Martha's body recovered well.
For a while, we all thought it did.
The scars along her head were not visible anymore. Only thin marks were left on her pale grayish skin.
It had been days since our return, but her eyes had yet to open.
The rudimentary medical scans at our disposition took a couple of days to reveal the reason. The latent spike had pierced her skull far deeper than any of us could have imagined.
Her upper spinal cord had been driven into a bloody pulp. It was a miracle that her head hadn't instantly burst from the initial impact.
I had watched Martha arrive at the base as a young child. I had watched her first steps, watched her cry, shout, and smile through the years. Only now was I witnessing her becoming a beautiful young woman.
For all purposes. Martha was now dead.
Except for Mack. Neither I, nor anyone for that matter had any right to be upset about it. Emotions clouded judgment, and right now, our judgment would determine whether we lived, or died in the upcoming weeks.
'That's right... We are on a timer.'
The lights of the distant citadel had long been erased into the void of space. There were no communications, and subsequently, no resupplies coming from orbit, as a consequence...
"Best case, we will run out of food in six days."
Kev said, his eyes bleak as his gaze lifted itself from the pile of sheets sprawled across his desk.
We were fully dependent on the resupply line coming from low Pluto orbit. We could do without refined water, but with no canned reserves...
"The reason we did well up until now, is only because half of us are already dead."
Uttered Kev in a low voice.
Kev, Mack, Martha, and I had been the last to arrive at base ever since the falling. It had been days since we received the last communications from Ben's squad, issued to fix a magnetic rail up east.
His was the biggest group at our base. That was 7 people.
Yet, with no way of communicating with them, and the risk, and price of organizing an expedition being so high, there was simply no way for us to even attempt to consider them alive.
That meant... Few of us.
Kev, Yyan, Mack, Tamm, Val, Samuel, Cass, Me, and... Martha.
We let slip a few minutes of silence before Yyan decided to speak. Not having to keep any appearances, his voice sounded devoid of its usual eagerness.
"We must presume the world is over then. There are no rules anymore."
He muttered. His eyes slowly darted to an old, map stuck on the side of the small office. A relic of decades of work. Miners were not bestowed, nor obviously allowed to have such precise geographical knowledge of their region. They were meant to be reliant on orders in every sense.
So having amassed such intricate geographical knowledge of the reason was nothing short of a divine blessing.
"This will be tough..."
Locations of nearby bases, supply vaults, and farther, minor outposts... Yet with the impact, It would be a miracle a couple of them had not been instantly obliterated or buried under kilometers of snow.
Making a choice would be one thing... Retrieving any equipment, or supplies, would be an entirely different matter.
"Vaam, have you been able to disable the blockade of the base comms?"
That was our hope.
Our base's communications were useless by design. We could receive orders from above, but parallel communication with other bases was simply out of the question.
"I am not overly confident..."
I was an amateur in the field of circuitry, but the base's systems were far too complex to rush over. More so, knowing they would immediately shut down if they detected someone was messing with them.
"That leaves us..."