The smoldering remains were surrounded by fast rising steam. The fires continued to burn between the knocked-down mechs. The hurried pace of the team belied the creeping fear that stalked them from out of the dancing shadows cast by the dormant machines. The fire played against the icicles, reflecting light into their electronic eyes as their electro-optical sensors attempted to keep watch of any minute movement. The sleds were loaded as high as possible with fuel tanks and munitions. Unfortunately, food was not stockpiled in the underground hangar.
"We've got about two weeks worth of supplies that we scavenged from here and topside. If rescue doesn't come soon, then..." Barry trailed off.
There were murmurs of discontent mixed with anxiety.
The freight elevator slowly descended. The light from the surface grew dim. Below them the darkness expanded. Their own high powered lights were too weak to penetrate the darkness. More sounds of cracking ice, all around them, left them with a vague sense of dread, as if the world was on the brink of collapsing on them. Shudders from the platform kept them from becoming complacent. Dizzy's fear of heights kept her eyes fixed forward while Reaper and Wasp imagined what was lurking in the darkness.
A sound, like lightning , crackled through the air. The tectonic plates of the planetoid were being aggravated by the tidal forces between it and the gas giant it orbited. It must have been a natural occurrence then but it wasn't any less precarious. Still , if that were the case, then the ice cavern should have collapsed. Ryuki wondered why such an expansive chamber could still stand. The thought of dying under the weight of ice suspended above him was a nagging one. It was best not to think to hard into it, Ryuki convinced himself.
The rickety platform moved slowly down. The first group had already set up camp at the bottom by now, the captain surmised. Next to him,the Thunderhammer was lit up like a sky scraper. Every one of its lights were on, in an attempt to pierce the darkness surrounding them. No good. It was like the depths of the ocean, all light sucked up by the darkness, consumed to never be seen again. Air pressure was increasing too. As they passed further down, the air massed above them creating a wall of pressure that lay a heavy weight across their shoulders and caused many to feel their ear drums compress.
Still further down,the utter darkness turned foreboding. Distant thumps as ice broke reached them as dull knocks. The platform shook more, its track surely reaching the end of its life expectancy. The brakes engaged ;the descent slowed imperceptibly. It would take another half hour to reach to a full stop.
Below them they could see the dim spotlights of the camp. Thermal imaging showed the team had arrived still alive. Strange thought ,to think that they would have died on the way down. That was the shadows, their slender tendrils gripping the mind with what ifs. The platform vibrated and came to an abrupt halt. The camp sat surrounded by barren plains. Nothing but ice. So where exactly was this elevator supposed to lead to, Ryuki wondered.
Even with the floodlights , it was difficult to see farther than a few meters. No wind left the cavern ominously quiet with only the cracking of ice to relieve the stark silence. Cold air seeped into their mechs. Their envirosuits,bulky as they were, had less luck preventing the biting chill from spreading. Being deep underground though shielded them from the frosty gusts and the tents ,with the billowing air pockets, stayed warm.
Only the mechs were an issue so far. As they functioned, the dissipated heat warmed the air around them. Dew condensed into the crevices and joints, threatening to crack even the most hardened armor should the water froze.
The spider-tanks towed with them a set of mobile hangars. These structures lay flat like plates , with tube outlets jutting out from them. Those outlets, when filled with a nanofluid would feed into constricted metal tubes. The tiny nanomachines would deposit on them , with the iron solution and build out the tubes into metal beams. The metal tubes would lift themselves on the pressure of the fluid and then solidify as the ferromagnetic nanofluid went to work.
Two large hangars sprang up after two minutes of being fed with the fluid. Their walls were filled with air pockets, a honeycomb of heated oxygen between two thin metal skins. Heated by the mech exhaust, the hangars kept the frost at bay.
The camp was fifty meters from the hangars. A central structure,similar in construction as the hangars, stood in the middle of the smaller tents. Its bulbous shape poked out from the ground with a single entrance, gated with an airlock. Inside were crates of weapons and armor. The food was kept in a separate storage shed, just to be safe .
The team gathered around a makeshift fire pit with their still gloved hands stretching palm first to the fire. Sneezes marked the deteriorating health with the cold shivers marking the onset of exhaustion. Ryuki looked at their sullen faces through the windows in their helmets. A dim outlook set in,amongst them and himself. They weren't going to make it. There was no other way to think of it. Not to them,surrounded in darkness with only the heat of the fire to keep them warm.
The first thing then was to raise their spirits. Food ,good hearty food. Their rations included prepared meals, not like the rations they would normally have. Their outpost was to be semi-permanent and with that came halfway decent meals. A small group brought back stacks of read-to-heat meals. The fire pit was topped with a grill for cooking the plates of food inside their plastophene packages.
It was the first time since the outpost was built that they had a chance to eat sitting down. There were plates of all-beef steaks and mashed potatoes, the noticeably thick steam forming ribbons in the air. Dessert was warm apple pies with real diced apples in the filling.
The warm food distracted them from the obstacles they faced. Their rations would dwindle. Their equipment become unusable. The warmth escaping their bodies, the ticking clock of hypothermia.
Few words were exchanged. What was there to talk about? There was no small talk to be had. Only a plan would get them to speak. And without one they all dragged themselves to their tents. That night they slept at the mercy of the freezing air.
Sleep came fast. The morning,from what their watches told them, brought a new problem. The cold had left their muscles aching. Moving was hard and painful. The days of nearly constant activity in below freezing temperatures had wreaked havoc on their bodies.
"If I don't get any coffee in me, I don't think I'll be able to get out of my sleeping bag" , Barry said to Ryuki in their tent. Great hunger too caught up to them along with the after effects of exhaustion. Their limited supplies required Ryuki to clamp down on them.
"This isn't a vacation. This food has to last us for a long time. Our first goal is to find whatever was draining the reactor. Our second goal is to stay alive till rescue arrives" he said to the gathered team for their morning meal. "We need to be cautious about this. I don't want to restrain anyone for eating so remember the situation we're in. Guys, we need unit cohesion if we want to survive this" he finished.
"I guess we can keel over after rescue arrives" someone murmured in the crowd.
Dizzy and Wasp were left to guard duty inside the Zephyrs. Karin remained to check the damage to the mechs. The EMP shock wave was strong enough to spark the electronic valves of the fuel tanks, the damage they could have done to their equipment needed checking.
The two remaining zephyrs went out with two buggies. Ross and Barry took the mechs while Ryuki and Reaper rode the buggies. Venturing beyond the camp brought them into the heart of darkness. The buggies pulled ahead to scout out the path while the mechs stayed behind waiting for the go-signal.
All they found was nothingness. The bare ground, with no sign of anything ever being there taunted them. An elevator that led to nowhere, deep inside the flat plains of nothingness, what a joke, Barry thought. It was the epitome of a bug hunt. Searching for something that probably didn't exist dampened any kind of hope they had.
No, Ryuki thought. "We're going to keep going till we find something. If your mechs need any supplies , head back now. We're going to be out here for awhile" he radioed. Something was down there. It was big enough to send a multi-terawatt reactor to the edge of its its operating limits. There was no way that it was nothing. All the evidence pointed to something down there. No one would be frivolous enough to just build an elevator kilometers down into an ice shelf.
Barry and Ross declined the offer to head back. There was nothing for them at the camp, sitting in silence. It was better to be out in the darkness then to wait for whatever would come for them.
A tremor passed under them. The mechs braced themselves while the buggies slid about. Then another tremor ,smaller and quicker , passed. They scanned the area , seeing nothing out of the ordinary.
"Switch to thermal" Ryuki radioed.
"Why? All we'll see is blue" Barry radioed back.
"Sweet bejeebus man, just do what he said" Ross replied.
Long trails of deep red appeared under them when the thermal sights activated. They snaked through the ice out towards a sheer ice wall nearly a kilometer away. On the periphery of his vision, Reaper saw something slither rapidly though one of the tunnels. Too fast to make it, it seemed like a massive worm had traversed it.
"This is insane! This is insane!" , he yelled. The dark red glows then flickered. More creatures sliding through , with their arms and legs clearly visible. His intermittent messages over the radio were jumbled and disjointed. His mind was rushing ,trying to make sense of the sight. He continued as the others yelled back at him to calm down but another tremor passed underneath. "Xenos man, they're everywhere! Cant you see them!?" , he cried over the radio.
There, in perfect view, they saw a new tunnel forming under them. A creature, long and thin with stubby arms and legs, crawled through. Its mouth expanded to twice its width , its jaw seemingly detaching completely. The silhouette writhed as it used its mouth as an excavator, its body squirming as its head expanded hideously. A trail of dripping red followed it, like a trial of blood.
Reaper ,in his destabilized state, slammed the throttle on the buggy and raced off into the abyss. The tremors continued and the loud crashes of shattering ice echoed through the darkness. "Ross, you're inertial map is working right? Ryuki asked. "Yes sir, I'll prep the short range radar. Just lead the way".
Reaper's broken mind could no longer sustain any semblance of protocol. Aliens, real life xenos. It all seemed to be a joke till Reaper saw it first hand. All the myths ,the legends, the stories of freighters found empty , colonies left desolate, they were just stories. Inky bodies ,undefined , snatching up people , it was just fake. To most, it was just that.
But the reality was blood red. The mech pilots already had seen the evidence. Reaper though didn't realize what happened. When he heard xenos, they were always with unexplained mechanical or ecological failures. The mech that blew up into a shower of flames and the exploding tanks of fuel, those were supposed to be mechanical failures. The computers must have screwed up something or the AI controls broke. He didn't see the entrails, the molten hot steel pouring out like blood. He didn't see the fleshy sinew , the bulbous lobes or the death rattles of the writhing limbs. Now, incontrovertible proof wriggled underneath him.
