The Will To Live✔️

Chapter 02: Echoes After A Storm

Maybe that could be a source of water, although there was still the trouble of boiling it. He didn't want to risk drinking contaminated water. He still had no idea where he was. Obviously the temperature, gravity, and atmosphere were all within acceptable tolerance as he wasn't having any trouble breathing, but there were still a lot of things to consider on an alien world. Even a colonized one, which he prayed this was.

As Greg began a slow walk that gradually picked up the pace as his battered body started working out the stiffness, his mind began to run through the previous day's events. Now that he'd had sleep and it was daytime, he could actually think, and he remembered. He had been riding a Pelican down from orbit with his Fireteam. They numbered twelve in all, plus the pilot, and were one of two squads sent down from their ship.

Their ship...

Yes. He had been living on the UNSC Icarus for three months now. He frowned as he remembered that. It had been bad recently, it had been hell really. Knowing that Earth was under direct attack from the Covenant now, and he wasn't there to help. No, he was out here on the fringes, putting out the little fires that cropped up whenever the Covenant assaulted another world, another ship, another colony. And how many of those had ended in retreat? Or a Pyrrhic victory where they ended up destroying what they were trying to protect in the process of 'protecting' it because the Covenant were so ruthless and reckless?

Greg shook his head and put that out of his mind, or tried to. And then his train of thought actually derailed as he stepped on something hard and flat. For a second, he thought it might be a rock, but as he pulled his foot back and looked down at the freshly fallen snow, he saw something silver glinting. His heart skipped a beat and he crouched, then grabbed whatever it was and liberated it from the snow. His canteen! Oh holy crap, his canteen. He brushed snow from it as he straightened back up. This was a massive win as far as his survival went. He looked it over and saw that although it was a little dented, it was otherwise intact.

"Thank you," he whispered, then unscrewed the cap and peered inside. Frozen water. Perfect. Maybe there were other items around. He kept walking, hunting for more lost treasure among the snow, and his thoughts resumed. Yes, he had been onboard the Icarus, and they were responding to a distress call to...

Wintermute.

Yes, he definitely remembered that, because of the weird ass name. A little frozen ball of ice and rock near the edge of colonized space, Wintermute was a mining world. They had picked up an emergency distress call from the planet's UNSC Command, but there was no further information attached to the call, just that it was an emergency. Being the nearest vessel, they had dropped into slipspace and traveled for two days straight to get there. When they'd arrived in orbit, they'd reached out over the comm waves, but...

There was nothing. No communications. Just dead air, and the weather and something else, some kind of solar storm or something, had been interfering heavily with the sensors, so they could hardly pick up anything. And so, Greg had been part of the two Fireteams dispatched to Wintermute's UNSC Command to investigate what, precisely, was up. And then...what had happened? He remembered some kind of pulse of light or energy, and sparks everywhere along the interior of the Pelican. And-and what? The cargo ramp.

It had come loose, and, being one of the nearest to it, he'd gotten up to try and hit the emergency manual close, only they'd hit a powerful bump, and he'd fallen clean out the back of the Pelican. As his memories came to a painful end, Greg felt a renewed sense of awe for his current situation. That he had survived that was just nuts. No wonder he felt so awful. He stopped again as his boot came down on something hard and flat once more, only this time it was a lot smaller. Crouching, he dug in the snow and felt his heart leap in his chest. His lighter! His Zippo lighter! Now that was quite the find. Standing back up, he realized that he'd come almost to the edge of the lake. He opened his lighter and flicked the wheel a few times.

The lighter sparked several times, and finally the wick caught, the flame strong and sure. With a sigh of relief, he snapped it closed and put it into the pocket with the canteen. For a few moments, he simply stood there at the shore of the half-frozen lake and stared out at it. Beneath a blue sky, a small flotilla of what he thought of as alien geese bobbed gently on the water. There were almost a dozen of them and they were oddly adorable. So, this place had life, evidently. Greg shook his head and turned away from the lake.

He began making his way back to the cave that was his temporary home. He gathered up more wood that had been blown loose during the storm that had ravaged the land last night, and once he returned to the back of the cave he restarted the fire. It felt a lot easier now that he had his lighter. Once it was going and he was fairly confident it wasn't going to go out, Greg placed his canteen upright in between two of the rocks. He didn't even have to wait for this water to boil, since he knew it was filtered and clean.

While that happened, he left the cave and took another look around. He had to get up higher, and the natural rise in the landscape his cave was burrowed into wasn't insurmountable. His joints aching and head throbbing, Greg climbed up the slope, pushing himself until he had reached the top. At least he wasn't cold anymore. The sunlight had the temperature up and there wasn't a breeze. As he ascended the crest in the rise, his view opened up tremendously. It didn't show a great amount of variety to him, though.

There was more blue sky dotted with the occasional cloud, a hell of a lot more trees, a lot more snow-covered landscape, and...

"Yes," Greg whispered.

A thin pall of smoke was rising into the air somewhere ahead of him. There was a good chance that was the crash site of his Pelican. Even if it wasn't, it probably was a sign of civilization. A cabin or even a campsite. What he wouldn't give to see another person right now. After staring at it for a few seconds more, he turned and made his way back down the slope. He headed into the cave and checked on his canteen. The exterior was certainly hot enough, but it probably wasn't fully melted yet. Well, more opportunity to take a seat and maybe gather up some more strength before the no doubt lengthy walk he had ahead of him.

As he waited for his water to finish melting, Greg found himself wondering if he'd been in worse situations than this. Probably. He'd been shot down behind enemy lines before. He'd faced overwhelming odds before. Then again, who hadn't at this point in the Human-Covenant War? He supposed the problem was that he didn't know how screwed he was. He had no idea where he was, if there were any hostiles around, how far he was from safety or help, or a hundred other potentially crucial factors.

He didn't know much. He was going to have to learn a lot, and fast.

Once the water was thawed, he dislodged it with his boot and then awkwardly kicked it out of the cave and into some snow, which immediately began to hiss and melt. He didn't have gloves and the thing had to be burning hot. No way he was going to deal with burns on top of everything else. While it cooled off, he stared out at the lake and the forest. He had a huge task ahead of him, and he could feel thoughts and concerns crowding in on him. But, drawing on years of practicing the act, he pushed them away, buried them for now.

Some of them would burn off in the ether, nothing more than immediate, in-the-moment anxieties. Those that were left would be the ones that mattered, and he'd examine those thoughts later, like during his walk across the field and the forest, because that would be a good time for extended contemplation sessions.

Right now though, he just had to get to that smoke, and then he'd figure out where to go and what to do from there.

As soon as the water was cool enough to drink, he made himself stop at a third of the canteen's reserve, then replaced it in his pocket, turned, and began the process of getting back up that incline. It was time to start walking.