Unification

Iteration 1: Incarnadine Twilight

"Dead?" Sarah offered as she floated parallel to him.

"Yeah, I guess so, but not like extinct or lifeless." David leaned in closer to the transparent aluminum, almost as if he sought to touch the curvature of the rocky sphere before them. "It's more like a graveyard." The other two were stunned into silence at his remarks as they all eyed the passing terrain below.

"I know what you mean. The first time I came here, I felt like it was haunted, filled with untold ghosts throughout its history. Alma made some of those ghosts real." The trio continued to stare in taciturn observance of the red planet until Ani returned with a triumphant chirp from the comms.

"Commander, I have accessed and downloaded the Argus Array's log from the past year. You might want to be seated for this," Ani conveyed. The trio looked at one another with deep concern as they made their way back to their stations. A few moments later, their screens were filled with textual timelines, meteorological reports, supply inventories, and other benign information.

"So what exactly are we looking at, Ani?" Jonas asked as he scanned the data as it passed on his screen.

"Nothing we don't already know until we get to the final month and that sandstorm which blocked out communications for three days, before Ares Prospect went dark indefinitely." A video stream opened up on all of their screens. "As you can see, the Argus Array captured the entire thing as it was happening, temperatures, wind gusts, general dimensions and density, the usual stuff."

"Okay, I'm still not seeing what's so important about it."

"As the storm reached the base, the Argus Array detected a high-frequency radio burst coming from these coordinates, approximately half a kilometer to the north of Ares Prospect, the area where—"

"Alma is located," interjected Sarah with both terror and delight.

"Correct, doctor Hutson. More so, moments after this signal was sent, a similar signal was detected within the storm itself."

"You mean there was something in the storm?" David asked cautiously.

"No sir, not within the storm as a separate entity, but as part of the storm itself, acting almost like an electrical pulse, similar to the pulses of your brain's neural activity."

"Are you saying the thing was alive?" David blurted out.

"Not at all, doctor Baltimore, merely that it resembled such. Though, now that you brought it up," the video stream of the storm on everyone's screen was soon accompanied by another video, this time displaying various bacterium. "When I came across the signal, I also noted how the storm's meteorological patterns were not like any system in our records, and when I came across the signal within the storm, the idea that something organic, or artificially organic, could be at hand and I began to cross-reference the storm's pattern to all known life forms, and I came across the following."

"You have got to be kidding me," Jonas muttered to himself in shock.

"This is fascinating," was all Sarah could say in response as Ani overlaid the footage of the dust storm with the footage of the bacterium, specifically bacillus anthracis, better known as anthrax. "It's as if the storm was searching, or hunting, for the base and Alma"

"Aside from that, I really can't tell you much else about the storm. All other readings seem within normal parameters, but then again, even that fact seems misleading as the numbers are what one would expect in a simulation, but nature does not deal with exacts, it's always fluctuating and shifting, and yet these readings were at a constant."

"You think the storm was created artificially?" David asked hesitantly.

"That seems to be where the numbers are pointing, doctor. I am currently running further analysis of the information I've gathered, but so far, nothing is pointing in the other direction. The December dust storm was not created naturally." The crew went silent once more, all of them wore the face of unfathomable ponderance at what had been shown to them. Something caused Alma to open, sent out a signal, which in turn transformed a dust storm half the size of the planet into an imitation of anthrax.

"Ani, something just dawned on me," Sarah spoke softly, almost as if she was afraid of breaking the silence too much. "You said that all of this information was captured and recorded by the Argus Array, correct?"

"Yes, doctor Hutson, that is correct."

"And all information gathered by the array is transmitted back to the ISC headquarters, right?"

"Correct, every six hours, a full upload of the array's memory banks is transmitted back to Earth." Sarah let out an uncomfortable sigh.

"Ani, can you determine when the array sent its last transmission to Earth?"

"One moment, doctor." In a blink, the holographic woman disappeared from sight. The computer systems could be heard humming throughout the ship with its distinct electronic drone.

"What are you thinking, Sarah?" Jonas inquired, as he glanced at the microbiologist, then back at the red planet.

"I'm thinking either the root of the communications problem might lay in the array," she paused for a moment, closed her eyes, only to open them again ever so slowly. "Or that someone back on Earth knows more than we're being told."

"I love a good conspiracy," David quipped in a snarky tone, "But I do see where you're coming from. If that array is designed to transmit every six hours and none of this information was sent back to Earth, then it could have been someone on the ground, or if it did make it back to Earth, then someone is withholding vital information for whatever reason."

"Precisely. Not that either of them would be rather surprising, they do deepen the mystery, and on a bigger picture, it doesn't explain the storm itself, nor what Ani has found thus far." At that moment, Ani reappeared in between the trio.

"Well I've got some good news and some bad news, but they're essentially the same thing, so I'll just tell you what it is." Everyone instinctively braced themselves for what the A.I. had to share. "It seems that transmission was made, three minutes before the storm hit, but was suddenly cut off, mid-upload right when the high-frequency signal emanated from Alma When this happens, the system is designed to cancel its upload and wait until stable communications can be reestablished. It appears our culprit is down there."

"Guess that settles it, and here I was wanting it to be some foreign mole deep within the ISC," David playfully whined.

"You're just going to have to stick to your noire war films, David," chuckled Jonas as he ran through some diagnostics at his station. "Ani, ready a report on what we've found so far and prepare it for transmission. When we line back up on the far side, I want you to send it as soon as possible."

"Yes, sir. Report compiling."

Jonas had always the collected one, able to keep his head planted on his shoulder, even in the most frantic of situations, but the news they had uncovered had unsettled him, and the other two could sense it. They were all moved by the enormity of the situation. Regardless, they still had their mission and were all determined to seek it out until the end.

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