A Cold God, Chapter 30

Thrud Arvinsdottir shuddered as a bone-freezing gust tore across the landscape, rattling her armor and clawing at her exposed visor. She drew a breath through clenched teeth, the air sharp enough to hurt. Frost crept up the edges of her vision, inching inward despite the warmth her suit struggled to maintain. Her joints protested with every slow step forward, a dull ache that spread from ankle to hip.

Ahead, the other figures trudged in silence. They moved hunched, bent into the wind, servos whining softly beneath their cloaks of synthetic fur. Sammy’s body trailed behind them, dragged on a litter by two servitors who trudged impassively through waist-high drifts of packed snow. The youth’s face lay open to the sky, eyes shut, lips blue beneath frost-coated skin.

Jakken Valis halted, glancing up from beneath the thick cowl of his hood. His breath poured from his mouth in thick, sluggish clouds, vapor crystallizing in midair. He raised a fist, signaling the team to stop, and turned slowly in a wide arc, eyes narrowed against the glare from snowfields stretching endlessly white. The servitors halted too, their limbs groaning faintly as they stood inert, snow settling slowly onto their blank, expressionless faces.

“We have to find some kind of shelter soon,” Jakken rasped into his comm, voice flat and raw. Ice rimed his beard, flakes falling free as his lips moved. “Otherwise, we’re going to freeze to death out here.”

No one answered immediately. Thrud glanced sideways at Velis Hath, the tall scout’s helmeted head bent downward, movements stiff and slow. His gloved fingers tapped clumsily at his wrist-mounted auspex, the device frozen nearly solid. Tarin Krom shuffled past him, boots scraping across the ice-slicked surface as he struggled toward a rocky outcropping nearby, seeking cover from the wind that cut through their formation in relentless waves. Shae Cormac stood apart from the others, shoulders slumped, staring blankly at the empty horizon.

Thrud shifted her weight, turning to look westward. Through eyes squinting against the snow-glare, she glimpsed the faint outline of mountains—a jagged, black silhouette against the unending white. One peak towered over the others, its sides sheer, cliffs veined in thick rivulets of blue-white ice. Thrud raised her hand, pointing with a trembling finger, and pinged everyone's attention through the squad’s comm system.

“Sir,” she said quietly. Her throat was raw, her tongue heavy. She had to force the words out slowly. “We might find a cave over there.”

Jakken turned, following her gesture. He studied the mountain for a long moment, unmoving, then nodded slowly. Frost fell from his shoulders as he moved. He gestured again, signaling to the others with a curt jerk of his head.

“Everyone. We're headed to that mountain,” Jakken growled through his helmet vox, voice distorted by static. “Keep your eyes open for a cave or something sheltered.”

They turned as one, bodies heavy and slow in the deep snow, moving like tired specters across the barren landscape. Velis Hath took the lead, activating the auspex again. The device pulsed feebly, emitting a faint clicking as it struggled to scan the frozen earth. Tarin and Shae fell into step behind him, their breaths coming in short bursts, clouds fogging their visors. The servitors trudged silently at the rear, dragging Sammy’s frozen corpse through the drifts, his body jerking loosely each time the litter snagged on ice.

Thrud walked at Jakken’s side, hands curled tightly within her gloves, fingertips numb, joints stiff. Every footstep drove needles of cold through her bones, but she forced her pace to quicken, moving forward through sheer will. She glanced sidelong at Jakken. His jaw tightened, eyes fixed ahead, shoulders squared against the wind.

The mountain loomed closer now. Its black cliffs rose sharply, crowned with a corona of frozen clouds that hung unmoving around the peak. Long shadows crept across the snowfield beneath the mountain’s bulk, darkening as the team approached. The wind dropped suddenly, a brief lull that made their footsteps ring loudly on the ice, echoes bouncing from the cliffs above.

Velis raised one fist, signaling for caution, then crouched low, inspecting a formation of jagged rocks thrust upward from beneath layers of snow and ice. He brushed away the frost with slow, deliberate movements, revealing a narrow gap—a dark fissure just wide enough for them to squeeze through.

“Cave,” Velis said simply, voice dull. He did not look up, already pushing aside loose rubble, widening the entry.

Jakken moved forward, silent, nodding approval. He stepped to the side and motioned sharply to Thrud. She ducked her head, easing past Velis, pressing herself flat against cold stone. Ice grated against her armor plates as she moved inside. The passage was tight, walls rough, biting into her suit as she scraped forward into the darkness. Her visor’s illumination flickered to life, casting pale blue beams ahead.

Slowly, the fissure widened into a small cavern, its ceiling low, walls crusted thick with glittering ice. Thrud turned slowly in place, scanning the floor, searching for any sign of danger. Behind her, the others filed inside one by one, shoulders scraping the walls as they entered. The servitors came last, dragging Sammy’s litter into the cavern, laying his rigid form gently onto the frozen ground.

Jakken activated a chem-lamp, its greenish glow spreading weakly through the dark. He studied the walls, then turned back toward the cave mouth, signaling the servitors to place themselves in defensive positions. The mechanical creatures obeyed, moving to the entrance, bodies rigid and inert as they took up sentry positions.

Slowly, carefully, the team began clearing space, pushing loose rocks and ice aside. Shae crouched in the corner, attempting to ignite a small heat source, the portable flame guttering repeatedly before catching, a thin warmth barely radiating outward. Tarin huddled close to it, stretching numb fingers toward the weak glow. But it wasn’t enough. So, they turned on the portable heater and placed it by the fire–completely against regulations or codes, but it was so cold that none of that mattered. They still had three of them anyway.

Thrud knelt beside Sammy’s body. His eyes were closed, lashes crusted with frost, mouth open slightly as if caught mid-word. She reached forward gently, brushing snow from his face with stiff fingers. She did not speak.

Behind her, Jakken paced slowly, eyes fixed on the cavern’s dark corners. He stopped abruptly, head cocked, as if listening. The silence pressed inward, heavy, oppressive. Outside, the wind returned in a sudden shrieking howl, rattling the cave walls, sending gusts of frigid air whispering through cracks in the stone.

Thrud drew in a breath, the cold slicing into her lungs, and closed her eyes. The mountain above seemed to press down on them, its dark weight filling the silence, watching patiently from the gloom. She’d been to plenty of expeditions across hostile worlds–planets of ice and snow, and planets of fire and brimstone. And still, she had never faced anything quite like this. None of them had. Sammy was a Fenrisian and he was dead. 

“Sir,” she said, louder than she meant to. Her voice cracked at the edges. “What are we expected to do even if we do find whatever’s causing this freak winter storm?”

Jakken didn’t answer immediately. He sat near the center of the cave, elbows resting on his knees, helmet off, steam rising from his hair as it thawed slightly in the heat. The light caught the lines in his face, the red that edged his nose and ears. He blinked slowly and rubbed his jaw.

Everyone turned toward him.

He exhaled. The breath came out in a long, heavy cloud. 

“We record everything we see,” he said. “We’re not a recovery team. We’re not sent down to retrieve artifacts or engage hostiles.”

He shifted his weight, eyes sweeping the firelit faces.

“If it’s a machine causing this weather—some kind of warp device, terraformer, goddamn alien sun-killer—I don’t care. We’re not touching it. We document. We report. That’s it. Hopefully, we might even find out what happened to the first team.”

He raised one hand and gestured vaguely toward the mouth of the cave, where the wind screamed past like a wounded animal.

“This place is wrong,” he continued. 

“We all feel it. This cold isn’t natural. Magos Helmane said it. The planet should be warm. Lush, even. But this—” he stopped, curling his fingers into a fist, “—this is something else. I've never encountered anything like this.”

Shae Cormac spoke next, voice low, barely audible above the wind. “How many of us have to die before this mission is no longer worth it?”

Jakken didn’t answer. His silence stretched longer than it should have. Tarin shifted, thumb rubbing at the cracked skin of his hand.

Velis finally spoke. “I spotted movement earlier. Something big, maybe two klicks out. Walking on two legs. Not one of ours.”

That brought quiet again. Thrud’s jaw tensed. She hadn’t seen anything herself, but she’d heard it. A deep crunching rhythm. Heavy. Deliberate. Gone the moment she turned.

Jakken straightened. “We’ll take shifts through the night. Two on watch. Velis, you’re first with Shae. Thrud, you’re after them with me. Tarin, rest up.”

He paused. “We move at first light. If we’re lucky, the storm’ll thin out and give us a line to that anomaly.”

Thrud leaned back against the wall, the stone behind her like frozen iron. She looked toward Sammy’s body again. They’d wrapped him in a heat tarp and sealed his armor, but it hadn’t helped. The tarp had frosted over in less than an hour.

“We bury him?” she asked.

“No point,” Jakken said without looking. 

“Ground’s frozen solid. We bring him back if we can. If not—” he shrugged. “He’s already gone. Take his name tag, at least, just in case we can’t bring any other part of him back. He’s got a family waiting for him in Fenris, after all.”

They sat in silence for a while longer. The fire hissed and popped. Snow howled at the cave mouth.

Thrud closed her eyes again. The cold pressed in. And then she breathed in and walked over to Sammy’s corpse and removed the name tag from his chest. “Goodbye, Sammy.” 

----

“Tell me about this new recon team,” Captain Lokir Amarith crossed his arms over his chest, eyeing the dossiers of the second reconnaissance team. Across him was Lieutenant Meros. It’d been days since the second team was sent down. And, thus far, most of them remained alive–for now. Their life signs were somehow still transmitting data through the winter storm, but their locations remained amiss. All Amarith knew was that the recon team was somewhere in the dark.

Lieutenant Meros nodded. “Well, Lord-Captain, they’re all from cold worlds and have plenty of experience performing reconnaissance missions in extreme conditions. They’re also not conscripts.” 

That, more than anything, caught Captain Lokir’s attention. “You’re telling me they volunteered for this? They willingly joined this expedition? Huh, I ought to know my own crew more. I didn’t think we had any volunteers, aside from the officers, like yourself.” 

“I had the same reaction as you, Lord-Captain,” Lieutenant Meros said. “But… in their homeworlds, they were outcasts and pariahs. People avoided them. They were hated and persecuted for things they could not explain or define. And so they turned to the stars. And, quite frankly, all who were crazy enough to volunteer were immediately accepted, given training, and then sent off. I interviewed them myself and I believe they may be Blanks, Lord-Captain.”

“Blanks?” Captain Lokir’s eyes narrowed. He’d met a few of those before and they were not pleasant to be around. “Is that why they’re kept separate from the other recon teams?” 

“I believe they’re Blanks, Lord-Captain,” The Lieutenant confirmed. “But likely of a far lower magnitude than what would otherwise attract attention.” 

Lokir’s eyes narrowed. “Do you think- maybe… just maybe… their being Blanks is what’s keeping them barely alive down there?” 

“It’s certainly possible, Lord-Captain,” The Lieutenant nodded. “But, truth be told, not much is known about Blanks. And I would not want to make unfounded assumptions.”