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Hunter shivered as another gust of freezing wind blew past. He could hear the clacking of Crosshair’s armour as he did the same beside him. They had to be getting close to their target by now, he could feel the electromagnetic signal just ahead. All they had to do was find a position to scout what should be a Separatist listening post while Tech and Wrecker waited at the ship in case they needed pickup. Wrecker was recovering from a concussion, and Tech had stayed to keep an eye on him.
Of course, they just had to get this mission while a storm was passing nearby, catching them in just the edge of it as they scouted. Even just the edge of a storm on frozen planets like this one were deadly if you weren’t careful. They were forced to travel along a huge stretch of flat, icy plains, with nothing to block the wind from battering them. He glanced over at Crosshair, whose visor remained trained ahead of them, searching for a sign of anything that wasn’t just swirling snow.
A change in the electromagnetic field made Hunter pause, looking up ahead of them.
“What is it?” Crosshair asked over the comms, rather than shouting over the wind. He’d stopped and begun searching the area with him, flicking down his viewfinder.
“I don’t know.” Hunter muttered, still searching. He felt like there was something at the edge of his hearing, something he was just missing under the sound of the wind, but he couldn’t quite put his finger on it.
“I see something.” Crosshair pointed slightly to their left ahead of them. “Maybe a sensor? I’m not sure.”
Hunter nodded and let him lead the way. If it was a sensor, they’d have to take care of it before they passed. He commed Tech as they walked. “Tech, we found some kind of sensor about a klick away from the target. We’re checking it out.”
“Co- -at.” Hunter frowned at the interference, but refocused on the task at hand as they approached whatever Crosshair had spotted. It was tall and thin, with a large base, though it didn’t have the usual lights that indicated an active sensor. And this thing was active, humming with energy. He could see the top of the tower vibrating from more than just the wind.
“That isn’t a sensor.” Crosshair echoed his thoughts. “Deactivate it anyway?”
Hunter shook his head. “That could alert them. Just go around it, carefully.”
They walked a distance back from it and tentatively passed by. When nothing happened, they kept walking, returning their attention to finding the listening post, until Hunter felt a change. The electromagnetic signal from the device, and something, presumably another device, on their other side a little further up, grew and he heard a faint cracking sound under the wind. He saw the snow near them shift as vibrations were sent through the ice, and knew Crosshair saw it too when he swore and picked up the pace.
Hunter followed, but they both knew it was too little too late. They were right in the middle of the cracking and shifting. The ice hidden beneath the snow under his feet gave out, and he let out a startled yelp, scrabbling for a hand hold. The ice he caught was either too slick or cracking under the force of the vibrations from the devices.
He caught a glimpse of Crosshair’s dark armour as he fell alongside him. The fall was short, and Hunter realised what he had been hearing when they landed in a shallow stream of ice cold water. It was only ankle deep, but when they landed in sprawled heaps it covered large portions of their armour, and in some areas soaked through to their blacks. Hunter bolted upright at the sudden cold and tucked his arms around himself with a shiver.
Crosshair swore as he shot to his feet, shaking his arms and legs to get the water off, some of it already frosting over the plastoid. He looked down the dark tunnel they’d landed in. It stretched on in icy curves each way, with an occasional small nook or branching path. The hole they fell through was at least ten meters above their heads.
As his brother got their bearings, Hunter tried to hail the Marauder over the comms. “Tech, Wrecker. Do you read me?” Static. He ignored how his voice was already beginning to shake from the cold. “There was a trap, and we’re stuck under the ice. We’re going to try to find a way out.” Still just static. The interference from being underground was the last nail in the coffin for their long range comms. He could only hope that Tech was already working on a fix.
He looked up when Crosshair splashed over, noting how his brother was shivering. “Looks like this is an old river that still flows under the ice. Our best bet is to follow it and hope there’s a shallower section we can get out through, the way we came is too unstable with those devices out there.”
Hunter let out a long sigh. “Long range comms are down until we get out of here. Let’s head back towards the ship, no use keeping going if we’re half frozen when we get there. And we don’t know where exactly the tunnel leads to.”
Crosshair grunted an affirmative and they made their way back down the tunnel. Each step splashed through the frigid water, the edges of the tunnel too icy and slick to walk along. Hunter kept an eye on Crosshair as they walked, using it as a distraction from the cold as well as making sure he was okay. He was shivering harder, but by then both of them were. The walking was helping though, at least a little bit. Thinking to how far the ship was, he just hoped they could make it, or that Tech and Wrecker figured out something was wrong and came looking for them.
He was beginning to lose track of how long they’d been walking, there weren’t many landmarks in an underground river, but he could sense the Marauder roughly ahead of them. He kept his hands tucked under his arms as they walked, sticking close to Crosshair, who didn’t argue the proximity. It felt like they were beginning to slow, the trembling and growing tiredness making it increasingly difficult to keep moving. Hunter blinked when he realised his eyes had been slowly closing as they walked.
He glanced over and nudged Crosshair. “You hanging in there?”
Crosshair just grumbled a vague response and Hunter looked at him properly. While he was shivering, Crosshair was positively trembling. He kept flexing his fingers where they were tucked close under his arms, and he was curled in on himself as they walked. Hunter frowned when he suddenly stopped, looking at the ground and wall. He was about to ask what was wrong when his shaky voice cut him off.
“W-we’re going uphill.”
Hunter’s frown deepened and he examined the tunnel himself, finding that Crosshair was correct. The water they had been walking through was flowing slightly faster, and the tunnel was slanting upwards. He looked back the way they came and was concerned at the realisation that they’d been going uphill for a little while, neither of them noticing as the ceiling got closer. Crosshair could just about reach it if he jumped.
Hunter examined the ceiling and approached a section that seemed thinner than the rest, over a particularly wide section. “You think you could get out if we made a hole here?”
Crosshair followed his gaze up and scoffed. “Of course I can.”
They took position back down the tunnel and aimed carefully at the spot on the ceiling. It only took a few careful shots from the two of them for the ceiling to crack and collapse, bringing a rush of broken ice, snow and freezing wind. They shivered harshly at the wind, reminding them that their blacks were still wet, no matter how much they were getting used to it.
They carefully approached, examining the hole. Ordinarily, with a running start, Crosshair could make the jump himself, but with the cold and the slippery ground, Hunter crouched below the sturdiest looking section, cupping his hands. Crosshair took the foothold and let Hunter help boost him up. He scrabbled a little for purchase as his hands tried to clumsily obey him, but made it out.
Hunter was left to wait for a concerning amount of time before his head appeared at the hole. He reached a hand down and pulled Hunter up and away from the hole. Hunter slipped a little in his grip, both their gloves slick with frost, but soon he was on solid ground once again. Harsh shivers assaulted him as he returned to the harsh wind of the surface. It took him a couple of attempts to get his trembling hand to activate his comm.
“Tech, Wrecker, d-do you read?”
“I re- -ou” Tech’s voice broke through the static, and Hunter could have collapsed with relief right there. Instead, he spoke as slowly and clearly as possible.
“We r-ran into a trap. We got out and are headed b-back to the ship. If we’re not there in ten, come p-pick us up.”
He got a staticky affirmative and lowered his hand. He let out a shaky breath and looked over at Crosshair, before scrambling to his side. He was still lying in the snow where he had half-collapsed after pulling him up, and hadn’t moved. Worry rushed through Hunter at his brother’s slowing shivers, shaking shoulder to rouse him.
“C-come on, Cross. We’re almost there, gotta move.”
He ignored how he almost tripped over a few words through the tremors. He sighed in relief when Crosshair moved to push himself up with a groan. He pulled at his arm to help him, slinging it over his shoulders.
“That’s it, let’s go.”
They huddled close together as they slowly made their way through the snow, Hunter following where his senses told him the ship waited, Crosshair following Hunter. They caught each other whenever they stumbled in the thick, uneven snow, or a particularly strong wind threatened to topple them.
It felt like they had been walking for ten years, but they seemed no closer to the Marauder. Hunter frowned and scanned the snow with heavy eyes. They had to be almost there, but he wasn’t sure they could go much further. He felt so tired, and Crosshair had stopped responding at some point. The movement, at least, must have been helping, because he was starting to warm up. Or maybe the wind was dying down, but visibility was the same as it had been the whole time, swirling snow that almost sent Hunter to the ground when he watched it for too long.
The sudden weight of Crosshair sagging completely against him sent them crashing into the snow. Hunter groaned and tried to reach for Crosshair, but his body was too tired to cooperate. He relaxed when he realised the thing already under his outstretched arm was Crosshair, letting his eyes slip closed.
They had been walking for so long, and the snow was fresh and soft under him, they deserved the rest. Tech and Wrecker were coming. If they were worried, they’d find them. A deep sigh escaped him as his body relaxed.
Hunter groaned and pulled away from the feeling of something touching his bare skin, sending painful pins and needles shooting through him at each point of contact. He was stopped by something solid behind him, keeping his trembling body still. He heard a familiar, gentle voice coming from behind him when he made another attempt to escape.
Another sound of pain and protest that didn’t come from him made him crack his eyes open. He squinted against the light and looked beside him to find the blurry shape of Crosshair beside him, getting the same sick and twisted treatment he was. A harsh shiver wracked his body when he managed to get half out from under whatever was covering him while whatever was blocking him moved to stop Crosshair.
He didn’t know where he was or what happened to earn him such a rude awakening. Despite that, his body trembled and he felt his eyes slipping closed again, welcoming the comfortable darkness.
When he woke again, it was slow. His mind felt sluggish and tired, and he wouldn’t stop shivering. As he slowly grew aware of his surroundings, he realised he was lying against something big and warm on a bunk. The familiar feeling of the Marauder surrounded him, like an extra layer of comfort over the layers of blankets he realised were piled on top of him.
He drifted like that for a while, content, until there were footsteps and quiet voices, one causing a rumbling against him. Then a light flashed past his closed eyelids, causing him to crack them open. He blinked over to the edge of the bunk, where the light had come from, and saw Tech reading the medscanner. When he looked up from it and saw Hunter looking at him, he startled a little, then spoke.
“It is good to see you awake, Hunter. You are back on the Marauder, after Wrecker and I found you and Crosshair passed out in the snow. We warmed you up in the fresher. We even used the soft towels, though you would have thought we were using sandpaper just watching you. Now, Wrecker is helping warm the two of you up. If I’d known this was what it would take to keep him in bed, I would have thrown one of you into the snow ages ago.” He muttered the last part to himself while Hunter just blinked at him, his brain struggling to catch up with his brother’s infodump.
“Don’t overwhelm him, Tech, he just woke up.” Hunter felt that voice rumble against him, now recognising it as Wrecker. “Give em a break and tell em when they’re not half frozen.”
Tech conceded and moved to a different part of the bunkroom, reading over the medscanner again, and keeping a close eye on them.
Hunter shivered, rolling over to tuck himself further into Wrecker, feeling him chuckle quietly as he settled with a content sigh. He lay there for a moment before his eyes blinked open again. He lifted his head to look at Wrecker, then over the other side of the bunk. Crosshair lay shivering lightly against Wrecker’s other side, a mirror of Hunter. Despite the shivering, he seemed to be sleeping soundly and comfortably.
Happy knowing that his family was all there and safe, he settled back down again, pressing as close as possible to Wrecker, greedily stealing his warmth in an attempt to fend off the unrelenting cold deep in his bones. Wrecker’s arm wound around and held him close. He could almost feel the amusement radiating off his brother as he held the two of them. He ignored it and let him have his fun as he drifted off into a much cozier, warmer sleep.