Andromeda Expedition

by Carlos Arroyo González

  The young men were shooting peering through the sides of the van, which read “Dough & Smylnov” in blue letters surrounding a picture of a rolled-up newspaper. Red and blue lights illuminated the street and the interior of the store, swirling and casting wild shadows. Another shot was fired. One of the young men fell, and as a pool of blood formed around his head, Smylnov could see from the pattern on the bandana he was wearing that he was a member of the growing resistance movement, of those who knew it was all a manipulation and would rather die than continue to tolerate all this madness. They called themselves the “Liberation Movement”. Rumor had it that the National Guard (the former Royal Guard) had decided to support them, but in those days one could hardly be sure of anything. In any case, it was clear that civil war had broken out in WilkinsBank Eastcountry, despite the fact that the press was determined to call it “isolated cases of rebellion against freedom”.

  The other young man had closed his eyes and seemed to be muttering something, clutching the pistol to his chest.

  Smylnov had no bandana, but pulled out the sawed-off he kept under the counter.

  Friedrick Olson had not yet turned sixteen. He stared at the too-long sleeves of his uniform. In front of him the Meteoro-III was waiting for him, the support spacecraft in which he would leave with the Epsilon squadron, the last to take off for the imminent battle. Their mission was “containment”. Friedrick didn't like the sound of that word. It seemed to imply the inevitable passing of whatever you were containing.

  Ever since Friedrick was very young his uncle Hansen had brought him books that talked about all the civilizations that had been discovered in the universe. At first he liked the illustrations best of all. He especially liked the ones with the huge idealized images of mankind, flying the flag over the smoldering remains of a bloody battle. In the book he gave him for his eighth birthday, a very thick, hard-covered book that, no matter how much he leafed through, always smelled new, there was a chapter devoted to termens. And there were pictures. It was as if the sensation he sometimes felt when at night he thought of things like his mother's death had materialized in that being that watched him from the page with eyes that looked more like two holes in the black armor of his head, like two wells of infinite evil. The first time he saw them he did not sleep for a week. So it was years before he had dared to open that chapter again.

  After his mother's death, and his father's increasingly obvious slide into alcoholism, Friedrick had to take the reins. So he took the only job that at that time in the New West could be done without previous experience of any kind. Even without having reached the legal age to work.

  His knees were shaking and he wasn't quite sure he could hold the ham and cheese sandwich in his stomach.

  Last week he had finally gotten a date with Clara. They had gone to the movies. His hands and knees were shaking even more than they were now. In the end, before saying goodbye he had forced himself to hold her hand. She had rested her head on his shoulder. He couldn't remember ever having felt such a pleasant sensation. He still seemed to smell the mango and strawberry scent of her blond hair.

  “Come on, soldier. We're leaving now!”

  The increasingly cooler evening air grabbed his hand. Friedrick ran into the interior of the Meteoro-III.

  Arriving on a new planet, I still feel the same excitement as the first time, when I set foot on that nameless planet.

  Gabriel Harrisman, space explorer

  Erebus occupied the entire view. A black marble sphere dripping with darkness. An infinite surface of water. An unknown immensity that reminded Fox of a huge sleeping monster, whose slumber they were about to disturb.

  “I still can't believe we're going down there,” Edelmann said as he ran his index finger under his nose.

  Pharex, the star of the Kentor-VI System, twinkled faintly, as if to welcome them. To the left, Kronos, a satellite the size of Mars, patrolled around that solid blackness like a blind eye constantly scanning the impenetrable darkness.

  “I haven't asked you yet,” said Fox, still not looking away from that sinister vision. He had not the slightest interest in Dr. Edelmann's motives, but at that moment he needed to divert his attention as much as possible from the dreadfulness that awaited them, crouching in the far reaches of the universe. “What brings you here?”

  “Well, as you know, a few weeks ago contact was lost with a crew of five. For all we know, it's possible they're still down there. I don't know about you, but I'd like someone to come rescue me if I'm stranded twenty million light years away. It's also a perfect opportunity to, I hope, reach the final explanation for a theory I've been working on for the last ten years,” he patted the pocket of his uniform where his notebook was sticking out.

  “You expect me to believe you're not here for the money?”

  “I'm worried about you, Captain.”

  “Do you really think anyone is still alive down there?”

  Dr. Edelmann shrugged his shoulders.

  “Who knows? They had enough food to last several months. It's possible that they had an accident, but there's no doubt that these people were very well prepared to deal with almost any unforeseen event. It is possible that the communication system simply broke down. What I think is that you are projecting your own fears, Captain.”

  It seemed to Fox that “captain” was meant sarcastically.

  “By the way,” Edelmann continued. “I saw you earlier with your android. Displays of affection towards a non-conscious being are... very peculiar cases. They can say a lot about that person.”

  “Mind your own business, doctor. And I hope this is the last time I have to tell you.”

  “I hope I haven't made you uncomfortable, but my business also includes making sure my colleagues' health is always in a state that allows them to perform their duties optimally.”

  “I'm getting tired of it. My health is perfectly fine.”

  “Of course. Of course.”

  As Isaac prepared the landing Fox lost his gaze again on the immense dark mass of Erebus. It was like watching solidified darkness. Behind him Nova sweetly sang what sounded like an old medieval folk song.

  She ran among the honeysuckles

  A ghost in the night

  She ran among the honeysuckles

  To meet her beloved

  Fox wondered if Nova's voice recorder had included that song, or if it was Nova herself improvising it with her digital voice. Perhaps the song did not exist, and Nova had composed it in her solitude during the trip, or perhaps inspired by the darkness of Erebus as it was processed by her algorithms.

  Fox let himself be rocked by those notes while down below, the incessant mists of the planet swirled relentlessly, like the smoke of a dying city.

  “Fasten your seat belts. Initiating descent maneuver.”

  Isaac moved the controls forward. The spacecraft oscillated slightly and gained speed. At that moment a soft rattling began, which gradually gained intensity. In Algea the mountains, rivers and rocks could be distinguished more and more clearly. And that single piece of land that from a distance, in comparison with the immensity of the Great Ocean, had seemed so insignificant, grew more and more in the window until it occupied everything. But they soon stopped seeing it when the heat from the friction with the atmosphere formed a crimson aura that enveloped the spacecraft. The rattling became much more intense. Fox held onto the arms of the chair. Just as he was beginning to feel nauseous, the rattling stopped.

  Fox could now clearly see the continental area, towards which they were heading. A gray desert dotted with huge boulders and some traces of vegetation. And in the middle of a vast plain, like an oasis among the rock formations, for the first time he could see what must have been the Ulysses. It was a much better looking spacecraft than the Titan. It was a sharp design reminiscent of the shape of a shark. It was a metallic black color that reflected what little light Pharex managed to send through the thick haze. It gave the impression of having a solid finish, and above all
of being made up of parts that would not clink together when the spacecraft came into operation.

  During landing, the Titan shook so violently that everything around it blurred into a heterogeneous blob of indistinguishable shapes. As the spacecraft came down with a thud, kicking up a cloud of dust around it that mingled with the black haze flooding the planet, Fox jumped to earth, as if at any moment, the spacecraft might have second thoughts and finally crumble into a puddle of twisted nuts and irons. When the last gasps of the spacecraft's propulsion system ceased, all was silent. He lay on the floor and looked up at the black and scarlet sky of Erebus, through the smoky, dust-spattered helmet visor. That sky was like a canvas on which a madman armed with two brushes, one black and one crimson, had painted his memories.

  The climate of Erebus could be compared on Earth to that of some dry, tropical place like the Canary Islands. The soil was of a grayish ochre hue. The sparse vegetation was rather low and reminiscent of hyper-developed ferns. The temperature, as indicated by the reader inside the helmet, was eighty-seven point eight degrees Fahrenheit, and the humidity was sixty-two percent. Pharex, the star around which Erebus orbited, was larger than the size of our sun, a huge disk veiled by the perpetual haze that covered the atmosphere. Furrows of darkness tinged with suffocating humidity. The constant impression of carrying the weight of the planet on one' s shoulders.

  The wind howled through the glens, accompanied by the din of some distant flying creatures crossing the sky of Erebus.

  In a moment of stillness, Fox thought he heard the distant murmur of the ocean.

  In case of emergency:

  1. Put on the KJ-27 pressure suit and make sure all fasteners are in the green position.

  2. Locate a free evacuation pod (cargo area, corridor 9).

  3. If evacuation service is not available, jump through the hatch marked with a double red arrow.

  4. If none of the above options are possible, the Old Europa Aerospace Corps thanks you for your loyalty and services.

  Sign in the sleeping quarters of Old Europa's armored spacecrafts.

  A tense silence reigned in the Old Europa fleet. Friedrick Olson, the sixteen-year-old boy on his first military experience, alternated his gaze between the emptiness of space and the radar, which flickered with an ominous violet light, while his mind superimposed those images he saw in the book he received that birthday, more vivid than ever. He remembered above all the deep, empty sockets like the infinite black that he was observing.

  His hands were cold, but he hardly paid attention to them. In fact, at that moment he was hardly paying attention to anything other than things like what it would feel like to be chewed by one of those things while one was still alive, what they would smell like (farm animal? rot?), or whether he would shit himself when the time came.

  It was curious that while he was down there with Clara, for example, those beings occupied barely a particle of his brain, and suddenly they were the only thing that mattered. He tried to push those terrifying images away with the memory of the warmth of Clara's hand under his, of her mango and strawberry fragrance, but again and again she would turn into one of those beings, and instead of her hand, Friedrick would find himself holding a sharp, protruding claw.

  The beeping sound announcing a message to the entire fleet made his heart skip a beat.

  “Get ready,” said a canned voice. “They're here.”

  As a din of stampedes and overlapping orders erupted around him, Friedrick stood there, paralyzed in a bubble of terror. On the black canvas of infinity the first lights of the termen fleet appeared. A primordial constellation spat out of the abysses of the universe.

  Sometimes everything aligns, that's true, but how much responsibility do we have in that alignment?

  Cefiro, Through the Thread of History and Science

  The door of the Ulysses opened with a hiss. The crew of the Andromeda Expedition ascended the steps as a smell of decay permeated through the air filters.

  Somehow, the interior of the Ulysses reminded Fox of the house he and Jessica had first moved into after the wedding, six months before Emily was born. But unlike that Bradley Falls house, the Ulysses was very messy. As if its last occupants had left it behind with the certainty that no one else would ever return to that place. There were botany books scattered on the white sofa that presided over the main living room. A T-shirt with the New West emblem was lying on the floor next to the door. In one corner of the bathroom there was still a small pile of used towels. Compared to the rest of the spacecraft, the sleeping quarters were not very large. Barely ten square feet. A bed in a hole in the wall. A desk with a lamp, a laptop and a jar of pens. Under the bed, Fox discovered the former occupant's duffel bag. Inside was a flashlight, dirty clothes, and a nine-millimeter with a full clip.

  “What exactly are we looking for here?” Dr. Edelmann said.

  “Any clues that might shed light on what happened, of course,” Isaac said. “With any luck we might even find the catalyst right here. Although I doubt that very much. I think we'd better split up.”

  Fox entered the testing area. As he entered the lab, he was hit by the smell of chemicals. It was a room with a ceiling that somehow seemed higher than what was guessed from the outside, illuminated by bluish lights that gave it a dreamlike appearance. Two long tables stretched along the center of the room. Another, narrower countertop, filled with taps and test tubes, ran along the perimeter of the wall. The New West emblem with the Aerospace Agency crown on it presided over the room. The floor was carpeted with the same turquoise blue as Kronos, the Erebus satellite.

  He wasn't sure what he expected to find there. He wandered among the countertops. On one he saw traces of blue drops curdling on the marble. Beyond, in a corner, a hole in the carpet that appeared to be caused by some corrosive product. He opened drawers and doors, but inside the furniture there were only instruments and bottles of chemicals. And when he turned around, he was stunned. The cabinet there, next to the test waste containers, was almost identical to the one in which he had kept Bruce's corpse. Of course, it was not made of old oak wood, but of reinforced polycarbonate. But the shape was the same. Or so it seemed to him.

  So he approached it. He placed his hand on the knob and held it there, as if performing some kind of exorcism against whatever might be in there. And what might be in there? A rotting zombie with a knife embedded in its neck, emerging from there and claiming Fox's brains? He turned the handle and pulled the door open.

  The cabinet had three shelves. Two of them were empty. But on one of them was a letter size envelope of a soft manila color. On a white sticker it read, written in blue pen:

  Albatross Expedition. Great Ocean.

  He opened it and saw that inside was a stack of photographs. He sat with his back against the cabinet.

  The first one showed the crew in front of the beach. It was the same picture he had already seen on Infoplanet. Smiles. Captain Dromnik giving the thumbs up. In the background, the boundless ocean.

  The next was an underwater photo. One of them, it was impossible to tell who, was holding an elongated creature in one hand, proud, like a fisherman who had made a good catch. Pharex was projecting the sinuosity of the ocean surface onto his suit.

  Then he saw Mia Globber in what looked like the Ulysses lab, where he was now, concentrating on a specimen, apparently unaware that she was being photographed. Someone had surrounded her face with a heart of black ink.

  He was surprised to see below many, and I mean fifteen or twenty photographs, showing simply the ocean. The almost infinite vastness meeting the sky on an inconceivably distant horizon. He had to compare them to make sure it wasn't the same picture over and over again, but he found that in some he could see part of a window of the Ulysses, or part of the hull or a wing, and that in some the water seemed more choppy than in others.

  Photographs of all kinds of seaweed that he assumed they would have collected during a dive prior to the crossing over the Great Ocean, o
r perhaps they had found them drifting. Images of what appeared to be the creature one of them had captured underwater. First in full body, lying on a laboratory countertop. A being with dark greenish skin, almost black, smooth, with nothing resembling scales, its moisture glistening under the blue laboratory lamp. It had no visible limbs, appearing only as an amorphous, elongated mass. Slightly above its central axis, an oval opening, revealing the darkness of its interior. Fox glanced at the countertop behind him, and in the pale light of the flashlight he thought he saw a dark imprint on the marble.

  He saw the crew toasting under the light of the Ulysses' common room, while through the windows the night could be seen hovering over the Great Ocean.

  Dolphin-like armored beings leaping over the surface.

  Amundsen in his underpants about to empty a cup of coffee over Dromnik's face, asleep on the dashboard.

  A picture in black.

  A close-up of a male arm. It showed some kind of deep rash, like furrows on the flesh dotted in red.

  Another toast. Amundsen now appeared with a white bandage around his forearm.

  As he looked at the last photo, the others slipped from his hands.

  “Everyone come to the loading area,” Isaac's canned voice said over the helmet intercom. “I've found something.”

  As Fox approached, the smell of decay grew stronger. As he entered he saw a man lying in a corner, between two lockers with the mission logo on the door. The man was wearing the blue uniform of the Albatross Expedition. Around his head were traces of dried blood, and pieces of skull and cloth were scattered across the whiteness of the wall and the side of the cabinets. In his hand, a nine-millimeter still hung. In the other, a photograph.