Chapter 292: Cold Pylow

The road toward Pylow had opened again by morning.

Snow was piled along both sides of the route, covering abandoned vehicles, roadside barriers and much of the lower ground beyond them, but the previous storm had moved away and the mountains were visible again under a pale sky.

For the northern force, the clear weather was more than enough reason to continue, though they couldn’t be too quick about it. The column moved at a pace that would have frustrated anyone several days earlier.

Recon elements stayed well ahead without pushing beyond supporting distance, while the heavier vehicles followed through the cleared route behind them. Aircraft waited farther back, although none were being sent deep into the mountains merely to prove that the weather had improved.

High Command had become more interested in the storms, but the northern Commanders were already recording everything they could each time the weather changed.

Temperature, wind direction, pressure, visibility, exact timing, and how the environment behaved before, during and after each storm.

The northern Commanders had reached their own conclusion days ago. If the storms were somehow artificial and couldn’t be stopped easily, then learning their pattern was better than blindly pushing through them every time the road opened.

The first hour passed by and nothing happened. The mountains beside them remained quiet.

Then one of the forward teams reported.

"Crystal Three to Northern Command. Pressure’s dropping at our position. Four klicks east-southeast of you. Please copy."

Marianne Krile watched the BACV’s Radar picture closely. She pulled the latest terrain images closer and compared them with the reconnaissance markings already spread across the table.

Crystal Three sat along the inner side of a mountain slope, well away from the main road. The climb alone would’ve exhausted an ordinary person quickly, but Scouts were not ordinary people.

"Received, Crystal Three. That’s another one. How strong is the wind?"

"Picking up fast, Northern Command. Strong enough that it’s pushing against us."

"Continue observing. Don’t move deeper yet."

Marianne took a slow breath and looked back toward the terrain picture.

They had seen this sequence enough times already. Pressure would drop, then winds would follow.

And the temperature would suddenly fall much faster than in the surrounding areas before visibility collapsed under snow.

The exact timing changed between storms, but the order rarely did.

Crystal Three was now standing near where one was beginning.

Hans had not given them any major directive to find the source of the blizzards, so Marianne and the other northern Commanders had started doing that themselves.

Every storm forced the column to stop, interrupted Air operations and buried parts of the mountain routes they had just reopened, and waiting for High Command to solve the problem from Grefort would only keep them sitting in the same valleys.

The pattern was no longer random; several mountain sectors kept appearing again and again, and one of them was near where Crystal Three was.

Marianne enlarged Crystal Three’s position. The terrain around them was ugly: steep slopes surrounded a narrow interior valley, with only a few service roads and smaller tracks visible under the snow.

One of the older maps showed utility lines crossing farther north before disappearing toward the mountains. Nothing on the ordinary road map explained why that mattered.

Marianne switched to the Air reports. Two earlier storms had first appeared close to the same sector.

Another began farther north, but the strongest wind shift still passed through the valleys surrounding it. That wasn’t enough to give them a single point on the map.

"Crystal Three, what’s the wind direction now?"

"Northwest to southeast. We’re already well below freezing."

Marianne checked the latest weather markings. That matched one of the earlier storms. One of the staff officers compared it with the nearest road stations.

"The temperature’s dropping faster again, ma’am."

Farther west, the main column was still under clear skies.

"Send Crystal Four around the southern side. I want the edge of the pressure drop. And give word to Elise that we want another look from outside the cloud line. Same as usual."

The officer moved immediately.

Marianne returned to the map. If they could plot enough of those boundaries across several storms, then somewhere inside them should be the reason the mountains around Pylow kept throwing blizzards at their advance.

Crystal Four reached the southern approach several minutes later, and their first report showed nothing unusual on their side.

"Crystal Four to Northern Command. Pressure is stable. Wind still weak. Temperature as warm as the road stations."

Marianne marked the position. Crystal Three was less than five kilometers away, and their readings were already diverging sharply.

"Crystal Four, continue north along the contour. Five hundred meters at a time."

Marianne watched both Scout teams on the Radar picture, Crystal Four working along the southern slope while Crystal Three held where they were. Five hundred meters passed with nothing, then another five hundred.

"Crystal Four to Northern Command. Wind’s starting to change."

Marianne looked toward the officer beside her. "Their pressure?"

"Still stable."

Crystal Three was northeast of Crystal Four, already dealing with stronger winds and falling temperature, while Crystal Four had only just begun seeing the wind change.

"Continue another two hundred meters."

The marker moved again. Less than a minute later, Crystal Four reported.

"Pressure’s moving now. It’s a slow drop."

Marianne logged the reading on the table. The pressure drop was small, and it was the wind she watched next.

"Crystal Four, report again in a hundred meters."

"Received."

The marker crept north, and when Crystal Four spoke again the numbers had jumped.

"Crystal Four to Northern Command. Pressure’s down four hectopascals in the last hundred meters. Wind’s northwest and rising. Temperature’s dropped six degrees since the last report."

Six degrees in a hundred meters. The temps from the road stations hadn’t moved.

"Hold there, Crystal Four."

"Copy."

Crystal Four had reached the edge, and it was sharper than anything the column had recorded before. On the Radar picture, both teams sat less than five kilometers apart, Crystal Three inside the storm and Crystal Four standing at its edge.

Crystal Four’s Drone Operator already had a drone in the air. The feed reached the table a moment later, showing a slope of undisturbed snow and, farther ahead, an unusually clean line where the snow began to lift.

Then Crystal Four’s readings moved back.

"Northern Command, pressure’s recovering. Wind’s easing. Temperature’s up two degrees."

"The edge moved, ma’am," the staff officer said. "About a hundred meters south."

A moment later it moved again, this time north, and Crystal Four’s numbers dropped and climbed with it.

Marianne compared the readings with the ones Crystal Three had sent earlier. Crystal Three’s wind had eased and returned twice in the last quarter of an hour, and neither time had anything about the storm changed except its timing.

Previous storms had built steadily. This one kept starting and stopping.

"Seeker One-One to Northern Command. We’re outside the cloud line on the north side. The storm’s centered on the interior valley and it’s smaller than the last two, about six kilometers across at the widest. The western edge is advancing in steps instead of spreading. There’s also bare ground on the slope above the valley, north side, a few hundred meters wide. Steam’s coming off it. Everything around it is under snow."

Marianne marked the slope on the terrain picture. It sat inside the sector that kept appearing in the reports.

"Understood. Continue observing."

Crystal Three’s channel opened before she could ask for another reading.

"Crystal Three to Northern Command. Wind’s dropping. Pressure’s recovering. Snow’s thinning out."

"Say again."

"Wind’s dropping, Northern Command. It’s stopping. Visibility’s opening up."

The staff officer checked the road stations against Crystal Four. "Crystal Four’s readings match the road stations, ma’am. The edge is gone."

Marianne looked at the two markers. Earlier storms had taken hours to fade, and this one lasted less than an hour after the first report.

"Crystal Three, what can you see?"

"The whole slope, ma’am. Several kilometers of it. The snow’s still there, but the storm isn’t."