I had to stay.
The decision was hard, and that is what made it necessary.
Our timer was running out. There was no edible food on the surface. Not making a move would mean starving to death.
So someone had to go.
I watched both Yyan and Kev vanish into the distant plains. The slow rumbling caused by the mule's legs receded, as both were slowly miniaturized in the distance...
Other bases were put in distant, and difficult-to-reach places. The aim was always to reduce the contact between us to a bare minimum. Base 049, was not too far away, but the shortest route would take them up one of the most harsh and inhospitable mountain ranges within our sector.
Still, It was a necessary choice. Out of all of us, they were the most resilient, the most hardened, and the most experienced.
It was a risk that had to be taken. If the retrieval of supplies failed. Our only option left would be to prepare a desperate hunt.
That would mean death.
The farthest door leading into the lobby opened, revealing two dark-golden irises. That did not catch my attention though. It was the unusual paleness, the bags under his eyes, and the almost imperceivable lack of confidence in his movements that made me shudder.
For a couple of seconds, I could feel his stare weighing down on me. I could feel his steps closing in.
"I'm sorry. You did your best."
The message was incandescent. It was his voice that hurt me. It sounded decrepit, raspy. The sound you'd imagine a corpse to make when asked to speak a sentence.
"Don't bother."
I said, not sparring him much of a glance.
"Go eat something and shower. We need you around Mack."
Maintaining the oxygen, and energy generators up and going. Assisting Samuel in readying the two broken mules. Preparing spare equipment for emergencies, and keeping an eye on the radars. Also sabotaging the radio...
There were plenty of tasks to take care of. And even if it hurt to say, Mack was pretty much excellent at all of them. We couldn't spare any hands.
"Got it. Thanks."
Perhaps too ashamed to look at me, he turned around halfway through the lobby and left the same way he came.
Giving one last glance at the shutting door, my hand scraped against my itching nape. A thin coat of bandage had been coiled around my neck. That served no purpose, other than to prevent others from having to look at the... shards.
The room fell silent once again, and so my fingers continued navigating the lines of ill-thought code that ran the communications on the base.
It was a time-consuming-burden task. One that involved patience, will, and temperance not to fuck up.
Luckily, I had good role models coming up...
'Mmm'
It had been an hour or so after he left. What I thought was a shadow outside, blurred through the clear glass that let the outside be seen. A slowly descending, thick shadow.
Then another one.
I counted two. Two... Two what..?
A cold shiver traveled up my spine as I felt the slight tremor of softly landing outside. As if a block of massive concrete had softly landed on a cloak made out of feathers.
'What is...'
There was supposed to be no movement outside. Kev was gone, Yyan was gone. The outside should be completely clear.
Yet it wasn't. I did not move, my senses kicked up a notch, I could feel steps weighing in outside, slightly cracking the weaker ice sheets as they advanced around the building.
The pattern... The song those steps told...
I had only heard them once.
The slight remembering of that same moment was enough to freeze my mind. The pent-up trauma was like a bath of a geyser. Freezing and deathly for the soul.
Still, as my mind grew increasingly numb to the cold reality I was now facing, my body moved on its own.
I wore no shoes, so my steps were unheard.
I left the tables, and my analysis pad on the table. I reeked back towards one of the few pieces of furniture we were allowed to have. inside a small, hand-crafted compartment, I found a sharpened wolframite-edged knife.
My eyes did not blink. I gripped the knife and stepped forwards.
A movement on my right.
Apparently, I was not the only one to notice the shadows.
Tamm, Samuel, and Mack too had been alarmed. Each of them gripped an edge, except for Samuel, who had routinely picked his beloved relic of a 16mm pistol.
Their breaths had already shut. Their skin was manually forced to cool down to deathly temperatures.
A determined, yet somewhat mad look glinted through my eyes as I silently nodded in their direction.
Commandos were variants able to peer through several mediums.
As far as we had guessed up to this moment. Thermal, X-ray, Ultraviolet. That was not all... Tracing high CO2 concentrations, thermal footprints, fingerprints...
We truly did not know the extent of the capabilities those things wielded.
'Even in this chaos, they would still spare Units to erase us off!?'
I thought, as my heartbeat muffled, to the point of it hardly being felt anymore. My steps turned cold.
'They don't see us yet. The layer of alloy prevents them from locating us through x-ray. Once they breach inside though... That'll be checkmate for us.'
I gritted my teeth, freezing blood dripping out of them.
Karl did not have a peaceful death. Even after all semblance of civilization had seemingly been lost on the horizon, the death-givers were more than willing to pay the price of our extermination.
'For Karl.'
...
The four of us grouped around the main vacuum-gate, Tamm and I on one side, Samuel, and Mack on the other. No breaths were heard. No words left to utter.
Forced from the outside, the levers of the vault silently started turning.