Never Dead: Beyond Nightmares

XIII

Log 7:

Tyr Mining Facility...

Greg Payton ...

August 12, 2413...

Greg watched patiently as the bodies were put into the shuttle and brought back up to the PFC Jericho. It was truly a tragedy, to have over twenty deaths in the span of three days. But the horrific thing was that the Captain was doing nothing to stop it. Matter of fact, it was almost as if the Captain was ignoring the deaths altogether. In everyone's eyes, the Captain was worthless. Even worse, they thought the Captain was a traitor.

It was rumored that, just the day before, the senior medical officer, Jacob Duncan, had murdered one of the ship's psychologists. The security team fired on him, but had scored no lethal blows, or even hit the man's arms. The Captain decided to ignore the event and cleared the Doctor for duty, claiming that it was all, "A terrible misunderstanding."

Greg turned to the recording system. "This is ridiculous... The Captain's a traitor, I just know it. Twenty-three suicides—twenty-three real people!—and the Captain's just shrugging it off like nothing's wrong." He slammed his fists against the table. "That's bullshit, and both he and I know that." Jacob kicked over a nearby trashcan in frustration. "I just know he's a traitor. He let the doctor guy live, even after he murdered someone. That's not going to fly. As soon as I get back to Earth, I'm going to get a new Captain, or I'm going to walk!"

Greg turned to look at the Monolith's dig site. It was almost halfway out. The mining crew was working double-time to get it out of the ground. Who could blame them, with all their friends killing themselves around them. He heard a screech of terror come from behind the Monolith. He leaped over the railing, onto the sand below, and ran to find the source.

When he arrived, two more lay dead in the sand. Quick to come to his side was the ever-present Zach James, another 'miner' stuck on Tyr "Son of a bitch, two more? The shuttle just left!"

"Yeah..." Payton said, lightly nodding. He started to pull the bodies away from the Monolith. "This just isn't good for morale."

"You don't say." Zach turned to the onlookers beginning to gather. "More suicides! Come on, guys, we don't have time to waste, we need to get back to work! The faster we can get this thing out of here, the faster we can leave and never have to see this damn Monolith again!" Ever since he first arrived as the replacement of Kyle Hendricks, he had had a theory that the Monolith was causing everyone to kill themselves. Everyone mocked him, but they all knew there was some truth to his theory. They were certain of it.

"How much longer do you think that we'll be here?" the Head Mining Official asked with a sigh.

"With the Captain in charge? We'll probably never leave, he'll make us look for more Monoliths under the sand. We'll be looking for Monoliths until the Jericho runs out of suckers for him to send down." It was James' attempt at a joke. It was quite obvious that the miner couldn't tell jokes very well. Either that, or this particular 'It's funny 'cause it's true' joke just wasn't very funny.

"Yeah... Probably."

***