The inside of Outpost Alpha’s central stronghold was a tomb of freezing steel and desperate, ragged breathing.
Fifteen guard post soldiers lay or sat slumped against the heavy inner walls. Their hands shook wildly from freezing sickness, their lips tinged with the deep, dusky purple of severe blood hypoxia. The air was so thin that every breath needed conscious, painful effort. The surrounding heat inside the module had plunged to minus twelve degrees as their emergency fuel cells died.
Arthur stepped into the center of the compartment, his heavy combat boots crunching on discarded ration foils and empty oxygen ampoules.
“Toby, bring in the portable life-support channels!” Arthur roared over his shoulder. “Set up the heated air scrubbers at the doorway! Titus, into the bay!”
The massive land-wide terrapin plodded through the widened blast hatch. His twelve-ton was dark rock shell scraping against the steel frame with a deep, metal groan. Titus moved to the center of the stronghold, lowered his four heavy pillars. Then he flattened his broad belly shell against the deck plates.
THUD.
“Isobaric domain, Titus,” Arthur commanded softly, resting his hand against the terrapin’s time scute. “Raise the nearby air pressure to one hundred and one kilopascals within this room, and radiate forty degrees of core heat.”
