The storm surrounds them. Two figures in an eternity of white. Trudging on, indistinct to each other as ice claws at them, their sledges resist every effort, and their guns weigh them down. Onwards against strain and sense. The first for many souls, the other for just one.

A marker post passes by. Unclear if it or they are the ones moving. Its plaintive blinking vanishing into the dome of white.

Abruptly, a cyclopean cliff emerges, top invisible, bottom long buried. A landmark, at last. Huddling around a lantern, cowering from the cold they eat. One hurries through his meal, and pays as cramps rebel. For a few minutes, all he can do is watch his shaking hands and his calm companion.

Onwards, still.

They trace the cliff, its grooves and places well known to Søren’s hands. They exchange no words. The argument has been had, and besides, the storm rips even screams away. The roaring air and ice enforcing a sharp blanket of silence.

The cliff diverts from their path, another long-suffering marker post marking the occasion before dismissing them back onto the featureless white.

By Søren’s senses they are closing. The trailing father’s agitation seeping through even the thick snow-robes. Another few roaring moments and Søren’s earpiece crackles with the rhythm of metal and circuit.

Abruptly, their blank perception is lit by distant lightning, the singular strokes becoming an all-encompassing flash. It at least reminds them where up is.

The signal gets clearer, more confident as they close. Marek, the father is lost in his own world of expected tragedies. Søren flicks the heater on his gun, warmth preparing the metal for violence. His hands pat down his camouflaged robes, familiar weights reassuring.

They slow, a dark shape metamorphosing into a snow-crawler, the hull ripped open, clawmarks along its skin. The dead lie still and freezing, crimson blood disappearing under pink snow, unprotected skin flayed by the icy winds before the frost granted a final dignity.

None of the bodies twitch, Marek won’t be prepared for that, Søren thinks. Leaving him to commune with the dead as Søren pushes along the convoy, damp gun raised.

Behind, Marek claws at the snow surrounding each corpse, brining what meagre light his lantern sheds to glitter in their frozen eyes for a final time. With each, his heart is in his mouth. As each is revealed the frisson of relief grows the dangling sword of dread.

Cursing the wind in his ears and the storm in his eyes, Søren’s only comfort is that the beast should be as blind as him. A lot hung on that should.

Another crawler emerges, its precious cargo strewn over the snow, food flying away. Another shape looms from the storm, one of jagged angles and sharp glass. He stills himself, permitting only a single eye to gaze upon the seven legged amalgam of dark glass and vicious edges. It stands over a corpse, snapping bone and rending flesh into its black maw.

Time, then. Time to think, trap and ambush. Better than running. The storm is enough cover, food enough distraction as he drags a better weapon out. Placing the square tube on his shoulder, the sight drenches the scene crimson as different sensors gaze into the ice storm and give up.

Just his eye then.

If he could hear them, he would have heard the beast’s final crunches as its eyeless body sought the next meal. For a heartbeat, if it had a heart, it was immobile against the buffeting storm.

In that heartbeat, Søren fired.

The laser flickered over the ice, visible in the swirling snow. A patch of the beast’s carapace explodes in a cloud of splintered grass. Its undulating cry cutting across the howling wind.

Instantaneously, it leaps. Søren’s second pulse stabs fruitlessly into the dimming grey surrounding them. It lands, crushing him. Hot blood pools in his jacket where its spike-legs have penetrated. Heart hammering in his ears, his mind fights back panic as his unpinned arm snakes a grenade out.

Tearing his pinned flesh, he lunges at its carapace-wound, stabbing the explosive into the tender flesh beneath. Closing his eyes, he waits for an end.

The flash ignores hand and eyelids as the world turns white around him. Itching burns around his goggles, the stink of burned plastic. He lies in a moment of a crater of water, steaming before it is snatched into the wind. Charred carapace fragments are lodged deep in the crawler’s steel skin.

He tries to sit up, pain and blood flowing, filling his body. Clawing the fabric wider until the gash beneath is exposed. It is a mess of crimson flesh, and he fancies seeing a hint of bone.

Marek explodes out of the writhing mist. A sharp scratch and Søren floats, his pain excruciating but distant, the world softer.

Marek’s hands stitch and bind, his gloves now soaked with Søren’s blood.

Now the wound is somewhat mollified, he drags Søren into one of the clawed-open crawlers and sets outward again.

Every corpse is smothered with crimson blood, waiting to glitter when the distant sun returns. With each, hope and despair duel. He cannot even close their eyes as he leaves.

It is not the last he finds. A familiar face, now fixed in a slacked rictus by the cold. His tears mingle with cloth and hair, eventually freezing. Hope, is extinguished. He returns to Søren, huddled with his lantern, a patch of warms in inadequate shelter.

Søren gazes at Marek’s dark eyes, now blackest pits. Marek surrenders his own lantern and disappears into the darkening twilight and the storm.