DEVIMAYNA 2980 - Book 1 - Chapter 5

First draft!

If you haven't read the previous chapters, this might not make a lot of sense hah

Enjoy :D

The actual ground was impossible to detect, blanketed in a thick cover of snow that reached up to our waists, long lost from view. Visibility was frighteningly low, as a blizzard clouded up the atmosphere - it raged fierce and rough, and as if we needed another thing slowing down our burdened pace, the wind fought against every step taken, threatening to blow us back. Our OWV-19 was parked about a thousand feet from the station, and the building at issue required a tracker to find; it blended right in with the environment. Overall, it was a very gloomy scene. Even the extra heating commodities in my armor were failing to fully shut out the violent cold.

The first thing that could be noticed was the eerie silence enveloping the area. Even with the howling wind raging across our ears, the absence of any other noise was certainly a little unsettling. Rhiannon and Winoa stuck close together, almost huddled up as they fought the strong gusts, with myself only a few feet away adjacent to them, having perhaps stupidly refused to engage in any sort of physical contact. Josiak was at the forefront, scouting the way with a device pinpointing the exact location of the structure using satellites. Thanks to the difficult nature of the terrain, plus the fact that the weather was obviously not on our side, it would take us quite some time to get to our desired destination, despite the distance between it and the jet not being really that far.

About two minutes in, Winoa began her complaints, though, comically enough, they went unheard.

"Timberland?" she shouted, her voice cracking. "This is exhausting, how much farther are we gonna have to go?"

A moment of quietude, then a faint,

"...What?"

"How far away are we?"

More silence. Even over the comms, it was difficult to make out any spoken words over the ruckus outside our helmets.

"...What did you say?"

"I said, how far away are we from the station!" She spoke slowly but vehemently, enunciating every syllable in careful detail.

Rhiannon and I could not help but let out miserable laughs under our breaths as the same response came back again, after a solid ten seconds.

"...What?"

"Oh, never mind, you're no help at all!" Winoa's face returned to its signature pout, and her pace regressed even slower. "Wasn't cut out for all this..." I don't think I was, either. This was certainly not an enjoyable experience...

"...What?"

We continued to plod on through the snow, heads low, shivering in the freezing temperatures. It was a good six minutes before the station came into sight, and this moment was greeted most enthusiastically by Winoa. She seemed to immediately gain all of her strength back, plowing forward twice as fast towards the building, leaving us all behind. Rhiannon and I eagerly followed suit, dashing as hastily as we could to seek out the warmth offered by the structure. Josiak yelled at us to get back, not wanting us to enter without analyzing the situation first, I suppose. I knew it was hazardous, but I ignored his breathless commands - so did my two partners. We were too cold to care; all that mattered to us was getting inside before we collapsed.

And thankfully enough, arrival went relatively smoothly. Due to the low visibility and my extreme haste, I barely looked over the doorway I flung myself through. All I recognized was that, collapsed on the hard floor, shivering spitefully, there were no bullets pinging off my armor, and no angry shouts from an enemy. I was safe.

What I did notice was the curious extension of the small room I was in, a dark hall, beset with icy walls and harsh rust...

Last to enter was Jo. The captain drew out his assault laser rifle from his back as he approached the entrance. Taking a deep breath, he kicked open the door and brought his gun up, ready to open fire. Of course, no adversary jumped out to greet him. Instead, I, rising to stand next to the aperture, reached out and laid a hand on his weapon, pushing it lower it as we all looked down the corridor ahead in curiosity.

It was a very unsettling sight to behold, reminiscent of perhaps the building in which the murders might usually take place in a horror film. The only lighting offered was the dim, flickering luminosity of the overhead ceiling fixtures. Slush and ice melted across the ground, interfering with the electric installations, causing little sparks to shoot out from here and there every so often. The walls were almost entirely covered in all sorts of pipes and tubes, and there was a single rust-coated iron door at the end of the hall

It was clear we were in some sort of lobby.

"Well..." Winoa began, her eyes fixated to the front. Despite the ominous situation, her voice was wrought with fascination. "I've never seen something quite like this before..." She pulled her helmet off and began mindlessly fixing her hair. I wondered at how she managed to disregard the cold.

A few seconds passed before Josiak took the initiative. Stalking further on, still just as tense as the moment he entered the scene, the man motioned forwards with a flick of his rifle. He did not look intent on spending too much time here - a reasonable quest.

"Come on, girls. Get your guns out. Madden, helmet on, officer. I'll bust open the door, and you three'll rush through to clear the area. Be sharp about it. Something's obviously up here, and I don't like it."

We filed along after him, though as we left our positions, Rhiannon reached back to push the entrance to the outside closed, fighting against the snow for a moment before collapsing in on it, producing a moderately loud sound. Our eyes shot back reproving glares at her before we continued. She withered a bit under our stares and quickly moved to join us, muttering, " 'M sorry, was getting cold in here too..."

Josiak had his hand on the knob, crouched, prepared to spring. "Ready?"

A swift nod from myself and a thumbs-up from Rhiannon was the reply. The captain turned back to the door. "Right, when I say go. One... two... three..."

For just a moment, it seemed the whole structure had gone completely hushed, not even the wind outside making much noise in our ears. Then...

"Go!"

He spun the handle and kicked open the entrance with great force, blowing the rust off the hinges and slamming the door into the back wall of the room it opened up to. We rushed along in his wake, in shooting position as we darted forward, branching out in four different directions, Josiak roaring through his flipped-up visor. "KFMD, come out with your hands up! Come out for inspection!"

Nothing. This room was just as lifeless as the last. Circling around a few island tables and peeking back to the corners, we each let up our own shout of "Clear!"

If the lobby could be described as in ruins, then this would amount to demolished. Water leaked in from the ceiling, leaving the floor to be drowned in a good inch of sleet; more sparks shot out in every which way with sharp crackling noises; a few pipes above hissed obnoxiously while some kind of steam pushed out through the breaks; the few lights that still had any life left in them would flicker on for a moment only every few seconds; a few of the windows had been shattered, glass shards scattered here and there; and the actual intended contents of the room, including books, science models, charts, tablets, and more, were dispersed all across the ground. What stood out the most, however, was the blood... everywhere. I swallowed hard as I overlooked the harrowing scene. A complete disaster of a setting.

I could assume by my companions' expressions that we each had the same thought in mind. What on earth happened here...

With sighs of relief (though plagued by apprehension), we met at the center of the area where our leader stood. Winoa offered her commentary immediately. "Excuse me for asking, sir, but why do you think there's someone here to 'come out with their hands up'? It's obvious someone was here to create all this at one point, but how could you think they might still be here? This place looks totally abandoned."

"I... uh..." Josiak shifted uncomfortably. He looked distracted, like his mind was absolutely elsewhere. "I just know..."Winoa could not help but interject. "Well, how sure you seem. Excuse me for saying, but I'd rather be sure of our situation before we make any further advances."

He wrinkled his nose at her before straightening himself up, raising his firearm again. "Look, it wouldn't make sense for people to just destroy Kartov stations. That never happens, never seen it out here. Either the occupants got in a fight, a likely possibility, or some undocumented outside force came inside with some bad motives. Either way, it leaves reason to suspect that someone might still be here, because why would someone attack this station in the first place unless they planned on using it? That's why we ought to be wary."

Undocumented outside force..?

I refused to let myself think too much of that now.

Winoa shrugged, seeming rueful. "Apologies for the sharp remark, sir," she mumbled.

I could hear in her voice, she was being genuine. Half of me wondered if her tough words were borne of impulsivity, but I recalled how protective she seemed to be of her keep. The worried glances she was always throwing Rhiannon's way, her gentle yet harsh reprimands whenever the blonde was about to do something stupid. It was easy to see where her vulnerability was laid. She was merely looking out for her friend. I thought this to be quite endearing.

Josiak nodded, and that was the end of that. Pointing over towards two hallways leading elsewhere across the room, he continued his directions, re-lowering his visor. "Whitlock, Madden, you two take the left wing. Marsalis and I will cover the right. Clear all the rooms and meet up right here afterwards. Don't skip a single place. If you see anyone, do not engage unless they've already spotted you - and in that case, just... try to keep them alive. I know this is already much different from our usual missions, but use your brains and we'll all be okay."

The rest of us nodded in unison. Satisfied, the captain motioned me to his side. "All right, good luck, and be careful."

As Rhiannon and Winoa departed swiftly, I caught a soft murmur in my earpiece from the man next to me.

"And to think that this was supposed to be an easy first mission for Marsalis. No matter, I'm always up for some action."

I pursed my lips and followed quietly along.

--

For most of our progression through the compound, it was an extremely uneventful journey, however, this in no way meant that I found it boring. I had never seen anything outside of the bleak environment of my city, and this was something different, something fresh. Every moment of this was a new sight to see, every dim and utterly destroyed room a new area I had never before beheld. I consciously made an effort to not let myself get too distracted. From the corner of my vision I could see that Josiak was noticing this and keeping a keen eye on me.

With another shout of "Clear!", one more area was searched, and unless we wanted to start inspecting the grounds outside, this would be the last room on this wing. I stood by the exit, peering out the broken window, waiting on a command from the captain.

I was hoping he wasn't going to start trying to make small-talk. The last thing I needed now was an awkward attempt at bonding again.

Josiak glanced around for a moment more before lowering his gun again. He let out a long, heavy exhale, and whether it was a relieved sigh or a disappointed heave was a good question. Flipping up the visor of his helmet again, the man made his way over the rubble to where I stood.

"Looks like we've finished up this part. Let's make our way back to the rendezvous. Hopefully, Whitlock and Madden will be done with the left wing soon; you can still hear their 'clears' if you listen closely."

Being in no rush, we paused for a moment, successfully catching a few of our companions' faint voices from the opposite side of the building.

I nodded. "Knowing the layout of the place thanks to the briefing documents, I think it's safe to assume that if they have been moving at a pace similar to our own, they should be done fairly--"

A sudden, far-off BANG! interrupted my sentence. Josiak and I went very still, eyes locked intensely on one another.

"Darcy. Left wing. Now."

Despite his own words, neither of us moved a single inch. It was as if we had frozen.

Another gunshot followed directly afterwards, spurring me into action - I darted headlong for the previous doorway, reaching for the rifle slung over my shoulder. Running full speed alongside myself, Josiak tapped into the microphone in his earbuds, raising his voice. "Whitlock! Madden! Do you read me?"

After a few seconds of silence and then a repeat of his words, a reply came back over the comms. "We've got an armed man in here sir, he's got a gun." Rhiannon sounded fairly shaken, though her voice remained hushed. "Winoa and I are behind the door. And--"

BAM!

"... and it would be very convenient for you to get here ASAP. Like, fast!"

We crashed along the passageways, leaping over strewn objects and toppled chairs, sliding on thick ice and ducking under hanging pipes. I let the captain overtake my pace, sprinting in his wake.

"We're on our way," he replied, his tone reliably calm, contrasting his swift movements. "Leave your mics on."

Winoa took over communications, sounding significantly more level-headed than her partner. "Copy that. May I have some orders, sir?"

"Keep behind the door until I get there. I'll attempt to negotiate with him. Consider it necessary to keep him alive."

"Understood, sir. Rhi, back, get behind me, now." I marveled at the collectedness with which she spoke.

BAM!

As Josiak and I bounded through the wreckage, we stayed notified through the radios, listening to the scene play out. At first there was mostly quietude, with a few gunshots every ten seconds or so, then the mysterious antagonist began to offer his own words.

"Show yourselves!" he called. His voice was that of an old man's, withering and hoarse. "Step out here, fiends, and maybe I'll give you a chance!"

The sound of metal scraping across the floor grated through the speakers.

"He's moving towards us, sir, using a chair as a protective barrier," Winoa informed. "If he moves much closer we'll have no choice but to engage or retreat."

Recognizing the extra urgency of the situation, Josiak sped up his pace even further. "Say somethin', banter with him, try and keep him there! I'm only a minute away!"

On the other end of the line, Rhiannon nodded, turning to speak to Winoa. "You heard him, say something!"

Winoa swallowed audibly, but replied undeterred. "Will do. Uh..."

Jo and I were now in the left wing. I immediately noticed that this entire section was in almost perfect condition; the windows, pipes, furniture, electrical installments, and most of the accessories were well intact, as though whatever had caused the destruction of the right wing had not even touched this part. Nonetheless, the area was still marked by bloodstains. Interesting.

Winoa cleared her throat, nervously taking on our commander's order. " 'Maybe I'll give you a chance?' Do you realize that you are vastly outnumbered, uh... dude..." Her voice wavered as she spoke. "If anyone will be doing the killing it'll be us--"

"Stop threatening him, Winnie, that'll do nothing good!" Rhiannon hissed, lightly cuffing her partner over the head. "Sir, please, we have no intention of hurting you. If you could just put your weapon down, and we could have a polite discussion, maybe we could go ahead and sort things out peacefully..."

She faltered as Josiak abruptly appeared behind her, myself not far off. He shoved the two girls over to the side. "Useless crew I've got... Sir, my name is Captain Timberland of the Kartov Foreign Missions Division. I don't want to harm you, but I will if I need to. I only want to help you. Push your weapon over towards the door and stand up straight with your hands in the air where I can see them, and we can go from there."

Silence. Josiak frowned, gripping his rifle tighter. "I said, push your weapon towards the door, and stand with your hands up. Now, or else we're gonna have some issues. Madden told no lies, you are vastly outnumbered."

More silence, then an awkward shuffling and a click, followed by the sound of the stranger's gun being shoved away. The tip of its barrel just barely reached the entrance, and Josiak leaned down to pull it towards him. "Now, sir, do you have any more weapons on you? Answer honestly or there will be consequences."

"I... no..."

"Good. Now, I'm going to enter the room. I have a gun, as do my girls. I'm going to put you in handcuffs so that we may question you. Like I said, we have no intention of harming you, outside of self-defense. Understood?"

The hesitation in the response was very noticeable.

"... Yeah."

"All right. Hands in the air, please."

In we went, rifles trained on the old man, who was positioned behind a broken-down chair, palms up. It would appear he was truthful in that he didn't seem to possess any other armaments.

His face was pale and gaunt, his clothing ripped and torn. He truly looked a mess. Fortunately, I could not spot any blood on him, either of the pure-born kind or AH fluids. This would surely save us the trouble of patching up any wounds.

Once close enough, Josiak was swift in retrieving a pair of cuffs from his belt and fastening them around the stranger's wrists. He then booted him in the shin, pulling him upwards. "Come on, stand straight now."

The old man complied, eyes darting around. "You're from Kartov?" was his first inquiry.

Josiak nodded, raising his brows. "Where else would we be?"

I could sense the uneasy subtext in his jesting words. Regardless, I still couldn't allow myself to fathom the idea of a people from another place than our city. That notion came with... a lot of weight.

"Are... are you goin' to send me back there?"

"Depends on your cooperation. Don't try to struggle or escape." He motioned towards the door. "Come on girls, let's get back to the jet. We'll interrogate him there. I'm gettin' cold."

--

The man's name was Barron Price, and it was very clear he was a little off his rocker. He was, however, despite his rather unseemly first impression, nothing more than a nice old guy. Huddled up in a blanket in the passengers' cabin of our jet, shivering and blowing on his hands, his eyes never left us. We circled around to take seats of our own, Josiak presenting a warm meal - composed of AH-safe energy vessels - for the newcomer, from the food storage. Barron immediately went at it like a madman, but only a few seconds passed by before the captain pulled back the platter again.

Rhiannon frowned. "Hey, wait, shouldn't you at least let him finish--"

Josiak set the food aside, leaning forward and folding his hands. "Don't need your opinion, Whitlock. Look at me, Price. You're not entitled to any of our stuff until you can give us somethin' back. You're gonna answer all of my questions truthfully, and if you cooperate, you can have all the food you want. If you don't, there will be some real ramifications. Understood?"

Barron nodded furiously, though his vision was still focused upon the prize. Satisfied, the captain wasted no time in beginning the investigations. Pulling out a recorder and clicking it on, he held the device at his side while they talked. First, however, standard procedure would require him to update the recorder on the context.

"This is Captain Josiak Wolfgang Timberland of Squadron Nine of the Kartov Foreign Missions Division, the time is 07:53, the date is February fourteenth of year 2980. I'm aboard OWV-19-09, and I'm at Station Two of four in the South Pole, alongside my team, officers Rhiannon Whitlock, Winoa Madden, and Darcy Marsalis. The station was not responding to the Kartov Communications and Missions Center for approximately two months, so me and my team went to investigate. The right wing of the facility was in complete disarray, while the left wing was quite the opposite. A singular man was found, who claims to be Barron Percival Price. This will be our full questioning of him. The objective is to find out what exactly happened at the station. Right." He turned to look back at his interrogee. "Price, how long have you been stationed at this location?"

Barron sat up again and cleared his throat with a pained hack. "I was planted here on... eh, let's see... I think it was the eighth day of the seventh month of year 2655. It might have been the seventh day. Goodness, I don't remember, why would I remember that?"

"And what was your role here?"

"Well, I was one of the technicians."

"And what did your relationships with the other inhabitants look like?"

"I did help out the scientists quite often with their observatory-sciency-fancy stuff. Some of them considered me to be an unofficial member of their close circle. Other than that I kind of just listened around. 'S lonely down here."

"I don't doubt that. Price, do you remember the day when-- when whatever happened to this place, happened?"

The old man nodded. "Yeah, yeah... I think it was the seventh day of the last month of last year, one of the scientists dashed into the building from outside, shouting about something like he'd found a hole? I wasn't too interested, 'cause a hole is a hole, why, there's holes everywhere. Anyways, apparently it was an entrance to somewhere or somethin', and everyone got real excited about it. I guess they used probes to see under there, and it was very, very deep, and opened up to a cave larger than anything they'd ever heard of. And when I mean deep, I'm talking many miles underground. The probes showed plants and creatures like they'd never seen before, and naturally they were ecstatic about it. Most of the team didn't want to report this back to the KCMC and get their glory taken from them, they were sure they'd found somethin' great. They planned on headin' down there to explore a bit, while the rest kept things goin' on the surface, but a few of the guys were strongly opposed to this, sayin' that a cave so low underground could be extremely dangerous, and it would be best to let headquarters know. Now, mind you, being all alone in a station with the same people for years does stuff to your head. They were desperate for somethin' new to do, and, well, there was a huge fight over it. Combine a huge discovery with a group of mentally ill scientists with no will to live, and you've got yoursel' a pretty harsh deal.

"I couldn't tell you how long the conflict lasted, but it was darn brutal. Meself being a smarter guy, I just hid the whole time, of course, I didn't care much about a blasted cave. Ultimately, being the majority, the ones who wanted to explore their find won, all the others were dead 'n' gone. They chucked all the corpses out into the snow and headed down there with some equipment and supplies and stuff, I guess. I ain't heard from 'em since. Crazed savages."

We glanced around at each other with raised eyebrows. This was a very different narrative than what we had been expecting. Josiak paused before continuing with the questions.

"And... have you tried contacting them through radio or any other methods?"

Barron scoffed. "Well what do you think, Mister Timberland? 'Course I have. Systems' been down, you saw yourself."

Jo shrugged. "Fair enough. Is that all?"

"As far as I remember, yep. Can I have some food now, I've been rationing terribly for the last few weeks."

"Why haven't you tried contacting the KCMC since the fight?"

"The communications tower got busted during the whole ordeal. Food?"

He nodded and picked up the platter again, holding it forth. Just as Barron was about to reach for it, however, the captain pulled it back again, producing an outpouring of protests from the technician. Josiak pointed a finger at the man.

"You can have your food all right, but only if you promise to do one last thing for us afterwards."

The starving man nodded hastily. "Anything."

The commander visibly suppressed a wide grin, shutting off the recorder before leaning in further. "Show me to the tunnel."