White Space

49

 The APC was in disturbingly pristine condition. It was such a sharp contrast to everything they'd seen since they left Enki for the first time. Nothing was missing from the truck, except for the weapons. Jaleel checked the rack towards the end of the back compartment, where they were stored, along with munitions and other assets for ease of access. He was hoping to find something, anything, that they could use to arm themselves. With a frustrated grunt, he turned toward the main operations table in the middle. The contents of the glass surface, which was practically one large screen, revealed nothing they hadn't known before.

He turned around and made his way over to the munitions locker by the back door and looked down lovingly at the cold steel and composite body of the rifle in his hands.

"Let's get you fed, buddy." He murmured and crouched to get into eye-level with the lower half of the locker they usually just called the "cupboard" among themselves. He ran his finger over some of the boxes like he was looking for his favorite book on a bookshelf and then pulled out a box of ammunition. Which, in fact, was a simple metal block wrapped in paper. He ejected the old one from the rifle, still almost half full, and slapped the new block in, watching the ammo readout reset on the top of the gun. This never ceased to give him a great deal of satisfaction.

He then rummaged through the rations in another locker, which was indistinguishable from all the other ones lining the walls, but Jaleel knew very well that it was a fridge. After packing an unjustifiable amount of food into a discarded grenade box, he went to offer a friendly meal to his friend. He must have had enough time to stew by now.

"Hey man, I'm bringing a peace offer—" he stopped upon entering the front compartment of the vehicle. "What the fuck are you doing, dude?"

Yemon stood next to the main terminal between the seats, stooping over a large screen. He just pressed the repeat button on the device that started playing his own voice back.

"This is Corporal Yemon Sears. If anyone can read me, please come in. We are still here, and we are still looking for survivors! I repeat, this is Corporal Yemon Sears, still looking for survivors from Enki station."

"I had to do something." he said with sad eyes. Jaleel put the box down and pulled out a pre-packaged hoagie. It was enormous.

"Here, have a bite." he said as he extended the monster sandwich to Yemon, who collapsed onto one of the chairs and took it. "I get it. It's worth a try. We have to wait for a little bit, anyway." He said and took another, somehow even bigger sandwich and took a bite.

"Thanks for not letting me die in the water though." He said, almost unintelligibly between bites. He was not eating, he was devouring the sandwich, not even swallowing too often, only when it was absolutely necessary.

"Jesus, of course I did. What the hell would I do without you?" Yemon answered with wide eyes, the bite almost falling out of his mouth.

"I don't know." Jaleel scratched his head. "Jump off a cliff, probably."

"Most likely."

"So once the big guns get here, do you think they'll kill every last one of these freaks?"

Yemon lowered his food and looked out the window, pondering his answer for a few seconds. "Fuck no. Those asshats will probably try to sell it or something."

"That's what I thought. So where does that leave us?"

"In the way." Yemon said, taking another reluctant bite.

"Exactly." Jaleel said. "I say we contact the Colonel directly. I trust him to not give us to the corporate dogs."

"Yeah. You might be ri—"

Before Yemon could finish either his thought or his sandwich, the terminal next to him gave off an extremely loud chime.

"Man, do they ever adjust the volume on these?" Jaleel said, finishing the second half of his roll, in one inhuman bite and stood up. "What is it?" he asked, leaving a trail of giant breadcrumbs.

"Hello? Corporal, is that you?" a soft, scared, female voice said after the chime. There was a lot of noise, it was a wonder it could put the message together as well as it was.

 "Are you still there?" the voice asked. "Ah, come on..." she said, but then they heard another voice in the background that was too weak for the Ai to make sense of. "I know, damn it. I'm trying." the female voice said after a pause. Yemon suddenly recognized Accacia's voice under the static. "I hope you're still there, Corporal. We're on the development site. Navin's... place. Whatever it is. We had to get out of there. If you get this, don't go to Enki station, you hear? Don't even go near it."

 "This is Yemon. We have a delay in transmission, so we need to communicate in bursts. When you're done, just say 'over'." He said, trying to remember what else he should tell a civilian about burst communication. "Also don't try to ans—"

 "Corporal, thank God you're alive!" they blew up with an explosion of joy. Jaleel tried in vain to suppress a chuckle while Yemon shook his head. "We're down in the development site. Navin has a place in here with its own submarine bay. And it's fully functional!"

 "Alright, listen—" Yemon said.

 "So, you can take your sub and come here instead of Enki. Definitely don't go to Enki. It's—"

 "I am going to cut in, alright? We don't have instant communication because of the radiation. When you say something, say 'Over' after a sentence or two. Keep it concise."

 After a long pause, the voice said, "Understood." Then after another few while, "Sorry, over."

 "Alright." Yemon said with a sigh. "We've been to Enki station, and it's a no-go. There's this... this thing. This creature. Anyway, we're right above the development site, but we don't have a submarine. Is there any other way? Over."

 "I don't think so. It's... We... Oh Jesus, how are we going to—"

 "Look, there might be a way." Narayanan said, replacing Accacia's soft voice. "There's an old access tunnel coming down from the second small building to the left of the elevator access." There was a brief pause. "It's a semi-vertical drop, about four kilometers down to the power station. It was supposed to be fortified and sealed in, but... Anyhow, the problem is that there's no elevator or anything, it's just bored into the ice. It was only used once in an emergency a year ago. Can you use that? Over."

 "Yeah, we have some climbing gear here that should do. What can we expect down there?" Yemon asked.

 "There should be an access hatch down into the power station. I can open it for you from here. From there, you can take a ladder down a few more clicks into the site proper. It should take you to the lower floors. Those are still mostly intact. Over."

 "Alright, once we're inside, we should be able to communicate properly. We'll contact you once down. We'll make it fast. Over and Out."