Spirit Caravan, part 2, Door: Frye and H.B. approach the enemy structure.
All the good things belong to MonolithSoft.
It was unnerving, crawling in the spore sand towards the structure. There wasn't any cover close by, not a rock, not a bubble-tipped tree, not even the shadow of a passing indigen.
They had initially stopped at the edge of the gully where the buildings were hiding, trying to get a better look it. "We're going to get a weather event before midnight," muttered Frye when it was his turn to peer through binoculars almost as large as his Gatling.
"Let me guess. You took an arrow to the knee and now you can predict rain," H.B. said distractedly, busy preparing notes for HQ.
"Naw, but the way the air shimmers when you look through these things, that's the same here as in Oblivia. Weather pattern is changing, and in this place it only gets worse."
H.B. considered this as valid information. "White or red?"
"Now as to that, I'll always pick the wrong one. If I pick neither, it'll be both somehow, or one straight into the next." Frye tossed the binoculars to H.B., then dropped flat on the ground.
H.B. immediately followed suit, keeping his head well down. "Enemy movement?" he hissed.
"No, but I wanna see how close I can crawl to it," Frye replied, imitating H.B.'s worried whisper. He curled around to grin at H.B. "By the time I get a few meters along, I'll be as white as the ground. Maybe they won't spot me."
Indeed, nothing had spotted them, at least not in an obvious way, and true to Frye's prediction, they were the same ghostly white as the spores after the first seconds of crawling. H.B.'s jet black hair showed under the frost, but Frye somehow vanished entirely, only his winking blue eyes retaining some color. The two soldiers' paths spread a little as they went, Frye making directly for what might be the entrance, with H.B. squirming a little faster to get a closer look at the walls.
It wasn't foolish, H.B. told himself. This structure was wrong somehow, and viewing it from a distance with his own eyes had been almost as uninformative as the buggy drone footage. The building looked less like an outpost and more like a rusting heap of every type of modular unit the Ganglion constructed, collected by a hurricane and piled under the eastern cliffs of Sylvalum. And yet they had some organization to them. Balconies ran at angles and broke off, but their barriers remained. Walls contained everything, no half rooms exposed by whatever had dragged things here. There were too many doors visible along the walls, but the only one on the ground was squarely in the center. Or so it seemed to H.B. He admitted to a slight doubt because every time he focused on the structure after taking notes, it seemed to have reconfigured slightly.
Frye had reached the entrance door, raised himself to a half crouch, and then stood. H.B. was horrified but he hurriedly got to a crouch.
"No foot prints. No machine tracks. Nothing." Frye's whisper hissed across the spores. "Door's open."
H.B. stood up fully and dusted the worst of the spores off his face. There was no question about whether they were going to go inside.
a/n: I think I have the exit for this story, but I still have squirmy guts to figure out. Still open to suggestions though.
Next up: Spirit Caravan part 3.