"Alright, everyone. We're in a tough situation," Captain Meyers states. "Our chip has crashed, leaving us stranded on the floating Venus Colony. The colony's running out of air, and if the supply dwindles, it'll smash down through the atmosphere. We must stop that from happening."
I deadpan at her, biting my tongue as a sarcastic comment bubbles up my throat. As if we were just going to wait around to die.
Pro. Maxted frowns beside me. "This doesn't make any sense. There are supposed to be 600 people living here. Why haven't they made contact? Why have they left a hull breach untended long enough for things to get this bad?"
"Don't forget that business with the airlock, Professor," Peter reminds her. "None of you are saying it directly, but I will. Someone wired the floor as a booby trap. They wanted to kill us!"
Steve raises a brow at him and slightly shakes his head, which earns him a glare. "Look, the colony's a large place. Something clearly went wrong. If some colonists are injured, but some are able to work, they'll be trying to get the colony's main computer online. That's protocol priority one. It's an AI, like the one on our ship. Regulates all repairs, scanners and communication systems."
"But what if the working colonists are hostile? Maybe they decided they wanted to keep profits from this expedition for themselves. Maybe they shot down our ship."
I swallow thickly at Peter's suggestion. If I didn't know any better, I'd ask him how he could believe people would be so selfish, but I've seen people do worse for less back on earth. People deciding to be greedy isn't anything new.
Captain Meyers doesn't seem to like that he'd suggest that, given the look she sends him. "We're not making any assumptions, Mr. Simons. We don't know why the ship came down."
He scoffs at her. "Well, you say that, but you let Sissay bring extra sidearms."
She glares at him, but he glares right back, cocking a brow as if challenging her to deny it. She doesn't.
"Our mission is still to make contact with the colonists," She says instead, her jaw clenching when he smirks in victory. "We do that, repair the station, and send a distress call to earth. Those are our goals. The best place to access the main computer is the colony's command hub. That means it's our best chance to find any of the people who live here. The hub is straight down the corridor. Let's go."
We don't run this time, thankfully. Even with training I still feel pretty tired from the amount of running we've had to do so far. I didn't think this would be as strenuous as it has been, but I suppose it's stupid to believe things will always go to plan. At the very least, we can say it's interesting, and everyone will have a story to tell when we get back home...
When they get back home. A quiet giggle escapes my mouth when I think about how dramatic Peter's report will be, and I can only imagine the amount of complaining he's going to do to Katelyn and Caleb and Sam. He'll probably talk their ear off, but they'll listen. They always do.
"Something funny, specialist?" Pro. Maxted asks curiously, although she pales when she looks at me. "Oh, my God. You're bleeding!"
"What?" Peter asks in worry as the professor points to my face. I reach through my cracked visor and feel around my lips and nose. There's blood on my gloves when I pull away, and I curse.
"Sorry," I say quickly. "I-It's just a nosebleed. I'm used to them. Uh, we didn't have much time to grab supplies and bring them in, but-"
"Here." Peter grabs a cloth from one of the pockets of his suit. "Come on, sit down. I'll help you get cleaned up."
"You?" Captain Meyers states, and he grins maliciously at her.
"Yes, me. Do you have a problem with that, Captain?"
She blinks at him, seeming displeased with the bite in his voice. "I just didn't see you as the caring kind, especially when it came to helping someone clean up a nosebleed."
"Well, if she gets sick and vomits blood all over me, I'll be sure to call for your assistance." He grabs my arm. "I would let her clean herself up alone, but I'd rather her not wander off. This isn't the first expedition I've had with her. She tends to get distracted."
Liar.
Captain Meyers says nothing as Peter drags me into a separate hallway, saying that if they get too tired of waiting, they can always keep going without us. It's a smart move, since my nosebleeds usually lead to loss of consciousness if I keep moving. I'll need to sit for a few minutes.
I remove my helmet, and Peter does the same. I do it so I can get cleaned up faster. He does it so they won't be able to hear him on coms.
"They're going to find out if you keep acting like this," I murmur as he dabs my face with the cloth, and he rolls his eyes.
"As if I care."
"You should. If they report it after this mission's over, you could lose your job," I hiss, but his face doesn't change.
"It'll be their word against ours."
"Yours."
"What?"
"Their word against yours. You'll have to argue the case on earth, and by the time we get back I'll be-"
"Don't you dare finish that sentence, Callista," He growls at me, and I sigh sympathetically, cupping his face with my hand.
"Peter, we both know what's going to happen. I mean, look at my blood!" I gesture to the now bloody cloth. "It's not even red anymore. It's black. I'm dying, and there's no way to cure me. I came on this mission to be with you because I knew by the time you got back, I'd already be gone. You have to accept that, which is why I am begging you to stop. I don't want to be the cause of why you lose your job. That 'no dating between coworkers' rule is stupid and everyone hates it, but you can and will get in trouble if someone finds out we're breaking it. So please, please behave."
I grab his hands, and I hate that I'm pleading for him to not care, but that's the situation we've found ourselves in. We're in different departments, but we're both employees of Pandora Haze. If we got caught, everything could be lost.
He sighs, and I can still see the frustration on his face. But at least he agrees with a mumbled, "Fine."
It's better than nothing. It's better than flat out refusal.
Once I'm cleaned up, I put on my helmet and shakily stand. "I think I'm okay for now. Come on. Let's get back to the others before they start missing us."
Peter scoffs as he puts his own helmet back on. "Missing you, maybe. They despise me."
"Well, you despise them just as much."
He chuckles. "You're not wrong."
We catch up to the others pretty quickly, although they still haven't made it to the command hub. I have a feeling they were going slower than normal so we could catch up, although it could be because of what's in front of us.
I can hear generators buzzing and whirring, keeping this place going, but the walls and floors all groan and creak with each step we take.
"Not liking the feeling of this place, Skipper," Commander Sissay says, looking at the flickering lights and dusty floors. "That creaking is a definite sign of structural strain."
Peter's brows knit together in confusion. "This... isn't right. This is the welcome lobby for new arrivals. It's supposed to be polished and clean."
"It looks like a bomb went off." Pro. Maxted looks around with disturbance at the overturned chairs and tables and... are those scorch marks on the walls?
Commander Sissay points to a bronze statue of a woman looking upward. "I-is that who I think it is?"
"Amelia Spens III, CEO of Pandora Haze, Founder of the Space Program," Peter answers. "They say she has a dozen clone bodies back on earth. She never ages. If she likes an executive's performance, she doubles their lifespan."
I shudder. I've dreamt of having clones of myself before. It's about me being in an entirely different world, with too much happening for me to ever remember it all. I do remember the clones though. There's always one that wants to kill me.
"I'd concentrate on surviving today, Mr. Simons," Captain Meyers replies, and her face suddenly twists in disgust. "Ugh. Look, under the debris near the statue."
My chest tightens. It's bodies.
Their jumpsuits are torn, and they're covered in blood. I've seen this kind of violence before on earth, took part of it even, when I had to scavenge for food as a teenager.
"I think they were murdered," Pro. Maxted says, and I roll my eyes.
"Well, yeah. Most people don't commit suicide in this type of manner." I sniff the air, coughing at the smell of decay. "They've been dead for a while, probably a few months. If they were back on earth, animals or insects would've got to them by now. Being here's the only reason they haven't rotted as much as most bodies would at this stage."
"Really not liking these vibes, Skipper. It reminds me of Helsinki after the floods," Commander Sissay says, and Meyers visibly tenses at the memory.
Pro. Maxted takes a step towards them. "Wait. There's something else here, growing between the bodies. It looks like... red coral, but not a genus I've ever seen. It's blossoming through a crack in the wall. Fascinating." She turns to me. "Your specialty is working with plants, right?"
"Er, well, it's mostly creation of machinery that can grow food and purify water on and off earth with given surroundings-" I correct, but she cuts me off.
"Well, have you seen anything like this?"
I look at it, not daring to get too close. "I remember there was a fungus quite similar to it in color that was discovered on earth a few years ago. I never got to study it up close, but it was extremely deadly. Had to destroy an entire lab to keep it from spreading. But if it shared any relation, these people wouldn't look like this. This looks like a tea party compared to what happened to people that got into contact with the fungus."
"Either way, best we do not touch this stuff," Captain Meyers says. "We don't know what happened here."
"There are holes in the wall," Sissay points out. "There was a battle. We know that much."
Peter sputters in confusion. "The security staff had firearms, but only as a formality. There shouldn't be anyone here to fight."
"The command hub's up the ramp. We'll find more information there. Quick time," Meyers commands, and we all follow her up the ramp. My eyes remain on the bodies on the floor for a few more seconds before I turn my gaze forward.
I'm used to seeing death. I'm used to seeing acts of violence, but it was always because people had something someone else needed. There would be no reason for this here. There was plenty of food, plenty of water, plenty of breathable air.
Steve said he didn't like the vibes here, and I completely agree. I find myself desiring more and more to get that distress call out. The faster we do that, the faster everyone can go home.
We get up the ramp, and the door to the command hub slides open.
"The nerve center of the colony," Peter mutters. There are neural display rates, console pits, ergonomic chairs, all top of the line. I remember Peter telling me how much was spent on this place-74 trillion dollars.
There are bodies in here as well, under the consoles. I count at least six. Two aren't even recognizable, their heads caved in from blunt force trauma. One appears to be throttled, and the others are riddled with bullet wounds.
"What happened here?" I whisper, and Peter squeezes my shoulder.
"Must've happened so fast, or they would've contacted Pandora Haze for help."
Commander Sissay hums. "Computer banks are damaged, Skipper. But I've seen worse. Reckon I can bypass it if you give me a minute."
Peter raises a brow. "Oh, aren't you supposed to be a pilot and not an engineer?"
He doesn't look at him as he starts puttering away with the consoles. "Been a lot of things in a lot of different wars, love."
A second later the computer whirs, and I wince as a high-pitched audio comes from the computer.
"H-h-h-h-h-h-h-hel-hel-hel-hel-hello," The AI says, static on the edges of her voice. "I am VR1-ICA, standard Pandora Haze Artificial Intelligence. This version of me is installed in the Venus1 Colony. Please call me 'Veronica' if it would help you relax."
I look at the man beside me, who tsks. "Oh, charming. She sounds a bit more... buggy than the one on our ship."
"Veronica, I'm Captain Meyers. Pandora Haze ID 83881. My crew was dispatched to assist this colony. What happened here. Where are the colonists?"
"I'm sorry. My systems are in disarray. There is no pertinent information in my archives."
"The station's losing air, Veronica," Commander Sissay pipes up. "Can you pinpoint the cause?"
"Internal scanners are functioning at 6% coverage. I cannot verify. The station is equipped with maintenance drones, which could assess the situation. However, I am too damaged to activate them. You would have to do so manually."
The Captain nods. "Where's the nearest drone bay, Veronica?"
"Station sector 13A. It is near to your current location."
She looks at me. "Five, with me. We'll head to the nearest drone bay and get the maintenance robots online. The rest of you, stay and help Veronica. Scour her archives and find out what's wrong with her coms. And Prof, see if you can find any info the colonists recorded about the local environment. We need to know what we're up against. Come on, Five. Through the yellow doors and into the maintenance tunnel."
•
"Command hub, this is Meyers. Five and I are on the drone bay. It's a storeroom full of crab shaped robots. More scorch marks on the walls down there."
The coms link crackles for a moment as I look at the robots. When's the last time I saw an actual crab on earth?
"Rodger that, Skipper. Veronica says there's an activation panel in the corner of the room."
"Uh, got it. Bringing them online now." She switches them on, and one by one they all begin to power up. "This reminds me of home. Was a slum kid in Chicago, Five, back before America fell. Used to carjack from the rich neighborhoods. Their security robots looked a lot like this."
I hum. "Only certain areas used robots in Arkansas, like uh, Little Rock or Fayetteville. Everywhere else they just used guns for security. Have a few scars from getting nicked while trying to steal oxygen tanks and food for me and my little sister."
"Captain," Commander Sissay says, cutting our conversation short, "Veronica says her communication systems can't broadcast because her transmitter tower's damaged. But we've found a signal stored in her database."
"Well, let's hear it, Commander."
The sound that plays afterward chills me to the bone. The audio is distorted, with some deep, almost inhuman voice muttering something in a foreign language. I've never heard anything like it. It's... disturbing, the sound seeming to burrow itself deep into me, grab at me, digging and digging deeper inside in a way that makes me feel sick and nauseous.
I want to curl in on myself, and I feel my shoulders scrunching up to my ears, only being stopped by my helmet.
I'm grateful when it stops.
"That's uh, reassuring," She says after a moment. "What language is it?"
"We don't know. Not an earth language. There's an image stream with the audio, but it's just some random symbols. Might be encrypted. I'm going over it. I've had some decipher training back in the day. Prof wants to take a look at it too. Apparently, she speaks thirty-seven languages. Impressive woman."
My eyes widen when the little robots around me start skittering around, heading out into the rest of the city. "Looks like the bots are powered up. Where's the transmitter tower? The Cap and I can assess the situation while the drones look for hull breaches."
"Checking... There's an access tunnel to your left. You can follow it into the colony's main garden area. The tower's in the middle of that."
I look over at the Captain, and she nods. "Let's move out then. We need to get that distress call out as soon as possible."
I nod in agreement as we head up the ramp and through the access tunnel. It'll take a massive amount of time before a ship can come rescue us, but there's more a chance of us surviving until then now that VR1-ICA's drones are looking around to find the damage and fix it so we can still have air, especially since it seems that we're the only people breathing it.
Oh, it's going to be awful being stuck here for months with all these bodies, even more so since I know my body will be joining them. I was rather hoping I'd die on the way home so my body could be buried back on earth, although I don't believe that's going to be the case now.
Shame.
Those thoughts are quick to leave my mind once we make it to the main garden area. It's like those massive city parks I used to see in pictures and movies. The gray buildings surround it, everything clean cut. There're tall trees, green grass, even an artificial lake! It's beautiful.
Or it would be, if there weren't more bodies lying scattered around. There's got to be at least two or three dozen of them, in the grass, in the lake. Their bodies are mangled, torn and ripped. Such violent deaths. It doesn't look like it was caused by anything other than humans, but they're still so gory.
"God, it's like everyone went on a murder spree," I whisper with a sneer in my voice.
"We're watching you both," Pro. Maxted states. "The Commander's got some of Veronica's internal cameras working."
I clear my throat. "Well, that's nice. Uh, Commander, do you see anyone else around? Anyone alive, maybe?"
"Negative. The scene in front of you... well, I'm seeing the same thing in image feeds across the colony. Bodies on deck, lots of wounds from bullets, blunt force trauma, or improvised blades."
"So it's confirmed, then. They did this to each other." I reach past my visor to pinch the bridge of my nose. This is messy. I can only imagine the report Peter's going to have to make.
"Captain," VR1-ICA says over comes, "my drones have restored the air recyclers. They have also discovered multiple hull breaches. There was certainly fighting within the station. Makeshift munitions destroyed the reactor and cracked the dome in several places. I can stabilize the air supply, but structural damage exceeds my capacity to address."
"Veronica might be able to hold the station together until the ship arrives, but only if we get the word out soon," Peter says, and I wonder if Sissay and I could work on repairing different parts of the station, just to ensure we'd have enough time and air before a rescue ship's arrival.
"This doesn't make sense!" Pro. Maxted shouts. "These people were scientists, administrators, engineers. They had children. Why would they turn on each other like this?"
Captain Meyers shrugs beside me. "Your guess is as good as mine, Prof."
"What's... what's that?" I ask, walking over to the gazebo near the lake. There's graffiti written on it, rather messily and... in blood. I squint as I read the words. "'Be reborn.' What does that mean?"
"No clue. Come on, Five. There's the transmitter tower. The sooner we find out what's needed to repair it, the sooner we get a message home. Come on."
I follow her, keeping my eyes on the big black spike with dishes on top. It looks like a rather odd form of art, very distinct from the gray buildings that make up the city. I hum in interest, ignoring the slightly off feeling I get from it. I suppose the contrast makes it seem weird, which could either ward people away from it or draw them toward it.
I can only wonder if we'll find bodies in there. I suppose it should be expected. We haven't seen a single living person yet. Pro. Maxted stated these people had children, families back on earth... How will we tell them what happened?
We'll have to figure out what happened first. All we know so far is that these people killed each other, violently. But even if we figure out what happened, I doubt it will comfort whoever is left back on earth, waiting for family members who will never return.
At least all my friends-my sister, Sam, Caleb, Jody, Archie, Tom-they all know I'm not coming back. The families of these people...
We reach the tower, opening the door and heading inside. It's a bit of a tight squeeze in this room, probably only made for one person to come in and do repairs, but we manage to fit. There are multiple consoles in the room, all offline. I make haste of switching them on, watching as the lights on them blink.
"Thank you, Specialist Five, " VR1-ICA says, and I flinch at the sound of her voice. "I am now connected to the transmitter tower. The tower is designed to broadcast messages to an orbital satellite, which relays them to earth. Diagnostics indicate that the dishes at the side of the tower are damaged."
Commander Sissay lets out a whistle. "Must be nice to be a computer. How can you sound so calm about all of this, Veronica?"
"I am extremely concerned, Commander, but my emotional responses are designed to renew utility. My focus is on helping those of you who remain. There are backup transmitter dishes near the door. Please take two to the side of the tower and splice them in."
"That's the stairway to the damaged area," Meyers says, jerking her head towards it. I cringe at the sign that shows how many steps there are to said area.
"I did not sign up for having to climb 2,000 steps," I huff, to which Meyers laughs at me. I cock a brow. "You're laughing now, but if I get sick, I'm making you carry me."
She rolls her eyes at my petty threat. "Pass me a dish, will you? We've got no time to lose."
•
I'm gasping for air by the time I make it up the stairs, and my legs are burning. I think I've gotten enough leg work for the next week, and when I pant the words out, I can hear Peter chuckling at me over coms.
"Don't laugh, or next time I'll make you do this with me," I reply.
"So you want to climb 2,000 stairs again?"
"No, but I'd do it just to see you struggle."
He scoffs, and I look at Meyers, who's been eyeing me expectantly.
"Glad you made it up, Five," She says. "Sorry to rush ahead. Veronica, I've spliced in one dish. Five, if you click yours in there and turn that power ray on..."
She trails off as I splice my dish in. It wasn't too terribly heavy. My arms only feel slightly worn, unlike the rest of me. I turn on the power ray with a few flips of switches, and then wait for everything to power up.
Meyers looks out the window in awe. "You can see the whole colony-the main garden, all the gray buildings around it, the dome overhead."
"But no signs of life." I purse my lips, a heavy weight on my shoulders. From this view I can see all the bodies around the city. There are hundreds of them in the street.
"Captain," VR1-ICA says, "I have made contact with the orbital satellite. It appears to have been sabotaged. It has been reprogrammed to send any approaching vessel a malware virus that will cause it to crash."
"So that's what destroyed our ship," Sissay says with a sigh. "And we can't contact earth for help. This is crazy. They killed each other and then boobytrapped the planet before they died. Why would anyone do that?"
I see something, a flash, a glint of movement in the street. I suck in a breath so sharply it hurts.
"They-they didn't all die. Good God, look! Down there!" I point to the movement of someone-a person-moving between the building, then they disappear, finding cover under an overhang of a building. "Damn it! I-you saw that too, right? T-t-that was a person!"
Captain Meyers nods frantically. "Yes, that was definitely a human being. We are not the only ones in this colony. There is a survivor down there. Looks like the only one."
"But what kind of person survives a massacre like this?" Peter asks.
"Someone very tough or very lucky. Either way, Five, we know this place went mad. They are not just a survivor. They're a witness. Whoever they are, we have to find them."
A/N: Here you go, guys! I hope you all enjoyed this chapter. Things just keep heating up, don't they? Please be sure to vote and comment. Thank you and have a blessed day!