by S. A. Lusher
“What about the other scans?”
“Nothing. No energy signatures. No odd biological agents. No strange chemical agents. The atmosphere is clean.”
“Shit...all right, thanks. We're going to head out. Keep the ship locked up tight and maintain radio contact,” Greg replied.
“I'm familiar with standard protocol,” she replied, a note of irritation creeping into her voice.
“I...yeah, sorry. It's kind of scary out here.”
“It's fine. Good luck.”
Greg stared at the horrific landscape again, trying to gather his thoughts, wondering what other horrors the planet might have in store for them.
“Well...I guess this is it. We need to get a move on,” he said, though he really, really didn't want to leave the ship or the area around it.
What he wanted to do was to turn right back around, get onto the Raptor and make for orbit. And never fucking come back to this place.
But that wasn't an option.
They had a job to do.
With a soft sigh, Greg began driving off towards his destination and an uncertain future.
CHAPTER 06
–Watched–
Jennifer was trying to keep her attention focused on scanning the area for hostiles or any kind of signs of life, but her eyes kept getting drawn to the horizon and the things that occupied it. They were like something out of an insane horror novel. They'd been driving for just about a minute now, but it felt like much, much longer. Behind them, the ship had faded into the distance. Greg wasn't going very fast, as if he didn't trust the terrain, despite the fact that it all seemed flat. Jennifer didn't blame him, she didn't trust it either.
What made her most nervous of all was the fact that there was something on the horizon ahead of them, something low and broad and fast approaching.
It wasn't the colony, it was too soon.
“What is that?” Greg muttered.
“I don't know, looks like a structure,” Keron replied. “It shouldn't be there.”
Jennifer continued studying it, but it just seemed like a low, dark thing.
“Whatever it is, we're going to be on it soon. We might want to think about investigating it,” Greg replied. Jennifer and Keron remained silent, leaving it up to him. She had the idea that he didn't particularly like that, but she didn't want to lead this operation. Things were insane enough as it was. She looked again to the horizon.
And the strange, dark monolithic giants that shifted occasionally. Maybe it was just an optical illusion. Was it even physically possible for something that large to exist? Wasn't there some kind of law of nature that kept beings from getting that massive? Even the largest creatures they'd ever discovered, either still alive or through their buried remains deep in the earth of newly discovered planets, would be utterly dwarfed by these things, like a minnow alongside a whale or a gnat beside an albatross.
“Be ready,” Greg said. “We're almost there.”
Jennifer made herself focus. The structure was about a hundred meters ahead of them and quickly approaching. She made sure her weapons were ready and tried to calm herself down. There may be survivors around, they had absolutely no idea what the situation was going in. As they drew closer and she got a better view of it, Jennifer realized that it wasn't a structure at all. It was more a very strange collection of rock formations.
They didn't seem natural.
Besides the layout of them that seemed somehow planned, the rocks themselves didn't exactly look like rocks. Or, at least, not like any she'd seen before. They were dull, black, misshapen things that looked like they had been slammed into the earth from somewhere high above. As they made the final approach, Greg slowed the jeep.
“What do you make of this?” he muttered, staring at it. This close, the shape of the rocks almost resembled abnormal, angular crystal formations. They were packed closely enough that they did almost seem to form a kind of maze between them.
“I don't know, but...” Jennifer hesitated as she scanned the rocks. Something, a shadowy shape that was a shade darker than the rocks around it, shifted, disappeared from sight. “I saw something.”
“I saw it too,” Keron said.
“Shit,” Greg muttered. He reached out and played with the dashboard controls. “Hold on, running a BioScan, see if it can pick anything up.”
“We should investigate,” Keron murmured, his voice low. He was staring in between the two front-most rock formations.
“Maybe,” Greg said hesitantly. He sighed. “Something's interfering with the scan. Of course it is, I don't know why we even bother with these fucking things anymore.”
“Should we investigate?” Keron asked. He seemed almost eager.
“Yeah...” Greg replied. “I suppose so. One of us needs to stay with the jeep and watch our back,” he added.
“I'll go,” Jennifer said. She felt she might regret volunteering but she also felt that she needed to face down a challenge, do something to get the creeping fear off of her back.
“Let's go,” Keron replied, hopping up and out of the back of the jeep. He landed with a heavy thud and the whole frame of the vehicle bounced as he departed.
Jennifer got out of the vehicle and unslung her rifle, switching the safety off.
“Five minutes,” Greg said. “No more.”
“Got it,” Keron replied.
As she stepped up to the pair of dull black formations, Jennifer focused herself, bringing her mind to a place of calm, of attention, of (ideally) fearlessness. It was something she called on in times of great duress, something that had failed her, to varying degrees, back on the asteroid. Not this time. She followed Keron's lead into strange rock garden. As soon as they stepped inside, something seemed to change, almost imperceptibly.
It was quieter, the distant sounds of Ash cut off, as though they'd entered an indoor area, except that they hadn't. There was no roof and although the formations were packed closely together, there were obvious holes in them. It almost seemed like they had entered a pocket dimension, a subspace, a world within the world.
“There,” Keron said suddenly. “I saw something.”
He marched off down a natural alcove between the rock formations. Jennifer hurried to follow him, keeping a sharp eye out for any anomalies. They reached the end of the alcove and stopped, faced with two directions now, left and right.
Keron looked left, Jennifer took the right. She aimed her rifle down the next alcove. “Nothing,” she reported.
“Same,” Keron said softly. “I think we should-”
He stopped speaking abruptly.
“Keron?”
Nothing. Dead silence. “Keron, what is it?”
She didn't want to take her eyes off the corridor ahead, sensing that there was something just out of sight, something just around the corner. Risking a glance over her shoulder, she let out a startled gasp when she saw that Keron was gone.
“Keron?”
She turned fully around, staring down the next passageway and seeing nothing but the brittle bleached dirt and the ugly obsidian formations. He was flat out gone, as if he had simply popped out of existence. For a moment, she was stymied, uncertain of how to proceed. Jennifer activated her radio. “Greg, can you hear me?”
More silence mocked her.
“Keron? Greg? Anyone?”
Dead air. Jennifer fought for control. She had to find Keron. Coming to this place was a very bad idea. She set off down the way Keron had been facing. It seemed like the only logical choice. He obviously hadn't gone the other direction and he would have had to have bumped into her if he had, for whatever reason, retreated back the way they'd come. To either side of her were holes in the rock formations, offering views into other alcoves. She kept checking them out as she passed them, expecting to see something staring back at her.
As she made it about halfway down the passageway, she saw a flash of something blocking the view and heard a whispered word. Skidding to a halt, nearly tripping, she took tw
o quick steps back and looked through the hole.
Nothing there now.
“Keron?” Still nothing.
The longer she stayed in here, the more paranoid she got, as if there was something kind of invisible countdown occurring, each second bringing her closer to some unnameable horror. She made herself keep walking until she reached the end of the alcove. Another two directions awaited her, another choice to make.
Nothing and no one to the left or the right.
But now she heard whispering again. It was faint, almost beyond the edge of her hearing. Standing perfectly still, she listened. It got louder, more insistent. It was not, as Jennifer originally thought, one voice that was whispering, but many. Her heart began to pick up its pace in her ribcage, thrumming with nervous energy.
She wanted to leave, but she had to find Keron. There was no way she was leaving without him. She chose right and hurried down the next path marked out by the formations. She'd left her radio on and occasionally she sent out a call to Greg and Keron. There wasn't even static by way of a response. Just the endless quietude of a dead channel.
Ahead of her, something leaped across another opening, something dark and vaguely shaped. She was reminded for an instant of the uncertain creature that had stalked her on the asteroid. Jennifer raced down the pathway, rifle raised, finger in the trigger. She jerked around the corner to the right, expecting to see the same shadowy figured.
Instead she saw, and nearly shot, Keron.
“Where'd you go?” he asked, sounding actually a bit strained for once. “I lost track of you...it was like you had vanished.”
“Same thing with you. I turned around and you were gone.”
All around them, the whispering was getting louder, stronger, intensifying
“We need to leave this place,” Keron said, looking around, “I can't contact Bishop.”
“I can't either.”
They began retracing Jennifer's steps, heading down the long natural alcoves between the formations, trying to get back to the entrance as quickly as possible. The whispering was building now. In the holes they passed, she kept seeing things, odd, dark shapes, what might have been faces or perhaps things without faces.
They took another turn, hurried down another alcove.
The whispering was closer now, seeming to press in on them. It was getting darker, the light slowly draining from the world around them. They hit another corner, turned. Jennifer saw something dark and thin reach out of the nearest wall as she and Keron raced past it. They both dodged away from it and nearly into the reaching grasp of another long, thin prehensile thing that looked vaguely like a tentacle. They both dodged again and then finally burst into the original alcove they'd entered through. Jennifer could just see the hood of the jeep.
A few seconds later they raced through the entrance, nearly running into Greg.
“What the fuck happened!?” he snapped. “You dropped off of the radio.”
“We lost track of each other,” Keron replied.
“There's something in there, I don't know what it is, but there's definitely something in there. I get the feeling that if we'd stuck around for another minute or so, we would have met it personally,” Jennifer said.
Greg stared past them, at the rock formations. The whispering was clearly audible now, but it was receding.
“Well, that was a waste of time,” he muttered. “Come on, I want to get to the colony as quickly as possible. No more detours.”
“Fair enough,” Jennifer replied.
The three of them got back into the jeep and Greg turned the engine on. It stalled for a second, then died. Greg grunted and turned the key again, it revved...stalled...revved...stalled...then it caught, churning to life.
“All we'd fucking need,” Greg muttered. “Get stuck out in here in the middle of this goddamn hellhole.” He smashed the gas and they kicked up plumes of bleached dust as the jeep gained traction and sped away from the unnatural formation.
“What did it look like?” Greg asked. “Whatever was in there?”
“Didn't get a clear look. Shadows, mostly. Darkness. Black tentacles. And the whispering, you heard that,” Jennifer replied. She was turned around, staring at the rock formation as it disappeared behind them.
“I fucking hate this place already. Been here like ten minutes and I hate it,” Greg muttered miserably.
Something stepped out of the rock formation. Something dark and shadowy. Something that had no eyes, no face.
Just darkness.
Jennifer turned away from it and tried to turn her attention to the colony ahead of them, which was slowly coalescing into view.
* * * * *
“What do you make of all this?” Eric asked. He was riding shotgun, Drake in the driver's seat, Parker behind them, silent as a stone, staring off into the distance. Eric was trying to keep his attention inboard.
“I've got no fucking clue what to make this,” Drake replied. He sounded subdued and cautious. “I've seen some crazy shit in my time, all kinds of weird stuff ever since signing on with Hawkins and Anomalous Ops, but nothing even close to this.”
“Wonderful.”
“Don't worry. We'll get it figured out. I mean, we always do.”
“Always?”
“So far, yeah.”
Eric glanced up at the black and red skies overhead. The red lines shooting through the obsidian clouds briefly made him flash back to the nightmare he'd encountered in the core of Theseus Stations. The lines made out of people, constructed of bone and flesh and muscle and hair and teeth. He turned away from that thought as firmly as he could. It was difficult, so instead he tried thinking of Luna. Unfortunately, that made him think of Luna here with him, Luna in danger, Luna dying...suddenly, Drake spoke up, mercifully breaking his train of thought.
“I see something.”
“What?” Parker asked, shifting around in her seat.
“Not sure, looks like it might be structures, maybe some vehicles. There's not supposed to be anything out here,” Drake replied.
“Might be an outpost. Maybe some kind of emergency bunker,” Eric suggested.
“Let's check it out. Weapons ready.”
As they drove closer to the anomaly, Eric began to pick out details. He spied a simple structure, one of those quick-build outposts that they set the Marines up with on frontier worlds. It was basically a simple building that could be assembled in maybe twelve hours if you had determination and enough strong, able-bodied men and women. There were also a few vehicles. He spied three land rovers and a big, boxy cargo hauler.
“Whoa...” Drake said softly as they rolled close enough to see the damage.
And there was a lot of damage to see.
Eric had to agree with him. It looked like the place had been through hell. One of the land rovers was flipped over onto its side, its wheels shredded. The others had their windows broken out and there were bullet holes all along the cargo hauler and the quick-build. Blood, too. Drake brought the jeep to a full stop about a dozen meters shy of the actual camp.
“Parker, watch our back,” Drake said.
“Affirmative,” she replied, standing up in the jeep, rifle to her shoulder. She must have had a good view of the whole area.
Eric got out of the vehicle with Drake after he killed the engine. They both made a slow, steady approach on the makeshift outpost. Eric kept his ears open for any threats, any signs of life, friendly or otherwise, but there was nothing save for the soft whispering of the winds that seemed their constant companion since landing and their boots on the dry, flaky ground. The pair of them slowly began to work their way through the camp.
The first thing they came to was the flipped-over land rover. It looked like a grenade had gone off beneath it. Eric looked inside, trying to find clues as to what might have gone wrong, but the interior was empty. They moved on to the next two rovers, finding more of the same. The windows were mostly broken out and the shards that remained were stained with blood, like
broken teeth lining a ruined mouth. Up next was the loader.
“Parker, you see anything?” Drake asked quietly.
“Nothing,” she replied, her voice hardly more than a whisper over the comms network. It sounded more than a little shaky.
They checked out the front cabin of the cargo-mover, finding the windshields coated in blood and turned milky white, shot through with about a million cracks each from sustained gunfire. In the back, they just found a big, empty, cavernous space.
“What the fuck were they shooting at so much?” Drake asked as they made their final approach on the structure itself.
“I don't know but whatever it was it must've been all around them. I mean, there's no rhyme or reason to these trajectories, it's like a bunch of people just ran all over the damned place, firing machine guns in every possible direction. It looks like pure chaos.”
“We haven't found any bodies yet,” Drake murmured.
“Maybe no one died.”
“This much blood, someone died. Lots of someones.”
“Maybe they pulled their dead and wounded out, got somewhere else.”
“Maybe,” Drake replied, sounding dissatisfied with that assessment. “Whenever there's a lack of bodies around, it usually means something sinister is happening.”
“Learned that the hard way,” Eric muttered. For an instant, he had a clear, perfect vision of seeing Seth's screaming face staring up at him from inside the core of Theseus Station as he planted the bombs.
He could've done without that one.
They stepped carefully into the structure, finding it to be mostly a single room. There were stacks of crates shoved haphazardly along the walls. One of them had toppled over and broken open, spilling its contents of MREs and canteens of water. They cautiously made their way through this room and into the next room, finding the end of the makeshift building already. There wasn't much more in the next room: more blood, more boxes and a very simple workstation.