Expedition Nereus

by Ilya Martynov

  Nor did the protocol express anything about the usage of weapons. In the current situation, Jack knew it would be difficult to abide by the protocol.

  When the procedure finished, Jack noticed the regenerator became noticeably lighter after it had released a lot of biomass to repair the wartstone's tissue. The creature remained motionless for some time, but when it realized its leg was no longer in pain, it shifted and stood on both limbs. Glancing around, the wartstone looked at its doctor, Lieutenant Sallenge, and quickly shifted away across the plain towards some far-off shrubs.

  Jack watched it walk away, scarcely believing his own eyes. Everything seemed so unreal to him. It was like he was viewing some elaborate painting. Yet it was reality, and Lieutenant Sallenge was in the middle of it.

  Nereus biological objects (Code: Nero-8). Xenobiology manual.

  Herbivorous wartstones are bipedal members of the fauna that inhabit near-equatorial zones. Outgrowths ("warts") are a matrix of keratin-like matter that is able to embed silicon-oxide particles into the pores between molecules. Despite its large body mass, its speed can reach up to 55 kilometers per hour.

  In contrast to the majority of other herbivores on the planet, the wartstones are not hermaphroditic. There are distinct males and females. During mating season, their dense shell of rock-like warts becomes a lethal weapon they use to compete for females. This explains aggressive behavioral impulses within the pack. Despite the organism's complex behavior within the pack during mating season, wartstones are fairly peaceful. They exhibit aggression towards other species only in critical moments. A theory is that the peaceful nature of most herbivores is related to the absence of competition for females.

  It was getting dark. The harsh rays of the sun resembled tentacles sliding along the sands of the steppe wasteland to reach the prickly tops of local shrubs. Jack looked around and felt a knot form in his stomach as if a black hole was hidden inside, eating him up from within. His legs became rubbery and his pace labored.

  In his gut, Jack knew all he wanted was to close his eyes, forget everything he had seen, and go home. Forever. His teeth clenched, he pushed himself to keep moving forward towards the pavilion where a strong, but completely fatigued, ill woman needed his help.

  6

  Jack entered the small glass home. Anne was half-sitting in the bed, her head looking out the side window. Jack couldn't see her face, but he unconsciously noted how the blanket accentuated the strict curves of her slim figure. Somehow, Anne managed to stay strong and vibrant even in such an unhealthy state. This notion caused Jack to feel slightly depressed.

  Hearing the soft footsteps of her companion, Colonel Petrow turned to face the entryway.

  "How's it going?" Her voice sounded worried but assured.

  "Well, I healed a wartstone that I shot by chance," Jack carelessly tossed the plasma rifle to the side.

  She shivered from the cold, and then gave a long heavy sigh.

  "It's getting chilly," she forced herself to say, slowly rubbing her shoulder with her right hand.

  "Yeah, sunset's about to start," Jack replied, shrugging off his field jacket.

  Their eyes met. From Jack's perspective, it seemed that Anne's eyes had become somewhat empty. She turned away, lay on her back, and scooched down the bed. Jack stood still, looking at Anne carefully. He understood how unpleasant it might be for her to seem so pathetic in his eyes.

  "Jack, I don't want to die," she suddenly blurted out. Her dry lips quivered, and tears started rolling down her cheeks. "Not like this on an alien planet..."

  "What are you talking about, Anne!? No one's dying! We will survive!" Jack rushed to her side, grabbing her shoulder more firmly than he should have.

  "Stop! I know we're going to die here!" she screamed hysterically, choking back her sobs.

  "We're not going to..."

  "There's one thing I'm happy about," she interrupted, calming suddenly. She pursed her lips, reminding Jack of an upset teenager. "You know what?"

  "What?" Jack asked in a forced voice, barely able to hold his own tears back.

  "I'll be reunited with him soon," she stated, giving a small sigh.

  "Are you..." he stopped short, realizing there was no need to make conversation about the afterlife.

  He hugged her once more. They spent almost 20 minutes sitting like this when they suddenly heard a voice chime in from the teleport.

  "Check. This is F-zero-zero-zero, Space Mission Control Center. Acknowledge, over. I say again, acknowledge, over?"

  Jack gently let go for Anne and sprinted for the teleport.

  "Roger, over. This is First Lieutenant Jack Sallenge. How do you read? Over." Jack responded, rubbing his eyes with his sleeve.

  "Roger." The next moment the image of a tall chubby man with a tightly-knotted tie appeared in the center of the teleport. It was the on-duty dispatcher.

  "I'm glad to see you, sir... I mean, Lieutenant Sallenge. Please report."

  As Jack would soon learn, the dispatcher's name was Mike Torbins. Only recently had he been appointed to monitor high-speed signal transmissions, which meant he knew very little about the Avant Light's mission or its crew. Jack spent a lot of time explaining and describing the situation. As he recounted the series of events, Jack got increasingly annoyed at the dispatcher's calm serenity upon being informed about the death of the crew.

  "In summary, only two of us survived. The shuttle pilot, Colonel Anne Petrow, but she's in critical condition, and me, research officer First Lieutenant Jack Sallenge. Colonel Petrow is recovering from massive blood loss due to injury."

  "Roger, lieutenant. I'll inform the administration. Stay in contact. Standby for future instructions. Out," the controller answered in a calm, firm voice.

  With that, the transmission cut off as suddenly as it had started.

  Jack spent a few moments sitting next to the teleport, almost like a dog waiting for a treat from his owner. Then he slammed his fist on the table, jumped up, and kicked the table the teleport was on.

  "That's it? Why the hell don't they connect me to administration!?" he bellowed through clenched teeth. "Damn bureaucrats! Where the hell is Norwell? We're here..."

  "Jack! Hush!" Anne hissed, obviously irritated by his sudden fury.

  "Anne, it's outrageous!" Jack felt as if there was no stopping him.

  "It's still not an excuse to jump and kick the table for crying out loud," Anne said louder and firmer, her forehead furrowed intensely.

  "I'm sorry, but don't you think it's just frakking... it's strange as hell!" Jack asserted, trying to justify his behavior. "Fine, we'll wait..."

  "Jack, you're an officer and a gentleman, even if you're not one yet!" Anne sniped.

  "I'm not an officer, you say!?" Jack froze, staring at Anne with his eyes wide open.

  "Well...I didn't mean that... I wanted to say you still lack experience..."

  "No, Anne. I want to hear exactly what you meant!"

  "Jack! You've never been on a dangerous mission. You have no experience. What more can I say!?"

  "You think this isn't a dangerous mission?" Jack retorted, indignant. "We almost died just landing here!"

  "Jack," Anne sat up slightly and gave Jack a reproachful look. "We must carry out our orders!"

  She lay back down and fell silent. It seemed that Anne clearly believed the conversation finished. Jack, on the other hand, did not agree.

  "And? Anne? Is that everything you've got to say for yourself?" He wanted to get something more from her.

  "Jack, until you learn how to maintain discipline and follow orders, you can never consider yourself an officer," she declared in a piercing tone as she stared up at the latticed metal ceiling.

  "So, it's like that, Colonel Petrow?"

  "Yes! First Lieutenant Sallenge, this conversation is over!" Those were her last words before she fell asleep.

  Jack pondered over the issue for a while. He was offended that Anne didn't see him as a true officer.

 
"To be honest, she's right," he rationalized to himself. "Still, a person can change. Maybe I should just obey orders and listen to my superiors... Maybe they know what they're doing at the Center. I need to wait for next contact."

  He glanced at Anne's face. Her dry, pale lips were pursed, and her nostrils flared wide every time she labored to take a breath. The blanket lying on her chest struggled to move up before plummeting down. Jack regretted getting into an argument with Anne considering her condition.

  No other messages from the Center were received that evening. Nevertheless, Jack felt a little better that there might be a chance they would be saved, that someone would fly and rescue them.

  He tossed and turned, constantly waking up from every slight rustle behind the pavilion window. At first, he imagined it was the predatory beast that ate the herbivores. Then he flipped between thoughts on how Anne and he would complete the mission's objectives, and what might happen if the Center couldn't come up with an idea to get them off the planet.

  "Jack."

  He flinched, hearing Anne's sudden whisper while he was half-asleep.

  "Yes," he abruptly sat up on his narrow sleeping pad.

  "Get me some water, please... my throat," she struggled to say.

  "Just a sec."

  The lieutenant tossed the blanket aside and walked in bare feet on the reinforced floor, quickly reaching the table to grab one of the few cans of water stored below.

  Returning to Anne's bed, Jack sat down on the edge and lifted the canister to her lips.

  "I can't sleep," Anne admitted, propping herself up on her elbow and gulping the life-giving liquid. "I can't stop thinking about the others..."

  "I know." He bit his lip, his light eyebrows frowning.

  "You know what saddens me the most?" Her lip quivered...

  He shook his head.

  "We never learned much about each other, and now they're all gone..."

  "I wouldn't..." Everything tensed inside him, and the huge weight on his heart became even heavier than before.

  "Jack," she cut him off angrily. "You saw the Captain and Frank's shuttle explode with your own eyes."

  "Yes, you're right," he shook his head sadly. "And Laura and Alan are likely dead too."

  "We don't know that yet, but I suspect the worst..." She gave him a sad grin. "Frank was a good guy."

  Yes... they were all good people.

  The images of that ill-fated morning flashed before Jack's eyes. The Avant Light had been orbiting the planet when there was an unexpected loss of pressure in the flight bay with the landing shuttles. It was Jack's first flight to a foreign planet. At that moment, with bated breath, he had been waiting for the shuttle to launch when he felt a sudden, sharp jolt, causing the ship to shake everywhere. All three shuttles hovered in the air as if they were surfing huge waves, but they remained in place due to their force fields. Remembering how earlier that morning he had nearly gotten sick at breakfast, his stomach twisted itself into knots again.

  In front of Jack's eyes, a huge, semicircular landing bay door slowly moved downwards, blocking the shuttles' exit. It's possible that the captain was trying to use his neuroband to command the bay door to open, depressurize the bay, and all the shuttles to depart. But the ship's computer seemed not to hear the captain's instructions. Instead, it had its own take on the situation. The computer commenced work on sealing off the entire ship and stabilizing gravitational force fields.

  Forced into a decision, Captain Graham and ship's engineer Frank Warple rammed the bay door with the nose of the shuttle to open a path. If they postponed the landing, they would have had to spend at least another week in orbit. After every malfunction, the Avant Light's computer conducted a long, drawn-out troubleshooting diagnostic, which caused the mission to already take much longer than planned. If they waited a little longer, they would need to start considering how to ration the remaining provisions and water.

  Then Jack saw something in his memories that caused him to grip the edge of Anne's bed until his knuckles began to ache. The captain's shuttle flew ahead, getting smaller and smaller, when suddenly it was lurched to the ide, turning into a bright yellowish-orange ball that disappeared in a flash.

  Jack let out a heavy sigh, releasing the edge of the bed to wrap his hands behind his head.

  "Frak! How could that have happened!?" He said to himself. "Though what am I talking about? We all knew where we were going."

  Anne stayed silent. She looked at him with disappointment before turning her head so that she could stare at the ceiling.

  "They knew the risks they were taking, unlike you," she declared.

  "I seem to have gotten the idea we're not on vacation." Jack leaned forward, putting his elbows on his knees and placing his head in his hands.

  "To be honest, I still don't think you completely grasped the dangers of the situation..." she remarked, still starting at the lattice on the ceiling. "Alan did. It wasn't his first time flying. He and Nicholas got to know one another during their last expedition."

  "I didn't know that," Jack carefully looked at the pointed tip of Anne's nose, observing how it seemed to be turned up in her current position.

  "Well..."

  A faded spot in the middle of the lower lip and chin surfaced in Jack's mind. The memory concluded with the image of a thin middle-aged man with somewhat hollow cheeks and brown eyes. Jack mentally thought of Alan as a Mexican. The word seemed to fit because Jack always thought real Mexicans had long black hair.

  "Alan was raised by his stepfather... Nick told me about it once. He always wanted to run away from home." She went silent for a few moments as if recalling something intimate before she sighed and added, "So he ran away."

  "He couldn't have known where his path might lead him," Jack felt the grief of regret rising up his throat.

  "You're right, he couldn't. Just like the others couldn't predict how the mission would end... I regret not really listening to Laura. But I tried. She always seemed lost. And then there was me. I somehow withdrew into a shell, just me living in my own little world with Graham."

  Anne grinned, her upper lip slightly bleeding from being dry and chapped.

  Laura's coffee-colored face and her stern, concentrated stare immediately popped up in Jack's memory. He turned away with the thought that he didn't long to find out more about other crew members that much. Although they had been on generally good terms.

  "You know, Anne, I think it's not that bad there were only six of us... More people could have gotten injured."

  "You're right," Anne nodded, reminding him of a stern teacher with her eyes fixed on the ceiling.

  "We'll definitely think of something, Anne! We survived! That's good news."

  Jack tried to believe in his own words. He needed to distract himself from those depressing memories.

  "Jack, I'm already dead. Just let me die in peace."

  She cut the conversation off at that, coldly, not even turning to face him.

  He started crying from fear and some feeling of stupid, childish helplessness, and because of resentment and anger with the whole situation. Quietly he wept, so that she would never hear.

  He turned away to look into the darkness behind the window. The darkness reminded him of space. Remote. Cold. Endless. He recalled how just a few weeks ago, before going into orbit, their ship slowed down, and Jack could endlessly watch the small points representing clusters of stars. Crossed, spiral, or just randomly scattered clusters, they represented white tips of unimaginably long needles that were tearing apart the darkness of the cosmic vacuum. He bit his upper lip until it hurt so that it wouldn't quiver. He tried thinking only about space for a few minutes, to distance himself from reality.

  "Anne, tell me about the stars. Everything you know," he suddenly requested, calming down a little.

  "About stars?" Her surprise added life into her voice.

  "Yes, everything. Who knows what I else I need to know," he explained, shrugging his shoulders and glancin
g at Anne as he blinked away dried tears. "Besides, it's interesting."

  "Well, okay. I'll tell you. The stars..." Anne started, perking up and propping her chin on her hand. "They, well, you know... they're the ancestors of everything. You. Me. Even this damn planet," she emphasized. "You know for yourself that they're so different... When we discovered small quasineutron stars, it turned the minds of physicists upside down because they were unlike all the others."

  "Why?" Jack questioned, trying to comprehend every word Anne spoke.

  He wanted to find out everything, to squeeze all the information from Colonel Petrow, down to the last drop. He couldn't let her go like this without asking about anything. For the first time in the last two years, he was eager to understand someone.

  "Every star is like a human being," she described, stopping only to take a quick breath. "It constantly fights with itself. A star's gravity forces it to compress, but light breaks free from the thermonuclear reactions inside the star. It reacts to the pressure, and the star has to keep a constant balance between these two forces. Just like how every person has to balance that which burdens them and what tries to break free," she laughed, coughing as a result. She stopped to take another breath before continuing. "It turned out that there are unique stars that remain neutron, which is heavier than the sun. You know, there are people for whom time seems to have stopped. Nothing pressures them and nothing breaks free. If we're talking about stars, gravity works differently, and the star becomes transparent. Nothing goes in. Not light. Not particles. There are people who seem to exist, yet it's as if they were invisible to everyone. I've been thinking about this for a long..."

  "So, what's wrong with this star and these special people?" Jack couldn't calm down.

  "They stop time and reconstruct matter," she answered with the tone of a lecturer as she looked at Jack.

  "You were trying to analyze them through the illuminator?" he carefully asked.

  Jack remembered Anne looking into the illuminator near the captain's bridge for a long time. Almost no one ventured into the area for fear of distracting her as she was deeply in love with them.