The Eternal Winter - Chapter 9 - Planning and the Major (Patreon)

                                                        Alexander North

As I’m sitting at the edge of the base proper, I finish typing up my notes in my terminal before rereading through them.

One. The wraiths and wendigos hunt anything that they can see with their infra-red vision.

Two. The brutes break everything they see. No matter what it is. Such as the poor soldier I saw getting smashed by one on the other side of the base and the wraith that was hunting him.

Three. The wraiths enjoy hunting. They will chase after their prey for a very long time, to the point that I’ve never seen one give up on prey before. Although most of the prey I’ve seen them chase didn’t last long, considering that they were wild animals. But the one that chased me back to the cave never gave up, annoyingly enough.

Four. The wendigos have a ravenous appetite, which clears up my worries about not being able to eat normal foods and drinks. These creatures will eat anything they find that’s edible.

And Five. The three types of monsters I’ve seen so far each have their own quirks. The brutes have strength far beyond that of the other two, with a much thicker skin and muscle protecting them at the same time. The wraiths have speed far beyond that of the other two, with two relatively sharp blades in the place of their arms. The wendigos have strength and speed a bit above that of a human with the ability to freeze anything they touch and the ability to take a lot more damage than a normal human can.

After I finish rereading through the notes, I close out of my terminal again and turn my head around the tree I’m hiding in to look at the base.

I’m getting sick of sitting here taking notes, but I’ve already failed rather miserably at getting into the base three times now. So at this point it’s best to know the monsters as well as I can.

And that includes myself now as well.

The things I’ve realized about myself is that my claws retract and extend whenever I want, my little freezing power seems to only freeze organic creatures for the moment. Whether that’ll change in the future or not is not something I know right now, nor do I want it to change right now. Considering just how annoying that would be to freeze everything I touch, including my own clothes.

I have my hybrid vision, and at the same time, while my body still has body heat, it’s drastically reduced from what it was when I was human. So, the wendigos and wraiths can still see me with their infra-red vision, but nowhere near as clearly as they would see a normal human. Which mostly means that they can’t see me through walls like they can other living things.

Which is nice.

I look around my body one last time to make sure I’ve gotten everything before nodding to myself and jumping down from the tree.

Time to try getting in again.

The base’s exterior is set up with five large towers and a large wall going between most of the towers, leaving just one section without a wall. However, that one section is built next to a river and instead has a bridge with plenty of security posts and a road on it.

Additionally, the exterior is tall enough that you can’t climb it very easily, but you can look into it from the mountains nearby.

Which in hindsight really is a flaw in its design, but no one ever really expected someone to be sieging it. So no one bothered to deal with this problem. Not to mention that the majority of the base is built underground.

Now though, this flaw has helped me a lot in showing me the exact locations of the monsters. Or at least their locations back when I was on top of the mountain to look.

I slowly make my way to the outer wall before squinting my eyes at it to look for any signs of heat signatures just in case I missed one of the monsters. And once I don’t find any, I extend my claws and begin digging.

The first time I tried getting in, I tried the obvious rout, which was climbing over the wall. But that failed rather miserably when I couldn’t reach the top. After all, the wall wasn’t built for people to climb and even has some areas on it meant to stop people from doing that. Areas that work even against my claws.

As for the second and third time I tried getting in? Neither of them worked. And they were both done via attempting to sneak in through the front entrance.

One of those attempts was also the point in which I truly realized the lengths a wraith will go to catch its prey. Considering how it chased me all the way back to the secret entrance.

But this attempt? This one should be different.

I continue to dig through the ground, happy that I eventually remembered the existence of a cellar in one of the office buildings outside. Even if it took three failed attempts to do so.

I just hope that I chose the right place to dig.

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Within the Military Base located several kilometers to the south of Argo City on planet Arran
               While Alex is digging through the snow-covered ground

“Terran. Fucking. DAMMIT!” the captain of squad AR27 shouts while smashing the monster of which Alex calls a wendigo’s head into the ground, finally making it stay down. “These things just don’t want to die!”

As if to prove his point, the wendigo tries to raise its head again despite being having cracked the ground with its impact while screeching.

The captain motions for the others to help while focusing both of his arms on its head and kneeing its chest to keep it down. Meanwhile both of the twins make their way over to him with regular steel swords in their hands.

“Try taking off its head!” the captain grunts, and the twins nod at that and begin to saw away at the creature’s neck.

Meanwhile, Robert and Victoria can be seen standing at the door to the office they’re in, watching to make sure no other monster nears it since the door is currently lying on the ground a few meters away from them.

Eventually, after several painful seconds of sawing, the two twins manage to get the creature’s head off, making it cut off its screaming in an instant while dropping its resistance.

All three of them back up while heaving heavy breaths of exhaustion before Michael eventually mutters, “Poor John. He didn’t deserve this.”

The captain glances at him with a frown and asks, “You knew that one? Or the person it was before turning?”

Michael nods without taking his eyes off of the dead wendigo’s corpse and says, “Yeah. He was one of my lunch pals.”

The others all share looks in confusion, but the man doesn’t explain any further.

“Well anyway, we should-” the captain suddenly cuts off and shouts, “Shard!” while pointing at the corner of the room where a shard pierces through the cement of the room’s ceiling and begins digging itself the rest of the way out.

All of the soldiers rush towards the other door in the office which the captain opens, revealing another set of offices with a few still-living soldiers inside that quickly lift their guns and aim them at squad AR27 as they close the door behind them before the shard can free itself.

“Hold up your hands!” one of the new soldiers shouts without pointing his machine gun away from the squad, but the captain and the others just ignore the man as they catch their breath. “I said hold them up! Or I will shoot!”

“Go ahead,” Victoria mutters while still catching her breath. “Not like it’ll do much.”

The soldier grimaces at that, showing them that he knows exactly what would happen if he tried.

Eventually, after seeing that none of them are changing into monsters, and that there aren’t any shards in the room around them, the soldier slowly lowers his gun. Meanwhile the other two soldiers that were with him ignore the paranoid one and get up from their place sitting down in office chairs.

“Have you seen the base commander?” one of them asks, to which the captain of squad AR27 just shakes his head and says, “No. We just got back to the base a few hours ago ourselves.”

“Wait wait wait,” the paranoid soldier asks while glaring at them, “you were all outside when this started?! What if you were infe-Shit!”

Before the man can finish talking, the one soldier who hasn’t said a word from amongst the three smacks him on the back of the head to shut him up before looking at the squad and asking, “Just how bad was it out there?”

The captain finally looks up at the man after having caught his breath, just to immediately straighten up and salute him while shouting, “Major Vaugns!”

He then motions for the others to salute him as well before answering, “It was even worse outside, with the number of monsters including both wild animals and people. Additionally, our ship had crashed, and I suspect many other ships had done the same at the start of this icy hell.”

The major frowns at the news while walking over to the captain.

After a few seconds of silence, he eventually asks, “Did you lose anyone?”

This one question makes the captain deflate as he answers in a much quieter voice, “Yes. Two of my men. One being one of my best fighters, and the other being my tech expert.”

“My condolences,” the major says, his frown growing deeper before he turns around again and adds, “we need to find the base commander. He should have a direct connection to the headquarters through his terminal should the base be under EMP attack.”

“We were searching for him when we ended up here,” the captain explains, still with his hand in a salute. “We’ve already checked the sites from here to the secret entrance and we were about to go look towards the lieutenant colonel’s quarters.”

The major turns around at that with a nod and says, “Then let’s go.”

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