[Dear readers, please provide any comments you have about this story. I would greatly appreciate it]

The bay doors shuttered with strength as they tried to shake off the thick layers of ice that accumulated over them. Load bearing joints wheezed under the weight of the frost. A loud boom swept through the cargo hold when a large slab slammed into the ground. Sparks erupted from between the actuators as the gears struggled to move.

It opened slowly , almost sickly , like age had worn away at the pistons and cams that made up the limbs of the actuators. The whine of steel bend under pressure sounded oddly like an old man moaning under the weight of decades of life. The reinforcing girders that kept the door mechanisms in place began to compress. Like osteoporosis had eaten away at it.

How many years did this thing stay buried here? Everything seemed to just crumple under as if the metal had fatigued from decades of non-maintenance. How exactly did the raiders sack the hull if the entire ship was only a few nudges from collapsing into itself?

The door slowed down against a frozen embankment. No amount of force would widen the gap. But it was enough of an opening to climb out through. At the least it would bring him back outside. If the team had done its duty ,they would have retreated the the camp at the mouth of the tunnel they came in.

The mobile ladder platform would do very well as a ladder. If it were still functional, which would be incredibly strange, it would be able to extend all the way through the gap. It could be that easy, Ryuki considered. There hadn't been much good luck at all , a change would be appreciated. In the midst of a ship aged far longer than it existed, something easy would be quite an event to celebrate.

The door of the mobile platform was frozen shut. The flamethrower was a simple solution. With the door set ablaze,it was a matter of seconds before it defrosted. The door though couldn't resist the heat. It fell off its hinges and dropped with the loud smash.

Inside the seats were solid as rock. The steering wheel was stuck too, the entire dashboard glistening under the frozen facade. He punched the dashboard to see how hard it was. He yelled as his hand swelled with pain.

A yellow ignition button was covered under the ice. With his knife he chipped away at it till the ice broke apart ,revealing the depressed button. Off to the right of the steering column , the faint glow of a battery indicator just barely pierced through the icy stratum. Enough ambient light had activated the solar cells in the display. Just as he thought, the batteries were dead. Why would they have been working anyway? The ship could have been buried for centuries , there was never even a possibility that anything in it would work. Ryuki punched the dashboard again in anger. "What kind of idiot am I to think this would have worked?" he said to himself.

Once out of the car cabin, he tossed his empty flamer cell onto the ground. Not enough fuel in it to melt the ice jamming the door. He watched it roll across the floor and keep rolling till it hit the bay door. He realized the ship was tilted at a slight angle. His mind,desperate for solutions, found it in the midst of anger.

He climbed back into the car and found the parking brake still engaged. He had not enough strength to push it down, his body growing tired from the cold. Pulling out his rifle, he grasped it by the barrel, aiming the stock down at the brake. Smashing once wasn't enough. Another bash. The lever moved slightly. Another one and it moved a bit more. One more smash, with all the energy he had left, struck down on the obstinate brake handle. The ice that covered it shattered as it smacked down into the release position.

Future engineering revolutions would have little impact on what he felt. The wheels began to turn. Even after the environment had frozen it in place, the wheels budged. A marvel of antiquated technology, the axles rotated and now the car slowly travelled towards the door.

He jumped out of the car and stood watching it make its slow and shallow descent. It made a soft impact. Still the ladder was not tall enough to reach the gap. Something else was needed to make the final few meters.

Ryuki turned back and walked towards the entrance. Stacks of empty crates sat next to the hatchway. He pushed one off the stack with his rifle butt to see how sturdy it was. While it did splinter, the crate still remained in one piece. A few kicks and it seemed to hold up well enough for what he wanted.

Hunger started to encroach on this thoughts. The grumbling in his belly came first. Then the pain. He wondered how long it would take till his stomach contracted to a quarter of its size. Maybe,if he waited long enough, the pain would go away.

Snap out of it , he told himself. It was those few moments of quiet labor that let his mind wander. It was tempting, the idea to end it right there. His thoughts strayed towards it when left alone. He reconciled with the thoughts by insulting himself. Weak, cowardly ,easy. A commander would not leave his soldiers so easily. They counted on him and leaving now would betray all the trust they had for him. This was no longer about him getting out. His team, waiting for him, he couldn't give up. For them, he needed to continue. His orders brought them to this ice cage , he would lead them out.

Nearby he found a tactical welding torch, lying ontop of a pile of scrap metal and refuse. Shaking it revealed the gas tank empty, the rattling noise just the steel pipette knocking against the tank. He unholstered the flamethrower and tapped the fuel tank attached to it. Half full, it seemed.

A pile of oily rags and cardboard sat piled next to him. Before transferring the fuel , he decided to make use of the flamer one more time. He piled the rags into an empty fuel drum and topped it off with a few metal plates for a makeshift grill. He aimed the flamer down into the drum with the blast guard fully .The pile burst into flames when he lit it up. The oily rags must have been soaked in diesel gas for years , the vapors trapped in their fibers until Ryuki set them free with a purifying flame.

He held his hands against the crackling heat that unfurled from the blaze. The warmth travelled up his arms followed by the goosebumps as the chilled skin rapidly heated. He could feel life slowly pouring back into him, flowing over his chest and down his back. His pale face soon brightened and reddened. The hunger abated as he soaked up his nourishment.

With the fire still burning behind him, he disconnected the fuel cannister from the flamer receptacle. He opened up the fuel tank from the torch to see if the tool would accept his flamer tank. No, it would have been too easy. The receptacle was much smaller than the cannister.

He slowly poured the fuel into the torch can , making sure not to spill any fuel. Once the tank was full he snapped it back into the torch. Striking a match against the pilot light was enough to spark it back to life.

He took the metal plates and began to weld them into a T shape. Sparks jumped from the metal and danced on the floors as he worked through the plates. Licks of fire leaped up from the torch , the blazing hearth behind him projecting his shadow against the rusted walls of the bay. As his shadow-self jittered against the wall, the torch began to slowly weaken. The blue flame at the tip shrank and changed to a pale yellow as the fumes of the leftover fuel escaped through the nozzle.

The last flames of life left the torch , all the fuel was gone but the steel T was finished.A few bits of flame was all it was needed to melt through the bottom of the T, making the hole for the rope to pass through.

He tied the rope into the T. The anchor would pass through the overhead girders then drop down back to the ground. With the anchor he proceeded to tie it to the mobile staircase. The other end he tied to a crate. He headed back to the stairs and began to pull on the rope. His arms hurt with every pull, his hands weakly gripping the rope and holding on with every last bit of strength left. The low oxygen levels prompted his muscles to produce lactic acid, making every pull painful.

When his body could take no longer, he wrapped his end of the rope around the anchor as quickly as his tired body let him. When his body gave out , the crate was high above him. Success did not bring any reprieve from the hunger pangs or his burning muscles. He crawled up the stairs towards the crate. At the top he pulled on the crate towards the stair platform. A quick slash from his knife freed the crate to land hard on top of him. The momentary dizziness gave way but now the pain burned through his entire body.

He pulled on the crate as he pushed himself along the platform with his legs. Thick splinters from the crate dug into his glove leaving him with the faint sensation that daggers were scratching at his hands. Closer to the bay door, he began pushing it with his back as he sat on the platform. When the crate stopped moving he knew it finally hit the door.

He pulled himself up onto the crate .He pulled himself up till his eyes could see through the gap. The darkness shrouded the ground leaving only the void to look back at him. He realized that the drop was too far down. He remembered the last time he was able to make the jump. Years before he became a pilot, he was the tech sergeant for an advance recon team. His job was to mark out targets and paths for the combat frame battalions. One mission was deep in valley at the edge of a desert. A dust storm had settled down on the valley, making visibility as bad as in the ice cavern. His goggles became caked with sand and dirt , his rebreather slowly clogging up. His team had ran for a cavern to hide from the storm but he had taken a chance and found an ammo depot deep in the valley. As he lay the the target beacons near the outpost, the storm strengthened. A wall dust was racing through the valley. He knew that the storm would sweep him into oblivion if he could not find shelter.

He ran hard , his breathing quickened and the air slowly choked from his rebreather. The dust had thoroughly covered the filters, his vision nearly completely obscured by dirt. He ran until he felt the ground under him weaken. A sudden stop before reaching a shear drop. Wiping away the sand from his goggles revealed the chasm. Through it ran a river. He leaped , knowing it would lead to sea and back to his teams waiting black-ops cruiser. He would have been arrested for desertion if he had not placed the beacons while his team cowered. Strange , he thought. Punishment for a job well done.

Back down he went, to retrieve the rope. The anchor stayed firmly on the fender of the mobile ladder platform. The other end he tossed out the gap. He waited, hoping the strength would return to him . He closed his eyes and laid his hands on the rope.