“That supervisor at C-6… a cunt she is, isn’t it?” C-7’s supervisor remarked jocosely.

“I will scare myself away from badmouthing a fellow comrade behind their back but…” Wuvalis pulled out the last cigarette from the pack that the supervisor at C-6 gifted her when they departed, “she really was a cunt.”

“Nah, Ooflp is a democratic woman,” C-7’s supervisor gave out a hearty laugh, “how is the patrol so far?”

“One of my men died,” Wuvalis commented with a stoic tone, “soldiers, go refuel and load up on the tank, would you? Give me and the supervisor some space.”

Supply stations at the southernmost C borderline all looked pretty much the same. A watch tower equipped with an essentia power generator, a sloppily fenced yard holding the more menial stocks, a greenhouse, and a small fermenting plant used to grind down biomass into fertilizer and food -- biomass like that of excrements and corpses. Only dozens of kilometers from the ice cap, which scientians had estimated to be expanding at about 50 meters (160 feet) per year, there were no native insects or plants, not even lichen or fungi. In winter, staying outdoors for more than a few minutes would surely result in amputation-level frostbite, and even on summer days, frequent blizzards and lightning storms challenged the mind and body of even the toughest general.

Atyla sauntered his way into the yard. It was a plus day out, point five perhaps. The boxes of cargo were buried under layers of gray snow, frozen solid.

“You didn’t salt your yard?” Atyla asked the station’s guard, the only other stationed personnel at C-7 outside of the supervisor.

“Do you know how hard the snow is out here, boy? It will be a waste of salt.” The guard, a middle-aged man with a long scar on his face, answered with a barely concealed tone of annoyance.

“Comrade, you are just a private as I am, and I have been running patrol mission since I got out of university” Atyla snapped back; ever since he met Umsil, his patience for discourtesy and poor working attitude had gone down drastically, he could feel himself becoming a less and less reticent individual, “well, since you don’t see fit to salt the cargo, maybe you can help cleaning the ice off for us. We can be doing the refueling on the side.”

The man looked to Umsil who just stood on the side, staring blankly into the pale white horizon with that sniper of his held tight to his chest, “corporal? You're gonna let a green boy talk over you like that?”

Umsil’s gaze returned; maybe he wasn’t looking into the distance, maybe he was looking into a different point in time. Could he be seeing the future of the Republic, or the brutality of Tutus of the past? “I’m sorry,” Umsil answered with a deep, soft voice, “I can assure you, Private Atyla is anything but green. He is more experienced in border patrol than I’m.”

The guard was visibly fuming. He spat onto the snow before walking away from the pair while muttering to himself: “Goddamn Atogs…”

Atyla and Umsil entered the watchtower’s ground floor to fetch the fuel. The work arrangement was made out of spite, but that was not to say that refueling the vehicle was at all easy. The lemon tank required both diesel and compressed hydrogen water, the storage for which required huge machinery and an absolutely freezing temperature. As such the watchtower was made with zero insulation outside of the top floor which people inhabited. Everything was frozen, so the two each grabbed a crowbar and started shearing the ice off.

During all of this, with no verbal exchange or eye contact with the corporal, Atyla was fighting against a whirlwind of thoughts in his head. This piece of work is sly, I will give him that; let’s just kill Ersulp on my way in while humiliating the squadmates the dead had left behind by acting all high and mighty. Atyla was not going to fall for that scheme, no, because his guts still twirled in twisting anger every time the man entered his field of vision.

Even right now, as the two carried the ginormous fuel pump pipe to where their tank parked, even when Umsil was treading behind him, Atyla was still annoyed; annoyed by the sound of Umsil’s boots crushing the snow or Umsil’s gun clanking against the man’s back as he walked, annoyed by the fact that Umsil hadn’t said a word or even made a different expression since the spat they had with the guard, annoyed by Umsil’s metaphysical existence.

Some saints should wipe the man off the face of Terra, and let him join the trillions of others in quiet extinction.

The pipe was really heavy, thick and dark gray like the mythical python described in the Omnipseudein. The two grown men were panting by the time they reached their tank with the nozzle, only to find out that the nozzle was frozen solid as well. They left the crowbars back at the tower, so Atyla tried to shear the ice off using that small tactical knife of his, but the knife just kept slipping with progressively mounting frustration.

The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.

Atyla could have just returned to the tower to fetch the crowbar, that wouldn’t take more than a minute, but he could also imagine how the corporal standing a few paces behind him would laugh in mocking derision; these pathetic dickwats would love nothing more than watching those ranked below them embarrassed themselves. Well, he is not going to get the satisfaction, I’m gonna get this ice off with my knife!

That was not going to work. The more his knife clashed with the ice, the more that reality became apparent to Atyla. He was practically stabbing the nozzle when he heard the corporal’s soft chuckle coming from behind.

“What!? Are you gonna give me a hand here, sir, or are you gonna dither a little bit more?” He turned back in fuming anger only to be met with Umsil holding out a crowbar.

“Those knives they handed out to us… they bend cutting papers,” Umsil simply commented.

“Where you got the crowbar?”

“I went back to fetch it.”

“Huh. Thank you, sir.”

Umsil just nodded and looked into the distance again; he did that a lot.

Atyla knocked the ice off with the crowbar and pushed the nozzle into the fuel chamber. The temperature was dropping, he could just feel it as his glove slowly lose their effectiveness in insulating his hands against the metals, and the welkin above was getting darker. The air smelled funny, the sign of a brewing blizzard. The contraption on the nozzle suddenly jumped, the loud click it made caught Atyla so off guard he almost jumped and reached for his gun. He tried unlocking the contraption to keep the fuel going, but it wouldn’t budge.

“Slamming it probably won’t help,” came Umsil’s hoarse voice; he spoke softly, almost inappropriately so, “you seem a bit jumpy, private. Is everything alright?”

“YEAH!?” Atyla didn’t intend to shout that, “I mean, yes, sir. Everything is fine.” He slammed the nozzle against the chamber one more time, and the contraption came loose, resuming the refueling, “see? It’s fine.”

Is the guy staring at me or is he staring at a distance again which I just so happen to be standing in the direction of?

“I know I might come off a little… detached, but I’m not blind, private. I can tell if someone has a go at me…”

“Sir,” Atyla interrupted, “let’s keep this professional, ok? I’m not having a go. I’m not. We are squadmates. Whether we like it or not, we are going to make do with each other in that tank for the next two months, a conservative approximation, mind you. So just…” he moved his eyes away from the corporal and back to the nozzle, “it’s fine, sir. I am not having a go. I think you are a perfectly democratic man.”

Umsil made a few dry coughs, “Private, you do know I’m your superior, right?”

Oh here you go. The mask of the noble altruist slipped off the face of the beast. “I believe I have been addressing you as my superior since the day we met, sir.”

“Ugh, no. Not at all.” Umsil sounded amused, “If I was to talk to my commander the way you talk to me on the field, I will be summarily executed before the tribesmen get me.”

“Sir,” Atyla had had enough, the raging fire within him could match that of the sun, “I know you have been to ‘the field.’ I’m perfectly aware of it. I’m also aware that some sections of the army, the section of asswipes and dickwats, think of themselves all high and mighty just because they have been to ‘the field,’ have shot some tribesmen, have seen some ‘real deal.’ And you know what, maybe they aren’t entirely wrong. Not much happened at the border, they always blabber about the Pales, I have never personally seen one and I have been running patrol missions since ’57. Well, not much happened until you killed comrade Ersulp…”

“I killed Ersulp?” That clearly caught Umsil off guard as his stoic mannerism cracked and let loose a laughter or two of disbelief, “do explain that to me if you will.”

“Listen, comrade,” addressing one’s superior as one's comrade was certainly a choice, but Atyla was on a spree right now; he was not going to let the momentum slip, “I don’t know what poison you dripped into your commander’s ears for them to reassign you to border patrol after the fucking meat grinder, but if you think you can just saunter into here like going on a vacation, you are sorely mistaken. And if you are going to pull your rank on me, you are more than welcome to try, see how far that gets you this deep in the South!”

“What gives you the impression that I came on a vacation?”

The corporal didn’t seem… mad? The wooly hoodie and the gray-white neck gaiter had virtually concealed all of the man’s face but his eyes, but his eyes… the two dark orbs sunken deep into the sockets, every so slightly slanted indicating a smile beneath the garments.

“Just… do your goddamn job…” This conversation had drained Atyla of all his vigor, so he terminated it by walking back towards the tower, “Finish the refueling, I will go carry… some stuff.”

When he was a dozen steps away from the tank, Umsil shouted from behind: “Can you tell me what I can do to improve our relationship?”

Atyla looked back. The camouflaged Lemon tank blended into the snow plain, and Corporal Umsill stood before it, the bronze-colored sniper rifle strapped on his back being the only thing standing out in this canvas of gray and white. Atyla could feel his stomach churning, and a sourceless panic came over him like the flight or fight response.

“Well, learn to fucking drive, sir!” He shouted back and returned to the tower.