Outpost Hell

by Jake Bible

  His scream was loud enough to wake the dead. Half his body felt like it had been lit up by plasma fire. Nordanski began to hyperventilate as his shoulder alternated from so excruciating it went white hot numb to a throbbing ache that he could feel deep inside his bones.

  “Oh shit, oh shit, oh shit,” he gasped once the pain began to subside down to a level that allowed him to think and form words.

  He had no idea how long he lay there, but it had to have been a good amount of time because once he felt he had the strength to get back up, the sun was almost directly overhead. It hadn’t been close to that high before.

  It took him a few more minutes to gather himself enough to start walking again. He had no idea which way he needed to go, but any direction was good as long as it was away from the cave. The image of the pile of bones kept flicking through his mind which helped to drive him on anytime he wavered.

  He’d made it maybe half a click before he heard the howls. Long, low howls that joined with the wind and pressed at his back.

  Nordanski risked a look behind, but still couldn’t see anything pursuing him. He certainly heard them, but he had no visual despite the realization that the howls were getting louder and louder with each passing second. The things were gaining on him and he couldn’t figure out how.

  He doubled his effort and tried to pick up speed. It worked for a while until his left foot came down on a chunk of rock that ripped right through his sock and pierced his arch. Nordanski fell to the ground, his hands going for the wounded foot, but he froze just before he touched the arch. He stared at the hunk of flesh that hung from his foot and flapped in the wind. He hadn’t pierced his arch; he’d flayed the skin right off it. There it was, a good twenty centimeters of Nordanski hanging loose and almost free as he held his foot up.

  He wanted to throw up, but he couldn’t spare the liquid. Nordanski fought back his gorge and wracked his brain for solutions. He needed to stitch the wound or he risked bleeding out. Extremities bled like a bitch. The pool of blood that darkened the sand under him was proof of that.

  The howls grew louder and louder then cut off abruptly.

  Nordanski turned his head this way and that way, but there was still no sign of anything after him. Maybe sounds carried on the wind. He rejected that thought as a strong gust slammed into him. If anything, the howls would have been drowned out by the ever-increasing maelstrom that surrounded Nordanski on all sides.

  The sun started to darken, and Nordanski glanced up to see those yellow clouds coming together into one single bank. Heat lightning streaked through the clouds, adding to the ominous look.

  Nordanski had no idea what to do. There was no way he could get up and walk. Hell, he couldn’t even limp. Even if he dragged his foot behind him, being upright would drive the blood flow down through the wound and he’d bleed out even faster. He was flat out stuck.

  There was a grunt and snuffle off to his right. Nordanski spun his head around, but saw nothing. Nothing. Nothing. Nothing.

  “Come on!” he yelled into the wind. “Show your damn selves!”

  More grunting with what Nordanski thought might have been words. Or maybe just elaborate growls.

  “Where are you, huh?” Nordanski shouted. “You want a piece of me? Then come and get it! I’ll kick your Eight Million Gods damned asses!”

  A snort right by his left ear made him whirl and he found himself face to face with…something.

  “What the bloody hell are you?” Nordanski asked as a fist found his face and he was returned to an almost welcome unconsciousness.

  ***

  “Cards on the table,” Kay said as she took a seat in a rickety-looking chair that was set against the small room’s wall.

  There were four more chairs in the room, all lined up next to hers, and she grabbed one and shoved it to the center of the room, indicating with a nod of her chin for Taman to take a seat.

  “You’re gonna be straight with me or we’ve got nothing more to talk about and I have my friend start cutting down your people like they’re Skrang troopers,” Kay growled. “If you aren’t up on your War terminology, for a GF Marine to say that means your people are going to die. Horribly.”

  “I am very aware of the implications of that statement, Private Kay,” Taman said. “I assure you that there is no need for such a threat. I will, as you say, lay all the cards on the table.”

  “Then get to it,” Kay said. “I’m all out of patience.”

  Taman looked like he wanted to respond to that, but he only shook his head instead and took his seat. He fiddled at the cuffs of his sleeves for a few seconds then took a deep breath and looked Kay directly in the eye.

  “This was a Galactic Fleet outpost,” Taman said.

  “Move along to what I don’t know,” Kay said.

  “I am, but you need some background first,” Taman said, holding up a hand. “Please bear with me, if you will be so kind.”

  “I don’t know about how kind I’ll be if you continue to stall,” Kay snapped.

  “I am not stalling,” Taman said. “You’ll quickly see why this is relevant.”

  He cleared his throat and returned his eyes to the cuffs of his shirt as he worried at them over and over.

  “At its height, this outpost housed over three hundred Marines,” Taman said. Kay began to protest, but he held up a hand and she closed her mouth. “Yes, it is hardly believable, I know. It seemed incredible to me as a young boy.”

  “Young boy?” Kay asked.

  “I was brought here with my parents as support staff,” Taman said. He laughed, high and bitter. “That was their official title. In reality, they were indentured servants.”

  “You come from dents?” Kay asked then smiled and held up her hands. “Sorry. Go on.”

  “I came from dents, yes,” Taman said. He glanced at the closed door. “As did every single soul out in that corridor. I grew up on this planet, never having set foot off it even once. This sandy rock has been all I have known. For the first fifteen years of my life, I was fine with that. We cannot miss what we do not know, right?

  “The reason I did not know what I was missing was due to the fact that this outpost was not on any books. It was a black site, I believe they are called. Covert and completely secret to the rest of the Galactic Fleet. In the years since, I have come to find out that maybe only a dozen people knew this outpost was here. If that many.”

  “You aren’t the youngest person here,” Kay said. “So that means a lot of your people were born on this planet?”

  “Most of them, yes,” Taman responded. “Obviously the children, but except for about eight or nine others, the majority are born and bred natives. Not that it matters. I was so young when I came here that I have no memory of any place else.”

  Taman paused and looked up at the lighting panel that glowed dully in its recessed alcove in the ceiling. He squinted into the light and shook his head.

  “Fifteen years my parents worked here,” Taman continued. “My mother was an atmospheric engineer. It sounds fancier than what it was. Basically, she cleaned the air scrubber vents once a day to maintain the purity of the air inside the outpost. That was very important. Contamination from the outside was not tolerated, and we had watched families get evicted for breaking protocols. The outpost was run with strict adherence to those protocols. Very strict adherence.

  “Those protocols…”

  Taman trailed off and his attention returned to the light above. He squinted into it despite the fact that it was far from bright. If Kay applied two filter settings to her helmet’s faceplate, the room would be almost pitch dark.

  “My father worked in another area of the outpost,” Taman said, eyes still on the light. “His job title was Organic Waste Disposal Captain. I used to salute him when I was little. Then I found out what exactly he did and I stopped saluting. I stopped talking to him for two weeks, terrified that if I said the wrong thing he’d dispose of me.”

  “Organic waste?” Kay asked w
hen Taman paused and didn’t look like he would continue. “What organics are we talking about?”

  “What organics would cause you to stop speaking to one of your parents out of fear?” Taman asked, bringing his gaze to Kay. “It most certainly was not table scraps.”

  “Eight Million Gods,” Kay exclaimed. “People? Your father disposed of people? Deceased, I hope.”

  “I had hoped as well,” Taman said. “Unfortunately, later on in my childhood, I discovered that not to be the case. And, to be clear, the people were from all races, not just humans. In fact, the vast majority of bodies that needed disposing of were not human in origin.”

  The words “in origin” echoed in Kay’s head. Stories, tales told by bored Marines and Fleet personnel, rushed up from her memory and slammed into the forefront of her mind. Black sites. Planets where experimentation, highly illegal experimentation, was conducted on unwilling subjects in order to create…something.

  Many stories were of the military variety. Programs to create the perfect soldier. Programs that took DNA from one race and inserted it into another race to combine positive attributes. Programs that went horribly awry and were shut down, never to be spoken of again.

  Kay swallowed hard and struggled to not look around the room, even though it was bare and would not yield any information confirming or denying Taman’s story. She felt watched, observed, like she was a subject destined for experimentation.

  “Yes, the idea is insidious,” Taman said, his eyes studying her face. “It gets in you and won’t let go. What were they doing? What were they creating? How could they get away with it?”

  “How could they?” Kay asked despite herself. “Never mind. It’s the GF. They get away with what they want to get away with.”

  She cleared her throat and tried to look unconcerned, as if she was simply listening to a court deposition about the average rainfall on planet Bax.

  “So, what happened?” Kay asked. “When did it all stop?”

  “I wouldn’t so much say that it stopped,” Taman said. “More like it collapsed in on itself. Similar to a sand cave that holds its shape only because a miracle of coincidence has allowed the wind to hollow out the space in perfect symmetry. But the second that symmetry is upset, it all falls apart.”

  “The subjects escaped?” Kay asked.

  “Escaped is not the word I would use,” Taman said. “Simply because there was nowhere to escape to. Revolted would be a more apt term.”

  “The subjects revolted and did what? Killed the scientists? Killed the Marines?” Kay asked.

  “The scientists. The Marines. The support staff,” Taman said. “My parents included. My father was butchered as soon as he started his shift. We never saw him again after he finished breakfast and left for work that morning. It was weeks later before my mother died.

  “I watched it happen. Saw it all before my own eyes. They started with her limbs, tearing them straight from their sockets and flinging them across the room. There was so much blood. Like four geysers exploding into the air all at once.

  “Oh, but she was strong, my mother. She stayed alive for several minutes, screaming my name over and over until finally her throat was ripped out. The subject that did that showed absolutely zero remorse. Zero.”

  “Taman? You said there were Marines,” Kay said. “You said that the Marines took Nordanski. That they weren’t Marines like us, though. What does that mean?”

  “The subjects were vengeful,” Taman said. “They didn’t just want freedom, they wanted justice. Justice for everything that had been done to them. So they took the surviving Marines and they repeated the experiments on those men. If you had heard the screams, you would have fainted dead away.”

  “I’ve heard screams before,” Kay said. “Probably more than you can imagine. Never fainted once.”

  “Good for you,” Taman said. “But I stand by my statement.”

  Kay shivered.

  Taman coughed and gave her a sad smile.

  “Perhaps that is enough explanation?” Taman asked. “While I understand that you have a loyalty to your fellow Marines, even ones you have not served with, you have to understand that the…things out there are no longer men and women. They do not deserve your loyalty. They have been changed and have perpetrated acts of such violence because of those changes that any sympathy you may feel is massively misdirected. There were so many more of us at one time. So many more. They have whittled down our numbers to what you have seen. They are why we must find a way off this planet. If we do not, then it is only a matter of time before they kill us all.”

  “Yeah, I see your point,” Kay said. “But there is one piece of this puzzle that isn’t fitting.”

  “Yes, you have every right to be skeptical,” Taman said. “Why trust my word?”

  “No, it’s not that,” Kay said. “You sound perfectly sincere. It’s just that an operation on the scale you have described would need a considerable amount of space. Way more than what I’ve seen.”

  Taman smiled, but it faded quickly.

  “You are observant,” Taman said. “Yes, these four buildings could not possibly meet the requirements of the operation. But the space below the buildings is more than sufficient.”

  “Space below?” Kay asked.

  Taman nodded. “Come. I suppose it is time to put all the cards on the table, as you say.”

  ***

  The leg held.

  It more than held; it felt fantastic. For a battle-scarred veteran of the War like Manheim, it was as if he had been supplied with a full body’s worth of fresh blood. He hopped up and down on his legs like a new recruit.

  Until his normal leg buckled and he nearly fell on his ass.

  “I will need to adjust your armor’s compensation rates,” the AI said. “You have taken to your prosthetic faster than expected. Your flesh and bone leg will need help in compensating for the extra power on your repaired side.”

  “You could dial back the armor on my left side,” Manheim suggested.

  “I would prefer to not tax your prosthetic prematurely,” the AI said. “Despite how fit it may feel to you.”

  “Okay, work on the good side,” Manheim said. “Don’t take too long, got it? I need to get geared up and into that outpost ASAP.”

  “Please stand on the platform,” the AI said.

  Manheim stepped onto a disc set into the armory’s floor. As soon as he was stationary, his battle armor began to whir and click until he felt an almost imperceptible pressure increase on his right leg.

  “There you go, Sergeant Manheim,” the AI said. “Your suit is now in balanced order.”

  “Excellent,” Manheim said as he left the disc and waved his wrist over the lock on a storage locker against the wall.

  The locker’s door slid aside to reveal several rows of carbines, pistols, knives, stun batons, grenades, and other assorted weaponry. Manheim helped himself, taking a pistol for each hip, a carbine to sling across his back and one to carry, several grenades that he affixed to his belt, and two knives, each of which he slid into compartments on his boots.

  “AI? Show me external vid,” Manheim ordered as he grabbed up his helmet and clicked it into place over his head.

  The vid feed came up on his faceplate’s display, and he switched between views until he was satisfied that there was nothing outside the drop ship waiting to ambush him.

  “Comms still down?” Manheim asked.

  “Yes, Sergeant,” the AI replied. “I have even tried rerouting the transmitter signal through the hull of the ship in order to boost its effectiveness, but that did not help. It is my estimation that our comm system is being intentionally jammed.”

  “That was my thought too,” Manheim said.

  Manheim made his way from the armory to the rear hatch. He had no intention of being boxed into one of the airlocks. If anything was going to come at him, it would have to do it by coming up the ramp and taking him head on.

  4

  Far from su
rprised at the where he was waking up in, Nordanski was more surprised that he was waking up at all.

  “Ugh,” he uttered, his head feeling like ten kilos of crap shoved into a one-kilo sack.

  “Ghhoghassa,” a voice growled from a couple meters away.

  Nordanski started, realized he was bound tight, struggled for a few useless seconds, calmed himself, then stared into the gloom of the cave. A shape, looking like it was part of the rock wall, sat huddled and still across from him.

  “Ghhoghassa,” the shape repeated. “Mgy foo?”

  “Uh…” was all Nordanski could say in return. He still wasn’t sure why he was alive and not crushed to death by one of the many large rocks that littered the cave floor. “Hello?”

  “Hgluh,” the shape said.

  It waddled forward in its crouch, knees up to the sides of its face, hands placed on the ground like paws.

  “Hgluh,” the shape said again. “Hgluh.”

  Nordanski could barely make it out. The cave was much darker than it had been the first time he’d woken up. He turned and noticed a thick drape made from something he wasn’t sure he wanted to know covering the cave’s entrance. Outside light filtered through the drape, but barely. It was only enough for Nordanski to see blurred outlines and indistinct shapes, including the one that continued to waddle towards him.

  “Sheb faglah,” the shape said. “Faglah?”

  Nordanski’s implant should have translated the language. Even if it was unknown to the database, the implant would have tried an approximation. Another puzzle piece to an already brutally puzzling day.

  “No idea what you are saying,” Nordanski replied. “Faglah? What’s that?”

  “Faglah!” the shape exclaimed and clapped its hands.

  “NOG FO TUMWA!” a voice boomed from deeper in the cave and a second shape appeared. It stomped forward, loose-skinned hands clenched into huge fists. “NOG!”

  The first shape leapt to its feet, and Nordanski gasped when he realized the crouching shape had been considerably farther away from him than he first thought. What he’d assumed was a small being, turned out to be as huge as the other that had come in shouting.