Expedition Nereus

by Ilya Martynov

  He narrowed his gaze and stared at the burning sun, freezing momentarily. He was absolutely alone on the endless plain of blueish-green sand surrounded by the occasional rocky highland. A light wind blew through his hair, filling him with a sense of loneliness. He couldn't even remember his parents, or even his best friend Sam. This usually happened during such times of detachment. He thought that while on this abandoned planet, the Avant Light was like a God to him. Somewhere up there, beyond the thick sky, as it orbited the planet, it instructed Jack on what to do and how it should be done.

  Jack's life was in the hands of a pile of nanocomposite chips assembled into the form of the Avant Light's supercomputer. Technology emerged victorious, overcoming the helplessness of a miserable, lonely human. This wave of thoughts running through Sallenge's mind reminded him of the ways of primitive people who used to pray to the invisible gods in the sky.

  What if, Jack reflected, a space explorer just like him had arrived on primeval Earth only to be forced to follow instructions from space? But then something went wrong, leaving the explorers alone with no help or support. Absolutely abandoned, they were compelled to carve out a new life on a strange new world that seemed cruel by their standards.

  They gradually transformed into wild animals, becoming more and more stupid, until, perhaps, they turned into mad monkeys. Together, their small community of explorers preserved their memories of the ship in space as being akin to praying towards the heavenly gods...

  "No," Lieutenant Sallenge resolved. "It's utterly ridiculous."

  At the Academy, he had seen the remains of the most ancient humans and even their biological predecessors. They were strikingly different from modern intelligent people.

  "I need to stop thinking about this," he concluded mentally. "Who cares about ancient people now!?"

  His situation was much more depressing. Completely on his own, he had to obey everything that a piece of metal in space told him.

  "What the hell is messed up in this life?" he mused, climbing onto the hoverbike to soar upwards in search for places to take samples. No choice left, he simply pushed unwanted thoughts from his mind.

  The navigational data being transmitted from the Avant Light to the airbike made it easier to get oriented in the air. The autopilot could have easily flown the craft along the arranged route. Jack didn't want to fly for some samples. Now he generally believed the research flights were meaningless, yet he couldn't object to the Avant Light's directions until updated tasks were received from the Center. Even here, billions of kilometers away from Earth, Jack Sallenge strived to remain an officer devoted to his service, even if he might not like it all that much. Moreover, he promised Anne he would be more disciplined.

  19

  One day, Jack woke up in the early morning, covered in cold sweat. He dreamt about someone kidnapping Anne's body from the pavilion. Waking up, he glanced at her bed and realized he couldn't live like this anymore.

  "Damn! Am I going to be living next to her body for the rest of my life!? I'm definitely going to go..." he determined. "The Center has been offline for two weeks already and the Avant Light hasn't provided special instructions about Anne. There's still protocol. That's it. I need to bury her."

  At that, Jack began packing all of Colonel Petrow's belongings into a box. He carefully placed her belongings into the container, holding on to the purple name badge with the semi-transparent picture of Anne's face to go with the data films.

  "I wonder what she was recording on the ship?" he thought, holding a data film in his hands. "Maybe there's something to shed some light on the shuttle situation? Nah. That's nonsense!"

  Jack, once again morose, recalled that almost no one told him anything on the ship.

  When he finished boxing Anne's personal belongings, he lifted her body from the bed and carefully carried her to the external back seat of the airbike. Next to her, he placed the small container with her belongings. Loading a laser disintegrator and a multifunctional searching shovel into the spot behind him, Jack activated the control systems and headed towards the crash site of Alan and Laura's shuttle.

  With the help of the disintegrator, he managed to break through the layers of compacted gravel and sand to dig a hole. Once the hole was finished, Jack placed Anne's cold breathless body at the bottom with her container of personal items near her feet. He stood for a long time, not wanting to dig the hole as if resisting some inner voice that commanded him to leave everything as it is. Finally, he turned around and started shoveling sun-dried sand into the hole in a way that he wouldn't see her face. As Jack filled in the hole with sand, he realized he had not only buried Anne, but he'd also buried her and Captain Graham's secret.

  A small unborn human being.

  He stood there, then glanced at the shuttle's frame at it baked under the sun. Returning to the airbike, Jack swore to himself he would return and dig out Laura and Alan's bodies from the rubble to bury them.

  20

  His hands wouldn't listen to him. Jack sped around on his airbike, going up and down, left and right, unaware of how he was flying. He nearly reached supersonic speed a few times, almost crashing against the top of the rocky ridge. He could have learned a lot about the planet's landscape during his five-hour flight, but his mind refused to work and his eyes were clouded over, rejecting everything that was going on with him. His mind rejected what was happening. Eventually, Jack came back to his senses as he flew over a hilly area covered in thick bushes. There were no familiar points of reference on the radar, nor the shuttle.

  He set down at a glade where many strange plants grew. Brownish-yellow stems were marked with long rectangular leaves. Colored yellow with green dots, the plants grew so thick it was impossible to see the sun more than two meters in. Jack tore one of the leaves off and a wet yellowish-green mucus flowed out.

  "Chlorophyll," he thought. "Nereus' plants are green like the ones on Earth."

  His observations were interrupted by a sudden rustling sound and a muffled growl. Something massive was moving towards him. Without thinking, Jack sprinted towards the hoverbike. Depressed and disconcerted because of Anne's death, he had forgotten about precautionary measures such as taking a weapon.

  A two-meter-tall creature emerged from the thicket. It looked like an ostrich with a camel's hump, and it had a long tongue resembling a twisted arrow that stuck out from its snout. The creature rushed at Jack and the hoverbike. The lieutenant barely managed to start taking off when the creature delivered a painful strike to Jack’s leg with its tongue before it rammed the aircraft. Luckily for Jack, the craft was already picking up speed in time to avoid the next strike. The airbike drifted to the side for a moment, but it flew upwards, leaving behind a territorial owner below.

  The misadventure succeeded in distracting Jack from recent events. He flew in circles for several hours, comparing the map with the topographical landscape until he finally spotted the blinking dot with the contours of his shuttle on the radar.

  Once home, he uploaded the images that had been automatically captured by the airbike's sensors and tried to analyze the appearance and behavior of the creature to take his mind of all that occurred.

  He determined the creature was an herbivore, judging by its physique and manner. On the whole, it wasn't very dangerous, but it was inclined to be aggressive if it believed there was an intruder on its territory. Jack supposed that this creature needed its long tongue for piercing the thick plant stems to drink the liquid inside. There were tube-like bumps around each nostril that produced mucus to protect the skin from prickly stems. While exhaling, the animal expels mucus containing special ferments that soften the nettles thereby permitting access to the stem, which was rich in nutrients. Without hesitation, Jack decided the herbivorous creature's name of bradawltongue was fitting.

  Finishing his analysis of the bradawltongue, Jack sadly glanced at the silent teleport box before going to the tiny medical compartment to spread nanobot gel where he had been struck. The nanobots
carefully cleaned all harmful material off his skin, leaving only useful microorganisms and immune cells on his body. That evening he promised himself he would bury the bodies of Alan and Laura the next day. He couldn't fall asleep as his mind was fixated on how to improve the general situation.

  21

  Jack spent almost the entire next day manually sorting through the shuttle wreckage where Laura and Alan had perished. It was incredibly challenging. He had to slice through the flattened metal of the cabin with his laser cutter to reach the bodies of his unlucky former crew members. At that moment, Jack strongly regretted that his loyal robot-helper was no more. Once the bodies were dragged out, Jack solemnly loaded them onto the hoverbike and flew them where he buried Anne. Digging two more holes, Jack carefully placed the charred remains of Alan and Laura in them before quickly filling the holes with his eyes shut. He only allowed himself to glance at the graves when the remains had been completely covered with soil.

  He had failed to find the remains of Captain Graham and engineer Frank Warple. Perhaps they were nowhere close. Their bodies could have literally been vaporized by the high pressure and temperature during the massive explosion.

  Jack wanted to do whatever was needed to avoid thinking about being absolutely alone on the planet, whether it was to die, drink strong alcohol, lose his mind, or pass out. The captain's death and that of the rest of the crew members seemed absolutely inconceivable, like some impossible situation from a magical parallel world.

  Upon returning to his solitary pavilion that sat in the middle of the greenish-blue desert, Lieutenant Sallenge wanted to collapse on his bed and fall asleep, but his body felt otherwise as a wave of stress hormones demanded he stay awake.

  The lieutenant spent more than two hours sitting in silence, trying to come up with an activity that could preserve his sanity. He glanced at the table with research equipment and then to the panoramic window where he could see his hoverbike sitting outside. Sighing heavily, Jack finally understood what would be his salvation.

  "Damn instructions," he thought. "I guess it means I'll be doing all the work myself. If I'm the last one here, then I need to do everyone's work while I'm alive."

  He gritted his teeth and banged on the table with both his fists.

  22

  The next morning, just as the sun's beams crept forward, Jack got on his airbike and headed to the next point to take samples. He could see plains below him, occasional mountainous ridges, and a few streams he already knew. Sometimes he managed to spot packs of herbivores from above that meandered from one bush to the next. Jack sat back and watched the landscape, trusting the autopilot to do its job. From time to time, he lifted his head up to view the rare semitransparent cirrus clouds that drifted across the blueish-green sky.

  Flying above a long mountain range, the hoverbike sharply skyrocketed upwards. Jack had never flown as high as he did now. The aircraft was now almost a kilometer above the surface. Jack felt fresh air and coolness for a moment before the climate stabilizer quickly balanced the temperature inside the cockpit. The airbike circled around another mountain and then shot vertically upwards again, its pilot being pressed into his seat.

  Flying above the tallest peak at 1.5 kilometers, Jack saw black and gray summits of the mountain range. From that height, he could witness the view of the closest plains on this greenish-blue sand planet. Some streams resembled thin blue veins whiles clusters of bushes looked like grayish-brown fluff. The Overplan drifted in the air for a moment before slowly starting to descend. Jack clung to the wheel, but it had no effect. The autopilot wasn't responding to him as it did its job.

  When the airbike reached its destination, it stopped and a long elastic probe extended from the bottom of its frame, exiting the protective shield to mercilessly pluck from the surface a grayish-green plant that resembled an Earth's clover. Then the probe retracted, the research sample tightly in its grasp.

  They flew a little forward of the mountain until the airbike stopped again. The same process was repeated for a different plant that was pulled from a green bush with sharp spade-like stems. In spite of the rather rare clusters of plant forms, one could not help but be surprised at how varied this silent yet living world looked from up high in the mountains.

  Meanwhile, the HUD displayed the image of sector G-114. Jack carefully looked to the side and a little down to observe the probe's work. The lieutenant had no doubt that the god from above would force him to disassemble all the collected samples. In order to distract himself from exhaustingly geeky thoughts, he started glancing around the environment.

  He liked this place. It was so calm and patient without herbivores waddling towards their watering hole or without that scary beast who was eager to kill and feed. Jack felt some tension in his stomach from this thought, but then everything vanished when he switched off the shield, allowing a massive current of fresh, cool air blow through his hair. Taking a deep breath, he closed his eyes. When he opened them, he let out a laugh. It was the angry, nervous laugh of a person who was cornered but trying to persuade himself of his own omnipotence. Yet Jack himself felt that the laugh was one of victory where he demonstrated some strange, lonely power over this abandoned planet.

  He laughed until he felt a stitch in his side and his jaw began to hurt. Calming down, Jack sat still in sadness. He had no more strength for emotion.

  With all samples collected, the Overplan-500 dove towards the ground so quickly that Jack's face felt like it was being flattened into a pancake. They flew towards sector G-112 where they had to take some more plant samples at the base of the mountain. A little later, from sector G-109, strange bubble-shaped roots were collected from a plant with stems resembling thin twigs. As they flew over sector G-105, Jack saw a cluster of unusual tall plants that resembled those on Earth. Their tall thick stems split off into branches that had huge fruit the size of basketballs hanging from the end.

  Jack switched off the autopilot and flew towards the top of one of the plants.

  The fruit gave off an amazing smell. It was an unbelievable scent that reminded him of the sweetest melon ever, which was then mixed with strawberries and forest honey, the kind sometimes brought by farmers to Aeronaut City. Jack flew a little closer and picked one fruit with the probe, then a second. Just as he was about to pick a third, the screen notified him the cargo compartment was full. Jack was sure these fruits were edible and would attract herbivores. Lifting off, Lieutenant Sallenge pointed the hoverbike in the direction of his glass pavilion.

  Such work engrossed him for the next few days.

  23

  It was getting dark when Jack reached home. His weapon at the ready, he expected to see the beast appear at any moment. The darkness was its habitat. Its predatory yellow eyes had been crafted through evolution for hunting in near pitch-black darkness during terrifying evenings. Unloading the plants and the fruits, Jack stayed alert, watching for any suspicious movement to shoot at. But to his fortune, no beasts appeared that night.

  According to the instructions, before entering the research area, all alien samples needed to pass through quarantine procedures in a special container that served as a lab where all objects could be scanned to reveal any possible hazards for humans. The container stood at the back end of the pavilion, bordered by rocks. It was that area the lieutenant strode towards.

  Jack remembered all the stories of his genetic engineering teachers about how in the 20th century, biological danger levels were classified from level one to five. The first level represented nonhazardous organisms. The fourth level contained viruses and bacteria for which no cure existed. The fifth level was the most interesting for researchers. It was a special level reserved for objects of alien origin. Back then, scientists had already investigated such organisms from space, but the news was withheld from the public. After a few tragedies that resulted in the deaths of some scientists who had been working with alien organisms, precautionary measures were strengthened and strict rules of quarantine were implemen
ted.

  24

  The analysis took the whole night, and all organisms appeared to be nonhazardous. Following the instructions of the neuroband, Jack placed prepared samples, one after another, on a modeling platform, which had replaced bulky microscopes years ago. He needed to explore the plants' genome, how they absorbed nutrients, and their possible methods of evolution. All this helped him describe the planet's appearance and get to the bottom of its mysterious history.

  But the more Jack explored, the more questions appeared. On the one hand, the genome sequences were similar to those on Earth, but it was unclear how these, or other external signs, were coded. Eventually, he got to the delicious-looking fruits.

  Jack cut their skin with a magnetic knife, almost going crazy from the intense smell of the fruit. He dug his teeth into the succulent flesh. The juice flowed down his chin, coating the surface of the research table. He continued eating the fruit, unable to stop. It had been a long time Lieutenant Sallenge had enjoyed such natural food. Once he was done with the treat, he decided to toss the skin and seeds into a garbage bin before changing his mind abruptly.

  He came up with a weird idea. What if he planted the seeds into the sandy soil near the pavilion and watered it thoroughly?

  As he dug a small hole to plant the seeds, the smart panel on the table cleaned the sticky juice of the fruit with microfibers. When Jack returned to the pavilion, the table was absolutely spotless.

  The rest of the day, he attempted to establish contact with the Center using the teleport but to no avail. Knowing in advance it would only cause pain and homesickness, as much as he didn't want to do it, in the evening, he used the neuroband to view memories of him holding Gladys in his arms.