Expedition Nereus

by Ilya Martynov

  "Don't lie to me. Nothing's all right." She jerked her shoulder away from his hand. "Thanks."

  Jack didn't know what to do at that moment. There were no algorithms in his brain's library for such situations.

  "I'm sorry" is all he could muster.

  "It's fine," Anne responded firmly, plucking up her spirit. "We'll get through this."

  "They haven't contacted us for several days already," Jack indicated, deciding to change the topic and putting his hands between his knees. "What if they don't answer?"

  "According to our instructions, if the Center doesn't contact us for more than five days, we need to link up with the Avant Light's computer using a closed protocol and follow the computer's instructions," she reported, her eyes narrowing and staring straight ahead.

  "Damn pile of processors," Jack cursed, displeased by the situation.

  He considered the computer to be too capricious to the point of arrogance. He couldn't put up with the idea that a piece of metal and nano-composite chips was to command him what to do and how to do it. Jack convinced himself that he put off that moment for as long as possible, even if the Center would never be able to contact them again, which he certainly doubted.

  "Jack, remember the instructions!" Anne reminded him mildly but persistently before turning to the window.

  "Yeah... Right... You're right. The instructions. They're supposed to help us..." He carefully glanced at Anne. "The main thing is don't deviate."

  "Jack, settle down." He saw Anne smiling.

  He thought to himself that he had been right about her after all. Even despite all these instructions, she was more human than officer.

  Jack was no longer surprised that no one contacted them. He decided to forget about the teleport and spend time with her. Jack asked her to talk to him but only as much as she had the strength for it. He didn't even persuade her to sit up. Only that she talk, drink water, and breathe calmly.

  "Jack, take the case with lines out of my container," Jack understood that she was talking about the tapes that had Zebibytes of information recorded.

  "What's there?" he asked, getting out of the chair near her bed.

  "It's about stars... and there's a course about terraforming planets. There are a lot of books and items. I took them because I know it can be boring while on the ship... maybe you'll need it..."

  "Anne, what are you talking about?" He felt a strange sensation in his heart, like it was about to overflow and explode.

  His legs felt like a pair of wooden crutches, hobbling towards the wall with the containers.

  "There's something else..." she sat up so that she could see what he was doing. "There are also my... uhm, my personal recordings and observations that I made while on the ship."

  She rolled to the side and vomited. The contents of her stomach were black and bloody.

  Jack had seen something like similiar once before happening to a patient at his dad's clinic. His father explained that such an event usually occurred if there was internal bleeding in the stomach.

  Jack returned the films back to their place and took out an absorbent gel to clean up the floor. The gel spread out, enveloping the area and absorbing all traces.

  Jack understood Anne was no longer allowed to have food or water. Based on the approximate blood volume, he estimated she could lose up to about half a liter of blood. He hoped her internal stomach injuries would soon heal.

  "Damn, most of the medical equipment was in Laura and Frank's shuttle," Jack cursed at himself.

  He helped her to clean her mouth out before laying her back down in bed.

  Medicine that could potentially ease her situation was not in the medicine kit.

  Jack woke up several times throughout the night, hearing her rasping breathing and occasional hacking. He was aware that it had become even harder for her to breath, and he despised himself for being unable to do anything to help her. He had only one tool at his disposal to help her. Himself.

  11

  The next day, Lieutenant Sallenge awoke as the first rays of the sun tried to reach the peak of the rocky ridge. Turning his head towards Anne's bed, he started trying to listen to her breathing. For a moment, it struck him that he couldn't hear any sounds coming from her. He bolted up and dashed to her side. To his delight, she was still breathing, although so calmly to the point of being non-existent, as if she were dead. Jack remained beside her for some time before standing and walking to the table with the teleport on it.

  The officer tried to establish contact with the Center again, but there was no response.

  Two hours later, Anne woke up. Jack hesitated at whether he should give her food.

  "Take me outside. I need some fresh air," she instructed in a careless tone.

  Jack didn't dare refuse her request. He wrapped her into her blanket and picked her up, noticing she had lost nearly all her weight before taking her outside. A mild, early morning breeze against their face refreshed them with its coolness. Jack shivered slightly. It was fairly dark, but he could already make out the silhouettes of rocks and hills. Lieutenant Sallenge waited for a few sun beams to appear, holding Anne Petrow in his arms while he walked to where Trape was parked.

  He sat on Trape, lifting Anne onto his knees so she could glimpse the rays of the rising alien sun.

  She gazed at the rays with childish delight, but to Jack it was just an alien star. Yet Anne possessed such an intimate understanding of stars that she could see something in them that related to their Sun. It couldn't help but touch her heart, which was eager to feel something warm and natural. Her eyes were shining, reflecting the red-orange half-blurred specks of the illuminated alien landscape. The morning started to warm up, yet the evening cold could still be felt through the legs. Jack tried to cover Anne some more.

  "Do you like it, Jack?" she asked quietly.

  "What do you mean?"

  "The light of the local star..."

  "Yes... I think, yes..." he nodded.

  "It's beautiful... it's so pleasant here," she started wheezing and coughing. Jack caressed her shoulder.

  "It's very pleasant here, indeed," he remarked in agreement.

  "No, it's getting colder...cold..." she didn't finish the last word. Her eyes closed, mouth dropping open slightly, and her heart ceased forever as she lay gently covered in a warm cozy blanket. Jack didn't immediately realize what happened when she fell silent. At first, he thought she fell asleep, but then he realized that she would never wake up again.

  "Anne, please, don't die! Anne, just hold on. You can't die like this," he put his head to hers, his tears streaming down his face. "No, Anne. You've got to live! Do you hear me?"

  Although Jack was perfectly aware that nothing would bring Anne back to life, he didn't want to come to terms with the fact he was now completely alone on a desolate, unknown alien planet. Jack was still sitting on Trape, holding Anne's already cold body to his chest. He kissed her messy dark hair. From time to time, he closed his eyes and swung on the motionless robot, paying no heed to how the sun was burning the top of his head or how a small pack of herbivorous wartstones strolled past him. One of them stopped when it noticed Jack. The creature shifted to the side a bit before approaching Jack and licking the lieutenant's jacket sleeve with its long, coarse prickly tongue.

  It was the wartstone that Jack shot and healed a few days prior. Jack recognized it somehow despite his hazy memories because of the scars left behind. The regenerator proved unable to cure alien tissue as well as human, leaving behind scars that would remind the animal for a long time about its encounter with humanity. The wartstone stayed beside him for a while, then it sniffed with something resembling a nose before rushing back to its pack.

  The wartstone, as it put more distance between it and Jack, couldn't even begin to comprehend the severity of the lieutenant's remorse. The bitter sadness, mixed with resentment, raged in the officer's mind. The realization of what just happened had not yet been replaced with overwhelming fear. For now, all
that existed was emptiness. That black emptiness, hidden behind his closed eyes, didn't permit the lieutenant to let go of Anne Petrow. He sat like that, losing track of time. He pulled Anne's body as close to him as he could, almost as if trying to make her stand and live again. Sometimes he bellowed in agony, rocking back and forth more intensely.

  Once he felt his legs become numb, Jack seemed to regain his senses. He opened his eyes, recognizing that three hours had already passed. Jack tried to stand. The whole time, Trape waited for a command. Noticing Jack's movement, Trape issued the necessary greeting sounds, but its artificial brain ascertained the officer wasn't keen on communicating, so it went silent.

  Exerting great effort to stand upright with his numb legs, Jack carried Anne's body home. He lay her on the bed and started putting her personal belongings into her locker.

  As Jack packed up Anne's bed, he found a small silver tube hidden under her pillow. Picking it up, he rotated it in his shaking hand, recalling the smell from his dad's clinic. He used to see such tubes given to patients with crippling pain. Although it was an old remedy, it was a proven one that could remove any pain for 24 hours. "Until the very end, she stayed brave, not wanting to burden me. She suppressed her pain with pills and did it in such a way I couldn't see," Jack reflected, holding the tube in his right hand.

  According to protocol I-844, Anne's body was to be placed in a protective membrane to preserve it. Burying and burning a dead body on an alien planet was only allowed in the event of a biological threat and was only to be used in extreme circumstances.

  Trying to overcome his concerns, Jack found a membrane case. His hands shaking, he placed Anne's naked body on a bare panel bed and covered it with transparent purple membrane, her skin taking on an unnatural purple shade in response. Then he covered her body with a bedsheet, took a seat at the table, and put his head down, his arms covering it. The sensation of having a dead body at his home sent a shiver down his spine.

  "What will they order me to do with her? Will they ever take her body from this place? Or will they wait until I kick the bucket too?"

  These thoughts pierced the lieutenant's mind like sharp razor blades. Another shameful thought popped into his mind and he tried to rid himself of it. He didn't want to think about how he now had more than three months of food.

  12

  In order to distract his mind from depressing thoughts, Jack opted to explore outside. The sun's rays, penetrating the turbid shroud of the yellowish-green sky, scattered across the peaks of the rocky mountains. There were calmness and dead silence outside, as though it was trying to make the situation more tragic on purpose. Jack shuffled in the direction of the stream, consumed by his own thoughts. He needed to immerse himself in a different place, a different world, to get back into something more bright and pleasant.

  For a moment he flashed back to Earth, to the Academy, remembering how he stayed up too late studying the prototypes of research devices as he waited for Gladys to finish her pilot training sessions. Afterwards, they would go on a stroll around the Academy park, enjoying their young, carefree happiness. Once, he suddenly grabbed her, lifting her high up, causing her to shriek and laugh in surprise. The watch drones on duty flew at them immediately, trying to remove Gladys from Jack's strong arms. He lowered Gladys to the ground, then spun around and struck one of the drones. Momentarily losing its coordination, the drone drifted off before recovering and flying at them again. The second drone followed close behind.

  Jack shouted to Gladys, "Run!"

  For a long time, they ran, evading those "four-clawed freaks."

  They hid among the tall rocks and thick, interweaving bushes in the park. When they determined the coast was clear, the drones long gone, Jack grabbed Gladys again, lifting her up. But this time she didn't scream. She just glared at him in seriousness with her grayish-green eyes. He caught her gaze, lowered her to the ground, and kissed her gently. It was a kiss that he remembered for a long time. Jack spent the next two months in the Academy brig without any kisses, dates, or romance.

  The Academy's administration simply couldn't forgive Jack's delinquency. Striking an operational sentry drone, one deemed equal to a police officer, was considered an outrageous misdemeanor, a so-called challenge to order and discipline. As the Commandant explained in a public address on behalf of the council, it was "an act of unprecedented impudence and improper foolhardiness." Since then, students took to calling drones not just "four-clawed freaks", but also "sneaks" and "snitches."

  Jack noticed he had walked in a circle and his legs carried him back to the pavilion without thinking so that he rested against the hoverbike floating in the air.

  "Still waiting, buddy?" he asked, pulling up the bottom step.

  The memories of his and Anne's flight flashed into his mind like shards of broken glass. Jack gritted his teeth, clenched his fist, and punched his own leg.

  "I need to be strong," he told himself. "Anne would have never approved of being such a crybaby." Then he remembered her body lying in the pavilion, and, shuddering, hunched his shoulders.

  Lieutenant Sallenge climbed onto the hoverbike and flew parallel to the stream that served as the wartstones' watering hole. The instructions stated the hoverbike was not to be used for no reason, but now he needed to escape somewhere to distract himself from the terror ripping at his mind.

  Boulders scattered about the rocky ridge flickered below him. Jack had been flying for several hours before he felt pain in his back. He descended down to the flat highlands and looked west where he noticed flashes of the red-orange sunset. He needed to return home.

  13

  On his way back he came up with a clever thought to check that nothing was damaged on the roof just in case. Perhaps it might be the reason for the bad data signal transmitted through the teleport. It was getting dark when he reached the pavilion. On the back side of the pavilion, there was a ladder that led up to the roof. Ascending the ladder, Jack carefully examined the top of the pavilion, adjusting one of the solar panels that charged the batteries before he calmly climbed back down.

  The sun set surprisingly fast, mercilessly depriving the air of its daytime transparency. Jack stumbled, not noticing the edge of a wide fissure that looked like it was splitting the ridge into two. He fell from a height of about three meters, sliding down the rocky wall on his back. The electrophotonic plasma rifle flew off his arm, dangling by the strap.

  Jack tried to fasten the rifle's sling around his arm, but the darkness made it difficult. After struggling for a few minutes, he gave up, lengthened the sling, and slung it over his shoulder so that it hung across his back. He wished that the crew of researchers had received more weapons training. The Academy explained only the basic principles of how they worked. To his own surprise, he learned how to aim and shoot quite quickly. Jack remembered the conversation where his dad joked how grandpa hadn't been a bad sharpshooter during the Civil War that started after the first cataclysms.

  The lieutenant started slowly crawling up the fissure to get to the side of the pavilion. He had to go about seven meters. The fissure was narrowing, making it harder to walk. Almost reaching the exit, Jack heard a noise to his right on the other side of the fissure. He froze and started listening carefully. The rustle was getting nearer. Three seconds later, a sliding black tentacle appeared in the dark light of the exit, the same one he had seen on the hill long ago.

  His heart started pounding wildly.

  "Oh God, please, not this," he thought. "Not now."

  The tentacle froze in the air for a few moments, as if it was looking for something, and then the next moment the beast itself appeared. It was about three and a half meters tall, absolutely black, and crawling on two sharp-clawed legs. It had two wings sticking out of its back that gradually trailed off into tentacle-like limbs, which reminded him of sharp spears. The muzzle protruded like a long, sword-like beak. Around the base of the mouth, there were some slimy growths that hid needle-like fangs. Two yellow, almost per
fectly triangular eyes stared into the fissure.

  Jack's mouth went dry, and he held his breath so as not to give himself away. For a moment, the beast stood near the hole as if it were searching for Jack. The young officer's brain was focused on one precise issue. He was figuring out whether the huge creature would be able to enter the narrow fissure he was hiding in. Holding still for a few more seconds, the beast made a sound, sniffed, then went to the left.

  Jack exhaled. He thought hard about his options. He could either take the long way around or he could go forward and exit the fissure next to the pavilion. For some reason, the second option seemed more appealing. Maybe it was because it presented the quickest route to safety.

  Attempting to tread softly and quietly, Jack crept through the narrow fissure. Constantly on the lookout for the slightest hint of a rustle that could signal the beast's presence, Jack heard nothing but calm. With less than a meter to the exit, Jack lifted his head to gaze at the grayish-green sky. Reaching the edge of the hole, he decided to wait for several minutes before he would sprint towards the door on the left side of the pavilion's glass wall.

  Jack moved sideways carefully, then peeked out of the hole. He turned his head like an alert owl trying to pinpoint the slightest trace of danger, but there was no sign of the beast. Although the sky still remained light near the horizon, it was too dark to look for any tracks left by the creature. Jack first took a tentative step from the hole, then a more confident one before turning towards the pavilion.

  "Five meters to home. Six meters to the door. Then I'll be inside," Jack calculated mentally.

  He went to take a step forward when something heavy struck his shoulder, pushing him forward. The plasma rifle fell to the ground, its strap unraveling. Something glittered behind him, followed by the most terrifying sound Jack had ever heard. There was something stalking him. Glancing back, he saw the beast land on the ground then start to lean forward on its tentacles. Its open jaw revealed thin, spiky, needle-like teeth before it made another shriek and charged at Jack.