Colony Lost

by Chris Philbrook

  “Right on. Dusty and I snuck into the science habitat. We heard a rumor Balashov was about to green light the helmets coming off or maybe say the water was swimmable. Hurry your ass over here. They have champagne in zero-G pouches,” the officer said.

  Lt. Theo Wendell jumped in over the comm.

  “What? Bravo team is on its way to secure some champagne.”

  Waren imagined the three marines from the other fire team getting their gear on as fast as possible in the cargo bay of Beagle.

  “You better hurry,” Hauptman said.

  Waren was already throwing the last chuck against the front wheel of Svoboda and sprinting past the six other ships on the landing field of the newly christened Rasima Plains.

  Dustin stood with his ass pressed up against one of the countertops inside the stark white science lab. There was no space left inside the facility; everyone who could shoulder their way inside the air-conditioned space had. The news was out and no one wanted to miss the Russian scientist’s announcement, for better or for worse. Right now the situation seemed to be trending to worse. The precariously maintained hab unit had never been designed to recycle the air for so many people and the temperature rose alongside the smell. Water conservation meant fewer showers, and the true cost culminated in that moment.

  In the middle of the square room– and still dressed in his disheveled slacks and sweater vest–head biologist Micah Balashov watched intently through his spectacles at a flat screen monitor. Over to the side, a mass spectrometer worked beside a slew of other incredibly old and rare pieces of testing equipment. The gear analyzed the air, water, and soil for microbial life, contaminants, chemicals and all manner of substances that would or could pose a danger to the expedition, and all those coming after.

  Balashov had been at this lone project alongside his three aides since the science habitat had been unloaded from the rear bay of Titan and set on Selvan land. Rumor had it the pretend-Russian hadn’t slept in two days.

  Dustin watched the man as he lifted his glasses and rubbed at the fatigue in his eyes. He pinched the bridge of his nose and sighed.

  “Is it wrong that I feel sort of bad for the asshole? He’s old and hasn’t rested in a long time.”

  “He’s not that old. Fuck him,” Hauptman whispered, pausing a moment from chewing his vitamin laced gum, as the armor-clad Waren pushed his way diplomatically through the crowd. The rank and file marines parted, but the civilians grunted or complained as he passed.

  “What’d I miss?” Waren asked.

  “Jack, and shit,” Dustin replied.

  “Oh man,” Waren whined. “I love shit. I joined the Colonial Marines just for the shit.”

  “That’s the most honest thing I think you’ve ever said,” Hauptman quipped.

  Waren made an attempt at looking bashful. “Aww. I appreciate that L.T. It’s a hard life for us Sotans when we leave the icebox. Always nice to find another friend in the warmer climates.”

  Dustin snorted. “I’m shocked they’d let you leave. I’d be afraid you’d embarrass the whole damn planet with your buffoonery.”

  “Man that’s a big word for you. Buh-Foo-Nurr-Ree. Four syllables. That’s got to be some kind of personal record,” Waren said as he watched the scientist sit and stare at a screen, oblivious to the crowd standing and staring at him.

  “He has a point,” Hauptman said. “Hey there,” Steve and Remy appeared, gently shouldering even more people out of the way. Dustin had to hide a laugh as he watched the civilians stare with clear animosity at the marines. They went where they wanted, whenever they wanted, and politely didn’t care whose feathers were ruffled in the process.

  “What’d we miss?” Remy asked.

  “Jack, and shit,” Dustin replied.

  “I have to admit, it scares me inside these things. They have refitted these habitats for use on every landing,” Hauptman said. “Phoenix to Pacifica. Ares to Sota. Drop ’em, settle the ball of rock, pick it up, fix it up with what we have left for parts. We are on borrowed time until Balashov declares the air safe. We’re a dried out seal away from who-knows-what kind of death.”

  “It has to be safe. We wouldn’t have landed all the ships unless we had a really good idea ahead of time,” Waren said. “Right?” he asked his officer, but Hauptman didn’t answer. He just pointed a thick finger at Balashov.

  A beep erupted from the bank of electronics. This was what Balashov had waited for. The crowd rippled with anticipation.

  The scientist with the frazzled hair and grumpy demeanor stood and walked to the machines after detaching the touch screen plate from its keyboard. He waved his hand to the side to dismiss those in his way. The crowd parted for him, forcing everyone to get closer and more uncomfortable as the mass shifted. The air in the humid white room somehow cleared up and became fresher as all those breathing stopped, waiting for the news.

  “Hmm,” Micah Balashov said, tapping on his screen and then the control pads of the devices. He took a few steps to the side and repeated the tapping at the next machine. “Hmm,” he said again after looked at the results. Good or bad he didn’t let on. He took one more step to the side, nearly making a lanky marine private fall over.

  “Hmm what, dude?” a well-built civilian engineer stepped closer, his patience shot. The man’s sealed environmental suit had been undone from the shoulder and was wrapped around his waist like a high-tech swimming aid. “Fucking say something.”

  Micah shot the man a look that would’ve dried paint in a monsoon.

  “Would you prefer for me to be wrong on this and get everyone killed with a viral infection that eats away at our brains slowly and painfully? Da? I will ‘hmm’ as many times as I wish. You do what you do. Lift heavy things. I will do what I do.”

  Balashov stared at the man, daring the “lesser” to challenge his authority. After several tense seconds, the bigger, younger engineer looked away.

  Dustin caught Micah’s eye and recognized the faintest of smiles in their corners.

  “Fucker’s acting. Ha.”

  Balashov looked at the data on his screen. He moved slowly back to his round white table and sat. Minutes crept by like a thousand steps taken with a rock trapped in your shoe. When he looked up to those gathered Dustin thought they were about to weep or become violent. “I will make two cursory announcements now. My full report to Major Duncan will be forthcoming within several hours’ time. For the moment I will say that the water is safe to swim in and bathe with but not safe to drink in any large quantities, especially the sea water, as it is salt water. You will dehydrate and become sick.”

  The room blew up in celebration as Balashov waited, feigning anger.

  “The air is similar to Pacifica’s in its makeup, though the oxygen level is higher. You might experience headaches and see stars initially during bouts of high physical activity but the air is safe to breathe. You no longer need helmets or suits. Wear your boots. We have not identified the few insects and reptiles we have taken from the ground and some might be venomous. Be careful in touching local flora, and do not touch any other forms of animals when they start to come around. Report any wildlife sighting to one of my associates without delay. If you feel strange for any reason, report immediately to Doctor Castellano or myself.”

  The habitat emptied like an airlock had been purged in spaced. Marines and civilians alike craved the fresh air. Micah might have been telling them that the sky was on fire and that demons were busting through portals from hell in the mess hall but they couldn’t have cared less. Dustin and the other FEM Marines were close to the door and were out the double airlocks in the first twenty to exit.

  The air hit their exposed skin with a wave of warmth and moisture that wasn’t sweat. Dustin’s nose exploded with the richness of the world’s scents. The familiar yet subtly different fragrance of growing grasses, the salt of the sea spray, the cloying clay of the rich dirt, mixed with the scents of their own human arrival: the grease of oil, the artificiality of plastic
, the acidic odor of rubber and the rank musk of the unwashed people all about.

  The full power of the sun’s warmth was a heavy weight on Dustin’s skin, but a welcome one. The sterile interior of their suits, ship interiors and habitats had whitewashed all the effect reality–nature–had on them, and it wore the colonists down. Vitamins and UV lamps only did so much. Dustin had received no gift greater in that moment, and he swung his arms wide and spun in circles, inhaling the new world’s air like he’d been brought to the ocean and only just learned to swim.

  The ocean.

  Dozens ran across the gentle raise of the hillock, stripping away their clothes as they got closer to the water, ignoring the warnings about the dangers of touching the foreign grasses and plants. Dustin took off in a sprint. The other marines laughed and followed suit.

  Dustin had already taken off his sealed armor in the science hab and wore only olive shorts, his slate gray marine-issued shirt, and his socks. He was down to his underwear by the time his bare feet touched the alien sand and he splashed his way into the water and dove headfirst into the meter-tall swell.

  The shock of the water almost froze his body as he swam under a small wave, doing a powerful breaststroke and exhaling a stream of white bubbles from his nose. Dustin had learned to be a good swimmer, a rarity for a man from dry Ares. He adjusted and came up as his friends dove in. He watched as every single person from the habitat joined them, frolicking, splashing, and enjoying the white sand and cool water the color of turquoise.

  This place is paradise. Pure, unadulterated paradise, Dustin thought. I need to get Melody. She needs to see this.

  Dustin made his way through the water to the shore, ignorant that his underwear had become the first drowning casualty on the world of Selva.

  His naked trip to Beagle’s cockpit to fetch his wife would become a story retold many times in the next few weeks.

  Chapter Fourteen

  The fringe of the peninsula jungle, planet of Selva

  19 August 163 GA

  “Can I go on record and say how much I hate doing this shit?” Steve muttered.

  Steve Ziu’s Bravo Team had drawn species collection duty, and that meant heading south onto the newly-named Dampier Peninsula. Steve had been told by one of the geologists the name came from Australia on old Earth. The name didn’t matter though. Only the job. And today, the job was species retrieval. Collection duty could be dangerous with how little they knew about the wildlife of Selva and that meant wearing their sealed combat armor.

  In the heat.

  Under the sun.

  While everyone else frolicked and played in paradise, or worked back at the colony.

  Despite having twelve environmentally sealed habitats, six permanent structures and a fully-functional landing field, the colony still had no name. Ping-Pong chalked that up to bureaucracy back on the moons as he used a rag from his utility belt to wipe away the sweat on his forehead. Someone important fought to have their old relative’s name put on the spot in the ground.

  Remy and Steve had been given a reprieve by their CO, Theo Wendell, as soon as they were out of sight of the growing settlement on Rasima Plain. He told them to hang their helmets on their belts so they could at least get fresh air, and drink water from their canteen instead of the integral straw system that recycled their sweat. The gesture was a small gift from the officer, but one the two sergeants appreciated.

  Theo crouched at the edge of the forest that covered the peninsula. Unlike a Pacifican rain forest, the trees here were on solid land, surrounded at their bases by thick bushes with seed pods sprouting on branches. Pacifican forests were composed of trees that planted their deep roots right in the surf. You could row small boats under the trunks and enjoy twice the shade. Theo had a clear glass cylinder in one hand and a lid in the other. On one of the palm-sized leaves of a low plant, an eight-legged insect sat still. The alien creature measured almost ten centimeters long and had a narrow and smooth abdomen the color of a dark orange. Its legs were spindly and black and the foremost limbs sported tiny pincers at their tips. With a snatch of his wrists he scooped the creature into the jar and slapped on the lid. As it scuttled and snapped against the inside of the container Theo produced a pen from his pocket. On the jar’s erasable label he wrote in shorthand the type of plant he found it on, the time and day, and how it reacted.

  “Nasty fucker,” Theo said as he held the glass container up to his face. A buzzing series of clicks came from the insect’s pedipalps and a tiny spray of yellowish fluid quickly hit the glass. The substance did nothing to the glass, but still made Theo flinch. “Big fangs. I bet it’s poisonous.”

  “You mean venomous?”

  “That’s what I said.”

  Steve scooped a strange insect up from the ground. His critter looked like some kind of flattened shrimp that had adapted to life on land. The thing was smaller than the bug in Theo’s jar, and brown like a brick, but still made him feel uncomfortable. The whole planet made his skin crawl and he couldn’t place why.

  Theo walked to the flatter open ground of the field near the forest. He placed the jar on a small trailer attached to a single-person six-wheeled ground vehicle. The jar sat in a recess inside a foam tray so it would travel safely. Theo picked up another jar from the tray in his big brown hand and returned to the forest’s edge.

  Steve placed his own jar down in the soft foam and grabbed another. He scooped up a handful of soil that had ant-like insects crawling over it.

  “Poisonous shit makes you sick if you eat it. Venomous shit bites or stings you, and injects venom to hurt or kill you or whatever. You could still be right. It might be both.”

  Theo stopped walking and looked at Ping-Pong with a frustrated glare in his narrow eyes.

  “Just shut up. Please. It’s already shitty enough on this planet without your smart-assed know-it-all comments heaped up on the pile.”

  “Sorry, Top. Didn’t mean to light a fire under you.”

  Theo pulled out his canteen and slurped down a chug. He screwed the cap on and put it back on his belt. “Sorry. That was bitchy. I just miss my wife and kid. I am ready to go home, and we only just got here. I need to screw my head on. Apologies.”

  “I can’t imagine how that feels.”

  Steve truthfully couldn’t; he had no children or spouse back on the moons. He’d never held a relationship down longer than five months.

  Theo’s face softened as he pulled out his digital binoculars.

  “It’s crazy. Hard to think of anything else but her and my son. I gotta stay focused. Get back to them on Ares. Safe and sound.”

  Theo raised the binoculars to his eyes and looked deep into the forest. The marines hadn’t been given clearance to head into the jungle yet so they stayed where they were: on the precipice.

  “Focus, big man. We need you here and present to get to the future. If shit goes down you gotta lead us like we know you can,” Remy said as he set down his own jar with a specimen inside it. “I’d like to get back to my woman on Pacifica. We all got things on our mind.”

  “Bitching should be going uphill, too. You have enough of my shit to deal with. I apologize.” Theo paused, looking into the binoculars with a new intensity. “There’s definitely movement inside the forest.”

  Steve reached to his back and readied his rail gun. Remy went to the all-terrain-vehicle and grabbed his rifle from a mount on the handlebars.

  Pretty big. Size of a rhino. Hundred meters in.”

  “Dangerous?” Ping-Pong asked as he put his weapon to his shoulder.

  “It’s gone. Dipped behind some trees heading south fast. I think it might’ve gone into some kind of burrow the way it went poof,” Theo said.

  Steve looked with his rifle’s scope but saw nothing, even after he adjusted it for low light.

  “Steve.”

  Steve kept looking through his weapon’s optics, focused on the depths of the bottomless forest beneath the dense canopy above. Poking above, almost o
ut of sight were the massive stalks of the strange mushroom-like trees that threatened to scrape the clouds.

  “Steve,” Remy said, repeating his lieutenant.

  “Ping-Pong?” Theo asked.

  “Yeah what’s up?” Steve said, hearing his name.

  The other marines laughed. Theo pointed to the forest. “You cover us. If one of those things decides we’re food I’d like to have a rifle ready. Keep an eye on the tree branches too in case they or something else can climb.”

  “Roger that, sir,” Ping-Pong said, and he settled back into the sight of his weapon.

  “What if they’re intelligent?” Remy posed. “What if we shoot the first intelligent alien life we encounter?”

  “If whatever it is happens to be intelligent, then I hope it won’t charge Exped Marines. Intelligent or not, the three of us are going home alive and in one piece. Ping-Pong, give ’em a warning shot, then blow a hole in ’em big enough to drive through,” Theo said as he opened a jar.

  “I can do that,” Steve replied.

  “Remy, launch a UAV,” he said.

  Remy popped open a hard case the size of a loaf of bread and removed a tiny disc. Inside were three nacelles with tiny turbines. Remy went to his left forearm and tapped a few times. The disc’s motors whirred to life and he tossed it into the air. It stayed still, floating in the air several meters high, awaiting his further instructions.

  “Shit, helmet,” Remy said. He detached his helmet from his belt and slid it on. With a flicker, a corner of his faceplate projected a camera view that originated from the underside of the disc. The surveillance drone transmitted what it flew over in real-time. He told it what to do.

  “Increase elevation to twenty meters above the forest top. Circle in a five hundred meter radius of my position. Observe for movement of non-plants. Highlight and alarm with location.”

  The drone zipped away into the sky high enough that the marines couldn’t see the glint of the intense sun off it. The highly advanced and ancient color-matching camouflage on the top surface of the drone no longer worked, but the caveman-level blue paint on the bottom did. The drone was invisible to the naked eye from the ground.