These Cold, Dead Hands.

[Denzein]

An icy gale howled through the gorge, the wind singing off spears of permafrost as it hit a truly lethal velocity. It was well that Rhen Var was all but uninhabited, for anything caught in that blizzard was doomed. The snow - falling almost totally horizontally - was sharp enough to cut right through skin and lacerate the meat beneath should anything be foolish to show bare flesh to such a storm, but neither that or the wind were the truest threat. That was the cold, a constant companion on Rhen Var. Even once you found shelter from the wind, even after the snow could no longer batter you into submission, still the cold remained. And it was a bitter, harrowing chill.

The corpse of the explorer who had made their camp in this very chamber aeons before Mkvenner showed up was testament to the danger the temperature presented. Emaciated and thin after years of solitude, the body remained huddled in its sleeping bag. They were preserved almost perfectly, shriveled but intact thanks to the touch of Rhen Var - The ruin’s next inhabitant kept expecting them to wake up and warm themself by his fire.

Two more days. He had rations and fuel enough for two more days, then he was taking his loaned piece of junk freighter off this rock. Mkvenner was currently the reluctant owner of an ancient holocron, once having belonged (according to the foreboding text embossed upon its surface) to one Jairo Light, a fallen Jedi. Five kilometres to the north of where he was now encamped under the ground was the opening to a truly colossal structure, buried under a glacier that had taken millennia to form. Mkvenner was contracted to plumb its depths and ascertain whether or not the place merited further exploration, and from what he had already found the man was sure they’d send others after him. The holocron was his proof, there was treasure under the ice in this place. Where he was now was the result of his explorations, deep into the network of tunnels and chambers that made up what he could only assume was some kind of vast catacomb.

The scale of this place made Mkvenner uneasy, but he had been totally alone for the nine days he had currently spent there - silence, aside from the noise of his own breath and the crunch of ice beneath his boots. The loneliness was palpable, but it was a good place to think. Despite the constant dangers of a frigid wilderness like Rhen Var, Mkvenner found the world calming. There was something to be said for being the only living thing in a thousand square kilometres.


Holding his hands over the chem-fire he had going, Mkvenner inspected the bubbling pot of stew he’d got on the go. The upside of a snowy world was that you didn’t need to pack water, just the correct apparatus for boiling and purifying ice. Some dehydrated minerals, vegetation and meat substitutes and he was satisfied - a meal finer than most he could have expected back when he lived on Metellos. There was even another pan waiting for water to be added that was going to make him a roll of bread to mop up the juices, so as far as Mkvenner was concerned so long as he didn’t freeze to death out here he was living the high life.

He decided on his next move. The dead one here could serve as a lookout, and this spot was ideal for a camp until he had to move back to the ship. He’d eat, then head back into the ruins. Who knows, perhaps he’d stumble across something he could actually use instead of more old Jedi garbage.

 

[Toska]

The cold came in muted whorls around the visor of a white-wrought environmental suit; Salvatore huddled within its clutches, swimming in gel that coated his flesh, locking heat within his body. His breath was isolated, drawn into filters that echoed harrowingly upon the exhale. He sucked it in, long and greedy gulps. It flitted about his lungs, that sickly-sweet smell of sterilized air.

In the haze of snow and ice, shards falling as glass upon a window pane (little patters that drew the ear, that cackled as they effervesced into ever-deepening snow banks which threatened to subsume the very breadth of the world), he found a measure of peace. Solitude, a quiet obtained only in an hour of reckoning. Sitting still, gaze centered on the flurry of activity that droned to a static thrum, it sedated him. Stilled the thoughts pounding against his skull, he fervent want of desire, of fixation, passion...

Fruitless, here. To want beckoned only misfortune. To struggle, to beat forth against the tide promised only damnation. The death throes of men riddled the ruins. Their corpses tagged decrepit hallways, etched their stories onto the bones of collapsing infrastructure. Their tales made for poetry, idle lapses into what they might have said, how they might have plead as the last of their warmth faded. As the final kiss of death settled firmly over their eyes.

It was a gentle glaze. Dulled by the frost, purple and blue, hardly resembling any creature wrought of flesh. Gentle, sweet, soft as it embraced them some decades or centuries past. Rife with romanticism. It brought a dewy gloss to Salvatore's eye.

But peaceful reverie refuse to take him. Its hold was dampened under the crunch of ice. The wallowing fall of steps that rifled around the ruins. The dreadful passage of life that woke him from his slumber.

Time had passed. Hours, days, weeks. The amount was irrelevant. The affect of hunger and deprivation on his body came as distant pangs clawing through his stomach. Caving in his throat. Yet it denied him any pull, refused to sway him from this meditation. Only the living stirred him, some creature of the night taken by fancy.

He shifted from the ice that encased him. Head to toe, moisture eclipsed his suit. Seized him, bade him still. Obfuscated him in a wall of glistering ivory. Until now. Until he moved, breaking from its hold.

It shattered as the suit kicked off its hibernating power. Shattered, drawing him towards that flicker of life.

And he said, "What manner of man walks amongst the dead?" Distant, loud, the speakers in his helmet flickering to life with a holographic blue. Distant, slow, as not to startle the figure so precariously perched on the boundary of salvation.

 

[Denzein]

The stew had been every bit as satisfying as he hoped. Picking himself up off the ground and dusting off the crumbs of bread clinging to his armour, Mkvenner began to gather his equipment for another excursion. He picked up his vibroknife, a grappling line, several glow sticks, a flare, an emergency heat source crystal and a twinned pair of ice axes. The axes in particular had been of great help down in the frigid dark - being bladed on one side and featuring a wickedly barbed pick on the reverse - they had already saved Mkvenner from falling down a crevasse once and he had a feeling they would come in handy again.

Aside from his survival gear, he shouldered a backpack and strapped his pistol to his waist. Though he was told before he took the job that Rhen Var was to all intents and purposes a dead world, Mkvenner had been unable to make landfall without at least a little weaponry.

He set off, crunching through the newly formed layer of frost that encircled his crackling brick of chemfire. The burning fuel granted only a couple of metres of warm, dry ground - after that every step was dangerously slippery going, a death sentence without ice spikes in one's footwear. By now, so far into his expedition Mkvenner was comfortable knowing where to step and where to avoid, the terrain gave him little pause.

A few minutes walk from the camp his overconfidence bore unfortunate fruit: as he put his foot down it smashed right through a thin plane of ice that covered a hole in the walkway he was crossing. Mkvenner kept balance, avoiding tumbling to his death, but spinning knives of ice fell away into the oily black of the chasm beneath him. He heard shattering as they hit the rock hundreds of metres below.

Mentally checking himself for his clumsiness, Mkvenner continued on - now as carefully as befits a deadly frozen tomb. Making it across the bridge he looked back, assessing whether he could come back this way to the camp or if it would be safer to find an alternate route later on. As he was thinking, something changed.

A ripple. A gasp. Shattered glass again falling onto a stone floor.

Mkvenner remained still, listening to the sound of falling ice reverberate through the tomb. Unstable wall? Unexpected gust of wind? In theory such a noise could be caused by anything, but the hairs on the back of his neck were standing on end. Mkvenner didn't know why, but he felt certain he was no longer alone.

A second later his premonition was confirmed. An echo as if from a great distance away bounced off the icy walls, surrounding him and making it impossible to determine the direction of the noise. It was clearly speech, though from the echo Mkvenner could make out only a few words.

“Manner...Walk... Dead.”

Ominous. He turned back to his path and continued on. Whatever he'd awoken in the dark, he had a task to finish - besides even if he wanted to leave, it was a five kilometre hike out from his current position to the entrance, then a hundred metres or so slog through the blizzard to his ship. Running away presented a several hour long obstacle.

So he resolved to press on into the black and the cold. He would see if there was anything else to find down in the catacombs of Rhen Var, and then he would depart. If whatever was down here with him came to find him?

Mkvenner was suddenly glad he packed a gun.