as he lumbered to his feet, features grim. Not even his meaty hands could cover the laceration he tried to hide.

Behind them, Ellie spoke to the screen. "Isaac, if you find this…God, I hope you find this-"

Impatient, Santos rushed up to grab her shoulder and tug. "Ellie! Come on! We're freezing to death out here!"

"I'm coming!" But she returned to the recording, determined to speak her mind. "We're on our way to find some shelter, but I'm gonna leave you this trail of flares-"

Norton, his tone lashing with frustration, interrupted her. "The man's dead, Ellie! Let's go!"

"Isaac…please, be alive."

"Come on," Norton said and yanked Ellie away from the recording. She gave in to Norton.

Being the one with the gun and a more active military lifestyle, Carver took up point. He had an itch between his shoulder blades that suggested a sinister life force prepping an attack. Tau Volantis had had plenty of time to marinate and evolve the Necromorph virus. Whatever the threat, he hoped they had similar weakness to what he faced before. He slogged past Norton, who brought up the rear, his face a tempestuous thundercloud. Santos's small frame upheld Buckell's weight, and Ellie had slipped under his other arm to balance him and help ease Santos's load. All three's features were dour.

"Ellie! We are well and truly screwed here," Norton called over the harsh wind. "When are you gonna admit this mission is FUBAR?"

"Now is not the time." Santos, not Ellie, responded. "Buckell's in a bad way, and we'll all die of hypothermia and exposure if we don't secure a shelter soon."

"Yeah, when is the time?" Norton spat. No one responded to him.

Santos was right. Even in his suit, Carver felt the wind's icy fingers. They searched for chinks in his armor, any weakness, and found it. Under the protective layer, his skin shriveled and rippled with pimples. Their feet crunched over the veined black mineral laced with ice. Where there was deeper snow, the crunches became muffled. Overhead, great uneven spires lurched from the ground and crowded over the small group.

Through the miasma of snow, ice, and wind, they negotiated the slick rock. Ellie dropped the flares within line of sight, so that the soft red would mark a clear path. The group came to a downhill slope, and even with the swirled snow, Carver noticed a rusted, bulbous shape under a snowy white blanket. Some sort of bunker? Whatever it was, it was shelter.

"We've got an installation up ahead. Be careful on the path. It's tricky," he called out. He waited at the bottom of the decline, his rifle to his shoulder. That omnipresent evil lingered here, hovering, stalking.

To the left, the installation was an overgrown caterpillar that ran alongside what seemed to be another cliff. An orange SCAF snow tractor huddled along the belly of the facility, abandoned. The center avenue was carpeted with soft snow that curved next to a high wall of that black Tau Volantis rock.

Tattered olive-drab flaps fluttered in the high wind, a hopeless flag over some corrugated metal. The shape and design of it looked like a set of barracks. But as they came closer, screams and guttural roars joined the wind's sonorous whistle.

Carver saw the first one as it took shape in the haze. His stomach plummeted to his toes. The thing sprinted, long blade-tipped limbs swinging, camouflaged with white snow gear. And it was as nightmarish as ever, but familiar. These he knew how to neutralize. Carver's finger, curled on the trigger, squeezed, but his forefinger had numbed. Shit. His controlled burst lasted longer than he intended, and the wasted bullets angered him.

In that second, however, the Necromorph's leg flew off, black fluid splattering, leaving the torso to scrabble forward on spindly forearms. Its face was a gaping desecration of humanity left to decay on this frozen hellhole for 200 years. Not a pretty picture, to say the least. Carver dropped his aim to activate his TK, snatching the sharp bone from the Necromorph's forearm; a trick learned from Isaac to conserve ammo. He took special pleasure in spearing it with its own weapon.

The firefight had attracted attention. A raw, overwhelming racket rose around them.

"There's more! We have to run for it!" Norton yelled. He hauled Ellie behind him, her arm a bridge between them. Santos, loyal and fierce, kept pace with Buckell. "Hurry it up!"

Carver swung around to keep the group in his sites. Norton had rushed further ahead, had released Ellie's arm. Had surged into a frantic sprint. Where was he running to? From Carver's vantage, the dark smudge up ahead looked to be a dead end where a precipice yawned out. With the wind and snow, he couldn't be sure.

Snow rippled and waved on the ground, disrupted into a shallow channel. Deeply disturbed, Carver watched as a Necromorph exploded from under the snow. A slasher. It honed in on Norton, within meters' reach. The thing leapt forward like a tarantula after a juicy morsel. Carver was too slow in bringing up the gun to target it.

Somehow, Norton lunged out of the blades' range, his shoulder tucked, and slammed against some corrugated metal panels with a resounding bang. This thin metal was the single barricade between Norton and a long swan dive over a cliff. Carver blasted apart the thing's knees, putting it to the ground. Black slurry sprayed the virginal white. But the slasher roared once before he severed the limb poised to spear Norton.

Around them fevered roars and screams clamored closer, louder, chilling already chilled blood. A ladder rose up to a level overhead to the left. Carver hauled Norton to his feet and shoved him to the grotty rungs. He didn't know where it led, but it was better than nothing.

"Up there!" He boosted up Norton, kept his rifle hugged to his shoulder. Panic jittered inside him. "Move, people. Move!"

One Necromorph ventured into visibility. Carver's bullets sliced apart the desiccated flesh, severed the femur to set the corpse flailing for balance. It toppled over the cliff's edge, arms spin-wheeling. Then another and another crept closer, cautious, calculating, and the panic spread through his mortal chest. Yet he remained calm enough to blast the bloodied and ragged legs to hinder them. From behind, his group one-by-one scaled the ladder until he was clear. He lobbed stasis in the middle of those vicious monsters, slowed them. During those precious seconds, he let down his guard to haul ass up the rungs.

The Necromorphs swarmed the ladder's base. Dozens of warped faces screamed at him in shrill frustration. Among them, Damara and Dylan watched, their eyes sad, their bodies as solid as the rock under their feet. Carver glimpsed them and then they were gone.

A/N: Hey, Dead Space lovers! It's a really a pleasure to be writing Dead Space again. I hope you enjoy this new novella. Let me know thoughts & comments. See you next time.