The Blue Beyond – Episode 2

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Chapter 7

Warehouse, Kazi Depot, Kazi

Osara System, Ballas Branch

At the westernmost side of the Kazi Depot compound was its massive warehouse. At more than 250,000 square feet, the gigantic facility functioned as the staging ground for every good shipped to the planet, including food, medical supplies, research equipment, vehicles, and other goods.

At the front of the attached building, the side that connected to Kazi Depot, was the food staging area. High-shelving held bags mostly composed of dehydrated potatoes, mushrooms, and freeze-dried meat substitutes were wrapped in cellophane and stacked nearly to the high ceilings on the warehouse shelving.

Fresh food had to be locally grown in indoor farms primarily at the Communications Station. Freeze-dried meats and vegetables were often shipped from Osara Prime and hydrated in the kitchens, but it just wasn’t worth it to any supplier on Osara Prime to freeze and ship tons of real fresh meats and vegetables, so those were a rare treat for most on the station, reserved for anniversaries and birthdays.

Kazi Security agents were spread throughout the warehouse, taking inventory with the help of small drones that scanned the shelving units. A constant hum from the drones loading the puddlejumpers and readying supplies for the solar transportation trains that ran between the stations at Kazi Depot. They needed to make sure that the Research Facility had the supplies that they needed.

Occasionally you’d see someone run by, searching the stacks of three-story storage shelving that ran throughout the facility for something, in particular, flipping through checklists on their hand terminal.

At that moment, it occurred to Johns how big of a pain in the ass it would be if another one of those squids came crashing down into the planet again right then. If it hit too close, everyone in the building would die as the giant stacks lost their footing and supplies as heavy as all-terrain vehicles came crashing down onto them. It was a miracle they hadn’t come down the first time. There had been a few areas of the storage warehouse that had required cleanup, but it had mostly fared well.

“We’re gonna be short,” Rick said as he moved a toothpick from side to side in his mouth.  

“I know,” Johns replied. This fact had dawned on him almost immediately after the squids landed. He’d known for a while that their stores weren’t equipped to handle any kind of long-term disaster scenario.

“Without the Communications Station crops, we are not in the best position. They had a crop of mushrooms and vegetables that was due for harvest in about a week. The count is still ongoing, but we are looking at weeks not months — of stockpiled fresh foods, anyway — at current rations,” Rick said.

“And the protein meal?” Johns asked.

***

A few hours later, after they’d taken full stock of what they had, Johns and Rick entered the meeting room at the back of the warehouse, where Alan Greenway, the Head of Logistics, delivered a report on their supply stock. It was homey, with trinkets and clutter on every surface. He was older, with red hair that had become peppered with blotches of white in seemingly random positions on his head. Fat around the middle, his uniform clung tightly to his gut and his shoulders were too large for its sleeves.

“Things are looking tight but manageable,” he said as he pushed his glasses farther up onto the brim of his nose. “Our food supplies are short. With our previous shipment delayed and the collapse of the Com Station farming system, which would have provided us quite a bit of runway on the next harvest, we have just about two months of stockpiled food ready to go. Stretched to perhaps four with the protein meal.”

“People will be rioting well before we get to two months in protein meal,” Johns said.

“Fair enough. The other stations will still be able to operate their own limited farming systems and with each designed to buy a few weeks for their own population in a pinch.

However, this is still too close for comfort. We are going to distribute our some food supplies between Kazi Depot and the Research Facility to give them a bit of wiggle room. I’m still waiting to hear back from their inventory over there, but we know they will have a fraction of what we do.

Regarding other supplies, it looks like we should be fine. The damage at the other remaining stations was significant but not critical. The train between Kazi Depot and the Research Facility is still running. Medical supplies will be distributed between the stations to make sure everyone has enough. The good news is that our engineering team has already put together more than 50 jury-rigged flamethrowers, and we should have no problem dealing with the rest of the crash sites.

Sites B and C are scheduled to have teams visit them in two days, after the puddlejumpers return from their supply runs. We’ll need every puddlejumper we can to transport the goods. In the meantime, the drones will continue loading the trains, which are scheduled to depart tomorrow morning.

With Site B’s impact being so close to the Research Facility, they have more damage. They need to shore up parts of their building so we will be sending some building supplies over as well.

As for us, there isn’t a whole lot that we can do until we transport to the next crash site. We have our flying drones out there surveying the sites today, looking for a good drop point. The sites have grown so large that we may need to make camp for a couple of days to finish the job, even with the extra flamethrowers.”

“Alright, so we won’t starve. That’s a win in my book,” Rich said, elbowing Johns in the ribcage as he did.

“Is it really going to take two days to distribute the supplies? We can’t get out there sooner than two days? The longer we let this shit grow the harder it’s going to be.”

“Well, maybe we could shrink it down to a day-and-a-half. But there were quite a few injuries over there. I think our priority should be taking care of our people.”

“I might argue that getting rid of this crap is taking care of our people.

“Well….we could drop the teams off there and then return the puddlejumpers to handle the supplies?”

“So we wouldn’t have any on hand to evac people if anything happened?” Johns asked.

“If what happens? A burn victim? It’s goop, Nicholas,” Alan said.

“Maybe. We don’t know what it is and what it isn’t yet. And I’m not going to gamble on hubris.”

“Fair enough,” Alan replied, looking over the schedule he had laid out on his coms unit. “I guess there is no harm in giving you the ships while you need them. Just let us get the critical supplies — medical, some food items, repair items — over there first. Then you can go out there and burn it all down. I can have them ready for you by midday tomorrow. No promises on the timing. Just sometime around then.”

“Alright. I can work with that,” Johns replied.

Johns and Rick walked out of the office and walked toward the warehouse exit. They were met at the far side by the security team, who had been mulling around waiting for new orders.

“The next burn is tomorrow. Probably around noonish, all four puddlejumpers will be loaded with people and flown out to the impact sites. You guys need to be here at eleven-hundred.”

“So…does that mean we are off duty for the night?” Rick asked with a big shit-eating grin.

“I suppose it does,” Johns said knowingly.

“Then we can drink?”

Johns rolled his eyes. He looked toward the group, who looked back eagerly.

“Fine,” Johns said and was immediately met with fist pumps and hand slaps. “Okay, okay, okay. Calm down, people. Calm down. You can drink a little tonight. Celebrate the last burn. But only a couple. That’s it. I need you fresh and ready to go for the next burn job in the morning. No one hungover, you fucking hear me? Be on point. If you show up fucked up I will send your ass home. But tonight do as you please. Dismissed.”

The group dispersed. Johns felt dumb. He knew that he shouldn’t allow them to drink tonight with a burn tomorrow, but he needed these guys to buy what he was selling. As the last of the guys made their way through the door, the nasty feeling in the pit of his stomach disappeared as he saw Sara jogging toward him from the warehouse entrance.

“I need to talk to you,” she said, waiting for the group to completely disappear before speaking.

“Okay,” Johns replied and stared, waiting for her to speak.

“Privately,” she said in a hushed whisper.

Johns looked around from side to side.

“No one’s here. Just me and Alan,” Johns said, motioning toward the office on the far end of the building.

“It’s extremely sensitive,” she said with an urgency that made the hair on the back of Johns’ neck stand up.

“Sara, it’s fine. Out with it—”

“Their fucking eggs within the egg,” she said hurriedly.

“Excuse me?”

“They’re eggs, Mr. Johns, the mound of Blue goo that we discovered at the Communications Station, that looked like an egg, are filled with more, smaller eggs. Dozens of them.”

Johns felt his heart jump off a cliff and land in his feet. He furrowed his brow and beaded his eyes as her, the realization of what she was saying washed over him.

“Eggs of what?” he asked, his eyes wide. “Wasn’t the whole thing a damn egg?”

“Like…what do they contain? Is that what you’re asking? And no it wasn’t an egg. It was an incubator, apparently.”

“Yes. What is in the eggs from within the egg?”

“Well…creatures. We aren’t certain. We dissected the samples that we brought back this morning and underneath a lot of layers of the goo… in different states of solidity, we found a…creature. It was in the early stages, we think. But still, an animal. It didn’t survive more than a few minutes outside of the egg.”

“Jesus christ. What kind of animal? How big?”

“Well, it was small. Maybe three to four inches long. Lizard-like. Four legs. I’m certain that we broke it out of its shell far too early, because it didn’t last long in the environment tank. It’s hard to say what it will be like when it’s fully incubated.”

“One second,” Johns said before taking off in a run toward Alan Greenway’s office.

“Alan!” he said, bursting through the door, starting him.

“Yes?”

“Change of plans. We need the puddlejumpers at first light.”

“I can’t—”

“Yes, you can. We just learned something. I’ll tell you what in a bit. But believe me, the most important thing that we can do right now is burn those sites down.”

“What—”

“Later!” Johns yelled as he slammed the door. He turned to Sara, who had made her way over near Alan’s office. “Take me to it.”

Sara nodded and they left in a jog. Johns felt like he should be sprinting to see whatever this creature was, he didn’t want to draw too much attention and cause alarm.

They made their way out of the warehouse and down the metallic corridors that spiderwebbed their way across all of Kazi Depot. A few minutes later, they arrived at the research hall, panting. Sara entered her credentials and let the system scan her eye. The doors whooshed open and exposed a tighter metallic corridor, but this corridor was lined with windows.

“This way,” Sara said.

Inside of the triple-paned windowed hallway they turned into the third door on the right, into a room that already had two scientists in it, huddled over their petri dishes. Johns didn’t think that he had ever been in this room before. He didn’t have much that needed to be done in this wing.

Johns followed Sara as she huddled over the clear enclosure with the gloved inserts in the middle of the room. In the middle of the table were the remains of the egg, split open and pulled apart into four separate quarters from the top. It was…wet. There, in the center of the split open egg, covered in a thin, familiar luminescent blue mucus, was what appeared to be a small bird-like animal.

Johns leaned in, taking a closer look. The animal’s skin had a blue-purple hue. It looked like it had four legs, but several places on the body featured hook and claw-like appendages. Eight in total spread around the torso. Its skin was smooth, like an amphibians. Its mouth was beak-like, protruding from its face and coming to a point. It laid in the center of the table emaciated.

“We washed some of the goo off to get a better look.”

“Do it again,” Johns said.

“Do what?” Sara replied.

“Hatch another one. We have more eggs, right? You said that there were dozens. I want to see what it looks like when it’s alive.”

“Right now?” Sara said, pulling back a step from Johns.

“Yes, right now.”

Sara looked at her shoes, then nodded at two researchers who were working close by. They dropped what they were doing and went toward the back room. A few minutes later, they were rolling out another table covered in the poly-plastic covering with a full egg inside. They placed it at the center of the room. A scalpel had been placed on the table next to the egg under the covering.

She reached her hands into gloved inserts on the side, carefully picked up the scalpel, and then slowly inserted it into the very top of the egg. She cut lengthwise in one direction, about three-quarters of the way down the egg. A familiar luminous blue fluid oozed from the new opening. Sara took the scalpel out, re-inserted it into the crown of the egg, and began cutting in the opposite direction down the side. Once she had cut down all four sides, she set the scalpel down and began to peel back each side of the egg one by one. With each peel of each quarter of the egg, the egg suctioned away and mucous strings pulled away with the shell of the egg, exposing what appeared to be a thin membrane beneath.

Once all four quarters of the egg had been peeled back and rested on the table on either side, Sara picked up the scalpel that lay on the inside of the containment bubble. Then, carefully, pushed the scalpel into the membrane. As soon as it touched, a thick blue liquid began pouring out, coating the surface of the table in the liquid. She cut and pulled at the membrane to make the opening larger.

There, in the center of the egg was the creature that looked just like the one from the first egg that had opened. It writhed its legs around, kicking and clawing at the air. It’s head whipped around from side to side, struggling. He tried desperately to pull air into its mouth. Johns watched with awe as the alien creature that couldn’t be more than three inches long clung to life. Within a minute, the writhing became less determined, until finally, the creature stopped and laid still.

Johns, Sara, and the techs that had brought the table over made eye contact, each waiting for the other to speak.

“We need to get to those other impact sites fast,” Johns said as he turned and walked for the door.

Chapter 8

Headed to Site B, Kazi

Osara System, Ballas Branch

Johns looked out of the open hatch out the back of the open puddlejumper at the sprawling green forest in the morning sun below. Being that Kazi was smaller than Osara, the horizon felt much closer to them than it would have been on their home planet.

He looked around the cabin. Twenty members of their security team sat packed into a puddlejumper that was meant for no more than fifteen. They fidgeted. He had briefed them in full about what was happening. They were about to land and weren’t exactly sure what would be waiting for them, given the fact that they had just discovered some kind of creatures were hatching at the crash sites.

On one hand, it seemed like a good idea to leave them in the dark. He didn’t want this information getting out into the station, and now that he had told a handful of people it certainly would. But he couldn’t send them out there in good conscience without accurately conveying the risk.

Still, the regular drone flybys hadn’t picked up any noticeable activities, aside from a few raised areas that appeared to be similar to the mound they have found at the communications station.

Sara had tried everything to be allowed to come. She said that she wanted to help with the burn. No, Johns said. Then she said she had to go because there might be new research opportunities. She could come after they had cleared the area, Johns suggested. He could make sure anything interesting was left untouched. Then she just tried to say that she was coming whether he liked it or not. “good luck scheduling your own puddlejumper then,” he had said and she stormed off.

She was smart and feisty and Johns was glad to have her on Kazi for this shitshow. She reminded him so much of Anna. Or at least, the way he imagined that she would be now.

Strangely, the discovery of the eggs had only excited Johns. He could feel his heart pounding, but not with the nervousness that you would expect, but with anticipation. But then again, maybe it wasn’t so strange. This was his first taste of the real thing since he had been unceremoniously dumped on this godforsaken research colony. He didn’t expect anything too difficult when they got to the site. Those creatures didn’t look like they were anywhere near ready to hatch back at Kazi Depot. In all likelihood, they would still be gestating and they could burn down the site just like they had the first, but this time burn the egg with it.

Still, he didn’t want his team to go in unprepared. Johns lifted himself from his seat, grabbed hold of a handle near the back of the plane, and cleared his throat into the coms channel. The heads of the 20 Kazi Security team members snapped to him and he felt a warmness in his belly.

“As we all know, we’re about to drop into a situation that none of us have ever been in before. I won’t lie to you and say there is nothing to worry about. I don’t know that, and you know that I don’t know that. We don’t know what’s waiting for us there. Now, in all likelihood it’s going to be just like the first site, for those of you that were there. All have you have been briefed and trained on how to deal with this growth. The only difference is that this time, we’re carrying gauss rifles.”

They had found a crate of working gauss rifles in the storage facility. They were beasts. The electromagnetic pull sent bullets flying at 2,000 meters per second and could tear a hole through a ship hull.

“Now, when we land, play it safe. I know we weren’t trained for this sort of thing. If there is something there that needs to be dealt with, trust that man next to you. Hold your gas, deliver fire, down it. Call it out. If shit gets too hairy, remember we have this puddlejumper circling and they’ll come down and extract at the same point we dropped in at. It’s a clearing just a few hundred meters to the West of the growth site,” Johns said before giving the team a nod, which they returned. We’ll drop a beacon that will be accessible in your HUD.”

That felt good. His speech needed a little bit of work but it was decent enough. It had been more than ten years since he had given one of those. He was rusty.

“You ready for this?” Johns asked Rick.

“Of course,” he said nodding, as he pulled his gauss rifle up to his shoulder. “I can’t wait to fuck one of these little rats up if they dared to come out of those eggs already.”

Johns smiled and rolled his eyes. He had known men like Rick before. He had commanded team. They were good, most of them. Most of them were even up for the bullshit that spewed out of their mouth. He had never been in a battle of any kind with Rick, but he suspected that he really did believe his own bullshit too.  

A few minutes later the puddlejumper was descending over a small opening in the forest floor. The team sat waiting for the rope to be hooked to the ship and then take the plunge. In the distance, Johns could see the growth site, shining blue through the tiny openings in the treeline at the edge of the clearing.

The drones had shown them that this growth site had seen its growth rate continue to grow exponentially. With each passing minute, the goo was spreading more quickly. The site was now three times the size of the first site, which meant that they were going to be cutting things close to get done by sunset, even with a larger team this time.

The ship came to a halt and the rope was lowered. Johns went down first. He was happy that this time he didn’t have to worry about Sara on the way down. He landed, raised his rifle, and spun a quick circle to check his perimeter. When he didn’t see anything out of the ordinary, he dropped to one knee and pointed his rifle toward the trees with the blue lighting shining through them.

He held that position as members of the team dropped from the ship behind him. As each one landed, they ran to the side and they too assumed the position.

“Take it easy,” Rick said when all twenty had landed. “We’ve got a few hundred yards of clearing and forest before we get to the growth site. The forest is our biggest hurdle. If anything is going to get to us, it’s going to be in there. Keep your eyes peeled, and call anything out before you fire a single round. When we get to the growth site, ten people start burning and ten people watch the perimeter. I don’t want anything sneaking up on us. We’ll have a few more start burning once we have a lay of the land, Understood?”

“Yes sir,” several people replied over the coms.

They took off across the clearing, staying low to the ground as they ran. All security personnel go through a basic boot camp. Some of them were ex-military. Others were just young kids. Boot didn’t compare to the real thing, but they did know the basics and that made Johns a little more comfortable.

When they reached the trees, Johns signaled with his hand for them to slow down. The few hundred meters through the forest were going to go by at a snail’s pace. They didn’t want to make a lot of noise on their way to the growth site. Each man watched different areas of the perimeter as they walked, checking for the unknown. The forested areas of the planet were dark, with only small amounts of sunlight squeaky through to the vine-covered floor. Johns had always found being in the forests of Kazi a tad unnerving.

They were only about a hundred meters into the forest when Johns saw something move through the foliage just a few dozen meters in front of him. He signaled everyone down and they hit the deck behind him, hiding among fern-like plants. He turned around with a grimace on his face, and pointed both of his fingers at his eyes, and then pointed toward the area where he had seen the movement.

They watched in silence for a few moments. Johns’ finger hugged the trigger as he aimed toward where he had seen movement. Gauss rifles took quite a bit of pull to start unloading but once they did, anything in their way wasn’t going to be in the way much longer. They pumped out over a thousand rounds per minute if you had them set that high.

Johns heard deep scratches and thuds and thought he saw a slight movement deep in the bushes. It sounded like something was digging. A few branches on one of the deep purple bushes ruffled. He felt his heart rate rising and he pulled yet tighter on the trigger, a fraction of an inch away from dumping gauss rounds in the area. A leg protruded from the foliage.

It jumped out, taking Johns by surprise. Somewhere behind him, someone let out a blast of his gauss rifle, dumping bullets in the direction of the beast. It looked in their direction then bounded off into the forest. Johns could feel his heart pounding. A small snicker started from somewhere behind Johns, who couldn’t help but crack a smile himself. It was just a Dinnu, the equivalent to a deer on Kazi. It looked more like an overgrown dog with long fur but had a similar set of horns and diet to the deer. Kazi was littered with them.

“Who shot that?” Johns said.

“That would be Briggs, sir.”

Johns turned around and made eye contact with Briggs through their visors.

“Sorry, sir.”

Johns hung his head and started laughing quietly to himself and as soon as the others realized that he wasn’t angry they joined in with him. “You god damned idiot.”

The group continued to slip their way through the forest, ever-vigilant against threats that never came. The closer they got to the growth site, the bluer their surroundings became. Many of the plants in the Kazi forests had a waxy finish, causing the shimmer from the growing goo, illuminating the forest areas surrounding it. As they got close, it became clear that the goo had made its way well into the forest. That would make burning it down a bit of a hassle, as Johns didn’t want to start a forest fire. They were going to have to be smart about how they did things.

The team set up a line at the edge of the seeping mucous. Johns delivered instructions for the burn and instructed two of the members with guns to do a perimeter check on either side of their line to look for obstacles or any issues. The shimmering of the goo made it hard to see much. Their eyes weren’t accustomed to constantly having a blue light shining in them. Johns was thankful for the environment suit, its visor providing protection.

The Kazi Security personnel did a quick walk of the perimeter. The burn team spread out along the edges of the growth and waited. Johns gave the signal. Instantly, the forest lit up with orange reflections as the flamethrowers started to dump their fiery tubes into the goo.

As the goo burned, you could hear bubbling and wheezing, almost as if the goo itself was screaming out in pain. They made quick work, tearing through the new growth and pushing it back several hundred yards within the first hour of the burn.

For the first time, Johns noticed that the goo had a weird reaction. The areas of the goo surrounded the burned areas seemed to bubble or wave, like a small wave in a body of water, as if it was reacting to the burn. Given what they know about the goo, it could be communicating what was happening further into the growth. That gave him some pause, but so far everything had been clear.

Within a few short hours, they had made significant progress. Johns had hoped that they would be able to finish in one full day, but as the evening sun began to sink in the sky it was clear that they were going to need more time.

“We goin’ back or campin’ out tonight?” Rick asked as he eyed the horizon after it had become clear that they wouldn’t be able to burn it all back that day.

“We’re going back,” Johns said after considering it for a moment. “Can’t risk it. We’ll come back in the morning at first light.”

“Or we could just go through the night,” Rick suggested.

“Not enough visibility. I don’t want to put these guys in that position.”

“Sure. But we’ve been out here all afternoon and we haven’t seen anything yet.”

“They could be nocturnal. We don’t know anything about these things.”

Suddenly Johns realized that things were quiet. The natural hum of the Kazian forest came to a halt. No birds sang.

“INCOMING,” a shout came over the coms “EAST ONE-SIX-SEVEN AND MOVING QUICKLY,” the voice that Johns recognized as Porter’s said.

Johns immediately grabbed his weapon and he and Rick took off in a full sprint toward Porter’s end of the line. Over the course of the day, as things had relaxed, they had spaced out around the edges of the growth. In the distance, Johns could hear shots being fired over near a patch of trees. Soon, several of the closer members of the team reached him and started firing too, although he could not see exactly what they were firing at.

“Holy shit!” Rick yelled through the coms as they approached the scene and drew close enough to see what was going on. Closing in on the group that was now seven strong, all firing their gauss rifles, was a group of hundreds of small creatures that were closing ground quickly across the Blue goo toward them, mucous splashing around them as they ran. They flocked like birds, ducking and bing away from the incoming bullets. They were fast, speeding along the goo at the height of a chicken.

“Evac now!” Johns yelled into his coms as he pulled the gauss rifle out and started spraying shots into the oncoming cloud of two-foot-high bipedal lizards that were flying across an open field. There were hundreds of them. They were so small, Rick knew that they had no chance to kill them all.

“GET TO THE DROP POINT!” Rick screamed into the coms, loud enough to be heard over the hail of gunfire being launched.

Several members of the group took off running outright, others ran a few feet back, then would turn around and launch some more bullets before taking off. Johns sent the signal to the pilot and immediately saw the puddlejumper turn around in the distance.

“RUN!” Johns screamed and took off toward the forest at the other end of the field behind him.

“Give me all relevant video feeds,” Johns heaved to his A.I. while at a dead sprint. He watched as a picture-in-picture screen appeared at the top right of his visor. Running was taking the bulk of his attention, but he occasionally glanced at the small screen as he ran. It was showing the helmet feed from Guard Aaron Sanders, a young recruit that was making his way across the field but at the back of their line. Every few seconds he would turn behind him to get a look at the cloud of creatures that were turning up goo as they ran, cutting through the mist that hung above it. Each time he turned his head around, they were noticeably closer.

He had put these men in a terrible position. With the very little training that the Kazi Security required, these men were a far fling away from where they needed to be to deal with what was happening. They were undermanned and completely out of their depth.

The last few times Aaron Sanders turned around, the creatures were right up behind him. His looks behind became more frequent as he felt their impending arrival. Finally, the view from his helmet cam turned around one time to show that one of the creatures had latched onto the back of his leg and was biting away at his environment suit while digging away with the extra two appendages that were located on its back. Aaron grabbed him, flung him off, then stopped, turned around, and dumped his gauss rifle into the cloud of creatures just as they arrived.

Aaron screamed over the coms for the entire team to hear. The cloud engulfed him. Johns stopped and turned around just in time to see Aaron’s detached arm floating above the creatures as they dug into his body. Aaron let out a few more gut-wrenching screams, his mouth filling with blood, as Johns saw mists of red dissipating into the air above him, mixing with the blue-hued mist.

Johns turned and ran, knowing that there was nothing that could be done for him but with a deep pain in the pit of his stomach. As they entered the forest, Johns could see that the puddlejumper ship was hovering a few meters off of the ground with its back open. As Johns entered the clearing where they had first been dropped off, the first few members of the team started to make it to the ship. As they did, each assumed the position with their rifles pointing out toward where the creatures would be coming from.

Johns was at the back of the line, slowed by his decision to stop and see if there was anything that he could do for Aaron. Behind him, he could hear that the creatures had moved on from Aaron and were now tearing their way quickly through the forest.

As the last members of the team made it to the ship, only Johns was left as he sprinted across the field. He could feel the creatures gaining behind him. Ahead of him, the puddlejumper started to lift ever-so-slightly off of the ground. The pilot was engaging the boosters, hoping to make a quick getaway. That meant that Johns was going to have to jump up into the ship.

The creatures let out some type of scream that sounded not unlike the sounds that you hear out in the Kazi forest at night.

They were so close, Johns almost felt like they were nipping at his heels as he closed on the puddlejumper, which was now a solid five feet off the ground. Johns wondered if he would make it. Those that were on the ship all began simultaneously dumping rounds on all sides of Johns, tearing into the cloud of small creatures that were stalking behind.

Johns jumped as high as he possibly could. He sailed through the air toward the slowly rising ship. He knew from the moment he left his feet that he wasn’t going to make it. No chance.

His arms were caught by several members of the team and he was quickly hoisted inside. Behind him, the creatures which were now attempting to leap into the ship unsuccessfully. They let out dying screams as a cloud of bullets started to rip into their flock, before scattering off into the forest. The pilot engaged the boosters and the ship lifted quickly above the jungle canopy.

Chapter 9

Johns’ Quarters, Kazi

Osara System, Ballas Branch

Johns sat in his quarters eyeing the metal table in front of him, sipping on a glass of potato vodka, his stomach in knots. Aaron had been the first man that he had lost in a decade. It hit him as hard as any ever had. Had he made the wrong call? Clearly, Kazi Security wasn’t a trained fighting force. Should he have not sent them out there?

He took solace in the fact that Aaron’s death and learning of the eggs had only made the situation more serious. They had to burn back the remaining two growth sites and do it quickly, before those things grew into whatever they matured into. At least they knew where they stood with them now – kill on sight. Who knew how big they would get? It was a thought that had been running through his mind since they had first discovered the egg. But now it really mattered. Those things would kill them indiscriminately. They were at war.

There had been hundreds of those creatures at the second crash site. How many had yet to hatch? If there was one thing he was certain of, they couldn’t wait any more before taking care of the other sites.

After getting back to Kazi Depot and going through the sanitation protocol, it had occurred to Johns that in the heat of the moment, they had all dropped their backpack-connected flamethrowers and had switched to the guns even though their tests had shown that the goo and the creatures it spawned died to fire. That was part of what was eating at him. Even he had opted for the rifle over the flamethrower. He should have known better. Had he sent his team out there unprepared?

He had. That was the conclusion that he ultimately came to. He should have told them to use the flamethrowers. All their flamethrowers together could have burned through the flock of creatures. Or at least drive them back. Aaron would still be here, maybe.

He had always done this — second-guessed himself when he lost someone. It had been that way during the war so why should it be different now? Still, something felt even worse in the pit of his stomach this time. Maybe he had gotten soft. But he couldn’t go down the rabbit hole.

Johns was used to adversity. Shit, if anyone could deal with this, it was him. He knew that. If he had survived the war then the public onslaught that followed it, he could handle a few hundred tiny aliens.

Returning home at the end of the Osarian Rebellion had been a dizzying experience. He had returned to the capital a hero. His command of the 5th Infantry Regiment, the unit that had taken back the city of Tillon from the Rebellion had made him a minor celebrity. He remembered walking down the ramp as he pulled into port in the capital and hearing his name called by the crowds. He had felt overwhelmed, but tipped his cap and raised his hand in thanks before hastily making his way inside the port terminal.

When they had arrived at the Osaran Army intake center the debriefing had started immediately. It had been intense. For hours, they had poured over the events that had led up to the end of the war, recording statements from Johns. At the time, he had assumed that all surviving members of his regiment were receiving the same treatment.

It had taken hours before Johns had been allowed to see his family. When he finally met them in the small meeting room that they had set aside for him, he hugged them for what felt like hours. During the war, he had never truly expected to come home. Things were just too fucked up.

That moment was a big one in Johns’ mind. That was his ideal. Back home with his family, everyone happy.

But that was before things went to shit and he ended up on this god forsaken forrest planet.

Johns pushed the thought out of his head. Now was not the time. There was too much at stake. If he let himself climb down that hole he might not find his way back out for weeks, and Kazi deserved better than that.  

He swished a finger of neat potato vodka around in his glass, the only liquor that was readily available on Kazi. He wasn’t much of a drinker. Just on days like this. He had been, years ago. As a recruit he had been maybe the most prolific drinker in his unit. But as men who drink heavily get older they typically go one of two ways, in Johns’ experience — they either take to the bottle, or they move away from it. He had moved away from it.

The hand terminal on the desk in front of him lit up.

INCOMING CALL FROM SARA RUTHERFORD

A pattern interrupt, bringing a smile to his face. He was fond of her, attracted to her, even. It wasn’t a sexual attraction. She was pretty, there was no doubt about that. But she was much younger than he was. Too young. Johns was attracted to Sara in a life-spirit sort of way. She had a young woman’s drive and naivety. Bubbly, but serious when it counted. She was confident, maybe too much so. But she was adept, he had to give her that. She was handling all of this like a pro.

“What now?” Johns said as he answered, making sure the glass of vodka was pushed out of the shot.

“We have some new imaging from the sites. We need to go over it. Now, preferably.”

“Alright,” Johns said, detecting the same hurriedness in her voice. “Meet me at Command in ten minutes.”

“Yes sir.”

When Johns walked through the doors of Command, he could see through the glass doors that Sara was already sitting in the conference room, face-down in her tablet. She saw him as he made his way through the deck and waved him into the room hurriedly.

“What’s the emergency now?” he asked as the glass doors shut behind him.

“It’s not good,” she said, eyeing him out of the tops of her eyes as she scanned the tablet.

“To be expected.”

He sat down next to her and she pulled up an image that Johns immediately recognized as the first crash site at the Communications Station.

“This is what the site looked like the day after our burn team left,” Sara said, showing the charred remains and debris at Site A, but no blue glowing snot. Theb she flipped the screen to a new image with a wave of her finger. “And this is it two days later, yesterday, taken while you guys were out burning Site B.”

The goo was creeping out of the impact site, starting to work its way toward the top of the crater.

“So we didn’t get it all?”

“Apparently not. But that’s not the worst of it,” she said, flipping to the next image. “This is today, the drones just made their first pass right before I called you.”

Johns’ eyes widened. The Blue goo had not only crept out past the outer reaches of the crater, but was nearly nearly back to the size it was when they had originally burned it down. The thick membrane covered much of what was left of the station that had stood there, but wasn’t yet approaching the outermost reaches of the structure.

“Oh for fuck’s sake,” Johns said. “That quick? It’s accelerating?”

“It does appear to be, at that site at least. If it had grown at this rate the whole time it would have been quadruple the size it had been when we burned it down the first time.”

“Well…great. What do we do?”

“I…uhh…I don’t know. That’s your job, isn’t it?” Sara said.

“I don’t think this is anyone’s job.”

They sat in silence for a moment while Johns weighed his options. It was a tough position to be in. Sara continued to flip through the images and sat awkwardly while he ran through the options in his head. Every thirty seconds or so he would whisper something out loud as he argued with himself internally.

“Well…I have to call for help.”

“From Osara?”

“Yes. I should have done it from the beginning but I need to do it now in case things go sideways. It’ll take them a few weeks to get here even if they left immediately.”

“I see,” she said. They sat for a few seconds of silence, each waiting for the other to speak. “Well, I’ll leave you to it.”

She got up from her chair in the conference room and Johns watched as she walked out the glass doors, making sure that they shut fully behind her before nodding and heading out of the Command Center.

Johns wondered who he should be calling on Osara Prime. Protocol dictated that his calls should go to Main Command, but his reputation with them was shot and he needed to be sure that he would be taken seriously.

He could send his message directly to President Raymond Duke. He would have to record it here and then send it from the Capella’s lightbeam to transmit it. He knew Raymond would accept the message, given their history. He would also know that if Johns was reaching out to him after all of these years that the situation was pretty serious, he hoped.

After juggling the options around in his mind for a few minutes, he decided reaching out to Raymond Duke was the best option they had for a positive outcome. He might get reprimanded for breaking protocol but what were they going to do? Fire him? The safety of the civilians on Kazi took precedence.

Johns could feel his stomach beginning to twist itself into knots. For years he had thought about what he would say to Raymond Duke when he finally had the chance — how he would lay into him. How he would let him know how he felt about the way things turned out. How he had been blamed for something he couldn’t control, something he had warned them would happen. How he, had betrayed him to further his own political aspirations in the wake of the war. Of course, Raymond Duke knew all of this. He had been the one that orchestrated it. Johns never imagined that this call would come under circumstances like these. His airing of grievances would have to wait.

He picked up his tablet and navigated to the messaging screen. He positioned it to point toward his face, making sure that the angle and backdrop looked sufficiently professional before hitting the record button. He let out a deep heave of a sigh, then pressed it.

“This message is intended for President Raymond Duke. It is being sent through proper military channels at eleven-oh-eight Osara Standard Time from the Command Center in Kazi Depot, using the OSN Capela’s light beam.” said.

“President Duke,” Johns began, the formality of his tone meant to catch Raymond in the gut. “I apologize that it has taken me so long to report in. By now I assume you have discovered that Kazi was struck by three objects exactly 4 days ago.

All three impacts struck in different locations in our northern hemisphere. I am sorry to report that one of the impacts directly hit our Communications Station. As a result, our communications are down and will remain so for the foreseeable future. We currently have teams working on restoring power and rebuilding a communications network.

“These impacts were extremely potent, damaging all three stations. Kazi Depot and the Research Facility are damaged but still in working condition. I am sorry to report that Station A was completely destroyed, and all inhabitants are feared killed on impact. Due to the landing pad being destroyed, we weren’t able to launch much of a rescue effort. Although, with the level of devastation at the crash site, we don’t believe there was much chance that anyone survived anyway. We estimate 503 casualties in total. We’ve sent teams to each station on Kazi to maintain order and tend to the wounded. I am happy to report that all other stations are shaken, but doing well. Each has their own backup power and enough supplies to cover them for at least a few months. We are coordinating supply-sharing runs in the meantime. I have transferred several video files to you that display the crash site at Station A”

“Further,” Johns continued. “The object that hit us was not a meteorite or typical space debris. We believe the objects that hit us were three separate biological entities of unknown origin. Based on our calculations and the size of the craters, they were between 250 and 400 feet long.

If these three impacts had each been meteors or pieces of a single meteor that broke up upon entry we would have expected far more devastation. Large amounts of dirt thrown into the atmosphere. Likely weeks before we had sunlight. Fortunately, that was not the case. While a significant amount of debris was kicked up into the atmosphere, the organism’s landing appeared to be clean. Perhaps it slowed down before connecting,” Johns said, his expression stern and unwavering.

“As you might have noticed from the videos and images that I sent with this message, a strange blue-colored film was discovered to be covering the impact area. The substance is a thick, mucus-like membrane that covers the entirety of the crash site and most of the areas surrounding it. At first we had hoped that the blue mucous was the remains of the animal itself, but have since learned a bit about it and have a working hypothesis as to what it actually is. We believe the membrane is a vehicle for breaking down organic matter to feed the growth of the organism and its self-developed ecosystem. All three crash sites have shown significant growth.“

Johns continued, explaining how they had learned that heat and fire were able to destroy the organism, and how they had dispatched a team to Crash Site A to burn things back. Then, he told him about discovering the eggs and the creatures that they had run into when they had arrived at Crash Site B. He told him about Aaron and how the team had barely escaped the flock of creatures that had descended on them, and that they had discovered the goo regrowth at the Communications Station. It all sounded crazy so say out loud.

“The situation has quickly gone from bad to worse. As things stand right now, I think we’ve got a handle on the situation and with some luck we’ll have these sites burned down within a few days. But I’d like to make a formal request for emergency help. If you could send some supplies and infantry units here that would be enough, hopefully. Even if we can take care of the crash sites, we’ll need help getting our infrastructure together to rebuild a Communications Station when this is all over. Thank you.”

Johns ended the recording.

Chapter 10

Warehouse, Kazi Depot, Kazi

Osara System, Ballas Branch

That night, Johns and Rick were in the warehouse loading supplies into the puddlejumper when a call came in on his coms unit.

 

Chris Hornsby

EMERGENCY

 

They made side-eye contact and Johns reluctantly picked up the call. What could be wrong now?

“Sir,” Chirs Hornsby, the Research Station Security Team Lead, said as he came on the screen. He was a short, stocky young man with bright red hair. “I’m afraid I have some bad news.”

“Yes?” Johns said.  

“About forty minutes ago we sent a team out to quickly collect more samples of the goo for analysis here at the Research Facility. When they reached the site, the Puddlejumper suffered a failure, killing all seven onboard.”

Johns stared back silently for a moment, taking in what he had just heard. Chris Hornsby swallowed a big, nervous swallow.

“Suffered a failure?”

“Yes sir, that’s right. They were transmitting a video feed from the cockpit view at the time of the incident. I have attached the video to this message.”

“Thank you,” Johns said through gritted teeth. “I’ll watch the feed and send instructions after I’ve seen it.”

“Yes sir. And…eh…I’m sorry sir.”

“Yes, me too.”

They hung up and Johns frantically navigated his way to the video and pulled it up on his coms unit.

The footage was clear, pointed out the front window in the cockpit of the puddlejumper. They were flying low, just above the canopy, over a night-blackened forest. Rows of giant trees passed quickly under the ship as it skirted the tops of the forest.

“Two clicks untio we reach the growth,” the pilot said over the radio.

Moments later, you could see the blue hue shining in the distance, dancing off of the trees. It looked like someone had set up neon blue bar lighting in a huge patch of forest.

Soon, the first signs of blue light were showing up just beneath the ship. The pilot could be heard mumbling to himself as he looked for a suitable place to land and flipped switches on the dashboard.

THUD.

The ship lurched to the side, knocking it off its flight path. A scream came from the back of the ship.

“The fuck!” the pilot yelled as he tried to regain control.

A blue splash hit the windshield of the puddlejumper, obscuring his vision. The surprise made the pilot jump, pulling the wheel sending the Puddlejumper into a spin. He turned on the windshield wipers. They swiped a couple of times, but only smeared the blue sludge around the windshield. The blue sludge was smoking. It was burning. Soon, it began eating its way through the window and dripping onto the dashboard, where it ate through the plastic dashboard. Some must have dropped into the pilot too, judging from how his screams increased in intensity. The pilot tried to regain control, but they had been flying too low. There was a loud explosion and the video feed ended. In the final frames it looked like something may have been coming through the window. It was hard to tell. Johns rewinded and watched a dozen times, but couldn’t tell if he was seeing something gnot just a shadow amid the chaos.

“Jesus Christ,” Johns said, pushing his forehead into his hands.

“Now what the fuck was that, exactly?” Rick asked.

“Hell if I know,” Johns said.

“Roll it back a second.”

Johns reluctantly rolled the video back a few more times after pausing to consider if he had the stomach to watch it again.

“What could that be from?” Johns asked.

“I don’t know. But it’s blue, just like the goo. And the way that it burns through — just… what the hell, man? What shot that shit onto the window? Could it be the little critters we ran into?”

“That puddlejumper has to be at least thirty feet from the ground when it gets hit by something. They go down quick but it’s still up there quite a ways. See,” Johns said as he pointed at a freeze-frame on the video that showed the forest canopy barely visible through the corrosive Blue goo on the windshield. “There’s the trees. That’s what? Sixty feet in some places? But they are a ways down. Nah man, whatever shot this shit on the windshield had to be airborne.”

“Could be up in those trees too. Maybe the little fuckers climb?”

“Good point,” Johns said as he dismissed the visual in front of them. “Still…we didn’t see them do that. We also didn’t see them shoot blue acid at anything either. I just want to be prepared if we run into something new.”

“Bottom line though boss, we don’t know anything about these things. It was just a day ago that we found out they were hatching anything. There could be anything in those eggs,” Rick said.

“That’s true. But what the hell am I supposed to do? The Research Facility was already working with a skeleton crew. Now they lost, what? Another seven? We can’t send them out there alone to burn. We still have to go knock Site A back, and Site B is growing out of control in the middle of the damn jungle.”

“How many security personnel do we have?”

“Total? Including volunteers?”

Rick nodded.

“One-hundred-and-forty-nine. Well, one-hundred-and-forty-two now.”

“And firepower?”

“Enough for every man to carry a gun and a flamethrower,” Johns said.

“Gun as in gauss rifle or handgun?”

“Almost one-hundred rifles. The rest pistols.”

“Then we need to hire a few more.” Rick said.

“Bring civilians on?” Johns said, raising his eyebrow momentarily and then warming to the idea. “I guess we’ll have to.”

“I know it’s not what you want,” Rick said.

“We’re way past what I want. If we don’t get this thing under control we’re all going to be dead. Even if Osara Prime sends help, they won’t be here for weeks. At the rate these things are growing, they’ll be knocking on our door by the time they arrive.”

“This is fucked, sir.”

“Fucked indeed.”

***

Hours later, when the ships had been loaded and the recruitment messages sent to every living person on Kazi, Johns finally made it back to his quarters. He was going to catch a couple of hours of sleep while the volunteers were onboarded and signed up to be trained to use the flamethrowers. The engineers on the station were putting them together by the dozens per day now. They weren’t hurting for flame, that was for sure. Once they were ready, the plan was for the civilians to hang back while the security teams pressed forward to confront the creatures as they arrived. If they could drive them back, the civilian teams could make a real dent in the goo growth.

Just as he laid his head down on his pillow, his coms device lit up with a new message routed from the OSN Capela. He held it up to his face.

 

NEW MESSAGE

PRESIDENT RAYMOND DUKE

That was a weird feeling.

Johns opened the message. A face he recognized appeared on the screen. He was still as handsome as he had always been. His chiseled jawline was still as square as it had been in his early 30s. Now in his 40s, Raymond had flecks of gray hair that made him look more distinguished.

“Hello Nicholas, it’s been a long time,” the President of Osara Prime said, his steely demeanor the same as Johns remembered it from the campaign. “It was nice to see your face on my screen.”

Raymond Duke shuffled some papers in front of him, then angled his chair to ensure that he was directly facing the camera. No doubt another quirk drilled into him during media training, Johns thought.

“I received your message regarding the situation on Kazi and am heartbroken at the loss of lives at the Communications Station. We did detect a collision there on the planet. When we hadn’t heard back, we feared the worst. But this. This was an unexpected and truly unprecedented situation. We will, of course, be sending word of these developments back to The Core. As you probably are well aware, any contact with any undocumented alien lifeform has to be reported. I’m sure this situation will receive a lot of attention from The Core — it may even reach the ears of the high council. So smile Nicholas, all of colonized space might be watching,” he said as a smile crept across his face. Johns was sure that he was going to love the attention.

“At this time, we have elected not to inform the citizens of Osara Prime of these recent developments so as not to cause a panic or unnecessarily worry those that have family on the planet. We will pass along information when we have a better understanding of the situation.

I have to agree with your assessment — this is certainly an issue. We have no way of fully knowing what this organic matter is or what potential issues it may cause. Hopefully, by the time you receive this message, you’ll have burned down the sites and have a positive assessment to deliver to me. That is my hope, at least.

I’ve shared your findings and data that you delivered with all of the top people here on Osara. Since you guys don’t have a consistent way to communicate other than through the light beam on the ship, all messages will be delivered through that channel will be accepted and manually routed to the appropriate people and databases. Our teams here will analyze the data and provide any insight that they have on the situation.

As for your request for help, that I have granted in part, although there are some things that you should know about our capacity here. In 30-days time, with an expected arrival date of 56 days. We’ll launch a small transport fleet filled with supplies and equipment to be delivered to Kazi Depot.

If you’re able to get the infestation under control in that time then we will be able to help you rebuild the Communications Station as required and render any medical help required. We’ll need to put together a quarantine plan as there would be no way to know who has been exposed to the organism.  If the situation is too dire, the transport fleets will be unable to land but will be able to airdrop supplies in from orbit.

An internal discussion with our Admirals determined we can not transport infantry to your location at this time. First, because it would unnecessarily put them at risk and possibly expose them to a hostile foreign biome. Our focus will be on rescue and rebuilding, not reclaiming land the organism has claimed. I know this is tough to hear. I know it isn’t what you wanted. But it’s the best that I can do at this time.

Please keep me posted regarding any developments and take care of yourself, Nicholas.”

The screen went blank and Johns slammed his fist into the table right behind it.

“That fuck!”

He shook the pain out of his hand and hung his head. He had known that this would be the outcome. Of course Osara wouldn’t send help to Kazi. Why would they? Any offer that he was making was a farce. They weren’t planning on leaving for a month. Even then, they would only engage with Kazi if the situation was under control. They would be no help and were likely only being sent so that Osara Prime could collect their own samples for study.

Kazi had always been little more than an afterthought in the system. They weren’t going to risk any serious Navy assets or lives coming to beat back some foreign sludge. They would level the whole planet with firebombs until they could safely go in and clean up whatever was left.

Johns picked up his coms unit briefly and selected “Reply.”

“Mr. Duke,” he said, refusing to call him by title. “This is Nicholas Johns again. I’ve just received your message informing me that no military help will be dispatched to Kazi, and that we can expect a small, inconsequential re-supply fleet in about eight weeks’ time. I accept this but just wanted to be certain that you understood the implications. If the sites continue growing at their estimated rates, in eight weeks Kazi Depot would be completely overrun. Of course, we will do everything in our power to keep that from happening,” Johns said.

He wanted to maximize the impact of his next words, so he chose them carefully. Accepting the fact that they weren’t sending military help without a blink of an eye was the best way that he could say “I see you’re fucking me again, but that’s expected.”

“I also wanted you to know that today we lost a full team from the Research Station in a puddlejumper crash. They were going to collect samples and something hit them while they were in the air. We’re not sure what. I’ve attached the video to this message. Have your team take a look.,” he said before pausing.

“Things are escalating and I don’t know where this is going to go. But if you leave these people to die I will make sure that I take you down with me, you sniveling cunt.”