Greyloch.

Hours later, Ordlo sat up to find Tyrone standing facing away, his back to him and the storm as relentless as before. The respirator and cycling system in his mask/helmet had worked overtime; he decided to bleed off the recycled portion of his own respiratory waste, and intake oxygen from the atmosphere. A touch of the tac pad screen on his arm then a long droning hiss of depressurisation from the jets mounted at Ordlo's shoulder blades issued forth.

Tyrone stood looking left and right, ignoring the officer behind. His scanning indicated a revelation which worsened an already FUBAR situation. He had noticed yesterday for every few metres they might meander through the blizzard, their tracks would be filled in and covered over behind them, no sign of their having been. It occurred to Tyrone then, that for all their movement, they could go around in circles. Or sticking by the ravine their route may lead them away from any higher ground.
"Sergeant?" Asked a muffled voice. Ordlo sounded like someone talking into a bucket. "Movement? Activity?" He enquired tactfully, wanting to know if Tyrone had seen or sensed something.

"Negative sir. Our navigational progress has been compromised. We've left no tracks."
Both men looked down and around, shifting to scan everywhere, hopelessly lost. Their betrayal at the cruel maul of nature leaving them stranded and out of options. It dawned on Ordlo, that they may die of exposure or starvation if nothing could be done to re-establish orbital contact. He also understood that if they were leaving no tracks, no-one else was either. There would be no hostile pursuit, but no regrouping of friendly units either.

"Fuck!" Tyrone swore and stormed around in frustration, sending clumps of snow flying.
Ordlo suddenly had an idea: "At ease soldier. Do you have a tee-gee-five hand grenade or an armour breaker?"
Tyrone stopped and glanced up at the officer, intrigued. ~ What's he thought of this time? ~ He mused in condescension.
"Four grenades and a melter charge sir... But... With due respect, what are you going to do?" He shrugged at Ordlo's question and waited to hear the Major explain his wayward plan.

"There is no common or universal rendezvous, and if there were, navigating to it would be impossible in this storm. Our best chance now is to find higher ground; tracks from any proximal units will be invisible. Give me the melter charge and we'll use it to clear a path through this ravine and proceed across. At least from here, it looks like the terrain might rise a little."
Tyrone considered the Major's plan, and it didn't sound as rediculous as he had assumed it might. It is a plan at least... He thought.

Tyrone unhitched the small angular box and hefted it at Ordlo who caught it. Ordlo inspected the device and its priming. He turned to face the ravine and peered over the lip to see where the snow had come up to after the hours they spent asleep. It had risen another four meters.
"The fill looks about nine meters down, I don't know if the ravine floor is rock or ice, but I'll set the discharge radius to maximum burn intensity. The hole will be clear enough to walk through without being buried alive." Ordlo entered the countdown sequence on the front dial and ripped out the primer.
"Look sharp Sergeant! Seven seconds, GO!!"

Ordlo turned and slammed the charge into the soft snow as hard as he could manage, then broke in behind Tyrone, running and diving into the powder for cover.
Three seconds beeped by on Ordlo's tac-pad and a huge vibration shook them while superheated flash-boiled hydrogen/oxygen vapourised jetting skyward, and spilling over the high edge of the ravine.

Tyrone and Ordlo got to their feet; they jogged to the edge of the ravine to see how well the melter charge had worked. Better than expected. The blast left a hole, twelve meters wide in diameter, they noticed the crater had formed in a bed of rock, the jagged edge crowning a red-orange glowing, fast cooling radioactive center. Around the crater for a further four or five meters were clean expanses of exposed granite-like geological surfaces, fractured and pitted where the charge had wrestled the ground for space to expand its blast radius.

"Clear! Let's Move!" Ordlo announced, then mantled over the edge of the ravine, skidding down the slippery face where water had condensed in the intense heat. Tyrone followed a second later, plummeting all nine meters before landing alongside Ordlo who gestured to the other side and broke into a double time jog.

Near the center of the crater, Ordlo broke off in a wide arc, the Geiger counter in his periphery chiming a continuous fluctuating blur of crackling noise. An indication the small nuclear reaction which occurred at the epicenter, had deposited some fallout. Ordlo leapt upward, sailing for a three meter traverse in mid-air, slamming two open palms against the upper half of the wall beyond the crater. He sank his fingertips into the cauterised ice, increasing his purchase on an otherwise, unclimbable surface.
As he pulled out a hand to progress, clumps of slushy ice fell away revealing the hard granite texture beneath.

Tyrone paused just beyond the radiation spiking pit, watching the Major ascend the far wall of the ravine in earnest. He contemplated how best he might achieve a similar feat, it was at the point of which he had judged a likely adequate distance to leap, that he froze in sudden realisation…

“Major! Stop! Don’t move!” The Sergeant spat trying to effuse the wailing storm. He had stared at the crumbling ice dripping away from where the Major had planted and extracted hands or feet, exposing the uneven, near-natural appearance of the wall. It was not a rock wall as anyone else might at first think.
They were never in a ravine, this trench, extended along the dorsal superstructure of some massive construct. Something ancient, old. Left there, abandoned, dredged deep in the crust of a planet now a frost-covered, blackened remnant. Dead. Resting.

Ordlo glanced back trying to spot what had spooked the man stood rooted in place, Tyrone glaring through the triocular assembly mounted to his face.
“What is it? What do you see?” He yelled, hearing the fell wind siphoning off his already muted voice, courtesy of his mask and respirator.

It was then, the Major turned back to the wall, using a hand to scrape away snow and ice buildup, revealing a semi-artificial rock surface, but on closer inspection and through radio-electric display overlay, Ordlo could pick out dozens of what looked like lenses spaced evenly apart and in a pattern like rivets on a ship’s hull. The glassy reflective nodes were dormant, no movement or interior activity. Ordlo let go and slid back to the floor of where they had been only minutes ago. Joining Tyrone, who stood motionless.

"What do you suppose that is?" Ordlo asked. Stepping back further to try and get an idea of the scale the construct might be.
"No idea. It isn't human in design. It's just a wall of eyes..." Tyrone shifted closer through radioactive slush, slowly extending a hand to touch the wall.
"Sergeant?" Ordlo queried. Concerned that whatever the thing was they stood on might be either alive or could activate at any moment with, or without interference.
"Sergeant? What are you-" He was cut off all of a sudden, the ground beneath their feet moaned, creaked and shuddered. The activity of which seemed to reverberate everywhere.

Behind the Major, the opposite wall shook, and in shaking, freed itself of masses upon masses of thick ice and snow. An avalanche of snow rushed toward Tyrone and Ordlo, threatening to bury them alive while the wall carrying it, folded over on top of the trench slowly. The shadow extending across the trench and barring SX's harsh blue -white starlight. Both men scrambled helplessly against the wall, trying in vain to escape. No use; the huge lid-wall would seal them in.