The small group of six trudged across the icy waste, the giant Pwyll crater lay off to the right.
Davrid was no longer the leader and Odis was shunned, instead Lara had taken control. Smoke still rose from the crater in the distance behind them but no-one looked back.
Lara also held a tablet with the life sign readings of Sakara displayed on them. She felt sorry for him. A test subject who thought he was just a boy.
His parents had been paid three thousand credits to bring him up as their own and another thousand to take him on that trip to Exlixia, no knowing that in reality it was just so that the military could cover up the whole thing. It had not been a missile that had struck his parents room, but a strategically placed warhead.
His sister was still crying inside her suit.
The suits themselves were alright but very bulky. They were also so heavy that if gravity had been any stronger then the group would have been unable to make it this far already. It felt like Earth gravity within the suit.
They stopped a few hours later at the remains of the missing hover sled. It had ploughed straight into an ice cliff and the reason was found soon after with the driver decapitated and the passenger shattered. Frost still covered the inside of the vehicle, preserved by the cold outside.
“Poor guys.” whispered Othella, as they left the sled. “They had no hope.”
It was seven hours before the disaster happened.
They had left the icy spires and cliffs and were walking across a flat plain. The suits glare visors had clamped down to stop them going snowblind due to the amount of glare from the snow.
Lara was walking at the rear with Hannah, trying to perk her up and failing.
The group stopped as they heard a groan from the snow beneath them.
“What was that?” asked Othella.
“One of three things. It is the snow above a crevasse weakening, Ice under strain before an earthquake or just natural ice movements.”
A large segment of snow collapsed into an abyss a few metres to her right.
“Crevasse! Run!.” screamed Lara.
The group launched itself into action, sprinting towards the other side of the plain.
It was too late for Lara and Hannah. just as they were nearing solid ground the snow they were standing on gave way and dropped them into the abyss.
The others turned at the screams. Seeing the hole in the snow and the absence of two of their companions.
A single grapple line flew out of the abyss and locked itself into the ice.
A single, suited figure clambered out.
A quiet thump rose from the crevasse.
Lara raised her eyes to the other survivors.
“She’d already used her grapple and hadn’t locked it back in the slot properly.”
At the bottom, Hannah Frost lay with a broken back, slowly bleeding out around the spike of ice lodged in her chest.
Snow fell around her as the final remnants of the crevasse covering floated down.
In the thin slit of sky above her she saw Jupiter in all its glory, the colours seemingly floating down to her as her blood stained the snow red around her. Great swathes of reds, ochres and burnt umbers painted the icy walls of her grave and in her last moments she looked up at the beauty of this spectacle and died, alone, but content.
The remaining five trudged on.
They came next to a massive field of penitents that towered metres above their heads, after climbing a ramp of snow up the side of an ice cliff they entered the maze. They had caught glimpses of the relay station before entering the field so they knew they were going the right way.
The sun-carved canyons and spires created a winding and twisting maze. And the monotony of the ice added to the sense of directionless.
The group weaved their way through the towering spires, unable to make out any landmark. After what seemed like hours of walking, they came to a more open area with two exits on one side and another straight on.
They chose straight on.
Eventually they found themselves back at the ice cliff and turned right, winding their way through the maze until another ice cliff rose instead of fell on their left.
“That’ll be the plateau where the relay is.” Said Davrid.
“Systems malfunction.” Came a voice from a nearby path in the ice.
A EX-170 droid staggered out into the area.
“Targeting core compromised.”
It turned its dull silver head towards the group. It must have been in a battle as it was missing one arm and had deep gouges in its graphene-steel composite armour.
“Targets acquired.”
Davrid stepped forwards and rammed his suit’s vibro-cutter deep into its chest.
“Shame, we could have used its help.” said Davrid, collecting the mark VII, octo-fibre laser beam rifle that it was armed with.
An electric blue beam shot out of the tip and drilled a hole in a nearby ice formation.
“Good, still works.”
The team continued onwards, first missing then finding a snow ramp up to the plateau, hidden because of an ice formation that shielded it from view in the direction they approached from.
The relay station was gigantic. It was the height of the empire state building and the central spire was shaped like two parallel right angled triangles separated by a gap of ten metres or so on top of a dome. Around the edge were eight psionic tracking railguns on isosceles based pyramids, all of which had been decommissioned forcefully.
The whole thing was painted military grey.
“The wraith has been here.” remarked Othella.
“It is our only hope of rescue, our only way out. We have to try.” said Lara
“For one, this will be their tomb
Who shall stand to let others leave this moon
Against foes of shadow and of ice
Who will from shoulders his head slice.” said Odis