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The Rhino was dead. The mal-prion cluster-mine had infected most of the tank's systems, swarming across the comms and induction fields, and shutting down almost everything. The power still trickled to life support, but it wasn't enough to do anything.
The rest of the crew was dead, except for one, tapping the pipes to talk in their last hours.
He'd have to choose soon. Bake in the Rhino as its heat dissipators failed, or freeze out on The Ice — as long as the toxins didn't do him first.
The tap code had been growing fainter and less frequent for the past hour or two.
It had been a long tour on Rat Patrol, out beyond the Polity's borders, beyond even the perpetual hot and cold running skirmishes of No Man's Land. Nothing was ever easy in Panzerwelt, but this had been a cakewalk, and he'd been short; only two more weeks before he was to redeploy, and after Rat Patrol, he'd likely have gotten some cushy desk jockey position in one of the quieter subjugate districts, found himself some twenty year old blonde bimbo to “take dictation” as he drank lunch.
He'd clawed his way from Bronze to Brass, anything to keep from being deemed a Clay, but dreamed of someday attaining Iron. He'd never party with the Silver or Gold, much less marry into Diamond, but he'd survive. He knew how to network, which palms to grease, whom to buy a case of beer or lose cards to.
Now he sat here in the dark, staring out into the greater darkness all around, awaiting the final darkness to claim him.
Fuck that.
He tapped rapidly, telling his fellow survivor his intention to go out there and find some way back. The reply that he got was garbled and incomplete. Ravings about great beasts and the pointlessness of it all. It ended with a dull, hollow bang.
Pistol shot.
He'd sat a while longer after that. It seemed to be its own contagion, futility.
Pistol shot.
Maybe that wasn't so bad a way to go. Clean. Quick.
Unless you botched it.
Taking a pull from his canteen, he wished for the twentieth time that the hooch wasn't in the sleeping cell. With the systems down, it might as well be miles away.
It was getting hotter, and he was running low on water.
“Oh Lord, won't you buy me a Mercedes Benz?
My friends all drive Porsches, I must make amends.
Worked hard all my lifetime, no help from my friends,
so Lord, won't you buy me a Mercedes Benz? ”
Singing can boost one's spirits, even a sardonic song, but it did tend to make one thirsty. Out of water at last and desperately hot, he cracked open the Jefferies hatch. A blast of air tore tears from his eyes, his hands instantly chilled to the bone.
Pistol shot.
Maybe this would be better, to drift away and let the cold in. At negative fifty, it couldn't take long.
He bundled himself up tighter, pulling on the gloves that he'd had off to work the wheel, then the mittens.
He stopped still for a moment, sure that he'd seen movement out in the dull gray.
Drone?
Nothing moved but the slow swirl of the mist.
Sliding out through the portal, he reached back for his bag. The eco-suit1 would stay powered for decades, but his supplies wouldn't last forever. Even with the recycling system somehow untouched by the mine, it couldn't hold out indefinitely. He'd need shelter, though that could be found right here, but more so he'd need food, water, fuel, eventually he'd need medical attention or some other logistic support beyond his own abilities.
If only I could chip this ice, I could melt it for water, if only I had some fuel...
He glanced up the side of the Rhino, at the motto painted across it, and the graffiti scrawled beneath that... just above the permanent shadows of some previous crew.
IGNORANTIA LIBERTAS
— et Carthago delenda est!
It had slid a few miles downslope, skewing at the end and coming to rest against a patch of stone. A small distance away, a rock formation stood like a long-empty building, waiting to welcome its owner home again at long last.
There it went again!
Searching the mist, he waited for his eyes to adjust to the random motions. Waited for the slight changes in hue to give away the terrain against his AR goggles. Waited for it to move again.
When nothing came for most of an hour, he gave up, dismissing it for a trick of the light.
Hauling his gear to the rocks, he found a partially covered entry. Beyond that, a chamber large enough to work with for the time being. Its walls were crumbly and irregular, but seemed sound.
As he returned with his second load, he had more time to examine the surface.
The patch of stone was sixty or more feet in diameter, and broadly circular, with a raised portion off to one side. A stretch of it led fairly straight to the cave mouth. The formation itself, though slumped inward, held a familiar feel to its form.
On his third trip, he was sure of it. It had to be artificial. A building of sorts, though not one wrecked in some bombing or other, but instead one built poorly, almost a howe.
He had no way of telling how long it had stood there, nor who had built or why.
Making his way out for his fourth bag drag, something felt different.
There was little wind to speak of, but it felt as if there were a lowing, some deep rumble just beneath his hearing.
Shaking it off, he forged on.
The Rhino looked different as he peered forward from behind a hillock in the stone.
Between him and it was a shape, too. Something small. Man-sized, but broken looking.
The Rhino held its outline, and never moved visibly, but it seemed to on a subliminal level.
Then it did — the surface pulled away from the body to become some amorphous thing2 twice the size of the Rhino, if not more.
The blob ambled toward him slowly, picking up the form in passing.
After a few more feet, it stopped and placed the form on the stone once more, then retreated toward the Rhino.
After five minutes with no movement on his part, the blob repeated the procedure, having first swayed its “head,” as he thought of it, toward the Rhino.
The cold was seeping into him. His suit simply wasn't built for this, but he was pinned down. If he were to move now, surely the blob would have him, if it weren't toying with him already.
Finally, he moved.
He had to.
Stepping out cautiously toward the form, he watched the blob.
The blob gave no indication of interest in him as he edged closer.
Crawling toward the form, he reached forward to find it an empty thing. An eco-suit of some kind. Examining it briefly, he could see that it was easily far more advanced than his own — though hardly new, not a spot of it seemed to show actual wear and tear, the surface responding as if by thought to adjust its visible and tactile properties while adjusting its size to match his own, and where the pullover mask should have been was what appeared to be a field of plasma3, almost a pale periwinkle in color — moreover, the eco-suit even felt warm.
The right clavicle area held four written symbols that he couldn't understand, with a stylized logo, a deep blue disc with a white polar grid superimposed over what could be a map; across the whole was emblazoned a forked tongue of red. It belonged to no force that he knew of in Panzerwelt, but that was irrelevant. If this meant the difference between life and death, he knew which one he chose.
Looking up toward the blob, he duck-walked backward slowly, watching.
He froze instantly as the blob shifted and ambled toward the Rhino once more.
As he watched, the blob enveloped the Rhino. It was mesmerizing.
Had they just made a trade?
He smiled, thinking that they'd each gotten the better end of the deal.
Looking on toward Panzerwelt, then glancing back toward the howe, and finally coming to rest with the blob once more, he knew his choice.
Choose life; choose freedom; tschüß, Panzerwelt.
O ~~~ O