There are few villages so isolated as Rossokamensk, a few hundred miles north of Deputatsky deep within the Sakha Republic of Russia. The closest permanent settlement was Oymyakon many miles South and the only stable path there and back had been snowed under for almost three months.
Their supplies would soon grow scarce.
It wasn't the first time this had happened, after all living so far out was bound to have its downsides. Life there continued as it had for the past five hundred or so years with little outside influence or news and that was just how they liked it.
They neither wanted nor expected any great changes.
In fact when the ice near the Yana River began to melt they grew concerned, after all spring was still many months away. At first they wondered if there was some slim chance that a thermal vent was working its way to the surface and the thought of all that warmth right at their doorstep filled them with excitement and impatience.
As something worked its way up, they dug down to meet it.
By their process of lighting a bonfire and using the hot coals to melt the icy ground enough to dig combined with eagerness they began to make significant progress. It was almost spring by the time their shovels finally hit something too solid to dig through.
They poured hot coals down and saw sparks as they hit a metal hatch.
Few submarines still exist fromthe 1900s and yet according to the writing scratched onto the hatch this was one of the three Pravda Class built during world War II. Designed for surface combat and ruled a failure they were scrapped at the time and re-purposed for superior models.
Finding an old sub was one thing, hearing laughter from inside was something else entirely.
Over the next few days it continued to gradually surface and the sound of laughter grew in volume to match. Before long the otherwise empty fields of snow echoed with the revelries of seemingly hundreds of men, far more than could ever fit into such a thing.
Unless they were further beneath it, their cries echoing through its empt chambers?
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