Rise of the Carnelians (Europa)

by Jason Gehlert

  Ulysses simply stood there agape with fright. The organism had been mere inches from burrowing itself into the back of the engineer’s neck.

  “I owe you my life,” Ulysses whispered to Shaw.

  “You’d do the same for me,” Shaw replied with a sharp wince.

  “Hell yeah, I would.” Ulysses reached his arm around Shaw and helped the staggering survivor down the corridor.

  Kaspar was bringing up the rear with Gillian when he suddenly heard another noise.

  “That sound’s coming from the hangar bay.” Kaspar nudged Gillian. “Did we ever do a headcount after the crash?”

  “Yeah, I’m pretty sure we did.” Gillian’s eyes shifted towards the bay. She tightened her grip on the 9mm and stared over at the bay’s closed doors.

  “Well, I guess we left out somebody,” Kaspar said. He raised his own 9mm and covered the bay doors. “Ulysses, take Shaw and duck into the medical lab.”

  “Come on, in here,” Ulysses said. He ushered Shaw into the room and found a safe spot away from Kaspar’s position.

  Kaspar waited patiently while the bay doors slid open with a swift motion.

  One by one, something clamped its fingers around the bay door’s, prying them open like an elevator.

  Kaspar and Gillian raised their weapons and aimed point blank at the approaching intruder.

  “We have you surrounded,” Kaspar barked out.

  “Please, don’t shoot,” a human voice cried and the commander let up on the trigger.

  “Randolph Kray, the Abagail’s chef,” Gillian said with a mumbled chortle. “You had us scared shitless. Are you okay?” She noticed streams of dried blood that had collected on the side of his face.

  “Come on,” Kaspar responded as he helped Kray limp into the corridor. “We’re glad you were able to make it. That was one hell of a crash.”

  “Everything’s blurry.” Kray rubbed his hands over his throbbing forehead. “I remember the ship crashing through the bay’s doors. After that...” Kray trailed off, his eyes fixating on the corridor. “I hit the floor hard, and the pots and pans crashed on top of me. The knives also went flying, and the appliances were scattered about the kitchen. I think I might’ve suffered some sort of concussion.”

  “I had one of those, too,” Kaspar said sympathetically. “Let Gillian and I get you into the medical lab and fix you up.”

  “I’d appreciate that very much.” Kray was favoring his right leg. “I think one of those knives might have cut into my foot.”

  “We’ll check it out.” Kaspar helped Randolph limp over to one of the beds.

  “With what?” Gillian asked. “The pompous asshole over there just killed our resident medical officer.”

  “My, what a sharp tongue,” Kray responded with a quirky look on his weary and beaten face.

  “She’s fiery, alright.” Kaspar walked over to Shaw and Ulysses.

  “We don’t have much time,” Shaw spat out the warning roaming the medical lab. “We will need more weapons. These things won’t quit until we are all dead.”

  “Sounds like you have some experience,” Ulysses countered.

  “I’m hungry. Can we eat? I will explain everything over a nice dinner,” Shaw catered to the crew’s appetites, promising further information about his team after the main course.

  “I like that idea,” Ulysses said. “We could use some food and drink. Regroup our senses and come up with a sound plan of attack.”

  “Spoken like a true scholar.” Kaspar let out a hearty laugh.

  “Let’s get Shaw and Kray bandaged up first, and then our resident chef can fire up some freeze dried food.” Ulysses smacked his hands together.

  Gillian and Ulysses tended to the injured parties, while Kaspar did one more round of the corridors, securing their position.

  Randolph Kray was in dire need of medical attention. He hobbled over to the bed and laid down ready for Ulysses inspection. His entire body was wracked with pain and distortion from the Abagail’s intense crash. His left foot was swollen and throbbing. Kray gingerly took off his boot and allowed Ulysses a peek at the black and blue area. Ulysses deduced that the foot might be broken.

  “Man, that doesn’t look good,” Ulysses said while he inspected Kray’s wound.

  “How do you know?” the chef asked.

  “It looks like a deep bone contusion, possibly a tendon tear,” Ulysses tapped his finger on top of Kray’s injured foot. The left big toe was dangling underneath the foot, a sign of a severed tendon.

  “Are you a doctor?” Shaw interjected.

  “I am a grandfather, and I have seen my fair share of injuries, not only to myself, but to my grandchildren as well.”

  “I have to agree, your foot doesn’t look so hot,” Gillian added.

  “So, the plan is...?” Shaw clutched his ribs gingerly.

  “Kray, you are going to have to stay off your foot as much as possible. I fear you’ve torn the main tendon that runs across the top of your foot.”

  “How can you tell?”

  “Well, you have almost zero mobility in your left toe.”

  “I understand.”

  “Shaw, can you try to find some crutches in here while I bandage up the good chef?” Ulysses snapped open the nearest first-aid box and worked on Kray’s injury.

  “Here,” Shaw walked over the silver pair of crutches.

  “Height?” Ulysses asked Kray.

  “Five-eight, five-nine. You know, give or take a inch.” Kray spun around on the bed and faced Shaw.

  Shaw tipped over the crutches and slid the small metal ball into the proper slot, adjusting the crutches’ height so Kray would be comfortable.

  “Thanks,” Kray said thankfully. “So, where’s the kitchen in this place?”

  “It’s down the corridor,” Gillian looked over the map on the wall. “It’s just past the artillery room.”

  “What about the cafeteria, or mess hall?” Kray asked.

  “The cafeteria is right across the hall, actually.” Gillian traced the map with her right index finger.

  “Are we ready?” Kaspar said, entering the room. “The corridor’s clear.”

  “Yeah, we’re ready,” Gillian replied.

  “Follow me and stay close.”

  “I don’t intend to stray here,” Kray muttered softly. His eyes caught the morbid remains of one of the crew members crumpled on the floor inside the control room.

  “That’s Reggie,” Shaw grumbled. “The poor fucker never had a chance.”

  “Chance?” Kaspar asked.

  “A chance at surviving those alien organisms.” Shaw walked steadily behind Kaspar and Gillian.

  “Here we go,” Gillian reported back to the team. “The kitchen.” Her words were muffled amongst the trashed room. The pots and pans were lying about the sticky floor. Packages of food and juice were ripped open, The horizontal freezer door in the far corner of the kitchen was slightly ajar. Smeared across the metal were streaks of green blood.

  “What the hell happened in here?” Kaspar asked Shaw.

  “They must’ve gotten in here.” Shaw approached the freezer. His fingers curled into a tight fist as he slowly raised the freezer door. “They are persistent little fuckers, I’ll give them that.”

  “Stand back, Shaw,” Kaspar barked his order.

  “For what?” Shaw demanded. “You think that pop gun will stop them?”

  “I’m going to take the chance that another crew member will be attacked.”

  “Save the speech.” Shaw ignored the order and fully opened the door, which illuminated the interior of the freezer. “They don’t like the light.”

  “What?” Kaspar asked.

  Shaw peered inside the freezer and reached in. “They don’t like the light, or fire for that matter.” He hurled a frozen item across the room in Kaspar’s direction.

  Kaspar unloaded on a freeze-dried packet of peas, sending the green pods flying all over the kitchen.

  “Nice job, Quickdr
aw,” Shaw said with a curled grin that stretched across his lower lip. His chin wrinkled up and his eyes narrowed. “You saved us from a box of dried up peas.” Shaw continued to pick apart the freezer’s contents, throwing boxes of vegetables and cartons of ice cream to the rest of the crew.

  Shaw rubbed his face and glanced at the ragtag crew. “Well, we can’t fight these things on an empty stomach, now can we?” Shaw tossed a blue and white box of pearl onions to Ulysses. “Let’s make sure we all send a nice, heartwarming note thanking the participating supermarkets for all of these great products.” Shaw grinned. “Central Market Moose Tracks Ice Cream?”

  “Can we all head back to the mess hall now?” Ulysses returned the favor and chucked the onions back at Shaw. “Here’s your feast.”

  Shaw’s Story

  The Abagail’s chef, Randolph Kray, had finally brought out the anticipated feast to the waiting crew. They needed this break in action. A time to regroup and re-focus on the moon’s perplexing problem.

  “What have you prepared for us?” Shaw asked. “My team never had a chef.”

  “I took the vegetables and made a nice casserole, using the green beans, peas, onions, peppers, and mushrooms.” Kray slid the hot plate into the center of the table.

  “Looks good, Randy,” Kaspar began to dish out the plates.

  “What’s for dessert?” Gillian begged.

  “The ice cream that Shaw found in the freezer.” Kray smiled. “I’ve also found some unused chocolate topping and a can of marshmallow creme.

  “Anything else?” Kaspar asked.

  “I managed to salvage some rolls and bread from the bottom of the freezer. And, frozen sticks of butter, cereal boxes, peanut butter, jelly, and a horde of other items.” Kray was excited at finding all the ingredients. He reminded Kaspar of a kid getting loose in a candy store.

  “NASA packed us full of goodies for the trip here.” Shaw shoveled the vegetable concoction into his waiting mouth, cramming every corner. “I didn’t think any of that survived when they attacked the station.”

  “We keep finding things on the ship,” Ulysses interjected.

  “I thought I’d never taste this shit again,” Shaw replied while he continued to slam the food into his maw.

  “Randy here makes one hell of a dinner.” Kaspar raised his glass of water to the honored chef.

  “Why, thank you.” Kray returned the gesture.

  “By the way, where’s Adrian?” Gillian scanned the room. “He should’ve checked in by now.”

  “I’ll go check the monitors,” Ulysses offered rising from his seat.

  “Here.” Kaspar handed him the 9mm. “Watch your ass.”

  “I’ll wait until you come back to start my story.” Shaw used his tongue to lick off the tasty remains of the dinner from his fingers. “Mr. Kray, I applaud your fine efforts here tonight. The dinner was excellent.”

  Ulysses heard that last line of dialogue from Shaw as the engineer made his way down the corridor. Randy definitely made a favorable feast. Ulysses’s stomach was filled to the brim and couldn’t take one more morsel of food.

  He had a bad feeling about this place. After he checked in on Adrian’s progress, he was going to suggest to Kaspar that they start repairing the ship immediately. Ulysses knew there had to be a reason why the previous team was decimated aboard the space station, without any signs of a struggle. They were just torn apart.

  The monitors were all covered in a snowy haze. Reggie was still sprawled about the control room, making a tricky step for Ulysses.

  “Adrian, do you hear me?” Ulysses tried to find Adrian’s frequency.

  Silence returned over the radio.

  “Shit.” Ulysses surveyed the conditions inside the room. One of the monitors started to shake off the snowy reception. Ulysses couldn’t make out the location. It was dark and blurry. It resembled a cave or something. The slow pace indicated to Ulysses that either Adrian or Philene could be hurt and in need of immediate medical assistance.

  “Adrian, can you hear me?” Ulysses again repeated into the blood smeared microphone.

  Ulysses could hear a distortion of some sort. He was unable to clarify if it was indeed Adrian.

  Adrian Blakely shook off the cobwebs and walked out of the cave, attempting to head back to the space station. He felt different. That fall had jarred something loose inside his head. His eyes were experiencing some blurriness, probably a direct result of a mild concussion. Adrian hit the ground hard after the vicious impact. He teetered from side to side, attempting to regain some sort of balance.

  “Where...” he stammered off into space. His eyes throbbed. His skin seemed to crawl underneath his suit. He was starting to lose his mind.

  Adrian eventually approached the area where Seth and Angela were scouting. He could see the bloody ice where Angela was attacked. He saw no sign of Seth. Off in the distance, Adrian did see the chamber, and a blurry figure walking around in the control room. Adrian reached into his pocket and found his last flare. He impatiently loaded it into the gun and fired off a shot into the air.

  Adrian hoped someone would see the flare. His entire body was aching and he felt like he was being torn apart from all directions. It was probably an after-effect of the moon’s gravitational pull.

  Looking down, Adrian saw the stranded harpoon gun that Seth had found. He clasped his fingers around the weapon and brought it to his chest.

  Ulysses stared out the window and caught the tail end of the flare through the window. “Adrian!” He watched this entire event as it unfolded. “Look at the poor guy. He’s all alone out there, fighting for his life. He needs help and fast.”

  “So, start the story already,” Gillian, wanting Shaw to spill the beans.

  “Shouldn’t we wait for the old guy?” Shaw asked.

  “Oh, we will fill him in.” Kaspar took a healthy bite from his dinner.

  “Okay. Okay.” Shaw took a chomp out of his buttered roll. The crumbs crumbled down his long fingers and spread out over the plate in a random pattern.

  “When we landed here over eight months ago, we were on top of the world.” Shaw took a breath. “President Faulkner had this vision, and President Forsythe made it a reality. We were ecstatic to be a part of it.” Shaw munched on another piece of bread. “Has that bloody volcano erupted in the park?”

  “Actually, Yellowstone erupted and wiped out Earth as we know it today,” Gillian said.

  “We knew it would only be a matter of time.”

  “Please, go on,” Gillian urged.

  “After we landed, we did some scouting. The previous team here succeeded in doing some drilling into the icy crust. They left behind their own legacy before moving on.”

  “Legacy?” Gillian inquired. “Where did they go?”

  “I don’t know. I know NASA had another mission for them. Whereabouts exactly? I don’t know. I wasn’t privy to the office memo,” Shaw griped. “Anyway, my team consisted of Captain Nigel Brody, Ellen Michaels our resident geologist, who, by the way, spoke very fondly of a Gillian Shea. I take it that would be you?” Shaw asked.

  “In the flesh. Is Ellen alive?” Gillian seemed excited at the prospect of meeting her mentor.

  Shaw’s despondent stare gave Gillian the hard answer. “No. What a loss. She had such a great mind. And, then our communication’s expert, Reggie Hooper.”

  “It sounded like you had everything in place for a successful mission.” Kaspar took a sip from his glass. “This previous team had set you up perfectly. Kray, can you go find some Vodka, please?”

  “Yes, sir,” Kray answered and retreated into the kitchen.

  “We unpacked, stuffed away our gear, food, weapons, and prepared for life aboard the space station.” Shaw shifted in his seat. “Of course, I take it you didn’t factor in the rough landing either, and your ship took a kick in the ass? I could hear that god-awful sound from the generator room, where I was hiding from the Carnelians.”

  Kaspar nodded. “We hit the
docking bay hard, yes. You too?”

  “Nigel overreacted and hit the docking bay with a thud. The Amity’s internal hyper drive was smashed and the engines took a severe beating.”

  “Ouch. Who is your mechanic?” Kaspar inquired.

  “Nigel was our captain and mechanic. Once he died, that left us royally fucked.” Shaw rose and paced around the room. “Anyway, I’ll get to that later.”

  Kray returned with Vodka, rum, and armfuls of others he found in the ransacked kitchen.

  Kaspar eagerly poured himself a hearty glass of Vodka. “Would you like a drink, Shaw?”

  “Rum, please.”

  Kaspar poured a drink for Shaw and listened intently.

  “So,” Shaw said raising the sweet-smelling liquor to his lips. “We came here with a plan. Our mission was to insert thermal fission bombs into the moon’s icy surface, and with that, speed up the heating core. The volcanoes underneath the surface would explode, unleashing a mammoth heat wave, which would melt the ice and bring the ocean below to the surface.”

  “That sounds like a very ambitious plan,” Gillian said. Kaspar slid over a glass of Vodka to her, as well.

  “Yeah, it was. And it worked. All too well.” Shaw gulped down the rum and wiped away the liquor from his mouth with the back of his hand. “What we didn’t realize was how successful the previous team was in their mission.”

  “What happened next?” Gillian asked.

  “This world is a vampire,” Shaw said with a grimace. “Sent to drain our blood.”

  “What?” Gillian was confused.

  “It must be the liquor talking.” Kaspar interjected.

  “In our ambitious and self-centered plan to warm up the moon’s surface, and gather water and oxygen, we accidentally thawed out some interesting species from underneath the icy surface.” Shaw squinted at the taste of the fresh Vodka he had just poured into his glass.

  “Those animals in the science lab?” Gillian asked.

  “They are the mild ones.” Shaw tapped his empty glass on the table, urging Kaspar to refill his glass with more rum. “We’ve uncovered a deadly new species. This new organism had taken us right by our balls and shows no signs of letting up. They want to get off the moon just as bad as we did when this whole thing hit the fan.”