Snow Crush Killing Song

December 484 I.C., Kapche-Lanka

Kapche-Lanka was a bitter wasteland, Reuenthal discovered. Photographs and written descriptions of the place did it no justice, and investigating the cold-weather supplies that his battalion had been given did not prepare him for the reality of how they would be used.

His first experience with the planet was a poor one: the crew transport that was bringing them to the surface had to descend in the midst of a thick blizzard. They were unable to wait in orbit for the weather to clear, since Alliance destroyers took shots at them as they came into the system. Reuenthal had never before been on a spaceship that was impacted by weather , and even the powerful gravity engine of the stardrive could do nothing to ameliorate the sickening, dipping sways of wind that pushed the ship around as it came down to land. Reuenthal had not even had the dubious pleasure of being on the bridge. He, along with his men, had been down in the crew staging area, waiting to unload themselves and all of their supplies, including the hundred and fifty tanks that were packed together so closely in the ship’s hold that one had to walk sideways between them. Reuenthal had pursed his lips and said, “The rebels may have a point, not trying to land their ships through any kind of atmosphere.” This had made a few of his NCOs chuckle, but it hadn’t been much of a joke.

And then, when they had made it to the ground, there was a controlled rush to get everything off the ship and out onto the surface of the planet. The ship itself needed to depart for elsewhere, with some purpose that Reuenthal was not privy to, so it was imperative that this all moved quickly. Reuenthal stood at the bottom of the ship’s ramp, watching all the tanks roll down and out, his adjutant carefully keeping track of everyone, and the NCOs and junior officers making sure that the process was orderly. Reuenthal gave what orders he needed to, shouting over the muffled-snow sounds and the roar of the engines of the tanks and the great, hulking transport ship above. The whole scene was illuminated among blowing drifts of snow only by the running lights of the ship, and the headlights of the tanks, which vanished into the darkness and howling wind as soon as they left the ship’s protective embrace.

Every time he took a breath, the air stabbed into his throat. The atmosphere was breathable, but thin, and with an excess of carbon dioxide that set Reuenthal’s nerves on edge right away, the body’s natural instincts sending panic signals to breathe heavily, get out. Reuenthal took steady, deep breaths, controlling the instinct but unable to quell the feeling that gave rise to it. He had been warned about it, and it was plenty below the threshold that would cause permanent damage, but it was still unpleasant.

The only blessing that this planet provided, and Reuenthal wasn’t sure how much of a blessing it was, was that gravity was only about eighty-five percent what it was on Odin. It made carrying the heavy winter gear less of a burden, but the bulk of the gear and the unexpected lightness of his limbs made movement feel unpredictable. He was sure he would get used to it, but it would take time. Beyond that, the lessened gravity made every snowstorm that much worse, with flakes able to travel much further in the wind than they would have on Odin.

Reuenthal’s nose and eyes were stinging and watering, but the tears froze on his eyelashes and at the corners of his eyes, and a disgusting, solid crust formed around the edges of his nose. He kept blinking, as though the surface of his eyeballs themselves was freezing, blurring his vision. Even with less than an hour’s exposure to the elements, he could feel the skin on his face beginning to dry and crack.

It was a miserable planet, and the division headquarters and surrounding camp were not much to speak of. It was a few hastily assembled buildings, half buried by snow that pushed up against their walls. They didn’t need much of a defensive perimeter, since it was about as temporary as camps could get, and they had no fear of aerial attacks; as Reuenthal and his men had learned the unpleasant way, even the best air vehicles had a horrifically difficult time navigating the zero visibility, high wind atmosphere of Kapche-Lanka, and the camp itself was invisible from space, covered as it was by snow. He doubted that the rebels knew that they were even in the area, though it didn’t hurt to assume that they did. Since the goal was to retake several bases that had been captured by the rebel fleet, the camp was stationed almost equidistant between all of them, behind a mountain chain.

The resource of interest on the planet-- Reuenthal wasn’t exactly sure what it was, some kind of mineral used in electronics construction, he thought-- was most highly concentrated in these mountainous regions, maybe pushed to the surface of the planet from tectonic activity of millions of years in the past. He had a vague sense of the geography of the planet: the whole thing a featureless plain from the sky, except for the band of liquid water near the equator. The oceans faded into thick sheets of ice towards the north and south, blending so seamlessly into land that the two were indistinguishable, covered as they were most of the year by thick snows. Even in the summer, when the snow melted in places enough to run in wide, torrential rushes back down towards the seas, the dirt underneath was a chalky, mineral white, and there was no trace of any of the plant life that had once covered the planet’s surface.

There were several mountain ranges that crossed the planet, and Reuenthal’s camp was behind the southernmost, and shortest, range. To the northwest, about two thousand kilometers distant, was a much taller mountain range. Years ago, it had been judged not feasible to mine, due to the more challenging geography, but since now the easier terrain was fully controlled by the rebels, all the new construction was happening there. That was where Mittermeyer was.

Reuenthal did not think about that during his first and only night at the base. After attending an exhausting meeting with division command about the ground situation and what deployment would look like the following morning-- different than planned, as one of their transport ships had been shot down en route to the planet, losing them an entire battalion before the battle even started-- Reuenthal retreated to the tiny private room that he was afforded as a senior officer. All his junior officers were sharing a room on the base, and all his NCOs and men were relegated to sleeping on mats on the floor in the largest building. They were apparently the lucky group, because Reuenthal saw that one of the battalions was camped out inside their tanks.

Although his room was small, it was at least warm, and he was able to fall asleep immediately. His dreams were deeply unpleasant, and he could not remember what specifically caused him to wake in a cold sweat, gasping for breath. He sat up, breathing shallow and ragged, completely disoriented in the darkness. His fingers slid around the wall, searching for the light, and in the moment before he found it, he imagined that he was trapped in some tiny space: buried alive, perhaps.

When he found the light and turned it on, his rational mind was able to process his location, but that didn’t make his heartbeat any slower or his breathing any calmer. He deliberately took deep breaths, until at least he wasn’t hyperventilating. He fumbled around for his phone, to check the time, and his eyes fell on the standard utility kit that everyone had been assigned for emergency survival on the planet, should they become temporarily separated from their group. Reuenthal had doubts about how much the equipment in the tiny belt-bag would be able to do, but it was better than nothing. He pulled it open, searching for one thing in particular: there, the carbon dioxide meter. He squinted at its little indicator, and saw that the needle was teetering on the edge between the yellow and red zones. Fifteen hundred parts per million. No wonder he felt like he couldn’t breathe.

His head hurt. As quickly as he could, with hands that felt clumsy and unfamiliar, Reuenthal dressed and left his room. As soon as he was in the hallway, the reading on his little gas measure dropped back to “normal”, which was still twice as much as one would expect on Odin. Reuenthal had to imagine that the ventilation design of his room was at fault, though it also allowed his room to be so much warmer than the frigid hallway. The intake and outtake vents were both up near the ceiling. Air flowed in, heavy carbon dioxide sank to the bottom of the room without chance of escape, and began to poison him. No wonder he was having nightmares.

Even though the hallway was tolerable, Reuenthal was still gripped by the lingering sensation that the walls were closing in on him, so he made his way outside.

The snowstorm that had made the whole area pitch black before had gone, leaving the air so taut and cold that Reuenthal imagined swinging an axe against it would cause the whole scene to shatter into fragments like a smashed pane of glass. The base’s lights reflecting unendingly off the snow, plus the stars above, lit the scene to an almost daylight brightness. He walked around the base for a while, ostensibly looking at the rows of tanks that were his to command, but really just trying to clear the lingering sense of doom that hung over him like a cloud.

After he had finished his inspection, he leaned against the side of one of the tanks and he stared up at the stars above. They had been given a chart of constellations for quick navigation purposes, one that was folded up in his survival kit, but the chart designers always chose easy to remember but unimaginative shapes for what to mark: letters of the alphabet were the most common. The weak magnetic field of the planet had a tendency to shift around, making compasses somewhat unreliable, thus necessitating the map of constellations.

There. The constellation that the map called ‘D’, which was made up of three stars in a curve, with the brightest in the middle, and then two stars close to each other in the ‘gap’ of the arc. Not a ‘D’, then, but a bow, held in a hand. His eyes traced where the arrow would be loosed from, and found the ‘t’ constellation. Five stars, three in a tall line, two stars perpendicular to that axis, near the lowest star. Not a ‘t’, but a sword.

He continued this exercise, studying the stars, until the alarm on his phone went off, and he went back inside the base to find breakfast. He felt nauseous more than he did hungry, which was probably a lingering effect of the atmosphere, but he forced himself to eat anyway, the high-fat rations tasting both rich and bland at the same time.

Reuenthal would not have described himself as nervous about the upcoming battle. Rationally, he felt prepared and confident. It was only the sickly atmosphere that put a persistent feeling of anxiety on his shoulders, and on everyone else’s. He wasn’t sure if it was an advantage that he and his men had been on the planet for less time than their opponents. On one hand, they would be less worn down by living persistently in this irrational state, but, on the other hand, they might have become used to it if they had been living here for an entire duty cycle. Could one grow used to such a thing? The thought flashed into his head that he could ask Mittermeyer, who had been here for months, supervising new construction. He would not do that. He didn’t even know if there was a way to contact the other bases; in the absence of satellites, which were shot down by the rebel fleet as soon as anyone attempted to put one up, communications any decent distance over-the-horizon were limited to shortwave radio, which was unreliable due to atmospheric conditions, or even more archaic methods, such as messenger birds.

They departed just as the sun was beginning to climb into the sky, necessitating the use of sun-goggles to prevent snow-blindness. Though the sunrise had caused a miniscule rise in temperature, Reuenthal thought it was not worth this extra level of annoyance.

The three battalions in his group made their way slowly through mountain passes, splitting up early into the long journey so that they could approach the base from different directions, careful to watch for both ambushes and mines. As they came closer to their destination, they ended up losing several tanks to cleverly hidden destructive devices buried underneath the snow, or attached to the sides of rock cliffs. The enemy base was visible from far off, due to the huge radio towers that poked up from the mountain tops. The biggest hindrance to their approach was the terrain; their tanks could only move in lines a few wide.

The rebels had decided not to wage battle within the mountain passes themselves, except for a few artillery posts in advantageous positions. Reuenthal dealt with these using his limited supply of rockets.

The base that they were taking had formerly been an imperial position, so Reuenthal had the advantage of complete and accurate maps of the geography. If he had been walking into this area blind, they would have been massacred. Instead, the majority of his battalion made its plodding way forward, towards the choke point that Reuenthal was sure awaited them at the end of the mountain pass.

This approach had been chosen because of how close they would be able to get before the rebel base could adequately defend themselves. If they had driven their tanks in across the easy, wide open plain to approach the base from the other direction, Reuenthal and his men would have been at a disadvantage: the base would have been able to shoot at them from much farther away, and much more destructively. The difficult, mountainous terrain was as much of a protection as it was an obstacle.

When they arrived at the choke point, Reuenthal set up his artillery on a high point, having tanks escort it into a defensible position so that it could shell the base below. The base’s air defenses were weaker in the direction of the mountains, so Reuenthal’s battalion, and the others who were approaching from the sides, had a definite advantage.

The base’s own tanks and guns fired at the pass, trying to prevent Reuenthal from sending in his tanks. Reuenthal was well prepared for this, though. His tanks could be driven remotely, and so he ordered several to be fitted with high explosives, which he then charged, driverless, into the defensive line.

Reuenthal and the other battalions broke through to the base with relatively minimal casualties, considering that they were approaching over difficult terrain, into a well-defended encampment. Out of the hundred and fifty tanks that he had started with, by the time they pushed through into the grounds of the base itself, they had lost about forty.

And then it was moving on foot into the base itself, first with blasters, and then with axes as they flooded the hallways with Zephyr particles to make blasters ineffective.

During the course of the tank battle, Reuenthal’s command post vehicle had remained near the back of the line, in order to have the best overview of the battle situation. Now that he was walking into the base on foot, though, headed directly for the command center, there was no reason for Reuenthal to remain in the back. He held his axe easily as they ran through the hallways, occasionally having to stop and wait for one of his men to cut open blast doors that had been sealed shut.

There was only one time that Reuenthal was in any serious danger. Right after his men had broken through a heavy, locked door into the next room, they were immediately hit with a hail of blaster fire before someone could even throw a Zephyr particle canister to stop it. Several of his men were killed immediately in the gunfire. When the rebel forces realized that they needed to switch to axes, Reuenthal found himself face to face, then axe to axe, with an Alliance soldier. Both of them were clad in the heavy winter gear, mask and suit, so Reuenthal could not see this soldier’s face, and the soldier could not see his.

The fight lasted mere moments. Reuenthal blocked the soldier’s first axe swing with the handle of his axe, then kicked at the soldier’s midsection, sending him stumbling backwards into the wall, freeing Reuenthal’s axe. He swung, aiming for the weak section of the winter-armor where the helmet met the shoulders. The axe hit with a sickening whack, the ease at which it had moved through the air suddenly being replaced with the thick feeling of moving through plastic, then flesh, then bone. The blade was sharp, and red blood spewed out from the suit as the soldier fell, dropping their axe to clutch at their throat, then toppling facefirst to the ground, dead.

Reuenthal didn’t have time to stop and think about the fact that this was the first person he had ever killed. He thought even less about it as he repeated the act of killing several more times as they pressed through the corridor. The pounding of his heart was more about the exertion and the danger to himself than it was about anything else. It was kill or be killed, and he was certainly not going to do the latter.

He continued to lead his men through the base’s corridors, all bearing the familiar traces of Iimperial design (and conforming to the diagrams that they had been given). The Alliance forces had apparently not done much renovation during their occupation of the base, for which Reuenthal was grateful.

He felt that, although they were meeting with soldiers who fought quite fiercely, there wasn’t as much resistance as he had expected there would be. It had been easier than expected to breach the base’s defenses with their tanks, and now, inside, they were making their way to the control room with great speed. Reuenthal wondered if perhaps the base was just short staffed, because they would need to rotate people off the planet fairly often. He wouldn’t have been surprised if his own command had taken advantage of information on this kind of staffing shortfall to plan the attack.

They finished taking the base, and Reuenthal and the other battalion leaders took over the conference room to coordinate securing the perimeter, searching to ensure that there weren’t rebel soldiers hiding anywhere, holding the prisoners of war they had captured, and getting back into contact with their headquarters.

Because it was still light out, and because there was a snowstorm sweeping in from over the plains, the radio communication was limited, so one of the other battalion commanders eventually sent out a few tanks as couriers to take the news of their success back to the main camp.

Overall, the mission had been a complete success. Reuenthal hadn’t lost many men, and they had taken the base without it or the adjoining mine being destroyed. He was feeling quite satisfied with himself as he sat in the control room that night, taking care of all the details of occupying this base and waiting for command to get in contact with them, either by radio or courier.

About two hours after the sun went down behind the mountains, Reuenthal was drinking a cup of black coffee that he had procured from the base commander’s office. It was fine stuff, and he was amused by the yellow mug that he had found with it, which read “I went to El Facil and all I got was this lousy mug!” with some pictures of what Reuenthal assumed were major tourist destinations on the planet. He resolved to bring it back to Odin for Yang. His contemplation of the taste of his coffee was interrupted by the sergeant he had manning the radio.

“Sir, we’re receiving an encrypted transmission over the shortwave.”

“From command?” Reuenthal asked. “It’s about time. Glad the weather cleared up enough for them to transmit.”

“No, sir, it’s not using command’s frequency.”

“Oh? Is it the rebels trying to check in on their base?”

“No, it’s our encryption, sir.”

Reuenthal raised an eyebrow. “What does the message say?”

“The baud rate is very low, sir, and we’re getting a lot of package loss. It will take some time before we have the whole thing.”

“Hm.” Reuenthal drummed his fingers on the table. “Well, let me know as soon as you’ve decrypted it.”

“Yes, sir.”

“And try sending another message through to command. If we’re able to receive, I would hope that we’re able to transmit.”

After about twenty minutes, the sergeant brought him the final message. Reuenthal read it with a chill up his spine that could not be accounted for by the weather of Kapche-Lanka. The message was addressed to Kapche-Lanka central command on the other side of the planet, and probably had only arrived in Reuenthal’s hands because of the way that radio waves bounced off the atmosphere. It was timestamped several hours in the past.

At 417 local (KLTZ4) construction base 2-A forward watchpost observed movement of rebel troops approaching base. Estimate of two battalions incl heavy artillery. Took actions to secure perimeter of construction base 2-A and request reinforcement or permission to abandon base and await rescue. Construction and guard crew not sufficient to withstand prolonged engagement. Enemy expected to begin attack within next six hours. -Construction Base 2-A Commander Wolfgang Mittermeyer. Message repeats.

Accompanying the message was a slew of data about Mittermeyer’s base strength, and then the enemy strength and positioning, though much of it was sketchy.

“Their six hour deadline is in two hours,” Reuenthal said. “Have they broadcast any updates?” He thought that Mittermeyer would at least send updates about the enemy’s position as they came forward.

“Not that I know of, sir,” the sergeant said. “This is coming from a relay station, which will always repeat the last message it gets. The base might no longer be broadcasting.”

Reuenthal put his mug down very slowly. “And have we been able to get in contact with either division command or Kapche-Lanka central?”

“No, sir.”

“Are there any messages from any of the other construction bases?”

“No, sir.”

“Hm.” Several realizations settled into Reuenthal’s mind, calmly and surely.

First, he saw that Mittermeyer’s assessment of his situation was correct. Given the amount of men and guns and tanks available to him in his half-constructed base, he would not be able to hold out for more than a day, at best. Calling that a ‘prolonged engagement’ might even be generous. He knew Mittermeyer’s strengths well enough to understand that he would put up a better battle than most, but it was not a winnable fight. The best he could hope to do was wait until reinforcements arrived. Even retreating might not be an option, if there was nowhere in driving range for him to retreat to , and if they were being fired on as they left. They might be easily overrun. Reuenthal suspected that Mittermeyer would stay put in the hopes of someone else coming.

Second, it was clear that Reuenthal had been set up to succeed because Mittermeyer had been set up to fail. It was obvious, now, to see that the reason that Reuenthal had been able to take this base so easily, the reason that there had been relatively few people guarding it, was because the rest had been sent to capture or destroy Mittermeyer’s base. Imperial intelligence must have gotten word of these plans somehow, and had taken advantage of the opportunity. No wonder the schedule for this operation had felt so rushed.

Third, it was certain that if Ovelesser even received this message, he would not give Mittermeyer the order to retreat to some nebulous rescue point.

Fourth, and perhaps most importantly, in the absence of ability to communicate with central command, Reuenthal could make his own decisions about his own battalion.

He stood sharply, holding the printed message in his hand. “Get me Cranz and Halvess in here, and put my battalion on alert.” Cranz and Halvess were the commanders in charge of the other two battalions who had taken this base with him. He was not going to argue with them. He was going to present the movement of his battalion as a foregone conclusion, and that they should remain behind to guard the base. He would leave them no room for contradiction.

And so it was, less than two hours later, the remaining strength of Reuenthal’s battalion began the long, long journey towards Mittermeyer’s base. It was two thousand kilometers away, but the terrain was very easy-- endless, smooth, featureless plains of ice and snow, which only rose up into mountains near the edges. His tanks could move at one hundred kilometers per hour, and he had taken all the fuel cells from the captured base to use, so they had the driving range to reach Mittermeyer’s base.

It was a grueling journey, alleviated only somewhat by the tanks’ air filters that brought the atmosphere to Odin-normal levels of carbon dioxide. Without them, Reuenthal felt that his tank crews might have started murdering each other. As it was, taking turns sleeping in the cramped tanks was unpleasant, and everyone had been looking forward to enjoying the relative peace of occupying the captured base for a few days, rather than charging off into another battle.

Reuenthal, for his own part, had communicated only the bare minimum of his reasoning for charging in to the rescue. He wasn’t sure he understood his reasoning himself, not completely. At the very least, the fact that Mittermeyer had been set up as a sacrificial lamb on the altar of Reuenthal’s mission meant that Reuenthal felt like he owed the other man, a sensation he found unpleasant. Even if his easy victory at Mittermeyer’s expense had been involuntary, Reuenthal detested the thought of Mittermeyer having something to hold over him. He had purposefully given up anything that they might have owed each other; both of them had.

And, besides, Yang would have never forgiven him if he had left Mittermeyer to die or become a prisoner of war, Reuenthal was certain of that. He didn’t understand how the two remained friends, but friends they were, and Yang would be upset if Mittermeyer were to die.

That was all, or at least it was all he was allowing himself to acknowledge and put words to.

Reuenthal’s whole battalion slowed to a crawl outside detection range of the base. Although they were still traveling across the plains, and would have been visible for many kilometers on a clear day, the whole area was enveloped now in both the utter darkness of night and a swirling snowstorm, one that was probably responsible for the radio blackout they were experiencing. He sent a few tanks to scout ahead and report on the situation, as walking in completely blind would do him no favors. They returned with information that gave Reuenthal some relief: the base was still holding, though there was a fierce fight happening close to the base’s main entrance. It seemed as though most of Mittermeyer’s artillery had either run out of ammunition or been disabled, so they were using their tanks rather like a barricade, to prevent entrance through the rocky pass into the base itself.

Reuenthal had two advantages: that of surprise, and that of being a relatively fresh force. Although he and his men had spent the last twenty hours travelling, that was still a far cry from spending the last twenty hours engaged in active battle. He had plenty of ammunition and plenty of undamaged tanks.

In other respects, though, he and Mittermeyer were still at a great disadvantage. Reuenthal’s scout reported that there were at least two enemy battalions, possibly three. Reuenthal had one, and Mittermeyer’s construction crew barely amounted to half of one (not to mention, they were a group of engineers and builders, rather than a fully armed and trained ground force).

There was not much that he could do in preparation, so Reuenthal sent his tanks in to charge, taking a spearhead formation. He didn’t intend to fully break through the massed group of rebel tanks, but if he could disrupt their rear line enough to throw them into chaos, that might be enough.

A remote part of his mind was thankful for Staden as his instructor, who had focused inordinately on ground combat. Another part of his mind was wondering what Yang would have done in his place. Probably he would have cleared a path for Mittermeyer to get out, and then abandon the base, Ovelesser be damned. But Yang was not here, and Reuenthal, though he had charged in under his own authority, did not have Yang’s devil-may-care attitude towards orders from above when it came to saving lives, and neither did he have Yang’s propensity to retreat at the earliest convenience. He was hopeful that his presence would allow them to hold the base until further reinforcements showed up, reinforcements who he suspected would come, now that more than just Mittermeyer’s men were committed to the battle. It would look very bad for Ovelesser to abandon them to the wolves.

Reuenthal’s battalion charged.

It was difficult to keep track of the state of the battle, even with the constantly updating map his own tanks sent to him with their positions-- the enemy vehicles did not show up on it, and the snow was so thick that it was hard to see any of them without being within a few meters. Reuenthal’s sudden arrival caused mass chaos, and he almost regretted his choice of formation for that reason. His troops were too effective. Where he had intended to strike the center of, and scatter, the enemy vehicles, instead, his battalion broke directly through their center, and ended up forming a long line in between two groups of enemy tanks, extending towards the base entrance.

He had succeeded in dealing a significant blow to the rebel forces, leaving huge numbers of their tanks disabled, and getting them away from the immediate danger point: the entrance to Mittermeyer’s base, but, in doing so, his tanks were now in a vulnerable position. They were being fired on from both sides, now that the enemy knew where they were. Reuenthal gave the order to bunch up, so that they wouldn’t be so easily picked off in the long and open line. He was able to do that, but when he tried to give the order to force outwards, to prevent themselves from being totally encircled, various parts of his formation began to collapse under the enemy’s superior numbers, which would leave an easy opening for the rebels to get back to their original position at the base entrance, and pick off Reuenthal’s forces swiftly.

They were saved from this fate, but only barely. Forces emerged from the base, half in tanks and half on open, motorized sledges designed to haul construction materials across the snow, coming to reinforce Reuenthal. Hurriedly, while the main gates to the base were open, Reuenthal gave an order over the radio. “Continue to fire on the enemy and back towards the base entrance to regroup. If your vehicle is disabled, abandon it and go in on foot. If you can, position it as a blockade.”

It was a good thing that he gave that order when he did, because moments later, his own tank was hit by rocket fire. Luckily, it was an indirect, and thus survivable, blow, but it completely destroyed the treads on the left side of the vehicle, and knocked Reuenthal hard in his seat. The main power of the engine whined and then died, and the red emergency lights filled the tank with a sick glow.

“We’re sitting ducks here, sir,” the tank driver said. “I recommend you head into the base. We can provide covering fire.”

Reuenthal nodded. He donned his helmet and took an axe and rifle from the back of the tank, and the rest of the tank crew did the same. They climbed one by one out the top hatch, the two who climbed out first laying atop the top of the tank and firing their rifles at any of the enemy who were sticking their heads out of their own tanks. It wouldn’t have done anything to stop another direct hit from another tank’s guns, or another rocket blast, but it was something. Reuenthal climbed out as well, then slid down behind the tank into the thick snow on the ground, struggling to run through the center of his own formation towards the base entrance. He made it into the base, grateful for the easier movement on the hard-packed snow, and the protection that the heavy rock walls provided.

Reuenthal pulled aside one of the people whose protective outdoor gear was covered in high-vis orange: far better for construction work in heavy snow than for combat, so clearly a member of the base crew. “Where is the base commander?” he yelled over the sound of the fighting. The man pointed back towards one of the buildings. Reuenthal’s instinct was to run towards it, but he stayed at the entrance, making sure that his own men retreated inside the base in an orderly fashion. He joined up with the lieutenant who was surveying the scene from the watch post above the rocky base entrance, coordinating the opening and shutting of the great gates, and Reuenthal used his radio to direct his remaining tanks, now much fewer in number, to take up defensive positions on construction roads carved into the sides of the rocks above the base, and just within the entrance.

At last, there was a lull in the battle, as the rebel forces backed off slightly to regroup, and the base closed itself off as best it could.

Reuenthal was about to go find Mittermeyer, and was on his way out of the watch post to do so, when he heard Mittermeyer’s familiar voice, loud and drifting up from the ground below.

“Ensign, do you know if there are other reinforcements coming?” Mittermeyer asked.

“No, sir,” the ensign, one of Reuenthal’s junior officers, Baumann, was saying. “The commander couldn’t get in contact with high command, but we heard your message asking for aid, so he said it was our responsibility to come.”

“Is he some kind of noble type, then?” Mittermeyer asked. There was a momentary pause. “Never mind, don’t answer that question.” Reuenthal could just picture the look on Mittermeyer’s face. “Do you know where he is?”

Reuenthal chose that moment to step out of the watch post and slide down the ladder to the ground.

“He’s right here,” Reuenthal said.

There was a moment of surprise from both Mittermeyer and Baumann.

“Oskar?” Mittermeyer asked, his eyes widening as he looked at Reuenthal, who was still wearing his helmet.

Baumann turned, startled, and saluted sharply. Reuenthal saluted back. “Go find out exactly what our remaining strength is,” Reuenthal said to Baumann, mostly to get rid of him.

“Yes, sir!” Baumann said, and dashed away.

“Commander Mittermeyer,” Reuenthal said coldly. “We should discuss our plans for defense.”

Mittermeyer was still looking at him as though Reuenthal was a ghost. “Is that really you, Reuenthal?”

“Not that it matters in any way, but yes, it is.” He didn’t take off his helmet like Mittermeyer, who was holding his loosely under his arm.

“What are you doing here?”

“I got your radio message asking for help. Since I had accomplished my own objective early, it was reasonable for me to come here. We should discuss our defense.”

“Oh, yes,” Mittermeyer said. “This way.” He reached out, as though to put a hand on Reuenthal’s arm, then let it drop and instead started heading towards one of the buildings. “You came just in time,” he said as they walked.

“Oh?”

“I ran out of rockets ages ago, and they had just taken out my last stationary artillery. If they breached the outer wall, I would have had to give the order to retreat out the back, which would have been messy.”

“You can’t retreat,” Reuenthal said, and briefly explained Yang’s warning about Ovelesser, who was in charge of the operation. “My thought was that, by committing more forces here, Ovelesser’s hand will be forced to send in even more reinforcements.”

Mittermeyer frowned. “And if he doesn’t?”

“Then we will either die or become prisoners of war,” Reuenthal said.

“You shouldn’t have come, then.”

“Oh?”

“If there’s no guarantee that Ovelesser will send in support, you’ve condemned yourself instead of just me.”

Reuenthal glanced at him and saw that Mittermeyer was frowning deeply. There were dark circles under his eyes. Reuenthal suspected that he hadn’t slept in at least a day, probably longer. “How sentimental of you,” he finally said.

Mittermeyer let him into the building they were walking towards, a squat thing constructed of cinderblocks, with drifts of snow piling up along the edges. The building looked like it had once been the coordination center for the construction of the base and mine: the maps on the walls were pinned up next to long charts showing construction progress and timelines, all totally irrelevant now, Reuenthal was sure. There was no one else in the room at the moment, though the presence of open computers on the long central table, and several cups of coffee that were still hot enough to steam in the air indicated that this room saw much use.

“You can take off that helmet now that we’re indoors,” Mittermeyer said. “Coffee?” He poured himself a mug from the industrial sized machine in the corner, and offered one to Reuenthal.

Reuenthal hesitated a moment before taking off his helmet and accepting. Mittermeyer dumped creamer and sugar into his cup, but Reuenthal just sipped his black. They were silent for a second, and Mittermeyer kept glancing at Reuenthal in a way that made him uncomfortable, unused to being observed like this. He stared back at Mittermeyer with as blank of an expression as he could muster, then said, “Explain to me what the situation is here.”

Mittermeyer did so, walking him through the defenses that remained to the base, and Reuenthal provided his own input. It was a businesslike conversation, at least for a while, especially since their adjutants wandered in at various points, looking for orders and bearing reports on what the enemy outside was doing.

“It shouldn’t be too complicated to just hold out as long as possible,” Mittermeyer said.

“Not complicated does not mean not difficult,” Reuenthal said. He studied the map in front of him. “We should be able to hold out for some time.”

“Yes,” Mittermeyer agreed. He looked at Reuenthal. “You shouldn’t have come, but I’m glad you’re here.”

Reuenthal made a noise that wasn’t agreement. “You’d be better off with Leigh.”

“I somehow doubt that. Besides, he’s not even on the planet.”

“He would find a way to let you retreat.”

“You think that’s what I want?”

Reuenthal’s smile was grim. “Luckily, what you want is of no concern to me.”

“Why did you come here, really, Reuenthal?”

“Because it was a sound strategic choice. The base is valuable enough to be worth holding, especially if it means the rebels have less of a foothold on the planet.”

Mittermeyer had always been able to tell when he wasn’t saying exactly what was on his mind. “And that’s all?”

Reuenthal had no desire to explain the rest of his reasoning. “Of course it is. Did you really think there would be any other reason?”

Mittermeyer’s frown deepened. “Do you want me to apologize to you, or something?”

“No,” Reuenthal said. “You should stay focused on the business at hand. Fighting while distracted will mean you’ll be far less likely to get home to your pretty little wife.”

“Reuenthal—” Mittermeyer said, but Reuenthal was turning on his heel and heading out of the building, slipping his helmet onto his head as he did.

The defense of the base went well for about twelve hours. Reuenthal barely saw Mittermeyer, as he was focused more on keeping his own forces organized and engaged, whereas Mittermeyer stayed on top of the overall defense of the base. Reuenthal did not mind not seeing him.

It was darkly funny, he thought, that they still worked together so well. He would tell one of his lieutenants something like, “Send those tanks with the damaged gun turrets to Mittermeyer. He’ll want them.” His lieutenants would look at him like he was crazy, but sure enough, they would report back that yes, indeed, Mittermeyer had been very happy to receive whatever Reuenthal had sent. And the opposite was also true— Mittermeyer predicted Reuenthal’s movements and supported him without any questions or commentary being necessary.

Still, despite their best teamwork, and the fact that the enemy was clearly also flagging and running low on supplies, they were still outnumbered, and their situation could not hold much longer. The enemy was beginning what felt like Reuenthal to be a last ditch attempt to enter the base. It wasn’t clear to him if the enemy knew that their ‘home bases’ on the other side of the wide plain had been seized; they had nowhere to retreat to. It would explain why they hadn’t left yet, at least. Capturing Mittermeyer’s base might feel like their best chance of survival.

Reuenthal ran out of rockets and artillery, leaving him and Mittermeyer with only tanks and a limited supply of ammunition with which to defend the base. They moved all the tanks into a defensive formation inside the base’s main walls as the enemy switched from picking off their few remaining defenses to simply shelling the heavy rock walls and door to knock it down and enter the base.

The whole scene felt weirdly silent as the door caved in. Flashes of gunfire lit the snow and sky, but sound didn’t travel very well past all the muffled flakes in the air, and everything was odd and distant feeling, even though Reuenthal was right there in it, standing behind one of his tanks with an axe slung across his back and a rifle in his hand. There was hardly any point in being in a tank; they couldn’t maneuver very well in the limited space within the base, so Reuenthal simply spent his time with his rifle mechanically picking off any rebel soldiers that climbed out of their own tanks to try to take the base on foot.

He shouted the occasional order to keep his men in line, but there wasn’t much more that could be said. The enemy had breached the walls, and everyone knew that all that was really left to do was fight in increasingly close quarters until one side or the other gave out completely.

There was red blood on the white snow, illuminated briefly by flashes of light from the firing of guns, or the lights of the tanks or the base, flipped on and off seemingly at random. It was chaos, with the tanks on both sides eventually becoming completely useless, destroyed by fire or running out of ammunition, and so the battle was reduced to a gunfight. And then the energy packs on the guns began to run out, one after another, and they switched at last to axes.

When Reuenthal’s own energy pack on his rifle flashed red with the low power warning, and he found that he had no one around to ask for a spare from (if there had been any spares to be had, which he doubted), he slung the gun over his back and pulled out his axe, retreating a little from the main fight to see if he could find a spare energy pack somewhere.

He spotted someone in an Imperial uniform engaged in a three-on-one fight with axes, holding his own but probably for not much longer. Reuenthal entered that fray, swinging his axe one handed to cleave one Alliance soldier at the shoulder, sending him to the ground. The Imperial soldier that Reuenthal had come to rescue was then able to quickly dispatch the other two.

“Thanks,” the man said, and he immediately recognized his voice as Mittermeyer’s.

“You’re welcome,” Reuenthal said.

“Came to rescue me again, I see.” Mittermeyer’s tone was light, now, despite the situation that they found themselves in. Reuenthal abandoned his plan of finding a spare energy pack; if Mittermeyer no longer had one, there probably weren’t any to be had in the entire base.

“You had better pay me that debt back fast,” Reuenthal said. “I don’t want you to go to Valhalla owing me something.”

“Sure,” Mittermeyer said. “I’ll keep that in mind.”

They stood shoulder to shoulder, then charged forward without speaking to fight another small group of Alliance soldiers, taking them all out without too much difficulty. Despite everything, Reuenthal wouldn’t have chosen anyone else to have at his side during something like this. He trusted Mittermeyer’s strength and steadiness, and Mittermeyer trusted Reuenthal’s reflexes and judgement. They complemented each other well.

Reuenthal had forgotten, or tried not to remember, what it was like to move side by side with Mittermeyer. Mittermeyer had a way of making every motion look both effortless and graceful, even underneath the heavy suits, in the weird gravity of Kapche-Lanka. Mittermeyer was more used to it than Reuenthal was, he supposed, since he had been here longer. Every swing of his axe was like the swift claw of some great animal, killing silently in the snow.

Reuenthal knew he should take his own advice: he was fighting distracted.

They each saved the other’s life several times, but Reuenthal was not keeping count, not there in the thick of things, and he suspected that Mittermeyer wasn’t either. He would just call it even between them.

Eventually, they ended up somehow separated from the main fighting, and surrounded by Alliance forces. Reuenthal and Mittermeyer were back to back.

“I wish I had a better axe,” Mittermeyer said over the howling of the snowy wind. “How are you holding up?”

“We’re in the same bad state,” Reuenthal said, eyeing the Alliance soldiers coming towards them.

“Too bad, or I’d let you have them,” Mittermeyer said.

“How kind of you.” Reuenthal’s grip tightened on his axe. The blade, now dull, glinted in the moonlight reflecting off of every snowflake. The whole thing was crusted dark red with frozen blood.

“Should we surrender?” Mittermeyer asked.

“I’d usually say it’s not my style, but I think we’ve killed too many of them for them to want us tossing down our axes.”

“Not even for the base?” It was a stupid question for Mittermeyer to ask, and they both knew it. Reuenthal couldn’t imagine what possessed Mittermeyer to propose it. After all, in the position that they were in, killing them would be just as effective at seizing the base as their surrender would be, and it would probably be more satisfying to those Alliance soldiers whose comrades they had both killed.

The Alliance soldiers were coming closer, crunching over hard snow, sinking in soft, stumbling slightly. Everyone here was bone tired, but Reuenthal and Mittermeyer were two against maybe fifteen. At their best, they might have won, but their weapons were dull and they were on the edge of exhausted collapse.

Reuenthal felt weirdly calm, for the first time since being on this planet. The poisoned atmosphere wasn’t bothering him, or his exhaustion had stifled the panic in his brain. If he was going to die, it might as well be here. It might as well be with Mittermeyer.

As the Alliance soldiers approached, Mittermeyer said something that wiped away the exhaustion from Reuenthal’s mind and replaced it with pure, undirected anger. “Eva, forgive me,” Mittermeyer said.

Reuenthal charged into the group of Alliance soldiers, swinging his axe, forcing Mittermeyer to follow him. He was acting on instinct alone, this frenzied rush of movement over the snow. Mittermeyer may need to beg Evangeline’s forgiveness for dying here, but at least that was one part of him that she could never have. She could steal his life from Reuenthal, but he had an odd satisfaction in the sense that, since they were both about to die here, Reuenthal would get to have that, at the very least.

Reuenthal was swinging his axe with arms that felt like lead weights when he heard it; somehow over the yelling and the deadening sounds of the snow, the heavy throb of an engine, a big one. He killed the person in front of him, then had a single second to look up into the swirling air, each snowflake burning like a light. There, hovering in the air far above them, was the massive form of an imperial destroyer, its stardrive acting like a rebuke of Kapche-Lanka’s gravity. From its hold spilled out a dozen little air-ships, the kind of close range atmosphere vehicles that were nearly useless on Kapche-Lanka, due to the ferocity of the weather. Still, somehow, these ships flew through the snow, pushed back and forth by the wind, and the hot sound of their guns pulsed through the air, killing Alliance soldiers with laser targeted precision, evaporating snowflakes en-route and leaving steaming pits in the ground where people had once stood.

From the brink of defeat, surrounded on all sides, they were saved. Reuenthal had the nasty thought that he was actually disappointed by this, but then he realized that he was too tired to actually care.