Chapter 2: Terminal

He awoke to frigid cold. His fingers were stiff, and his breath hung in the air, forming crystals that glittered in the waning light of the dirty bulbs. He wasn’t sure how long he had slept, but the heating still had not come on. There was some kind of problem.

He tried to rise to a sitting position, noting with discomfort that his chapped lips were welded together, but the gravity gripped him like an angry fist and chained him to the bed. It felt as though an elephant was sitting on his chest. He groaned, electing instead to roll out of the bed sideways, his muscles still aching as if he had run a marathon. He rose to his feet unsteadily, still shivering. His coat was covered in frozen moisture, and the fur that lined the inside of his hood was matted with ice. It was a miracle that he had woken up at all. He had activated the heating system, why wasn’t it working? Surely the pipes would have thawed by now, and any ice or snow that had clogged the ducts would have melted. He needed to get to the bottom of it, and quickly, he didn’t know how long he could endure in these conditions.

His stomach rumbled, gurgling audibly under his layers of clothing. He had exerted himself so much, burned so many calories keeping warm, he needed to eat. He remembered the cans that he had found and piled on the dining table, making his way back to the kitchen. Frost still coated every surface, it hadn’t thawed at all, no heat was getting through to the base.

He rifled through the cans, sending a couple of them rolling, his gut cramping uncomfortably as he searched for something with a legible label. Most were either so faded or so damaged by the moisture and ice that he couldn’t read them. Ah, here was one that he could just about make out. He lifted the can, examining it under the dim lights. Kidney beans, perfect. He couldn’t make out an expiration date, but he had no choice. He set the can to one side and walked over to the kitchen drawers, pulling them out and searching for cutlery or a can opener. Most of what was there was rusted beyond use, the blades of the knives and the prongs of the forks decaying into orange dust because of the pervasive damp. Eventually, he found a manual can opener that looked intact enough to use and brought it eagerly to the can of beans. He had never felt so hungry in all his life.

As he pierced the lid of the can, a fowl, nauseating smell spewed forth and he had to cover his nose with his sleeve to save from gagging. He moved away, batting at the air with his other hand. They were beyond rancid, not even recognizable as ever having been edible.

A twinge of panic shot through him, and he grabbed another can. He couldn’t read the label, but he broke it open anyway. A fresh stench made him dry-heave, and he dropped the can onto the table. It was full of a gelatinous, black sludge. It was impossible to say what it had once been. No, fate could not be so cruel, were all of the food stores spoiled? How long had they been here?

One by one he opened the cans, and one by one they were proven unfit for consumption. After a few minutes, he had a pile of open cans, their combined stink permeating the room. There was nothing, not one scrap of edible food. He threw the can opener across the room in frustration, shouting his anger and despair at the icy walls of the outpost. No food, no heat, this base would be his frozen tomb and Rawling would get exactly what he wanted.

Wait, there was still one option open to him. The storeroom. He had succeeded in unlocking the doors of the base, even if the more advanced functions such as control of the satellite dish were off limits to whoever had owned that terminal. There had to be a storeroom somewhere on the base, he had not yet explored it in its entirety.

He would try to secure food first, without anything to eat, whether he survived the cold or not was of little consequence. Repairing the heating system would have to wait.

Schaffer took a moment to compose himself, then set off towards the area of the base that he had not explored yet. He passed what appeared to have been labs at some point, they must have been doing research of some kind. Anything valuable or useful seemed to have been stripped, leaving mostly bare counters and tiled floors with a few beakers and glass vials scattered here and there.

There was a second bathroom and a small storage closet with janitorial supplies, nothing Schaffer could make use of. He finally found it, the main storage room, its door ajar after the electronic locks had been deactivated. He swung it open all the way, stepping inside.

Most of the lights in here were broken or non-functional, but enough were still working to illuminate the space well enough that he could navigate it. There were crates and boxes all over the room, what looked like a rack of jumpsuits or maybe space suits, shelves with cans of food. It was everything that he had hoped for. He went straight for one of the shelves, grabbing cans and examining them. His face fell, these were in no better condition than the ones in the kitchen, rusted metal peeking out from beneath decaying paper labels. He didn’t hold out much hope, but he would take as many as he could carry back to the dining table and see if any were still good.

He opened one of the boxes that littered the floor, finding that it was full of tools. Hammers, screwdrivers, drills with bloated batteries that he didn’t dare to handle. These were definitely useful to have, they might help him in his endeavor to repair the heating system. He opened a few more boxes, finding nothing of use to him, then made his way over to the suits. There were six of them on a rack, UNN blue in color. Schaffer recognized them as environment suits, fully contained units with a battery backpack for use in space and extreme conditions. The base staff must have used these for excursions into the snow to make repairs or to unload cargo from supply shuttles.

Did they still have power? He pulled one of the suits down to examine it. This one was obviously too small for him, and the battery readout on the backpack was dark, indicating that it was out of charge. The faceplate was obscured by a layer of frost. He discarded it on the ground, then checked the rest of them. They were all unpowered besides for one, the flickering readout on the backpack read thirty-two percent. It even looked big enough to fit him. This suit would keep him alive and warm for at least a few hours, should he need to use it. As cold as he was, his life was not in immediate danger right now, he should save it for an emergency.

There was something else on the bottom of the rack, too, resting in a recess. He pulled it out, feeling cold metal through his glove. It was a revolver, a rotary powder weapon of archaic design. The UNN had only recently introduced a standardized handgun for their troops, so it was not uncommon for Marines to carry personal sidearms that varied quite dramatically in their designs. Though they lacked the range and stopping power of railguns or plasma casters, traditional bullets would still put down most enemies in close quarters.

He flipped open the cylinder to check if it was loaded, and it was, there were six rounds chambered. The base was deserted, and there were no natives for hundreds of miles in any direction. There couldn’t be, it was a tundra out there. The weight of it was reassuring, however, so he slipped the gun into his coat pocket.

Okay. He had tools, he had food, he had an emergency environment suit. Time to get to work.

Schaffer heaved the heavy box of food cans onto the dining table with a loud crash. He had somewhat overestimated their weight, he still wasn’t used to this damned gravity. These were all of the cans that he had retrieved from the storeroom that weren’t visibly damaged or beyond salvaging. If at least some of these proved to be edible, then he might be able to ration the food out for a few days ... maybe. Theoretically, he could starve for a week or even two before he actually died, but that wasn’t something he wanted to try for himself. Water was a more pressing issue, despite the rumbling in the pipes, none had come from the faucet. Perhaps the plumbing was breached somewhere.

He could retrieve snow and melt it, but he would need a heat source for that. While he had electricity, most of the base’s functions were not operational. He retrieved the can opener from where he had thrown it, cursing himself for his lack of composure, and started opening the tins.

A few minutes later the can opener was again discarded in anger. Not one of the cans was edible, there wasn’t a morsel of food in this entire outpost that he could eat. His stomach gurgled in protest as he rested his hooded head in his hands, the reality of his desperate situation hitting him for the first time. He might really die here. Without food, the clock was ticking. His only hope now was to gain access to the central computer before he starved, and send a distress call.

He marched off to the central computer door that he had found the day before, it must be open now that he had disabled the locks. He found it, the yellow warning labels visible beneath the frost. He turned the handle, meeting resistance, and finding that was still locked. He slammed the door with his gloved fist as frustration overwhelmed him.

“Why!? Why the fuck are you still locked!?”

His voice echoed through the corridor, petering out into silence. As if in response, one of the lightbulbs over his head flickered and died, casting him into deeper gloom. The computer room must not be accessible from the terminal, it must need its own key code, and he had seen nothing of the sort while rifling through the desk.

Fuck it, he’d have to deal with this later, the heating was a more pressing issue. He knew the base had power, or the lights and the terminal wouldn’t be on. He knew that the heating system had at least some functionality, he had heard noises coming from the walls when he had turned up the thermostat. He didn’t know the first thing about repairing plumbing or AC systems, but he had tools, and he was out of other options.

But where to start? Any such systems would be embedded behind the walls or under the floor. The base was mostly made of metal, so it stood to reason that there must be access panels somewhere that would allow repairs and maintenance to be performed without disassembling the habitat. What would those look like? He rubbed his belly, the hunger pangs distracting him from his thoughts.

The design of the base was very functional and practical, so he doubted that they would be too heavily concealed. He started to wander, examining the walls and floor for keyholes or handholds. It was difficult, as every surface was obscured by a veneer of frozen moisture. He tapped his feet on the floor as he went, checking for the reverberation of a hollow cavity beneath the rubbery linoleum.

He circled the central hub of the base but did not find anything, and so proceeded outwards. After perhaps a half hour of searching, it was hard to tell time with only the waning light that entered through the narrow windows to guide him, he came across what must be some kind of furnace in the storage room. It was a large, boxy object of similar size and shape to a large refrigerator that went from the floor to the ceiling, with what looked like air ducts connecting it to the roof. He hadn’t even noticed it the first time that he had entered the room because of the low light. This had to be the heating system. He inspected it more closely, prying loose a panel on the front of the device and revealing its inner workings. It was obvious at a glance how it operated. An air duct open to the cold winds outside would draw in air, then a fan powered by a small motor with a belt would feed it up and into a furnace. He swung the door open and could clearly see the heating elements. From there, it would pass the heated air up and into the base’s ventilation system, thus heating the building. It looked to be electrically powered, so why wasn’t it operating?