The Expanse.

Creeping hatred.

That was the only emotion those instants carried. Bursting anger directed at the world, at the people that had rained destruction upon our land.

Hundreds, if not thousands of colossal craters plagued the smaller moon, scarring and violating its once pristine surface to an unrecognizable degree.

The mountains, valleys, cliffs... Everything that we remembered about that eternal part of our sky had vanished in what seemed like a miserable eyeblink.

[ How is it possible... ]

Mack uttered, his expression contorting in anger as his teeth clenched against each other.

Incandescent plumes of igniting, molten lava escaped the deepest injuries across its far land, blood, and growing plumes of water vapor escaped the insides of Charon, clouding the moon in a layer of thin gas.

We gazed towards the bond. The artificial channel that had once joined both moons, was now gone. It had been impacted too, each of the resulting segments had slowly fallen toward its closest moon. Causing more devastation...

The massive steel cities that had once surrounded the fallen cord had been equally damaged. Shrapnel had torn through its towers and large habitats, some managing to knock out entire constructions with bestial ferocity.

Charon hung lowly in the sky, but her movements had changed, they were now erratic, fundamentally alien, almost as if agitated by the pain she felt.

The only thing that remained untouched was her citadel's blinding lights... Those had yet to flicker away.

Somehow.

...

Only after a couple of minutes had ticked by did we finally find the courage to gaze at our own land.

It was no surprise, the horizon had changed radically...

The flat no-man's-land we so well knew was no more. A simple glance to the formation standing right behind us would be enough proof. Proof of the drastic change everything had undergone.

[ ... ]

The scale of change neared that of solid ranges.

We found ourselves at the feet of a mountain of shattered ice and cracked steel. A mountain that had never existed before, one created in a mere instant.

Just one of many born from the impact...

All around, the horizon had been covered in nothing but sharp dents and scars, venting the overwhelming heat of impact into ancient vapors, ones that had once composed the crust of Pluto.

Then, the city... The bright star on our land had been lost behind the newly formed terrain.

[ We are still a few hours away from day. ]

We found grief too, somewhere in that stare.

Steps echoed along the tunnel that reached from the insides of the ground. Kevin stood near us, through his reflected helmet I could see his eyes glued on the twin moon.

[ We do not have much time left, so we'll be parting as soon as we got some visibility. ]

Kev said, before turning his back on us, still maintaining eye contact with the edge of his vision.

[ I'm going to reseal that entry for now. Get some rest now that you can, this will be dangerous... ]

With a withering flash, he relit his headlight, submerging back into the bellies of the man-forged grout.

...

We already knew it would be dangerous. It always was.

Mack's gaze narrowed as he glanced at the expanse one last time, his attention fell on the narrow valley that had formed somewhere far, south of our position.

| They should be somewhere there. |

...

I didn't know if he expected an answer back then.

| They should. |

However, saying nothing was not an option. We all needed answers, even if it was just a vague premonition. I quietly muttered, before turning around, and letting myself be swallowed by the absolute darkness inside the cavern.

Mack turned around not long after, letting Kev seal the entrance with a new, thicker wall of ice.

...

Freely huddling for warmth and safety was a rarity outside the base, but without a handler on our toes, rest seemed to come faster to some.

Time ticked through seconds rapidly became hours, as the horizon lit, preparing for the rising star.

Mack had managed to fall completely asleep by Martha's side. The two had burrowed themselves under one of the insulation covers stored within the mule. The gravity of the situation weighed heavily on them, but the overload of emotion and change had probably been enough for them to find sleep.

Neither I nor Kevin were that lucky.

Kev was far too occupied with trip planning to bother with anything else. The number of tools we could bring with us was very limited, so we had to be very careful in deciding which equipment would be of use, and which could be discarded and left behind.

It may have sounded simple, but it wasn't...

If you decided to leave behind the half-emptied excavation tools, then making a shelter if things turned south would be nightmarish.

If you opted to leave behind one of the heavy drone mappers, navigating rougher terrain would be impossible, and the trip's length would greatly increase.

If you ignored bringing food supplies instead, then our capability of prolonged survival, and general performance would decline.

It was a jigsaw puzzle, one that could easily determine how many of us would reach back home... If it still existed.

[ Did you manage? ]

Kevin asked as he finished loading a single-shot rifle onto the side of his heavy backpack.

[ Yeah, I think it will work, more or less... ]

Fixing and reloading a suit were not complicated tasks.

Miners were given a single space-wear for the entirety of their careers, there were very few exceptions of any of us being given renewed suits, none that I personally knew of.

So you had to learn to fix it, like it or not.

I used the lack of sleep on my part to 'parch' the visor with something resembling tape, the same we had used to parch Martha's suit. I managed to charge the empty air cycle with a mix of frozen nitrogen, and the leftovers of the oxygen tank, diluting the second enough for most of its toxic effects to wither away.

To my surprise, what was initially a dumb experiment had turned out to work, more or less. In the end, I managed to charge the system up to 20% with one of the mule's supposedly empty batteries.

Knowing I couldn't be wasteful, I disabled all side systems, and limited expenditure to the recycling of air.

[ You are a lucky bastard, you know that? ]

Kev said, letting a radio-chuckle out. Strangely enough, the most ill-judged of situations would always be the ones in which his sense of humor shone.

[ I know... ]

I replied. Not wanting to recall any of my luck. Especially any of the extenuating anguish felt when being burrowed alive under several tons of ice.

...

[ We are getting on the move soon. ]

He said, pointing a finger towards a particular black cube standing at a side of the small icy cavern that stored the mule.

[ It pains me to say this, but we better bring the stupid flying machine with us. You are the pilot here, so you'll be in charge of it. ]

I gulped but didn't answer.

[ Martha will carry some of our supplies, and Mack will handle the rest. ]

...

In the end, Kevin decided to leave behind the Terrain Modification Equipment, as well as all the tools directly related to fixing the deuterium drilling heads... Which we wouldn't be needing anytime soon.

I trusted his decision-making, out of all of us, Kev had the most experience out in the open hell of Pluto by a landslide.

Arguing would have been foolish.

[ I'll get the pair, we are on the move. ]

...

The thin, artificial layer of ice cracked, letting the outside be seen again. The lights of dawn ignited on the horizon, slightly warming the land.

Careful not to move too fast, we slowly crawled out of the tunnel, into the bright and frigid vacuum. Far below the base of the incline we found ourselves in, the snow-covered plains stretched out before us, the only thing visible for kilometres.

We stood there for a moment, taking it all in before silently moving forward.

...

The terrain downhill was steep. It was comprised of little, thick ice pebbles, which made it complicated to advance without mindlessly slipping.

Eventually, the hard ice boulders that had been moved by the avalanched vanished from the landscape. They transitioned into smaller and smaller bits of frozen terrain, becoming something close to soft snow.

In Pluto, areas with snow were always a curse. It made our progress slow, plus it got inside our suits pretty easily. The sound of our boots crunching through the snow was the only noise in the silent landscape.

Imagined noise, that is.