ICE WAR: Europa
A new member of Galileo Prospecting Group steps onto the Berg and comes to realize the truth behind humanity's shared history of conquest.
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"Welcome to the Berg," said Ajax as the airlock's exterior door swung out to the glacial trenches and plains beyond.
His voice was muted by his Surface Suit and the thin atmosphere between us. The radio unit in my new helmet facilitated the auditory transfer.
The old icehead stepped out onto the glacier. His suit was white and grey in a camouflage dispersal pattern that blended with the dirty ice terrain outside Forward Operating Base "Lupine". A legal extra-orbital holding owned in totality by Galileo Prospecting Group.
At least that's what they told me during boot camp aboard the GPGSS Dauntless on the 2 year trek to Jupiter's moons. The men I met on the ground said it belonged to the Central Europan Arctic Survey & Extraction company only weeks before I arrived.
I followed Ajax and looked around the ice trench we found ourselves within. It's sides were hardened with concrete layers, but micro particles of frozen material glazed all surfaces.
With the group clear from the safety of the airlock, it began to slide closed behind us.
Torq, another rifleman like me, and Bird, our Orbital Bombardment Spotter, trotted out beside me. We waited as Ajax ignited the enclosed pilot light in his flame projector before we went any further. He was our veteran squad leader and the team's Thawing Specialist.
"It's bleak," I said to the group as I scanned the trenches around us.
Other men and women in Surface Combat Suits were milling around the big divots in the ice. Nearby, to our right, was a gun pit with an ice crusted anti-air battery being warmed up by its operators. It looked like the vertical rotator had frozen solid.
"Don't be such a warmie," said Torq as he landed a light hit on my shoulder, "You'll get used to it soon enough, man."
"Born to freeze," smirked Bird as he raised his Telescoping Laser Spotter (TLS) to his helmet's transparent visor.
The lights on the device blinked as Bird scanned the hazy black sky above us. Jupiter's eye stared back down.
"Not seeing any observers over the route," said Bird folding the TLS and putting it away.
"Let's move," grunted Ajax.
He turned and began to climb the ladder out of our trench. At the top, he paused and scanned the ice sheet that lay beyond. A No Man's Land separating us from another, hostile, trench line somewhere out at the multiple kilometer distance.
I saw Ajax had tapped over the reflective parts on his Surface Suit with black fabric patch kits. The only color that separated him from the palette of white, grey, and icy blue was the green corporate security patch on his right shoulder.
"Feels clear," Ajax radioed down to us.
He pulled himself over the top and we scrambled after him.
We began to walk out into that icy frontier. Ajax took point and weaved our single file line through the cracks and pitfalls in the 10 kilometer thick glacier.
2 kilometers out, I felt a brief vibration pass through my boots. I stopped and began to look around for a vehicle or the like moving in on us.
Torq paused and looked back at me, "What's up, man?"
"Felt some kind of vibration," I replied before looking back at Torq.
Beyond, Ajax and Bird stopped to look back at us.
"Tremors?" asked Bird with a tone of concern.
Ajax turned back the direction we had been walking and began to sprint as fast as the Surface Suit would allow.
He shouted through our local communication network as he ran, "Geyser! Move!"
Torq and I made eye contact through our visors before sprinting after our squad leader. Bird was already ahead of us and gaining on Ajax.
As we ran another wave of vibrations rippled through the glacial ice. I couldn't hear it, but I could feel the movement through my suit as the ice behind us began to shatter and splinter like a mighty hand was trying to punch through the ice sheet from the other side.
"Faster!" shouted Bird as the vibrations increased in tenacity again.
Then a grinding crack that I didn't hear, but felt under my boots, washed over us. I looked back to see ice and vaporized water erupt into the black abyss above. Frozen shrapnel peppered the terrain around us.
An ice chunk the size of a bowling ball smashed against the ground in front of me. I raised my arm to shield my visor and leapt the shattered ice as I ran.
Microscopic bits of ice hung in the air. The dust-like clouds began to cling to my arms and helmet. I could only hear my breathing.
"Dive!" shouted Ajax through the speaker in my helmet.
I couldn't see anything through the ice sheet that froze against on my visor. I dove to the ground on faith alone.
Crashing into the frozen ground, I covered my helmet with my hands. My blinded visor pressed into the salt and ice of Europa's surface. The moon shook in anger at the invasive hubris of our mission to steal her water for Earth.
I screamed into the white void. The glacier shook and condensation slid down the inside of my suit.
Nobody could say how long we laid there. It felt like a lifetime.
And then, the geyser stopped its rattling. Jupiter's angry gravitational pull released its grip on Europa's ice shell.
"Sound off!" shouted Ajax.
His voice pulled me back from the edge of panic and I pushed myself to my knees.
"I'm blind," I stated back.
I felt a hand on my shoulder, then my helmet being turned back and forth. A scraping noise resonated within the confines of my bucket as the blindfold of ice on my visor was chipped away. The intense light of Europa filtered in to my eyes as my visor began to dim itself.
Ajax was standing above me brushing the snow and microparticles away from his suit.
"Only ice," spoke Ajax as he reached out a hand to me.
I took it and he pulled me to my feet. The man shoved my weapon back into my hands without another word.
"Thanks," I said.
Ajax was already moving to where Bird was crouched next to Torq. Torq was still face down in the snow.
His helmet had been cracked. The frame around the side of the visor had snapped and cratered inward. There was red snow and ice around the impact site on his armor and on the surface of the grand glacier around him.
"Fuck," said Bird as he rolled Torq's body onto its back, "Torq, you there buddy?"
"The Berg's now," said Ajax, "Grab his gear and set a recovery beacon."
"God damn it," shouted Bird slamming a fist into the ice.
It didn't budge.
I crouched next to Torq. Then I began transferring his rifle magazines and grenades into the extra pouches on my suit's webbing. Nothing else could be done for the man.
Bird reached out and slid a hockey puck shaped beacon into one of Torq's empty magazine pouches. He placed his hand on the dead man's visor for a few moments before rising to his feet.
"Let's go," stated Ajax as he began to walk in the direction of our next waypoint.
Bird said nothing, but followed along. As we walked, I only saw him look back once.
I think I heard quiet tears picked up by his headset at irregular intervals, but I couldn't be sure. I learned later that those two had arrived on the same ship I had almost an entire Earth year ago. And, that Ajax was remarkably close to paying off his Debt Based Contract (DBC).
My DBC was going to keep me here for five years, at least. And that didn't include the travel costs getting here and back. Though, I could always sign up hazard duty to get the extra pay. But, all in all, my term wasn't terrible considering I took on my entire family's debt.
I'd be a true icehead on the way back to Earth and the free life in no time.
We carried on another kilometer into the ice desert.
Bird asked me, "What's good on Earth right now?"
"Oh," I said pausing for a moment, "Uh. I guess Goth Pop is big now. Last I heard the Water Shortage was easing up in a lot of places."
"Never enough," cut in Ajax before Bird could respond.
"I know, boss," replied Bird before asking me, "How many iceheads you actually seen come back?"
"They have the parades every year," I said, "Never counted faces though, if that's what you mean."
"Ah," said Bird, "Whatever."
"He asked them all," grunted Ajax as we rounded a large glacial cliff.
I began to hear faint static behind Ajax's words. The last syllables almost distorted into gibberish by the growing buzz on the line.
Bird looked back at me and tapped the side of his helmet.
Ajax watched this exchange before raising his flame projector and diving to the ground.
As he hit the ice, thermal hotspots appeared along the base of a semi-sphere, ice covered structure ahead. Muzzle flashes began to illuminate and reflect in the ice around the camouflaged pill box. The guns made no sound.
I dove.
Bird flopped to his side and slapped a hand onto his left shoulder. The snow was red where he impacted the ground.
Ahead, Ajax had rolled a Trench Plug "Goo" grenade into the space between him and the enemy gun emplacement. It burst and expanded into a yellowish, foam-like barrier before his prone form.
A necessity when bullets could shoot through almost any natural terrain in the ice field. Under sustained gun fire he had maybe 5 to 10 seconds of protection before the barrier would collapse.
And fire was sustained.
I crawled for Bird. He was wrestling with his chest rig and trying to pull a patch kit out.
I reached the man and thrust my extra patch kit into his free hand. Then I rolled to my side and pulled an Obscurant grenade from my chest rig, tossing it towards the gun emplacement.
The grenade rolled then skipped itself into the air where it burst open. Light flashed and a cloud of ultra fine cryo-reactive particles obscured us on the visual and thermal wavelengths. With no wind, the mass hung in the air like a curtain pulled between us and the unknown enemy.
The gunfire slowed. Instead of full auto bursts, the emplacement's gun team began blasting probing holes through our concealment. Each bullet opened a new viewport through our curtain and caused it to ripple.
Ajax sprung to his feet. He charged the emplacement only now beginning to become visible ahead again.
Fire erupted from his flame projector. The globular burning balls of jelly-like, self-immolating material splashed across the ice and the bunker's poly-concrete walls. The jelly burned like thermite before petering out a few seconds later as Europa's oppressive temperatures stifled the chemical reaction.
Bird and I climbed to our feet to surge forward. Weapons raised, we fired through thermal scopes at the gunport openings ahead.
Ajax continued to brush the structure with flaming paint.
I saw him touch the bunker. He crashed into it and shoved the barrel of the flame projector into a firing slit. He held it there disgorging sticky hell fire into the bunker's gun room. Then he pulled the weapon back to swap canisters, his back leaning against the side of the smoldering pill box.
We arrived to Ajax's position and took cover as he had.
Our comms were still being jammed. I could hear nothing but my own breathing, static, and my heartbeat.
Ajax looked at me and pointed up towards the top of the pill box.
I pointed the same and gave him a thumbs up.
Ajax was already hauling himself up the frozen structure's exterior with his ice axes.
I reached the top and Ajax indicated for me to pull the entry hatch open.
It didn't have a lock and I pulled it upward as Ajax jammed the flame projector inside. Orange and white light shown out of the hatch onto Ajax's ice crusted suit like lava shinning into a mirror.
The color faded and Ajax drew his sidearm. It was a white, low bore axis, pistol issued all across the Galileo Prospecting Group's Europan Surveyors Division.
He dropped into the hole. I followed after clutching my short-barreled, bullpup carbine to my chest to avoid clipping it as I entered.
Hitting the charred deck, I found Ajax rolling the body of a man in a charred Surface Suit onto his back. His chest armor and equipment were melted in a drastic concave shape.
If I hadn't been wearing a helmet in the vacuum, it would have smelled like a cookout inside that open gun emplacement. I was sure.
Ajax knelt and tore a patch off the torched man's armor. He tossed it to me.
In my hands, I saw a blue ice crown on top of a cartoon depiction of Europa stitched into the surface of the patch. It was the Cryo Kings Enterprises logo. I put it into my dump pouch for later.
Then Bird dropped into the gun room and began fiddling with the downward airlock door in the center of the room's floor. A new black fabric patch was adhered over where he had taken a bullet. The non-reflective, square uniform black of the patch contrasted the bleeding red color that permeated the exterior fabric of his suit around the wound.
Ajax had moved onto the third man on the ground when I heard a commotion. The third man, much less charred than the others, had lunged at Ajax with his ice axe and had missed. Now, Ajax stood over the Cryo Kings man with his pistol aimed at his helmet.
The Cryo Kings man threw the ice axe to the ground. He propped himself up against the blackened wall of the bunker and raised his hands.
Ajax gestured with his pistol to the airlock Bird crouched over.
The Cryo Kings man gave two thumbs up over his head.
Bird gestured for the man to approach the airlock.
As the man stood and walked to the center of the room, I kept my rifle trained on his torso.
Bird stepped back as the man approached.
The Cyro Kings man crouched and entered a pin code into the airlock's keypad.
The exterior door opened and revealed a ladder leading down to a second, inner door.
Ajax stepped forward and with a series of hand gestures directed the Cryo Kings man to climb outside.
The man objected by making an "X" with his arms.
Ajax raised his pistol again.
The man gave in with a shrug and climbed outside.
Ajax watched him through the firing ports of the pill box.
When the Cryo Kings man was was a meter or so from the bunker, Ajax turned the port's mounted, medium machine gun towards him.
I tried to say something through the static: to tell him to stop. But, I only heard the sound of my own voice bouncing off the material on the inside of my helmet.
Ajax held down the trigger. 7.62mm saboted rounds tore through the Cyro Kings man's legs. He crumpled to the ground in a heap. Hands clutched at wounds too numerous and too grievous to plug alone.
I pushed Ajax away from the gun and threw out my arms.
Ajax approached, but didn't push me back. Instead, he took two fingers, pointed at his visor, and then back out at the squirming man.
I looked out at the figure turning the ice and snow red. A color so bright in a world of black, grey, and timid blues.
This was the Ice War: the war where debtors like me got flown 671,000 kilometers away to fight a corporate war for control of the biggest single source of pure water left in the entire solar system.
I looked back at Ajax. He was watching me and I could see his face through the auto-tinting visor of his helmet.
Burned scar tissue ran down the left side of the man's face. The surface texture reminded me of the view of Europa from orbit. The trenches scattered across its surface like the etchings of some army of ants chewing through the wood of a dead tree.
Ajax gestured me forward and reached out to touch the vibrational audio peg on the side of my helmet.
Through the tinny vibrations of the touch-transmitted audio system, I heard the man speak. His eyes were locked onto mine. They weren't hostile, but implored me to listen and learn.
With his free hand, he gestured to the freezing body out on the glacial planes of Europa. The Cryo Kings man who had begun to slow and now reached upward into the sky with one of his arms. The fingers appeared to be grasping for something.
I think he was trying to touch Jupiter hanging up there above us. It's eye always staring down upon these new works of mankind.
Ajax's raspy, tin can voice told me, "We're born to freeze, kid. The Berg don't care about victory. Only survival one millimeter of water at a time. It's a cycle and we're all here to stay."
He removed his hand from the contact point. Then turned to walk to Bird at the airlock that would lead us down into the glacier.
I looked out at the ice beyond the walls of the pill box. The blue-grey of the ice sheet ridges looked like they were glowing. Impurities stretched the length of these monolithic slabs like veins on a some gigantic cosmic beast. Above the pitch black of space offered no reprieve from danger. Even the stars that blinked back at me in a million different symbolic languages all represented chaos. An embodiment of entropy held tight by the very same sustained fusion reaction at their cores that warmed me everyday back on Earth.
Between the suns and the ground, that grand eye of Jupiter stared unblinking down at the war raging across the skin of one of its child moons. It stood there unmoving in judgment of the actions wrought by the hands of men.
And yet, it did not speak out. None of it did. No cosmic entity stepped in to tell us we are wrong in our ways. No, no. Earth continues to spin and the water continues to flow through the bodies of the human masses. We expand and we rise. Unified in our multiplicity against the harsh and uncaring universe that cradles us.
I saw the Ice War, here, on Europa was one of many. Another war in humanity's illustrious career of adaptation and domination. It doesn't matter who "wins" this conflict, this battle, or this war. It is of no matter who survives the Berg. Humanity will have won once again against infinite carnal entropy of the universe. Our species would continue to survive despite the hungry maw of the void above.
My only wish, as it came to me watching the man-in-the-snow's hand drop to the ice for the final time, is that if only it was that the great eye of Jupiter did not need to see so much death.
But, here we were. Surviving: out on the Berg.
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