All conversation and activity ceased when Silhouette walked into the room. Another member of the Krajova Team, Albert Jordan, the pilot, stepped down from the stairs that led to the cockpit, stopping midway as he felt the tension in the room.
Silhouette stood there, an emptiness, an unknown to everyone else on the ship. She was a monster to them— a ghost, just as Dominski had said. Maybe I do still need to work on my social skills. Silhouette was a person, after all, wasn’t she?
“Hi,” she said.
There were a few nods in response. The game of chess continued and Jordan proceeded down the remaining flight of steps. “Hey there,” he said as he passed Silhouette and walked out of the room.
“Do you want some coffee?” asked Yost. He held up his cup and gestured as if he would go and grab another for her.
“No thanks. I’ll bring some to my quarters in a bit.” She pointed at her face. “Can’t drink it through the mask.”
“Yeah,” said Kapoor as she twirled a wire-tube brush around her fingers. “What’s with the getup? Why do you gotta stay all mysterious and shit? You get to see our faces.”
“Instructions by the Presider,” said Silhouette. “I’m not allowed to reveal my identity to anyone.”
“What makes you so special?” asked Kapoor. She grabbed the rifle’s barrel and wriggled the brush inside of it as she spoke. “We’re going out to the same place as you. Gonna see the same things, same people. Why aren’t our identities protected?”
“You’d have to ask the Presider that, or your Jeden. I don’t question or disobey my orders. I’m sure you don’t, either. Am I right?”
“Hmpf.” Kapoor turned away from Silhouette as Dominski entered the room.
“Kapral Nguyen, how goes your understanding of the logistics of our mission?”
“I’m getting there, Jeden. Kapral Yost is a good teacher.”
“Good,” said Dominski. “Everyone prepare for takeoff. We leave in five minutes.”
“Yes, Jeden,” came from all around.
“Doctors, Silhouette, follow me,” said Yost. “I’ll show you where to strap in. The Krajova isn’t one for smooth takeoffs. Or landings, either, really.”
Chapter Five
EMPTY WORLD
THREE WEEKS PASSED IN TRANSIT to planet Thuun. The landing process was just as turbulent as Silhouette remembered the takeoff from Fujisan had been.
Before departing the ship, all mission personnel were instructed to report to the communal room. Once everyone had gathered, Yost ran through a pre-departure checklist with the Krajova crew. All seemed to be in order and Yost had Nguyen fetch the atmospheric stabilizers from the infirmary. She ran to grab them, returning with a box full of individually wrapped pills.
“Each of you take a capsule and swallow it before you leave the ship,” said Yost. “Most of you have taken these before, so you know that the pills will adjust your body to this planet’s atmosphere, but Thuun is a bit tricky. One pill may not be enough. Keep an extra on your person and take it immediately if you start to feel woozy.
“As far as the colonization facility— they haven’t responded to our arrival. The receiving mechanisms are non-operational, and the expandable airlock refuses to deploy. We will have to walk across the landing platform to enter the facility through the nearest doorway.”
“We’re moving out in ten minutes, people,” said Dominski. “Take your pills and grab your gear. We’re all leaving together.”
Silhouette stepped away as soon as Dominski concluded the meeting. She walked into her room, locked the door, and pulled the shadowsuit’s fabric headpiece away from her face. The plastic packaging was labeled with usage instructions, but Silhouette ignored them and simply squeezed the package, popping the gel capsule into her mouth. She licked her lips after swallowing. Mmm, sweet.
Within moments, a pressure had formed in her sinuses like someone was blowing up a balloon inside of her face. Her muscles tensed, throat tightened, heart-rate slowed. Thoughts became a blur as the pressure spread over her skull, dulling all senses. She struggled to breathe— it was as if the vacuum of her lungs had sprung a leak.
The feelings washed over her like a wave, and then they were gone. The pressure subsided, returning all thoughts and bodily functions back to normal. She wiped away the sweat that had formed on her brow and tucked the remaining pill between the turtleneck of the shadowsuit and her skin.
Silhouette pulled her headpiece back on and made her way to the ship’s exit, but paused when she heard Dominski and Kapoor speaking in a nearby room. With caution, she stepped closer to listen, her body pressed against a wall next to the doorway.
“We don’t know her motives, Jeden,” said Kapoor. “We can’t trust her. She could be dangerous.”
“She is dangerous,” said Dominski, “but she’s on our side. Don’t let your fears run wild. We’re all working for the Cooperation.”
“I don’t like it. We’ve never allowed an unknown operative onto our Krajova before, let alone join us on a mission.”
“I can’t refuse the Archon.” Dominski tightened the straps on his backpack, then did the same for Kapoor. “Besides, I let you onto this ship way back when it was just me and Kapral Jordan flying this thing around. When I picked you up he warned me that you were too wild to bring aboard the Krajova.”
“I was just an angsty teenager back then.”
“Yeah, if you call drugs and thieving angst. You wouldn’t have been brought into this crew the way you were back then, not if I hadn’t known you and your father back when you were just a babe in his arms.”
Kapoor strapped her rifle to her side. “Why do you always have to bring up my father? I never even knew him.”
“I know, but you would have loved him.”
They left the room without noticing the living shadow that had been spying on them.
Silhouette waited for Dominski and Kapoor to disappear from sight before she moved down the hall. As she approached the Krajova’s primary airlock she saw that Kaprals Yost and Nguyen were caught in a laughing fit with each other while everyone else talked among themselves.
“All here, except for the operative,” said Dominski. “Where is she?”
“I’m here,” said Silhouette. Everyone turned their heads at the sound of her voice, some squinting to see her with clarity as their eyes attempted to make sense of her suit’s unusual camouflage.
“Good,” said Dominski.
“Is everyone stabilized?” asked Yost. Heads nodded in response.
“Kapral Jordan,” said Dominski. “Lower the ramp.”
There is something to be said for stepping onto a world for the first time. People assume that the visual of the landscape is the initial impact upon the senses. Dreaming of a new world, one first envisions the color of the sky or the shape of the terrain, but those who have actually set foot on other worlds would say otherwise. The smell, thought Silhouette. I haven’t been to a planet before that has smelled like this. Each planet has a distinct aroma, one that permeates its entire atmosphere.
Thuun’s rancid odor smacked each member of the Krajova crew in the nose like a wet sack of fermenting fish. They all stepped back from the airlock and covered their faces. Even Silhouette coughed a little at the stench.
Dominski gathered himself and was the first to walk down the ramp. “All right, everyone out. Maybe the air inside the facility will be better.”
One by one they moaned and groaned as they plodded out of the ship and onto the landing platform. Small flecks of yellow fluff floated along the hot, humid wind like snowflakes. Silhouette’s suit insulated her from the elements, but the others weren’t so lucky.
“Shouldn’t there be another ship here?” asked Jordan. “The facility’s mule?”
“Yeah,” said Yost. “I guess someone got the hell out of here, but where did they go? There was no mention of it in the report.”
“The bio-domes,” shouted Fukumura. She walked to the platform’s edge and looked
at the area surrounding the facility. “They’ve collapsed.”
Silhouette joined in on the observations. Terraformation had begun, spreading for hundreds of acres around each dome, but now the structures were flattened and swaths of rotten plant-life covered the nearby landscape. The rust-colored dirt which surrounded the dead jungles stretched to edges of their sight, continuing beyond the horizon where they were met by the dusty, blue sky.
In her more immediate surroundings, Silhouette could see that the ground was moist. Around the facility was wet sand, like something you would find during low tide in a coastal bay. The building was damaged. Dented, somehow. A tawny grime was plastered in strips across its surface.
“We’re in,” shouted Yost from across the platform.
The mercenaries and specialists funneled inside, Silhouette falling to the back of the line and closing the door behind herself.
The sunlight penetrating the sparse windows was the only source of illumination until the mercenaries switched on the everlights that were clipped to their hips. Silhouette turned on her Ocu’s thermal vision and pulled the facility’s layout diagram into her peripheral sight. She fell behind the group and watched as the team made their way deeper into the facility toward its command center.
Silhouette chose a different path. Her vision detected multiple sources of heat emanating from within the facility, distant and weak. She wanted to find their sources and start gathering intel as soon as possible.
The halls were quiet. Rooms were empty. The place was filthy. Nothing seemed to be damaged or missing, only neglected and unkempt. A layer of dust covered everything, but underneath was a slick moisture. Humidity must have seeped in when the ventilations system went offline. It smelled bad, too, maybe worse than it did outside. At least there was a bit of a breeze out there.
She noticed that the group came to a halt in a large, open space and checked with her diagram to see that they had indeed made it to the command center where they would be trying to bring the facility back online. Before that happened, Silhouette wanted to track down the sources of heat and see what was still operating— or living— in this wretched place. Once the machinery of the facility came back online her thermal sensor would likely be overloaded.
The radiation was far below her current position. The elevators would be offline, Silhouette knew, so she moved to the main staircase that connected all six stories of the building.
The ghastly odor intensified as Silhouette descended the stairwell. She was careful with her steps to avoid slipping on the nasty slime that coated everything. The heat signature she was tracking grew as she continued on, and she noticed that it was moving. Not mechanical movement. Something down there was alive, and it smelled awful.
As she reached the bottom level, Silhouette could see a thermal mass of wriggling appendages in the room at the far end of the hall.
Piles of vile waste littered the stairwell floor. She moved out of the space in a hurry and nearly stumbled over a human corpse that was sprawled out in the middle of the hallway. Most of its body had been eaten. Such sights did not shock her any longer, not after all she had seen over the years.
Silhouette slowed her pace and crept down the remainder of the hall. The air was cooler down here than it had been in the rest of the facility. Her data files had mentioned that the bottom two levels of the facility were below ground, and the area she was now in was utilized for refrigeration needs such as food storage. She could see the cooling units as she passed by, each left open and emptied.
Her infrared sight picked up on the details of the writhing mass as she closed in on the far room. It wasn’t one thing. It was many. It was people— the scientists of the facility.
She ran toward them.
Inside the room were twenty or so people huddled together on the floor in the darkness, breathing and murmuring. They were emaciated, many were losing their hair. If it weren’t for their breathing and collective warmth, Silhouette would have thought they were all long dead. There were a couple of expired bodies in the room, and as Silhouette scanned the living she noticed that they all had weak bio-signatures.
A hunched form barely clung to life as it leaned alone against one of the large water tanks in the room. These were the scientists, and they were alive— but why? Why were they like this? They had properly shut down the facility, chosen to cease communication, and then starved themselves. Their bio-domes were somehow destroyed and they quickly ate through their food supply, then turned upon their own dead to nourish themselves.
Why didn’t they call for help? Thought Silhouette. What happened here? It seems like they’re in hiding, but from what?
This was too much for Silhouette to handle alone. The survivors wouldn’t last much longer in these conditions. They needed help, now. She silently stepped out of the dark room, none of the cadaverous scientists noticing her existence.
Silhouette hustled back up the staircase and turned off onto the third floor where she unmasked and vomited into a trash receptacle. She took a moment to breathe in the less-rancid air and then continued on up the stairs and toward the top floor command center.
“Looks like almost everything should still be operational in this facility,” said Dr. Bourdain. “The systems need a while to boot up, but once they do we’ll have lights and air conditioning again.”
“Dominski,” shouted Silhouette as she ran into the room.
“There you are,” he said. “You can’t—“
“I’ve found the scientists. They’re alive. I need your help.”
* * *
Silhouette lead Dominski, Kapoor, and Dr. Fukumura down to the bottom floor of the facility. They approached the scientists together, slowly, Kapoor and Dominski illuminating the space as best as they could. The everlights reflected off of the cloudy eyes of the huddled scientists as they turned to look at the weapon-wielding visitors marching toward them.
“Dr. Fitzpatrick,” said Fukumura. She wedged herself between Dominski and Kapoor, pushing them out of her way. “Is that you? Oh my god, what happened?”
Some of the bodies slowly started to rise into a standing position. Fukumura ran forward to help Fitzpatrick to his feet and Dominski aided her. Silhouette scanned the area for additional lifeforms while Kapoor jerked her head around like a concerned chicken, tapping her fingers on her rifle, twitchy with unease as the gaunt forms moved and moaned in the darkness.
Fukumura grabbed Fitzpatrick by the waist. “It’s okay, we’re here to help.”
A few of the scientists stepped forward, then the lights powered on.
The emaciated scientists backpedaled from the brightness as if it burned them, shielding their eyes, one of them crumpling to the floor as if the weight of the radiance was too much to bear. They looked even more haggard in the full light, and every one of them was covered in sores. Fukumura and Dominski lifted Dr. Fitzpatrick to his feet, but the man was unable to hold himself up. Fukumura grabbed his hand. Tears fell from her cheeks as Fitzpatrick tried to speak.
“No power,” he whispered. The man’s voice was barely audible, not much more than a breath. “No power. It will find us. Leave Thuun.”
The other scientists slowly recovered from the sudden onslaught of light and started to hobble toward Silhouette and the others.
Dominski put a hand on Fukumura’s shoulder and pulled her back. “We need to help them,” she said.
“We will,” said Dominski. “The power is back on. Let’s return to command and put together a plan.”
“No power,” whispered another of the scientists.
“Thuun will see,” said another.
“Leave,” said Fitzpatrick once more.
“Come on,” said Kapoor. “This is creepy”
“We will return soon with food,” announced Dominski to everyone in the room. He motioned to Kapoor to start moving.
Fukumura was reluctant to leave, but she followed the others who were eager to head back upstairs. The emaciated group could only watch as t
heir rescuers backed away from them.
The now-operational elevator lifted the crew back up to the top floor where they reconvened with the rest of the crew.
* * *
“Where are they?” asked Dr. Carter. “You didn’t bring them back up with you?”
“They’ve been scared senseless,” said Dominski. “They’re starving. The situation is not good.”
“And they were talking crazy,” said Kapoor. “Telling us to leave and shut off the power. I think one said ‘it will find us’. Fucking bleh, I’m all wigged out.”
“We’ve got plenty of food back on the Krajova,” said Jordan. “And a wheelchair. I think there’s even a gurney in the infirmary we’ve never used. Let’s get them some help.”
“Excellent suggestion, Jordan,” said Dominski. “You go prepare the Krajova for the incoming scientists. Make room for two dozen in the communal spaces and infirmary.
“Kaprals Yost and Nguyen, I want you to bring all of the nutri-fluid you can carry down to the scientists. Take care of the weakest ones first and begin escorting them one at a time to the Krajova.”
“Yes, sir,” said Yost and Nguyen in unison.
“I’ll assist them with the scientists,” said Dr. Carter. “I can’t do much else with the bio-domes in their current state.”
“I still need to check for faults in the system,” said Dr. Bourdain. “I don’t want this place to power down again.”
“We should complete our investigation and leave for home as soon as possible,” said Dr. Fukumura. “I want to inspect the domes and figure out what happened to them. Once we grab the information we need and get all of the facility scientists on board the ship we can leave.”
“The domes are not receiving any power,” said Dr. Bourdain. “The facility should be stable enough for me to route some energy to one of them for now. Head over to Dome West. I’ll send it all the juice I can spare.”
“I’ll escort you to the dome,” said Dominski. “We have no idea what caused the destruction. Something’s off about this place, something weird, and I don’t want you getting hurt.”
Deceit of Humanity Page 3