Repairs were needed for the mechs. Sparks from welding torches bounced off the floor while cranes and gurneys zigzagged above. A few of the Zephyrs had extensive interior refits. Apparently they were shipped with an older flight suite , making them only half as effective. Oddly,there were only four of the necessary seven to fill out the squadron.
"Colonel, where are the rest of the mechs? Theres three Zephyrs missing" , Ryuki asked Tevat as he observed the repairs. "Mission killed", he replied.
"Sir, if they're mission killed why arent they being repaired?". He had seen units that were MK'd and they would usually be repaired when the salvage crawlers picked them up. Only when they were deep in enemy territory would they be left behind. "Whats left of them is deep in the dig site. No point trying to haul them back up. If ya find em ,make sure they've been destroyed" ,the colonel replied.
Ryuki sighed. The colonel seemed to be on his last legs. Disinterest was probably the last stage till full on withdrawal. And when that happens, the base will be in chaos. Well it would be, Ryuki thought, if there were more than a handful of people. It seemed if the food and booze kept coming, no one would care one bit. Unluckily for him and his team,they would be out in the middle of an ever-raging snow storm in a cold and remote outpost.
"Sir, we'll be taking the Thunderhammer along with us" Ryuki asked. A terse "sure" was the only response.
The snow-storm howled outside louder than the machinery bolting and welding inside. Water dripped off the sides of the slanted facade ,freezing swiftly into channels of ice. The hot air, pumped through vents, turned to a heavy mist as it condensed on contact with the outside. Wafting plumes of thick water vapor scurried along the hard packed snow , snaking between ice dunes and snow drifts. Isolated. It was all on a separate plane, Ryuki thought. No life, no movement save for the shifting white snakes.
The entire planet felt like a trap. There was no place to fall back on. If the base went cold, that was it. A slow freezing death as the sleet slowly layered on top of you. An ice coffin buried under solid permafrost. He kept asking, why. Why is a base here, why are their heavy mechs here? Why even bother being here when forgetting to charge you batteries meant turn into a human popsicle?
Growling storm overwhelmed whatever sounds the mechs would make. Static was all he could hear from inside the pilots nest. Winds pushed and pulled on every part of the machine. Each step was a precarious fight against nature.
"There's maybe fifty meters of visibility out here, thats an optimistic estimate" Barry said over the comm. Swirling tendrils of ice obscured even the basic shapes of the mechs. They had to walk single file, even going so far as having each place its hand on the shoulder of the mech in front of them, just to keep from seperating.
"Radar is all frakked up man. Radio is fugged too" Ross said. "Thank Jebus that we have point to point comms still working". The laser comms were set to their highest power available. Close proximity to each other meant it would only sound like a radio sitting at the bottom of an ocean.
"Do not lose contact with Dizzy. She needs to have constant comms with us. Remember, if we lose the Thunderhammer, we lost half our fighting ability. We don't want those xenos or whatever to tear us apart because we're stupid enough to get lost out here" Ryuki said.
Shrill wails interspersed the baying winds of the storm. "Thats em, either the guys who died out here or whatever killed em" Dizzy said. Wasp yelled incoherently in the background while Reaper exclaimed "Game over!". It was probably not the best idea to have all three of them in the same machine.
"Calm down, we haven't even seen anything", Ryuki said.
The Thunderhammer was stripped of its weapons except for a few under-slung machine gun cluster turrets. A large sled was hitched to its hind , carrying the automatic construction drones and the modular outpost. Its flaw though was its speed. Slow as a moving glacier , compared to the Zephyrs. Under normal circumstances, it was basically an arsenal landship. Today ,though, it was our mule.
"How's the Lidar ? We still have contact laser relay comms with Dizzy's team?" Ryuki asked. Ross queried the computers, running diagnostics and checking missed alerts. "We're good sir, Dizzy is still going on about UFO's though" , he replied. "Do you want me to relay their gibberish to you sir?".
"No no, no" Ryuki said emphatically.
Inertial guidance was the only method for navigation. The lack of satellites and preponderance of intense interference made any other method nigh useless. Ryuki tapped his nav screen, a force of habit he usually explained. He thumbed through the many displays and readouts till the map pulled up. The lidar showed all five units in a nearly straight line heading towards the dig site. Slowly they approached the recon point.
"So its settled right, north will be towards the dig site from HQ?" Wasp asked. "Might as well be, no one ever told us which directions the poles were", Barry replied.
The trek was a slog through deep snow and rock ice. Footprints soon turned back into a blank white as the snow landed thick on the ground. Inside their suits, the tendrils of cold permeated through the miniscule spaces between the armor plates. Body perspiration became sticky and damp . A few choice words slipped through Barry's ever running mouth.
Visibility had effectively disappeared inside the storm. The sky and the ground looked the same. Only ground penetrating radar kept them from blindly falling off the edge of a cliff. Ryuki took a long drink from his water bota, a souvenir from his few visits back to Earth.
He glanced at the nav display. A few more kilometers to the waypoint. The construction equipment would be released to do their thing while the rest of them would secure the perimeter. In this weather, the perimeter may as well stretch around the equator. Ryuki sighed , his mind too exhausted to say anything inspirational.
The Zephyrs were in their element. The harsh environment and near isolation made their NBC systems even more useful. Though designed for nuclear and biochem warfare , the life-support system was unperturbed . Whether in deep space or deep in snow, the Zephyr would function as it always did. They seemed to be impenetrable walls between life and death. The cold though ,that was a problem.
Slush formed under their metal feet. It seemed as if the snow was liquefying. A low rumble echoed through their pilots' nests. Now they slowed their pace, unsure of what was happening under their feet. "Earthquake!" Barry yelled. The one-way laser relay kept his high pitched voice from propagating through the communication lines.
He was right though partially. The ground was moving, now stronger than before. Snow shifted around them like quicksand but the rumbling ended before they sank completely. Ryuki in the lead unit began to dig up out then pulling the others up. The spider-tank had an easier time, using its extra legs to push itself back onto the surface.
"This is getting worse by the minute" Barry complained again. "We better get that recon post on stilts or something" he said.
"Dont worry, the foundation will be wide enough to keep itself from sinking. At worst we'll just have to learn how to build snow shoes for our mechs" , Karin said back down the relay.
The storm cleared enough to show the outlines of a large structure in the distance. It was a tower sitting on top of a slopped alcove dug into the snow. Solid metal gates blocked the entrance that seemed to extend deep underground. Behind it though was a jagged crag of ice and rock, nearly as large as the headquarters they had trekked from. "There it is, the dig site, which means we're near about the recon waypoint. Wasp, head to the waypoint, Barry you're going with them. Karin, Ross, you two come with me. Everyone update your maps", Ryuki called out. "Do not get frakkin lost. I will not come looking for you" he said moments later.
A break in the clouds brought a sickly brightness to the surroundings. Light reflected off the ground to give it a pale glow. The muffled steps of the Zephyrs pounded the path around the dig site. Karin noted the structure as they passed it. "Looks like a giant elevator shaft. They might be deep underground", Karin said.
Ryuki understood that under the kilometer thick snow was the rocky surface of Glacius The giant elevator bored through the solid surface, like a worm working its way through the core of an apple. Strange though that the entrance was left unguarded.
As the moved about, they planted motion beacons into the ground. The large strobing light swept with a pale glow while its long thin antenna suffered under the strong winds. Anything that passed overland would set off the beacons.
Marching around the site revealed little. Their patrol was little more than a formality. Shrubs and tiny furry animals were as dangerous to them as a hot water poured onto their mechs. Fatigue set in all of them. Journeying to the site had sapped their patience and the nearly blank terrain left them with little to their imagination.
Construction drones scurried along the sided of the tank. Its cannon had been replaced with a construction crane, which slowly placed foundations and girders for the drones to bolt and weld together. Most of the building was already pre-constructed , leaving the tank crew with the simple job of moving and placing the pieces. It began to fit together like a jigsaw puzzle and soon enough the outpost turned from a skeleton to drab blocky outcropping in the snow.
Wasp, Reaper and Dizzy sat idly as the automated system whirred. The clicking sound of nuclear hardened CRT monitors and the the wheezing of the HVAC system were all they could hear inside the armored bridge of the Thunderhammer.
As uneventful as it seemed, tense feelings were abound. Communications were nonexistent. Visual confirmation was all but impossible. It was abject isolation, buried inside a pocket world where this was all that was. Civilization was just a glimmering shaft of light that died between the folds of the clouds.
The patrol was approaching the outpost. Sweat and frustration had built up and the sight of a box only big enough for a few people to live in was a sign of salvation to them. A radio array and laser antenna sat atop the roof, next to the air-conditioning block. A pair of large power cables snaked from the back of the Thunderhammer into the side of the building. The Thunderhammer lay on its belly while Barry's Zephyr knelt in front of the entrance. They too would need to struggle down their mechs without the help of gantry's or catwalks.
The entrance was a simple sliding door that lead into an airlock. To prevent temperature shock, the team had to spend a few minutes in it to adjust to the warmth gradually. When their time was up they appeared on the other side, holding sweaty clothing and the occasional sneeze. "Welcome home guys" Dizzy said with derision
The bare metal double bunks sat at one end of the large unsegmented room. On the other side were banks of monitors and computers, quietly recording everything. The locker modules were spacious, almost big enough to fit oneself into, but they brought little to fill them. In the middle, a single round table with chairs neatly rolled underneath.
Steam wafted into the main area from the only two showers inside the bunker. Even indoors with heat controls set as high as possible, the temperature still felt uncomfortably low. Ryuki's patrol team went first, their bodies in much need of refreshing water.
Dizzy and her team sat around the round table with a deck of cards lazily strewn across it. A game of poker quickly degraded into a near fist fight. It took only a few hours for them to become uncomfortable in each others presence.
The computer displays showed aerial radar scans and ground penetrating ultrasound images. The weather had damped the radio tower though, making radar difficult to use and communications even more so. Ryuki sat in front of them panels and controls, switching from one infoscreen to the next. Green lines raced along the screen with iridescent squares and circles popping up along their paths. Those were the seismic readings, which so far had proved innocuous.
But Ryuki was still uneasy. The remote isolation was disconcerting and the lack of contact with the science team was suspicious. The great elevator shaft they had seen seemed a bit too old to have been constructed alongside the base and the ice crag was a sore thumb in the midst of uniformly white terrain.
Time was difficult to tell. Not a break in the clouds could be seen and the darkness that permeated the air stayed unchanged. A clock showed it was nearing 6 PM , Earth standard time, though Earth time was useless on a planet where the sun never really rose.
Sleep was much appreciated by Ryuki and his team. A day that seemed to stretch into the horizon had sapped much of their determination and will, leaving them tired husks in search of quiet solace. The whistling winds seemed soothing by the time they headed for bed. White noise was what it was. Everything else was silenced by it, aside from latent tinitus that years of battlefield experience brought.
Those sensor beacons never noticed what was going on under them. Slight ,long tremors reverberated through the night. Impalpable yet even more dangerous than outright hostility. Beacons meant for solid ground sank into the ground. To the more attentive soldier, the change would have been stark. But fatigue makes one's mental clarity sluggish, blurring situational awareness.
The morning patrol circled around , following the flashing lights they had left behind the day before. Around they went, with little attention to their surroundings. A bit more of the dull gray elevator shaft was revealed . The icy skin of the crag didnt completely sheath the rocky surface like it did the day before. Little details that would have fallen into the crevices of faulty memory remained like spiky thorns in Ryuki's mind.
"Something's up, that rock is bigger than it was yesterday. The gate into the elevator shaft was left closed but its a little ajar" Ryuki said. Dizzy ,in Karin's place, spouted incoherent. Once her words strung together intelligibly , the thought still sounded inscrutable. "I knew it, that earthquake was them! It was them! They got into the dig site, we gotta go in there!" she yelled.
"Calm down, lets stay calm ok? We'll have to investigate but we'll have to be careful. Comms are still screwed up so if we go in we'll be going in blind. We're heading back to base to load up on gear" he said.
The outpost was slowly being buried under a snow drift when they came back. Snow mounds piled up around the Thunderhammer's legs and forming ice shards running down its back. No, they weren't being buried, they sunk, Ryuki thought. That earthquake the day before made the ground loose. Dumb dumb mistake, Ryuki muttered. He was unprepared and shocked at the extent of the descent.
He rushed into the bunker, covered in frost and cold sweat. "Get the Hammer up , cable up the outpost and pull it out of the snow" he said quickly. "Karin, get a thick gage coax cable ready, it needs to be a few kilometers long. There should be one on the Hammer", he said slower. His mind was rushing now, trying to figure out all the contingencies. How does one prepare for the unknown anyway?
Not enough was given to explain to them what was happening. They were tense and confused, but did what was ordered of them. Dizzy got back into the Thunderhammer with Wasp at the crane controls. Barry and Ross strung together high-tension cables onto the crane with the Zephyrs, using the boosters gingerly to speed up the process.
The coax cable sat on a giant spool. It wasn't thick enough for Ryuki but there were no other alternatives. Communications would be tough, with the thick crust blocking most radio signals. A deep sense of isolation dawned on Ryuki. A thin cable would be all that connected him to the surface. Limited batteries and fuel meant that if the worst would to happen, they would be completely defenseless.
A chill went up his spine. Perhaps it was the sweat flash freezing. Or it was the sense of dread.
Rocket pods were filled and magazines loaded. Jury rigged missile racks were strapped to the Zephyr legs, with even more rifles stored on chest mounted rails. Shields mounted to the shoulders, guns mounted to the hips. There was not meter of their machines not covered in weapons. Special night-ops optical visors were loaded onto the heads, with green and red spheres jutting out like smooth insect eyes. Extra tanks of fuel were slotted into the knee guards , just enough to sate Ryuki's paranoia.
With the Hammer struggling to pull the outpost out of the sinking snow and slush at their backs, Ryuki took Ross and Barry to the entrance of the dig site.
The gate had to be pulled open. Its motors had frozen over due to exposure. Frost had spread inside, like moss. Lights failed and flickered, leaving them to use their flood lights. Down a short ramp was the open platform of the elevator. Giant exposed gears sat atop of a sharp declining rail. The emergency lights strobed in the low light, revealing the faint light of the control panel.
Walking onto the platform activated its controls, allowing Ryuki to remotely activate it. The gears screeched against the rail before the platform jerked into motion. Slowly they descended, with the light dying above them and only the eerie shadows cast by their flood lights accompanied them down.
