The wind roared. It was a ceaseless gale, a shrieking banshee wind that scoured the cliffs and canyons. An endless howl that battered the ears and chilled to the bone. Dust and grit whipped through the air in undulating sheets, blasted by the unrelenting gusts into every crack and crevice.
Zenna pulled her rebreather tight and squinted through scratched goggles at the pitted cliff face. Somewhere above, etched into the stone, was the Calypso outpost - the only refuge from the storm on this hellish world.
"I can't see a path. Are you sure this is the right way?" Kiva's voice crackled over the comm, nearly drowned by the wind.
"The beacon is coming from that direction. It has to be."
"We'll never make it. We should go back to the lander, wait it out."
"We can't. The atmosphere is turning, carbon dioxide levels are spiking—our rebreathers will max out in a few hours. We have to reach shelter."
Zenna started up the gravelly slope, her boots struggling for purchase. Pebbles skittered away beneath her feet. The buffeting winds threatened to pluck her off the mountain side.
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The only thing that kept her moving was the thought of the outpost - a sanctuary of breathable air and blessed silence. To be able to close a hatch on this roaring nightmare of a planet.
An outcropping gave some respite from the wind. Zenna hauled herself onto it with aching arms. Kiva crawled up beside her a moment later.
Through teering, dust-caked eyes, Zenna saw a stripe of lurid orange zig-zagging up the cliff. Not just mineral strata, but something vaguely plant-like. Lichen or fungus perhaps. A fuzz of tendrils clinging to the rock. The only living thing they'd seen since crashing on this desolate ball of storms and stone.
"Look." She pointed.
Kiva followed her gaze and froze. Above the orange band, a cluster of bright purple pulsed. Quivering gelatinous orbs clung to the cliff face. As they watched, one of the orbs extended a translucent pseudopod and prodded the orange tendrils. The lichen shuddered and a plume of spores puffed into the screaming wind.
"What...are those?" Kiva whispered.
"Trouble. Come on."
With weary limbs they hauled themselves up, heading for the promise of shelter. Towards refuge from the killing wind and the hungry alien things that clung to the bones of this unquiet world. Towards survival.
The outpost was waiting, if they could reach it. If the storm didn't pluck them from their precarious perch. If their rebreathers didn't fail. If the chittering things now oozing from the cliff cracks didn't catch them first.
Step by onward step, they climbed into the howl. Into the sky of roiling dust. The only sounds: their straining rebreathers and the eternal shriek of the wind.