A biting wind swept across the Arctic Space Monitoring Station's landing pad, carrying fragments of snow.
A silver-gray aircraft rested in the berth marked "A-3." The heat from its reverse thrusters instantly steamed a ring of white mist off the ice, only for the subzero temperatures to freeze it back into tiny ice crystals.
The cabin doors slowly slid apart, and the boarding ramp unfolded, locking onto the frozen alloy ground.
Broken Star walked down from inside.
His cold-weather suit sealed him tightly from collar to ankles. His hat brim was pulled low, leaving only his chin exposed.
The pack on his back was half a person tall, filled with many of his personal belongings.
Besides essential changes of clothes, it also held things like his smartphone.
The ice crunched beneath his feet. Following the directions broadcast inside the aircraft, he headed toward the monitoring station's main base building three hundred meters away.
The wind here seemed edged with blades, rasping against his cold-weather suit and involuntarily reminding him of the baleful wind on the Against the Tide Battlefield.
Along the way, several disc-shaped cargo robots appeared ahead.
They flew over from the base, unloaded crates of sealed daily supplies from the landed aircraft's cargo hold, their mechanical arms moving nimbly among the supplies, then transported them to the delivery hatch on the side of the base.
This would be his daily life for the next ten years.
Broken Star looked away and quickened his pace.
The monitoring base's main entrance was a ten-meter-tall blastproof alloy door, with an optical scanning pillar standing before it.
Following the onboarding guide, he stood before the pillar and removed his cold-weather mask.
"Verifying identity. Please look at the scanning point."
A cold electronic voice sounded, and a pale blue beam swept across his