Chapter 13
"How long has Human history lasted? A half million years? Some say a full 2 million, since our very earliest ancestors roamed around Asia and Africa. And in all that time, not one culture created by any of these people has managed to survive without warfare. What does that say about warfare?
What does that say about Humanity?"
~ Harryld Rittenhauer, "A Treatise on War and Development of the Human Mind"
"There are more than a few who say we were shaped by hunger. Others say we were shaped by greed and gathering. Look at us. Look at these wonderful long legs and forward facing eyes. We were shaped by open ranges, waiting to be explored. We've got a body designed to eat distances that other members of our lineage would die trying to cover. Sure, we get hungry and greedy, too. But those are add-ons to the design.."
~ Gloria Neumann-Gainer 'Dawn of the Killer Apes'
"If you are a good man, a truly great and Godly man, your name might live a few centuries. But if you are truly creative, and wicked, to boot, you become immortal, somehow. No one remembers the poor fools fighting the fires while Rome burnt.."
- Alec Guiness, 'Afterwords with Alec Guiness'
Buran IV was entering its long, dimly lit Winter. The planet, already far colder than Earth, edged ever deeper into a cold that was almost legendary for its ability to kill. Few people came to the planet, and fewer still stayed, once Winter truly settled in.
Winter was also a relatively long season, on Buran IV; the planet orbited fairly close to its star, but because Buran was a Red Dwarf, the habitable zone was an area well inside the orbit of Venus. And to make matters worse, Buran was moving through a rather thick nebula; so dense was it that the solar wind created by Buran IV's primary was not near enough to keep the gas from masking the already feeble light. In other words, life had been something of a struggle; now it was, more or less, a funeral. Luckily it was not Humanity's funeral. Instead, the frozen little backwater had worked its way into the lexicon as an excellent place to kill the various enemies of Humanity, guilt free and with all expenses paid.
And though she'd never once in her short life suffered from guilt, she had, on occasion, suffered from expenses. So while a typical volunteer stayed on long enough to get that college education, she had stayed on long enough to buy a planet, collecting more credits
for her semi-legendary kills than whole governments paid entire armies back home.
She smirked. She didn't have the heart to tell them she would have done all this for free. That she loved the hunt, even on the frozen hellhole, more than she loved any imaginable soft life behind the lines. Killing was her skill-set; and while the Winter weather might push her harder, she saw it as another kind of opportunity: the weather would weaken the Enemy as well. So she would be bold.
She glanced at the ground beneath her feet, tinted vaguely blue-white where the atmosphere was beginning to freeze out. Carbon-dioxide mounds dotted the small valley she was passing through, mixed with regular snow and water ice, forming an eerie, sculpted
group of icy stalagmites along the periphery of the valley.
Overhead, dull orange Aurora danced and shivered, brilliant and visible even in full daylight. She paused, long enough to get her bearings, adjust her rifle, the started off again, her long legs moving as if with a mind of their own towards the North, where the Enemy prepared uneasily for Winters arrival.
They needn't worry, she thought, grimly. I will come for them first.
What does that say about Humanity?"
~ Harryld Rittenhauer, "A Treatise on War and Development of the Human Mind"
"There are more than a few who say we were shaped by hunger. Others say we were shaped by greed and gathering. Look at us. Look at these wonderful long legs and forward facing eyes. We were shaped by open ranges, waiting to be explored. We've got a body designed to eat distances that other members of our lineage would die trying to cover. Sure, we get hungry and greedy, too. But those are add-ons to the design.."
~ Gloria Neumann-Gainer 'Dawn of the Killer Apes'
"If you are a good man, a truly great and Godly man, your name might live a few centuries. But if you are truly creative, and wicked, to boot, you become immortal, somehow. No one remembers the poor fools fighting the fires while Rome burnt.."
- Alec Guiness, 'Afterwords with Alec Guiness'
Buran IV was entering its long, dimly lit Winter. The planet, already far colder than Earth, edged ever deeper into a cold that was almost legendary for its ability to kill. Few people came to the planet, and fewer still stayed, once Winter truly settled in.
Winter was also a relatively long season, on Buran IV; the planet orbited fairly close to its star, but because Buran was a Red Dwarf, the habitable zone was an area well inside the orbit of Venus. And to make matters worse, Buran was moving through a rather thick nebula; so dense was it that the solar wind created by Buran IV's primary was not near enough to keep the gas from masking the already feeble light. In other words, life had been something of a struggle; now it was, more or less, a funeral. Luckily it was not Humanity's funeral. Instead, the frozen little backwater had worked its way into the lexicon as an excellent place to kill the various enemies of Humanity, guilt free and with all expenses paid.
And though she'd never once in her short life suffered from guilt, she had, on occasion, suffered from expenses. So while a typical volunteer stayed on long enough to get that college education, she had stayed on long enough to buy a planet, collecting more credits
for her semi-legendary kills than whole governments paid entire armies back home.
She smirked. She didn't have the heart to tell them she would have done all this for free. That she loved the hunt, even on the frozen hellhole, more than she loved any imaginable soft life behind the lines. Killing was her skill-set; and while the Winter weather might push her harder, she saw it as another kind of opportunity: the weather would weaken the Enemy as well. So she would be bold.
She glanced at the ground beneath her feet, tinted vaguely blue-white where the atmosphere was beginning to freeze out. Carbon-dioxide mounds dotted the small valley she was passing through, mixed with regular snow and water ice, forming an eerie, sculpted
group of icy stalagmites along the periphery of the valley.
Overhead, dull orange Aurora danced and shivered, brilliant and visible even in full daylight. She paused, long enough to get her bearings, adjust her rifle, the started off again, her long legs moving as if with a mind of their own towards the North, where the Enemy prepared uneasily for Winters arrival.
They needn't worry, she thought, grimly. I will come for them first.
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Chapter 12
"Think about this for a moment; the science is spot on. Nature makes one out of five thousand with the potential of being a genius. Think about that. Nature makes one out of ten of us sociopathic. You tell me which trait nature is pushing.."
~ Oswald Laurent, "Science Now, Nov. 17 Edition"
"But don't become as some men become; so haunted by their past mistakes that they cannot build a future.." ~Karth Proverb, early 2nd era, SGC
"..and even more people wonder why God doesn't speak to them. They pray and pray, and hear only silence. And then they begin to doubt that God exists, not realizing God has been there, in the silence, waiting for them to make a move, so He could help them. Hoping that they realize that even the silence is a voice, a tool.." ~ Tarsha Apocrypha, Book of Edom.
Faith is a funny thing. Throughout Mankind's long war with its varied enemies, that faith in eventual victory had never wavered, despite the numbers stacked against it. It had paid enormous dividends, as race after race had retreated from seemingly insane attacks.
Defenses considered untenable by the Enemy proved too costly, in the end, to take without massive numbers of troops and overwhelming logistical support. And even then, places like Buran IV, well away from the major traffic lanes, held on indefinitely, even in the face of insurmountable enemy advantages in men and materiel. Why?
Faith, perhaps. A stubborn refusal to see facts, or to blithely ignore reality, to use weakness as an advantage, and the ground itself as a weapon. It is faith that held Humanity together. Faith that 'we', the one-hundred and fifteen separate Republics, could somehow overcome thirty-thousand to one odds. She laughed mirthlessly at the thought, walking tirelessly through the darkness of a Summer's evening on Buran, Aurora dancing softly over her head. She'd thought about it often as she walked; the 'why' and the 'how' of her existence. The mechanism that had brought her into being. She was a firm believer that nature produced only what was needed, and seldom made gross errors. Perhaps she was here, on this icy hellhole, for a reason greater than merely the love of the hunt, or the burning itch to be away from people, or the petty crimes too numerous to count that had landed her on the draft-docket to begin with. Maybe there was a God, above her, watching. Just as the ancients believed. Rewarding faith. She sighed, pausing to scan the dark bowl of Kissimer Valley ahead of her, and adjusted her sniper rifle to a more comfortable position. Another ten klicks, and the Enemy Crawler would be parked. She'd bet a months pay. She had faith.
She laughed, startled at her own admission. Yes. Faith.
And perhaps that's why she existed, in the end, she thought. To answer the prayers of her fellow Humans, and to stand on the icy battlements like a gargoyle, warding off the Enemy in the unnamed valleys below.
Or perhaps she existed only as an extension of Mankind's thirst for blood. Either way, she had a job to do.
And the faith in herself to see it through.
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~ Oswald Laurent, "Science Now, Nov. 17 Edition"
"But don't become as some men become; so haunted by their past mistakes that they cannot build a future.." ~Karth Proverb, early 2nd era, SGC
"..and even more people wonder why God doesn't speak to them. They pray and pray, and hear only silence. And then they begin to doubt that God exists, not realizing God has been there, in the silence, waiting for them to make a move, so He could help them. Hoping that they realize that even the silence is a voice, a tool.." ~ Tarsha Apocrypha, Book of Edom.
Faith is a funny thing. Throughout Mankind's long war with its varied enemies, that faith in eventual victory had never wavered, despite the numbers stacked against it. It had paid enormous dividends, as race after race had retreated from seemingly insane attacks.
Defenses considered untenable by the Enemy proved too costly, in the end, to take without massive numbers of troops and overwhelming logistical support. And even then, places like Buran IV, well away from the major traffic lanes, held on indefinitely, even in the face of insurmountable enemy advantages in men and materiel. Why?
Faith, perhaps. A stubborn refusal to see facts, or to blithely ignore reality, to use weakness as an advantage, and the ground itself as a weapon. It is faith that held Humanity together. Faith that 'we', the one-hundred and fifteen separate Republics, could somehow overcome thirty-thousand to one odds. She laughed mirthlessly at the thought, walking tirelessly through the darkness of a Summer's evening on Buran, Aurora dancing softly over her head. She'd thought about it often as she walked; the 'why' and the 'how' of her existence. The mechanism that had brought her into being. She was a firm believer that nature produced only what was needed, and seldom made gross errors. Perhaps she was here, on this icy hellhole, for a reason greater than merely the love of the hunt, or the burning itch to be away from people, or the petty crimes too numerous to count that had landed her on the draft-docket to begin with. Maybe there was a God, above her, watching. Just as the ancients believed. Rewarding faith. She sighed, pausing to scan the dark bowl of Kissimer Valley ahead of her, and adjusted her sniper rifle to a more comfortable position. Another ten klicks, and the Enemy Crawler would be parked. She'd bet a months pay. She had faith.
She laughed, startled at her own admission. Yes. Faith.
And perhaps that's why she existed, in the end, she thought. To answer the prayers of her fellow Humans, and to stand on the icy battlements like a gargoyle, warding off the Enemy in the unnamed valleys below.
Or perhaps she existed only as an extension of Mankind's thirst for blood. Either way, she had a job to do.
And the faith in herself to see it through.
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Chapter 11
"If there is a universal truth in this Universe, it is that there are no universal truth's" Ibrahim Wallace Holmes, " The Valley of Darkness"
"A good government knows that the best government is the government that is not needed." Calvin Nguyen-Huang "Bittersweet Lullabyes"
"But you know why we have war? It's really easy. John; do you know why? Malcolm? We are in the 26th century, and we are still killing hundreds of thousands of human beings every year. Why? Exactly, John, exactly. It's because we are good at it. Damned good at it."
~This Evening in Politics with Saul Bellowes
She looked across the shallow bowl of Haarlingen Crater, pausing mid-stride to scan the wrecked Enemy Crawler. She counted a half-dozen bodies around the wreckage, flung this way and that in the explosive upheaval. Unaware that she was doing it, she patted her gun, a feline-like smirk spreading over her face. Almost time to head home for a bit. Maybe take a breather from the killing fields. Her grin turned evil for a moment, trying to imagine a week spent not tracking down and killing the Enemy. She huffed, raising and lowering her shoulders. Fine. Even though she had earned some time off, she couldn't say the same for the enemy. So she would stick around and pick off a few more.
That would have to be vacation enough.
There was no valid reason the War had lasted as long as it had except one: Humans had a capacity for violence that was unmatched by any other race in this part of the galactic arm. It had taken decades for the combined enemies of Humanity to learn how terribly violent we were; and usually they had lost tens or even hundreds of thousands of troops in the process of being taught.
And Humans, being old hands at war, knew that fighting in ones own backyard was fraught with problems. Populations dislocated or dismantled, factories and habitats destroyed, whole biosystems laid waste. No; far easier to have these grinding battles as far from Humanities core worlds as possible.
So places like Buran IV had been chosen. Not because they were useful, but quite the opposite: because no one would miss them too terribly if they were blown into sand. And, as the Colonial Marines had decided its main goal was offensive actions to keep our myriad enemies off-balance, it often fell to 'irregulars' to play defense, and man the walls separating Human territory from our foes.
Sometimes it was simple greed that lured these 'irregulars' to the fight. Sometimes it was the simple want to explore. With some, it was the thought of free college, or free healthcare, or the ability to vote.
But it was the last group that perplexed our enemies the longest. It was this last group that hung on in the impossible conditions on Buran, and scraped by with whatever equipment could be scrounged.
It was the last group, you see, that fought for that most Human of reasons.
Because they simply liked to kill.
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"A good government knows that the best government is the government that is not needed." Calvin Nguyen-Huang "Bittersweet Lullabyes"
"But you know why we have war? It's really easy. John; do you know why? Malcolm? We are in the 26th century, and we are still killing hundreds of thousands of human beings every year. Why? Exactly, John, exactly. It's because we are good at it. Damned good at it."
~This Evening in Politics with Saul Bellowes
She looked across the shallow bowl of Haarlingen Crater, pausing mid-stride to scan the wrecked Enemy Crawler. She counted a half-dozen bodies around the wreckage, flung this way and that in the explosive upheaval. Unaware that she was doing it, she patted her gun, a feline-like smirk spreading over her face. Almost time to head home for a bit. Maybe take a breather from the killing fields. Her grin turned evil for a moment, trying to imagine a week spent not tracking down and killing the Enemy. She huffed, raising and lowering her shoulders. Fine. Even though she had earned some time off, she couldn't say the same for the enemy. So she would stick around and pick off a few more.
That would have to be vacation enough.
There was no valid reason the War had lasted as long as it had except one: Humans had a capacity for violence that was unmatched by any other race in this part of the galactic arm. It had taken decades for the combined enemies of Humanity to learn how terribly violent we were; and usually they had lost tens or even hundreds of thousands of troops in the process of being taught.
And Humans, being old hands at war, knew that fighting in ones own backyard was fraught with problems. Populations dislocated or dismantled, factories and habitats destroyed, whole biosystems laid waste. No; far easier to have these grinding battles as far from Humanities core worlds as possible.
So places like Buran IV had been chosen. Not because they were useful, but quite the opposite: because no one would miss them too terribly if they were blown into sand. And, as the Colonial Marines had decided its main goal was offensive actions to keep our myriad enemies off-balance, it often fell to 'irregulars' to play defense, and man the walls separating Human territory from our foes.
Sometimes it was simple greed that lured these 'irregulars' to the fight. Sometimes it was the simple want to explore. With some, it was the thought of free college, or free healthcare, or the ability to vote.
But it was the last group that perplexed our enemies the longest. It was this last group that hung on in the impossible conditions on Buran, and scraped by with whatever equipment could be scrounged.
It was the last group, you see, that fought for that most Human of reasons.
Because they simply liked to kill.
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Chapter 10
"The path to hell is paved with good intentions; the path to government is paved with good intentions and other peoples money." ~ Edvaard Ehrlis,
"Something Stupid This Way Stumbles"
"Love is like forgiveness in this one way; both are only truly possible if you can start with yourself." ~ Ohmish Covenant, 12th century, SGD.
"300 Billion stars, ladies and gentleman. Can you believe it? In just this one galaxy, there are 300 billion stars. And, of them, only 200 or so intelligent life-forms that are still extant, and the oldest intelligent lifeforms are..what do the archeologists tell us? Almost a billion. So, intelligent life showed up a billion years ago. Think about that, folks. And, in all that time; a whole billion years, not one single solitary one of them made a city that didn't smell like piss." ~ Late Show with Terry Yorke
Buran IV was a cold hell; one carved of dirty ice and cracked grey granite, jumbled stones and brutal gash-like crevasses that crisscrossed the terrain like vestiges of some unearthly, unimaginable war.
Except, of course, she could imagine just such a war. She could imagine a struggle so vast and so long-lasting it would deface and destroy an entire planet, or gouge it, or cut it, or freeze it solid. She could imagine it, and, where she could, she would do her best to be as hellish as the terrain itself, and as unyielding, as chaotic, as cold and as deadly. Not because she was inherently bad; such moral categories didn't exist on Buran IV. No; she would be all of those things because they kept her alive. And being alive was preferable to the alternative: as ugly as treading Burans' vast sheets of ice might be, being buried under one of them would be even more terrible.
She sighed, forcing her mind to clear itself, going through a five-step
Boa Dai ritual to pause, reflect, and release bad thoughts before they became a habit. She sighed only in spirit, of course; her body was covered in a viscous, hyper-oxygenated jelly that protected her from
the bone-numbing cold and radiation, but had the down-side of making her feel as if she were drowning. All the training in the world would never make the immersion easier. Some things you had to grit your teeth and move past, though. And the money made the difficulty worthwhile, if not the scenery.
She chuckled mirthlessly, kicking a loose pebble from beneath her foot. She presently stood on a jagged out-cropping overlooking the vast bowl of the Kalombba Crater, a fifty mile around crater that had, in warmer times, been filled with a twenty foot deep lake, now frozen solid. She thought, for a sad moment, of all the small creatures frozen solid in that water, killed when Buran wandered into a dense cloud of interstellar gas. With Burans' feeble light gone, the planet had plunged into this icy hell. And then people like her had come, because hell would be terribly lonely without people like her in it. She shrugged, stepping carefully over a patch of black ice, a subtle grin playing over her face as she found what she'd come for; the Enemy had left tracks here, and recent. Her grin went feral as she unslung her lone weapon, a magnetic-rail sniper, caliber .75.
If she belonged here, it wasn't because she was a lost soul, stumbling through perdition and purgatory. No; she had never been that innocent. It was because the Devil called his own.
"Something Stupid This Way Stumbles"
"Love is like forgiveness in this one way; both are only truly possible if you can start with yourself." ~ Ohmish Covenant, 12th century, SGD.
"300 Billion stars, ladies and gentleman. Can you believe it? In just this one galaxy, there are 300 billion stars. And, of them, only 200 or so intelligent life-forms that are still extant, and the oldest intelligent lifeforms are..what do the archeologists tell us? Almost a billion. So, intelligent life showed up a billion years ago. Think about that, folks. And, in all that time; a whole billion years, not one single solitary one of them made a city that didn't smell like piss." ~ Late Show with Terry Yorke
Buran IV was a cold hell; one carved of dirty ice and cracked grey granite, jumbled stones and brutal gash-like crevasses that crisscrossed the terrain like vestiges of some unearthly, unimaginable war.
Except, of course, she could imagine just such a war. She could imagine a struggle so vast and so long-lasting it would deface and destroy an entire planet, or gouge it, or cut it, or freeze it solid. She could imagine it, and, where she could, she would do her best to be as hellish as the terrain itself, and as unyielding, as chaotic, as cold and as deadly. Not because she was inherently bad; such moral categories didn't exist on Buran IV. No; she would be all of those things because they kept her alive. And being alive was preferable to the alternative: as ugly as treading Burans' vast sheets of ice might be, being buried under one of them would be even more terrible.
She sighed, forcing her mind to clear itself, going through a five-step
Boa Dai ritual to pause, reflect, and release bad thoughts before they became a habit. She sighed only in spirit, of course; her body was covered in a viscous, hyper-oxygenated jelly that protected her from
the bone-numbing cold and radiation, but had the down-side of making her feel as if she were drowning. All the training in the world would never make the immersion easier. Some things you had to grit your teeth and move past, though. And the money made the difficulty worthwhile, if not the scenery.
She chuckled mirthlessly, kicking a loose pebble from beneath her foot. She presently stood on a jagged out-cropping overlooking the vast bowl of the Kalombba Crater, a fifty mile around crater that had, in warmer times, been filled with a twenty foot deep lake, now frozen solid. She thought, for a sad moment, of all the small creatures frozen solid in that water, killed when Buran wandered into a dense cloud of interstellar gas. With Burans' feeble light gone, the planet had plunged into this icy hell. And then people like her had come, because hell would be terribly lonely without people like her in it. She shrugged, stepping carefully over a patch of black ice, a subtle grin playing over her face as she found what she'd come for; the Enemy had left tracks here, and recent. Her grin went feral as she unslung her lone weapon, a magnetic-rail sniper, caliber .75.
If she belonged here, it wasn't because she was a lost soul, stumbling through perdition and purgatory. No; she had never been that innocent. It was because the Devil called his own.
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Chapter 9
"God, if you will not grant me peace, give me ammo." Charles Morton Thackerton, "Dimworld"
"The Unknown usually has fear working in its favor." Oi Dah School of Martial Arts
"Judge a man not by how he treats his loved ones, but by how he treats those that mean nothing to him." Fragment of Ohmish proverb, 12th century, SGD.
The cold here, in the ragged depths of the White was so intense that it permeated her suit, the gel and settled into her bones, like a grinding weight against her. It was as if the entire planet of Buran IV fed from her negligible warmth, teasing it from her with every movement. She slowed her pace somewhat, allowing the gel protectant to settle over her again. Around her, the jumbled terrain of the high northern plains running alongside Fischel Glacier, some twenty kilcks north of Christmastime, lay the wreckage of countless Enemy transports, glazed with a thin coating of snow, and thicker
piles of ice where it settled. She moved past them, imagining that she wore no helmet, her dark hair catching the almost non-existent breeze as she sniffed the air for the spore of her prey.
She giggled, coming to a nearly complete stop, as her small squad froze behind her wordlessly. They probably thought her quite insane, and they wouldn't be too terribly wrong. Still, after a moment, she was business again, and set off, her tireless stride chewing the kilometers with practiced ease.
Nanomachines fed her brain oxygen, others inundated her muscles in a thick slurry, repairing damage quickly from her occasional misstep or stumble.
By midmorning, 35 klicks had passed in an agonizing white and gray
blandness. A few close-calls along the Fischel Glacier seemed to focus the troops behind her, and, by the time they left the glacier, moving into the deep northern valleys, her squad moved with a kind of wordless grace that was both hard to imagine and startling in its precision and beauty. Here, the ground was more solid, and no sudden gaps opened beneath their feet as they moved north, devouring the miles in a startling manner. But their was no air here; it was so cold, it had snowed out, so no air resistance, and the valley arched very gently upwards, but did so and a low angle, making the walk rather brisk, but comfortable.
Nightfall on Buran was a thing of rapidity; the tiny sun simply seemed to be eaten by the planets miserable cold, same as everything and everyone else.
The cold; it was a worm, coiling in her soul, like a doubt, gnawing at her heart in the star-scattered dimness of Burans witching hours.
Morning found her stiff and angry, with nano's sending electric shocks through her muscles to get them moving again. Her team seemed positively anxious to move out, and she smiled, with something approaching joy as she looked over them.
When she reached the lip of Ransfield Crater, she paused, examining the weak Enemy signal in earnest, before motioning the others closer.
The war was about to get very personal to the Enemy.
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"The Unknown usually has fear working in its favor." Oi Dah School of Martial Arts
"Judge a man not by how he treats his loved ones, but by how he treats those that mean nothing to him." Fragment of Ohmish proverb, 12th century, SGD.
The cold here, in the ragged depths of the White was so intense that it permeated her suit, the gel and settled into her bones, like a grinding weight against her. It was as if the entire planet of Buran IV fed from her negligible warmth, teasing it from her with every movement. She slowed her pace somewhat, allowing the gel protectant to settle over her again. Around her, the jumbled terrain of the high northern plains running alongside Fischel Glacier, some twenty kilcks north of Christmastime, lay the wreckage of countless Enemy transports, glazed with a thin coating of snow, and thicker
piles of ice where it settled. She moved past them, imagining that she wore no helmet, her dark hair catching the almost non-existent breeze as she sniffed the air for the spore of her prey.
She giggled, coming to a nearly complete stop, as her small squad froze behind her wordlessly. They probably thought her quite insane, and they wouldn't be too terribly wrong. Still, after a moment, she was business again, and set off, her tireless stride chewing the kilometers with practiced ease.
Nanomachines fed her brain oxygen, others inundated her muscles in a thick slurry, repairing damage quickly from her occasional misstep or stumble.
By midmorning, 35 klicks had passed in an agonizing white and gray
blandness. A few close-calls along the Fischel Glacier seemed to focus the troops behind her, and, by the time they left the glacier, moving into the deep northern valleys, her squad moved with a kind of wordless grace that was both hard to imagine and startling in its precision and beauty. Here, the ground was more solid, and no sudden gaps opened beneath their feet as they moved north, devouring the miles in a startling manner. But their was no air here; it was so cold, it had snowed out, so no air resistance, and the valley arched very gently upwards, but did so and a low angle, making the walk rather brisk, but comfortable.
Nightfall on Buran was a thing of rapidity; the tiny sun simply seemed to be eaten by the planets miserable cold, same as everything and everyone else.
The cold; it was a worm, coiling in her soul, like a doubt, gnawing at her heart in the star-scattered dimness of Burans witching hours.
Morning found her stiff and angry, with nano's sending electric shocks through her muscles to get them moving again. Her team seemed positively anxious to move out, and she smiled, with something approaching joy as she looked over them.
When she reached the lip of Ransfield Crater, she paused, examining the weak Enemy signal in earnest, before motioning the others closer.
The war was about to get very personal to the Enemy.
Chapter 8
"Revenge is a story with only bad endings." ~ Kelso Kiernan, "Hour 23"
"Seen from above, the entire galaxy, a hundred-million suns, looks like water circling a vast sewage drain. So, yes, its a bit like our politics.."
~ Late Night with Ambra Nurzhinski
"For over twelve thousand years, mankind has roamed these vast dark caverns between the stars, huddling like our forbears around the flickering fire of this star or that, hoping that nothing restless stirred in the darkness
beyond." ~ Paris Hillman, "Auld Acquaintance"
Christmastime was the only real settlement on Buran IV worthy of mention to most Human Coalition Government types; it had semi-working bathrooms, at any rate, and food, munitions, hardware, software and entertainment.
I suppose I found the place too crowded to be comfortable in, having spent the better part of the last 5 years trudging through the frozen, airless tundra of the far north in almost complete and glorious isolation. Still, even I needed
the occasional break from my routine of hunting down and eliminating the Enemy. My suit could only absorb so many rads, the gel that kept me warm
would begin to decay (and smell like overcooked eggs) and the software that linked me to my gun would gradually become more and more error-prone, due to magnetics from the planet, radiation, viruses from Enemy programs, the works.
Its not as if the Enemy were stupid, just not nearly so vicious as Humanity; they might kill, but it would be out of neglect, rather than murderous intention, most of the time. Perhaps that is why, though Humanity was outnumbered more that 30,000 to one, we were winning against both the Coalition of Sentients and the Federation of Intelligent Races. Cruelty. Avarice. Hate.
I marched more than 20 miles south into the low valleys around the great volcano Christmastime was built into. Mount Erebus, a 24, 500 foot colossus
with a caldera the size of the Earth territory of Wyoming, arched up and above me, spewing a never-ending haze of hydro-carbons and thick blankets of carbon-monoxide. If the planet were not in a fairly thick nebula, it would be a greenhouse. As it was, it was a freezer.
But it was my freezer.
I picked up the local radio station on my walk into the upper valley; Christmastime (named for the day it was settled, naturally) was now hosting
a new group of troops. For once, the annoying host seemed rather quiet when talking about them.
"Not really Androids. Not really robots, or even clones. Genetically modified
animals, really, with Human characteristics stamped onto their DNA, but no more related to us than a Chihuahua. But they look human; thing is, they are born with..lets call it 'enhancements'. Stuff I have never even heard of, folks.."
The radio went dead for a bit, as I passed the overhanging jut of rock called
'Lovers Leap'; by the time it came back on, it was an old Troy Robinson song
"Dream Sweetly, Baby".
So, soulless critters who look Human sent to hunt this icy perdition for our Enemy?
I smiled, despite myself.
Finally; people I could relate to.
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"Seen from above, the entire galaxy, a hundred-million suns, looks like water circling a vast sewage drain. So, yes, its a bit like our politics.."
~ Late Night with Ambra Nurzhinski
"For over twelve thousand years, mankind has roamed these vast dark caverns between the stars, huddling like our forbears around the flickering fire of this star or that, hoping that nothing restless stirred in the darkness
beyond." ~ Paris Hillman, "Auld Acquaintance"
Christmastime was the only real settlement on Buran IV worthy of mention to most Human Coalition Government types; it had semi-working bathrooms, at any rate, and food, munitions, hardware, software and entertainment.
I suppose I found the place too crowded to be comfortable in, having spent the better part of the last 5 years trudging through the frozen, airless tundra of the far north in almost complete and glorious isolation. Still, even I needed
the occasional break from my routine of hunting down and eliminating the Enemy. My suit could only absorb so many rads, the gel that kept me warm
would begin to decay (and smell like overcooked eggs) and the software that linked me to my gun would gradually become more and more error-prone, due to magnetics from the planet, radiation, viruses from Enemy programs, the works.
Its not as if the Enemy were stupid, just not nearly so vicious as Humanity; they might kill, but it would be out of neglect, rather than murderous intention, most of the time. Perhaps that is why, though Humanity was outnumbered more that 30,000 to one, we were winning against both the Coalition of Sentients and the Federation of Intelligent Races. Cruelty. Avarice. Hate.
I marched more than 20 miles south into the low valleys around the great volcano Christmastime was built into. Mount Erebus, a 24, 500 foot colossus
with a caldera the size of the Earth territory of Wyoming, arched up and above me, spewing a never-ending haze of hydro-carbons and thick blankets of carbon-monoxide. If the planet were not in a fairly thick nebula, it would be a greenhouse. As it was, it was a freezer.
But it was my freezer.
I picked up the local radio station on my walk into the upper valley; Christmastime (named for the day it was settled, naturally) was now hosting
a new group of troops. For once, the annoying host seemed rather quiet when talking about them.
"Not really Androids. Not really robots, or even clones. Genetically modified
animals, really, with Human characteristics stamped onto their DNA, but no more related to us than a Chihuahua. But they look human; thing is, they are born with..lets call it 'enhancements'. Stuff I have never even heard of, folks.."
The radio went dead for a bit, as I passed the overhanging jut of rock called
'Lovers Leap'; by the time it came back on, it was an old Troy Robinson song
"Dream Sweetly, Baby".
So, soulless critters who look Human sent to hunt this icy perdition for our Enemy?
I smiled, despite myself.
Finally; people I could relate to.
Chapter 7
It was not often she wished to be anywhere but here; here being the frozen wasteland of Buran IV and its altogether trivial accommodations scratched into the merciless tundra and rock hard ice. Oddly, it wasn't often she wished anything at all, and she puzzled over this, wondering if some vital system within her had at last shut down, or if it merely meant she was doing the job she was good at. And that job was the merciless liquidation of the numerous morons that Humanity had made enemies of over the course of a few Galactic generations. They came to Buran for its wormhole links, they stayed for the weather? She laughed, despite herself; a hollow, brittle sounding laugh, as if her laughter, unused for so long, had forgotten how to properly sound.
The truth was simpler, of course; there was no air here. She stood atop a crumbling piece of limestone nearly two kilometers high and covered with two kilometers of hard-packed snow. What little atmosphere Buran had (that wasn't frozen) was down south, in the valleys, faintly swirling small eddies of snowflakes. Here, just her suit, full of gel, and helmet, full of the same gel, protected her from the terrible sucking cold.
Or at least they tried. She blinked in the wan daylight, fixing her sights, and moved stiff limbs again, trying not to let her metabolism kick on, so her calories would last longer. Nanites fed her brain oxygen directly; the rest of her body was...well..left out in the cold.
Regardless, she was on the move, heading south-southwest from her current position (named 'Mt Erebus' on Colonial Maps) toward Fischel Glacier, about twenty klicks out. Movement was slow, as it meant picking her way over cracked ice and rock strewn waste, all for the singular joy of killing a group of people she had never met.
She had to admit she liked her jobs perks.
And she tried very hard, over the next hour, to not think of Buran as Hell; a place of lost souls; who could fly away, if only any other place would have them.
And lets face it, no other place would feel so much like home...
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The truth was simpler, of course; there was no air here. She stood atop a crumbling piece of limestone nearly two kilometers high and covered with two kilometers of hard-packed snow. What little atmosphere Buran had (that wasn't frozen) was down south, in the valleys, faintly swirling small eddies of snowflakes. Here, just her suit, full of gel, and helmet, full of the same gel, protected her from the terrible sucking cold.
Or at least they tried. She blinked in the wan daylight, fixing her sights, and moved stiff limbs again, trying not to let her metabolism kick on, so her calories would last longer. Nanites fed her brain oxygen directly; the rest of her body was...well..left out in the cold.
Regardless, she was on the move, heading south-southwest from her current position (named 'Mt Erebus' on Colonial Maps) toward Fischel Glacier, about twenty klicks out. Movement was slow, as it meant picking her way over cracked ice and rock strewn waste, all for the singular joy of killing a group of people she had never met.
She had to admit she liked her jobs perks.
And she tried very hard, over the next hour, to not think of Buran as Hell; a place of lost souls; who could fly away, if only any other place would have them.
And lets face it, no other place would feel so much like home...
Chapter 6
"If the Devil hates us, why does he want so many of us around?"~ Curtis Browne "The other side of Alice"
"There is nothing worse than a man with high standards complaining of loneliness. I wish choosy men chose silence." ~ Patricia Blackwell "Hekuba"
"Revenge, like wine, sweetens with age." Cor Lai mantra, mid 5th century SGD.
The Thin; a place so terrible, even the planets own atmosphere refuses to go there. Yet, here she was, moving very slowly through a jumbled terrain
of brown-grey boulders and eerily sculpted ice columns. On warm days, the atmosphere would return, to sculpt more out of the ice or frost, or occasionally drop some in thin, dry flakes.
This was not a warm day. Fully one-hundred twelve below, with no air pressure. Water would boil, except it would freeze, first.
She shook her head, watching the crawl of Aurora Borealis flicker like a river
of greenish-red light above her. As thin as the atmosphere was, the magnetosphere still worked, at least.
North of here was the Great Barrens; a sheet of virgin ice more than 2 miles thick and twenty-five million years old. It was no-mans land, and even by the surprisingly low standards of Buran, it was ugly, dreary and cold.
South three hundred klicks was Christmastime; to her direct west (behind her, in this instance) were the jumbled peaks of several mountain ranges, and directly ahead, due east, was a great glacier nearly three miles across.
On the other side, over the frozen white and airless nothing, some twelve kilometers, were the Enemy, meandering slowly south in the narrow side valleys carved by the glacier as it advanced and retreated.
If the glacier had a name, she had never heard it; like her own, it simply didn't matter. It was simply another thing that could present either an opportunity, or a problem.
And there are few things, either living or dead, animal or mineral, that truly wished to become her problem.
She loped across the frozen river, her suit easily mapping for crevasses, adjusting for grip, and pumping much needed oxygen to vital muscles. Nano-machines repaired strained tendons and ligaments before "pain" could be felt
for the most part, though occasionally a bad landing would produce a white-hot burst of searing pain from this ankle or that. Minutes would pass as she
swore, and the nannites knit her back together again.
Then off, to the east, as if she was magnetically drawn, and the Enemy
was a Lodestone. She stopped twice for more than an hour; once, because her suit needed an emergency repair, once because a wrong landing from a skittery jump popped her knee nearly around the back of her leg.
She screamed for a full 10 minutes, her eyes tearing, her teeth gnashing, as the cold of the nannites pumped into the region. For nearly forty minutes, she watched as her leg repaired itself, then, for twenty minutes, she hacked
at the ice she had landed on, using a thermal knife to gouge, cut and rend massive pieces away.
Done, she moved on, at first gingerly, but gaining confidence as she pressed east.
She was close, and she could feel the presence of the Enemy crawlers moving about through the vibrations in the rocks and ice.
At last she slowed to a near halt, finally removing her weapon from her shoulder and scanning the valley wall for a perch to hide in.
It would not be long now.
"There is nothing worse than a man with high standards complaining of loneliness. I wish choosy men chose silence." ~ Patricia Blackwell "Hekuba"
"Revenge, like wine, sweetens with age." Cor Lai mantra, mid 5th century SGD.
The Thin; a place so terrible, even the planets own atmosphere refuses to go there. Yet, here she was, moving very slowly through a jumbled terrain
of brown-grey boulders and eerily sculpted ice columns. On warm days, the atmosphere would return, to sculpt more out of the ice or frost, or occasionally drop some in thin, dry flakes.
This was not a warm day. Fully one-hundred twelve below, with no air pressure. Water would boil, except it would freeze, first.
She shook her head, watching the crawl of Aurora Borealis flicker like a river
of greenish-red light above her. As thin as the atmosphere was, the magnetosphere still worked, at least.
North of here was the Great Barrens; a sheet of virgin ice more than 2 miles thick and twenty-five million years old. It was no-mans land, and even by the surprisingly low standards of Buran, it was ugly, dreary and cold.
South three hundred klicks was Christmastime; to her direct west (behind her, in this instance) were the jumbled peaks of several mountain ranges, and directly ahead, due east, was a great glacier nearly three miles across.
On the other side, over the frozen white and airless nothing, some twelve kilometers, were the Enemy, meandering slowly south in the narrow side valleys carved by the glacier as it advanced and retreated.
If the glacier had a name, she had never heard it; like her own, it simply didn't matter. It was simply another thing that could present either an opportunity, or a problem.
And there are few things, either living or dead, animal or mineral, that truly wished to become her problem.
She loped across the frozen river, her suit easily mapping for crevasses, adjusting for grip, and pumping much needed oxygen to vital muscles. Nano-machines repaired strained tendons and ligaments before "pain" could be felt
for the most part, though occasionally a bad landing would produce a white-hot burst of searing pain from this ankle or that. Minutes would pass as she
swore, and the nannites knit her back together again.
Then off, to the east, as if she was magnetically drawn, and the Enemy
was a Lodestone. She stopped twice for more than an hour; once, because her suit needed an emergency repair, once because a wrong landing from a skittery jump popped her knee nearly around the back of her leg.
She screamed for a full 10 minutes, her eyes tearing, her teeth gnashing, as the cold of the nannites pumped into the region. For nearly forty minutes, she watched as her leg repaired itself, then, for twenty minutes, she hacked
at the ice she had landed on, using a thermal knife to gouge, cut and rend massive pieces away.
Done, she moved on, at first gingerly, but gaining confidence as she pressed east.
She was close, and she could feel the presence of the Enemy crawlers moving about through the vibrations in the rocks and ice.
At last she slowed to a near halt, finally removing her weapon from her shoulder and scanning the valley wall for a perch to hide in.
It would not be long now.
Chapter 5
"Time is the one thing that fools consistently waste, and wise men consistently enjoy." ~ Ernest E. Ralls "Songs of our Fathers."
"Only the foolish and the very wise never change." ~ Confucius.
"If you added up all the 'if only's' and 'I'd rathers' in the universe, you still wouldn't reach a conclusion."~ P.J. Stoke "Stand Up, Sit Down, Shut it."
It had been three days already since she had left Christmastime and her new lover.It had seemed like a frigid, cold, breathless hell since then, but then, she smiled, Buran IV had always seemed that way.
She loped north putting a half-dozen klicks on her new suit, testing its every reaction, its every thread coming under scrutiny; infinitely better to find it here than in the Thin or the Freeze, where failure equaled death.
She moved north through a rocky terrain of jumbled boulders and craggy peaks, the feeble glow of daylight fading to a watery reddish flow in the far west. Already, a few feeble stars tried vainly to ward of the all encompassing
gray consuming the rest of the sky. Here and there, green whorls of Aurora
snaked over her head, dancing eerily and almost within reach, it seemed.
There. The faint rumble of movement through frigid rocks. She stopped for a moment to be sure, facing north along the rim of a shallow valley, carved by advancing glaciers.
Sure enough, the rumble, though distant, was present. The Enemy was coming south.
She scanned the edge of the bowl shaped rim, finding a large stone pile to
dig herself into, gradually becoming still within the narrow confines of its rocky embrace.
A small snow devil passed within a dozen meters nearly thirty minutes later, depositing a thin layer of snow around and on top of her, neatly completing
her camouflage. Her weapon lay in front of her, her optics already filling her visor with data from the shallow valley below.
When the Enemy slowly hove into view, it was very nearly three hours later
and forty degrees cooler. Two large tracked vehicles, looking like centipedes
lined with antennae, nearly three kilometers distant, and down a slight inclination.
She watched for several minutes, tracking their slow and ungainly progress
over the ice field, carefully aiming for weak points in the armor, where engine heat was ported away from the reactors.
Her breathing was slowed, now, as was her metabolism; everything in the universe seemed to slow under the gravity well of a nearby action. Even the aurora seemed to slow and pulse, giving the ground an eerie green glow
where it reflected.
Joy. This was what she was born to do. This moment of release. She pulled the trigger, a look of understanding crossing her face. Her lover had made this same face, and for very nearly the same reason.
If the Enemy was aware of her, he was unable to do anything about it; the first shot penetrated the Crawlers reactor, its kinetic force more than enough to cause a small amount of the Crawlers plutonium to combust spectacularly. The second Crawler died in the pyre set by the first; the sudden heat evaporated a huge amount of ice beneath the two vehicles, and
swallowed the second almost totally.
If the spectacle could be called anything, "orgasmic" would be an appropriate choice.
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"Only the foolish and the very wise never change." ~ Confucius.
"If you added up all the 'if only's' and 'I'd rathers' in the universe, you still wouldn't reach a conclusion."~ P.J. Stoke "Stand Up, Sit Down, Shut it."
It had been three days already since she had left Christmastime and her new lover.It had seemed like a frigid, cold, breathless hell since then, but then, she smiled, Buran IV had always seemed that way.
She loped north putting a half-dozen klicks on her new suit, testing its every reaction, its every thread coming under scrutiny; infinitely better to find it here than in the Thin or the Freeze, where failure equaled death.
She moved north through a rocky terrain of jumbled boulders and craggy peaks, the feeble glow of daylight fading to a watery reddish flow in the far west. Already, a few feeble stars tried vainly to ward of the all encompassing
gray consuming the rest of the sky. Here and there, green whorls of Aurora
snaked over her head, dancing eerily and almost within reach, it seemed.
There. The faint rumble of movement through frigid rocks. She stopped for a moment to be sure, facing north along the rim of a shallow valley, carved by advancing glaciers.
Sure enough, the rumble, though distant, was present. The Enemy was coming south.
She scanned the edge of the bowl shaped rim, finding a large stone pile to
dig herself into, gradually becoming still within the narrow confines of its rocky embrace.
A small snow devil passed within a dozen meters nearly thirty minutes later, depositing a thin layer of snow around and on top of her, neatly completing
her camouflage. Her weapon lay in front of her, her optics already filling her visor with data from the shallow valley below.
When the Enemy slowly hove into view, it was very nearly three hours later
and forty degrees cooler. Two large tracked vehicles, looking like centipedes
lined with antennae, nearly three kilometers distant, and down a slight inclination.
She watched for several minutes, tracking their slow and ungainly progress
over the ice field, carefully aiming for weak points in the armor, where engine heat was ported away from the reactors.
Her breathing was slowed, now, as was her metabolism; everything in the universe seemed to slow under the gravity well of a nearby action. Even the aurora seemed to slow and pulse, giving the ground an eerie green glow
where it reflected.
Joy. This was what she was born to do. This moment of release. She pulled the trigger, a look of understanding crossing her face. Her lover had made this same face, and for very nearly the same reason.
If the Enemy was aware of her, he was unable to do anything about it; the first shot penetrated the Crawlers reactor, its kinetic force more than enough to cause a small amount of the Crawlers plutonium to combust spectacularly. The second Crawler died in the pyre set by the first; the sudden heat evaporated a huge amount of ice beneath the two vehicles, and
swallowed the second almost totally.
If the spectacle could be called anything, "orgasmic" would be an appropriate choice.
Chapter 4
"If there is darkness in the world, it was crafted by man" ~ Duar Religious Text, 3rd century SGD
"God loved the world, but it was a short honeymoon." ~ Newman Castell, "Bleakspace"
"You will either write your own future, or be a footnote in someone else's."
~ Gynnifer Ghant _"Hellike"_
For nearly a fortnight she had been cooped up within the confines of Christmastime, that singularly nasty clump of human detritus washed on the unforgiving shores of Buran IV. It wasn't the crowded, badly lit corridors that finally began to work at her; she realized she missed the Thin and the Freeze more than she missed the milling crowds of swindling, scheming,
shady, sulphurous humans who called Christmastime home.
Still; she was able to catch up on some reading, upgrade her sniper scope to a Leupold Starmaster AG 9 and finally figure out who had carved her initials into the men's bathroom wall. Not at all uneventful, she just felt..
cooped up.
In the Freeze, she was master; she followed her own rules, and never broke them, and they had never let her down.Not once. Those rules had been handed down to her, and she had made them her own with a passion. Sure, she had added to them, and tweaked them; but they were still very much intact.
In Christmastime, the singular rule was simple; watch your back. Personally, the Enemy were far safer to deal with; they typically shot at your face, whereas these noble denizens of humanity tried very hard to use your back as a target.
Perhaps that's why she found it so easy to pull that trigger, over and over again. She simply pasted the faces of her fellows onto the enemy and went to work, with a smile on her face and a song in her heart.
She needed a drink, and maybe something else. She hated to ask around for that ; odd as it seemed, men and women were somewhat scared of her. all things considered, she was ok with that. Still, she needed what she needed, and it would be three days till her armor was totally finished with its cleaning and its upgrades. Ugh.
The Bartender over at the "House of Ale Repute" owed her a favor or two, and he knew her type. God.
Things were so much easier when you could kill them when you were done.
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"God loved the world, but it was a short honeymoon." ~ Newman Castell, "Bleakspace"
"You will either write your own future, or be a footnote in someone else's."
~ Gynnifer Ghant _"Hellike"_
For nearly a fortnight she had been cooped up within the confines of Christmastime, that singularly nasty clump of human detritus washed on the unforgiving shores of Buran IV. It wasn't the crowded, badly lit corridors that finally began to work at her; she realized she missed the Thin and the Freeze more than she missed the milling crowds of swindling, scheming,
shady, sulphurous humans who called Christmastime home.
Still; she was able to catch up on some reading, upgrade her sniper scope to a Leupold Starmaster AG 9 and finally figure out who had carved her initials into the men's bathroom wall. Not at all uneventful, she just felt..
cooped up.
In the Freeze, she was master; she followed her own rules, and never broke them, and they had never let her down.Not once. Those rules had been handed down to her, and she had made them her own with a passion. Sure, she had added to them, and tweaked them; but they were still very much intact.
In Christmastime, the singular rule was simple; watch your back. Personally, the Enemy were far safer to deal with; they typically shot at your face, whereas these noble denizens of humanity tried very hard to use your back as a target.
Perhaps that's why she found it so easy to pull that trigger, over and over again. She simply pasted the faces of her fellows onto the enemy and went to work, with a smile on her face and a song in her heart.
She needed a drink, and maybe something else. She hated to ask around for that ; odd as it seemed, men and women were somewhat scared of her. all things considered, she was ok with that. Still, she needed what she needed, and it would be three days till her armor was totally finished with its cleaning and its upgrades. Ugh.
The Bartender over at the "House of Ale Repute" owed her a favor or two, and he knew her type. God.
Things were so much easier when you could kill them when you were done.
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Chapter 3
"The man who loses his dreams is the loneliest man of all." Dei Ara saying, 9th century SGD.
"Only he who is willing to bury himself should pursue a battle while peace may yet be had." Pierre De Arsenault-Couamley "The Art of Peace."
The valley was a north south cut, running some thirty-five klicks from one end to the other, and some twelve klicks across; mostly wide, flat country
covered in the omnipresent ice and deep drifts of compacted snow.
Small eddies of heated wind caused tiny tornadoes of white snow to form in the lower part of the valley, where the atmosphere was almost perceptible; here, above the valley floor and to the east, the air was bled of any strength
by the iron grip of numbing cold; and it was well and truly cold, brutally cold, right now. A full one-hundred five degrees below zero, with the feeble, watery heat of Buran IV's sun a precious memory.
Still, she made do, her heavy gun propped against her shoulder, its ceramic
surface dull and cool to the touch, where a metal gun would shatter like struck glass on recoil.
She had been in the valley, holding position and still, for several days; watching the plains to the north with unwavering intensity, shutting down all
non vital body systems and slowing others to a crawl; her biosuit couls sustain her for weeks in the deep Freeze, and, with her metabolism turned down, could theoretically keep her going for months.
Soon. She could feel the enemy. She had no other word for it; the distant treads and clamor of mighty engines crawling along the bitterly-cold surface
could be felt for miles, if you were attuned.
And if it were one thing she was, it was attuned. She adjusted the gun, slowly, mimicking the speed of falling ice. The scope animated the inside of
her bio-suits visor.
There. A dozen transports, roughly the size of an old Terran football-field.
She checked the status of her weapon quickly, adjusting azimuth and quickly measuring air pressure (negligible) and wind speed (5kpm, N'/ne)
Then that rarest of things
She smiled.
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"Only he who is willing to bury himself should pursue a battle while peace may yet be had." Pierre De Arsenault-Couamley "The Art of Peace."
The valley was a north south cut, running some thirty-five klicks from one end to the other, and some twelve klicks across; mostly wide, flat country
covered in the omnipresent ice and deep drifts of compacted snow.
Small eddies of heated wind caused tiny tornadoes of white snow to form in the lower part of the valley, where the atmosphere was almost perceptible; here, above the valley floor and to the east, the air was bled of any strength
by the iron grip of numbing cold; and it was well and truly cold, brutally cold, right now. A full one-hundred five degrees below zero, with the feeble, watery heat of Buran IV's sun a precious memory.
Still, she made do, her heavy gun propped against her shoulder, its ceramic
surface dull and cool to the touch, where a metal gun would shatter like struck glass on recoil.
She had been in the valley, holding position and still, for several days; watching the plains to the north with unwavering intensity, shutting down all
non vital body systems and slowing others to a crawl; her biosuit couls sustain her for weeks in the deep Freeze, and, with her metabolism turned down, could theoretically keep her going for months.
Soon. She could feel the enemy. She had no other word for it; the distant treads and clamor of mighty engines crawling along the bitterly-cold surface
could be felt for miles, if you were attuned.
And if it were one thing she was, it was attuned. She adjusted the gun, slowly, mimicking the speed of falling ice. The scope animated the inside of
her bio-suits visor.
There. A dozen transports, roughly the size of an old Terran football-field.
She checked the status of her weapon quickly, adjusting azimuth and quickly measuring air pressure (negligible) and wind speed (5kpm, N'/ne)
Then that rarest of things
She smiled.
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