Brood

A Surveyor Corps Adventure

Photo by Luke Chui on Unsplash

This story has been an epic project. What you are about to read is the result of nearly two months of wrangling the most volatile draft I have ever worked on. This is the longest work of fiction I have ever published to Gibberish, and it has taken a small village to help me get it across the finish line. Thank you—you know who you are.

This story is set in the Sandbox Earth Universe, and is another of our Surveyor Corps Adventures. Please click the links to learn more. Otherwise, it is my absolute pleasure to invite you to please enjoy this story!

---

“Civilization is the interlude between Ice Ages”
-Will Durant, popularized by Arthur C. Clarke

“The locals say the outer system is haunted. I’m not making this up—that’s the brief.” I tossed the folder onto the desk, and looked sternly at my crewmates.

Casimir, that giant of a man, sighed, stroked his thick black beard. He leaned back in his seat, his grey eyes aglow. Greta was the opposite: “That’s the flimsiest excuse we’ve heard yet. How can a whole half of a system be haunted. Do they give us evidence? What do they expect us to even look for?” She slammed her fist into her palm, and then pushed her blonde locks out of her eyes.

“There’s a signal. Any ship that goes beyond the Belt starts picking up this phantom signal. They can’t triangulate it, don’t know what it is. It only started recently. That’s all the brief says,” I said, steepling my fingers. “Listen, this is going to be the easiest mission yet. We go, we look around, we find out what’s going on with this signal, tell them there’s no phantoms, we high-tail it back home. It won’t take more than a week, and we’re getting hazard rates.”

Greta sighed, rested her head in her hands, before renewing her attack, more desperation in her voice than anger: “What do they take us for, anyway? They can’t go look themselves?” Casimir dodged her suddenly outstretched arm, and her aggressive gesturing. “Do they have to get one measly ship to fly across all of inner-space to see a colony that’s barely been around a hundred years?”

“I don’t make the rules, Greta. Yeah, this is a lame mission, but at least we’re getting paid for it.” My eyes flicked to Casimir, who was still stroking his beard, an odd expression on his face. “Casimir, you’ve been quiet, got anything to add?”

Casimir shook his head. “No sir, boss says go to Tharsis system, I go to Tharsis system.”

Greta turned in her seat to look at him. “Oh yeah, big brave Casimir,” she mocked.

“You want to be the ground-man you’re welcome to it. Please—make my job easier,” he chuckled.

“I just thought we’d be, you know, exploring. This is stupid.”

“Well you can tell the Corps its stupid all you want after we get back. Take some R&R time, we’re leaving in 10 hours.”

“We haven’t even made it to Riven!”

“This was a priority one redirect, I’m sorry Greta, orders is orders.”

Greta leaned back limply, letting her arms and legs dangle off her chair, and groaned dramatically.

“You’ve got ten hours to make peace with this mission. One more week, then we get that long break they promised us on Riven.”

“Fiiiine.” Greta huffed, and she stood, and stalked out of the room.

Casimir stayed behind. “Something on your mind, Casimir?”

Casimir leaned his big frame forward, and rubbed his hand over his buzzed haircut. I caught a flash of a tattoo I hadn’t noticed before—a winged black knight riding a horse—underneath his bicep. As quickly as it was revealed, it was gone, and Casimir said: “This is a curious mission, Jarrad. You know it, I know it. Corps knows it. They’re sending us anyway. They’re giving us hazard.”

“You’re right, it’s a curious mission.” I tried to keep a straight face. My blood began to boil. What do you know, Casimir? Big, brave Casimir?

“I’m just reading between the lines is all. Phantom signal? New Colony? Feels like someone left something out,” Casimir stood and turned to leave. “Thanks for the brief.”

The door closed with a swoosh behind him, and I was alone. I heaved a big sigh—I realized I’d been holding my breath.

Riven. I was torn. Yes, not getting leave as scheduled was tough. I found my thoughts turning idly to the blue skies of Riven: Sunny days in the apple grove, the symphony of cicadas singing away in the afternoon heat. Yet—The Corps needed us. Of all the ships in the Surveyor Corps, they chose The Extrapolator. Surely that meant something? Surely that was a good thing? All Greta wanted was to go home—see her people, do whatever she wanted to do. Selfish, I thought, bitterly. And Casimir—always opaque, never revealing what was behind those eyes of his. Casimir made me nervous—he always listened to me, but I never got the sense it was because he respected me. It was always because it was his job. Were all ground-men like this? They had a reputation for being their own breed, but Casimir seemed more-so. At least he didn’t complain as much as Greta.

I sighed again, and turned to my navigation screen: anything to keep my hands busy. One more week.

---

When our hyperspace jump was complete, the Tharsis system loomed ahead of us, in all it’s glory. The viewscreen filtered the light of the star and revealed all six planets of the system. The inner three were classically rocky worlds, then there was a belt of asteroids. The second planet, Marinas, had been colonized almost 100 years ago. It hadn’t even grown enough to take the Plebiscite, that’s how new it was. After the Belt came the outer worlds— another rocky world, Aris; a big jovian world called Graben; a small, remote snowball called Outworld. Each planet gleamed like a diamond in the stellar tiara of the system.

“It’s always something else,” I said.

Greta and Casimir were crowding behind my chair, looking at the viewscreen. Greta said glumly, “It would be, if this were new. Some other survey ship came here who knows when. And now we’re just dustin’ their trail.”

I bristled, but Casimir interjected.

“Where you wanna start?” he grunted.

“I’m thinking we start ‘in’ and work our way ‘out’. So let’s check out Aris, the moons of Graben, and we’ll end at Outworld.”

“Do we have anything on these planets from the last survey?” Casimir asked, ever the professional.

“Not a lot. No atmosphere to speak of, active geology.”

“Dead rocks.”

“You could say that,” I smirked.

“What about this weird signal?” Greta chimed in.

“Like I said, they had trouble triangulating it. Outside the belt, that’s where it starts.”

“Did they try finding it themselves?”

“Yeah—they’ve sent their own explorers out, but lost one and the other couldn’t find anything.”

“What?!” Greta and Casimir both said in unison.

“What?” I asked, innocently. “Their report to HQ was that the lost expedition was a ship malfunction of some kind, not related to any of this.”

Casimir’s eyes narrowed, and he stroked his beard. “Wouldda been nice to know when you briefed us,” he said, matter-of-factly.

“It wasn’t important before we arrived,” I retorted, “And besides, we have to go no matter what information they give us. Orders is orders.”

“Orders is orders,” Casimir repeated, quietly, with that disconcerting gleam in his eyes.

“Is this why they are giving us hazard?” Greta demanded, her tone accusatory.

“I don’t know—they never tell us that.” I shot back.

“Would you tell us if you did know?”

I whirled around and stood, “Listen, Greta—”

Casimir thumped me in the chest with his open hand and I fell back in my chair, while he pulled Greta back by her shoulder, interposing himself between us. “Hey!” he barked, “Enough. Jarrad, continue. What do we know about the lost expedition?”

I fumed. I looked at Casimir, whose eyes were dark, his expression stern. I turned to Greta, who was scowling, avoiding my eyes. I turned around in my chair, and counted to five. Casimir giving ME orders? I let out a controlled breath. I said: “It happened around Graben. That’s all it said.”

“Are you sure?” Greta quipped.

“ENOUGH.” Casimir said loudly. I didn’t turn around, just clenched my fists, and released them. “Should we start at Graben, then?”

“No.” I said, tersely. “I want to run this job by the book. No detours, no improvising. We’re gonna do our survey like it’s a new system, we’re going to look for that signal.”

“I just want to get this over with.” Greta muttered.

“Scared of ghosts, Greta?” Casimir chided playfully.

Greta didn’t respond, tense energy filled the air like lightning was about to strike.

“Alright, let’s get to work. Greta, get those sensors running, let’s see if we can’t pick up this phantom signal. Casimir, make observations. I’m going to start bringing us around to Aris.”

“Orders is orders,” Casimir said, and he followed Greta out of the room.

---

I kept the viewscreen centered on Aris over the next hours as I navigated us into an equatorial orbit around the planet. It was a bleak, grey world, pockmarked with craters and striped with long geologic faults. A dusting of white marked it’s north pole, but otherwise it looked fairly uniform.

The door swooshed open and Casimir entered behind me. “Jarrad, Greta has picked up an odd signal.”

“Okay, and have you made any observations?”

“I’ve got my eye on something interesting but we’ll have to get closer. Otherwise it’s just another dead rock.”

“Got it. Once we get into orbit, find a place you’d like to set down. Ships on course, just got to let gravity do it’s work. Let’s go check out Greta’s signal.”

I got up and followed Casimir through the cramped interior of the Extrapolator. The ship was the smallest possible ship that could house a hyperdrive—which, while it looked large from the exterior, it was so filled with equipment and engineering that there was very little room left for living space. Casimir walked with his head down, and his big frame blocked the entire causeway. The floor was metal plating that clanged loudly as we tromped along. The wall space that wasn’t brimming with equipment and maintenance panels was a faded, rustic red. By all accounts it should have felt claustrophobic, but after being on the ship for a long tour—it almost felt like home.

Greta’s sensor station was on the opposite end of the causeway, past the interior drone-shuttle bay. I heard the sound before we even arrived—it sounded like a raspy, electronically filtered rattling. It put me immediately on edge. No wonder the colonists were afraid, I thought.

We walked into Greta’s station, and without turning from her screen she declared, “I Found it. Listen to this madness!” She turned the volume up slightly, and it echoed in the room and rattled its way through my skull.

“Have you tried triangulating it?” I asked, almost shouting above the din.

“Yeah!” she said. “I’m getting nothing—I don’t know how it works, it’s got an imprint on all frequencies. Here, check this out.” She pulled up a spectrogram on one of her screens, and pulled the screen over so Casimir and I could see more clearly. “It’s primarily in three bands, but the fact that it’s a wide-spectrum signal is making it hard for me to pin down.”

“Interesting.” I said.

“It sounds familiar.” Casimir said. “Reminds me of something.”

“I can’t think what,” Greta said. “Been around haunted planets much?”

“More than you!” He said. He turned to walk away, stroking his beard. As I watched him leave, I saw the strange tattoo on the underside of his bicep, again.

Greta reduced the volume to a dull, white noise, and turned in her chair to face me. “So, uh, what do you make of it?”

“I don’t know yet. Keep working on it, see what you can figure out. It’s good that we are receiving. Pay attention to how it changes as we move through the outer system.”

“You got it,” Greta gave a mock salute, and turned back to her station.

I walked back through the ship towards my navigation station. As I passed Casimir’s observation room, I stuck my head in. “Hey, Casimir—may’s well suit up. Let’s try and keep this quick.”

“Sure thing,” Casimir replied, without turning his head from his instruments.

---

The spot Casimir chose to land was a wide crater—so wide, it could have been a natural basin or a plain. There were some odd depressions near the center, and it was curious enough that Casimir wanted to check them out.

Greta took over in the observation room, keeping coms open with Casimir. I kept an eye on navigation and the feed from the drone shuttle.

“How’s it looking down there, Cass?” I heard Greta ask from down the hall.

“Dead and dry,” his radio crackled back. “Nothing to see. The shuttle landed maybe…fifty yards from the depressions.”

“Nothin’ like a nice walk in the park, huh?”

“In a few days we’ll all be taking a stroll around Riven and this barren rock will be a distant memory.”

“You got that right, pal.”

From the drone shuttle feed, I could see Casimir walking across the grey rockscape. A ridge of grey mountains serrated the horizon beyond him, and Casimir’s shadow growing long off to the right of the screen. Casimir’s suit was big and bulky—much like the man—and it had a single red and white patch on the underside of his arm, where his tattoo would be. I was amazed at how he could move so comfortably, between the low gravity and the suit. At length Casimir arrived at the odd depressions, looked down, and paused.

The radio crackled back to life, “They aren’t depressions at all, but caves,” he said.

“What do you mean caves?” Greta responded.

“They just go straight down, into the black. It’s why they looked like depressions—hard to tell the difference from orbit.”

“Can you see anything inside?”

“No. Too dark. I’ll toss a flare down.”

“Casimir, see if you can get a photo.” I said through my radio.

I could see Casimir on the feed reach for something on his belt. “Activating flare.” His hands suddenly glowed brightly, he tossed the light down into the cave.

It was moments of tense silence. Casimir didn’t move. “Casimir, the photo?” I reminded.

Casimir ignored me, and said, “I counted eight seconds before—AH!” he shouted in pain. The ominous, rattling frequency blasted through coms, Casimir gripped the side of his helmet, staggered backwards.

“Casimir! Cass! Can you hear me?” Greta shouted down the hall.

He replied something, but we couldn’t hear over the strange noise. His com feed went dark—he silenced himself, probably trying to eliminate the noise that was echoing in his helmet.

“Casimir—a photo! Can you get a photo?” I called. I felt my face get hot, “ANSWER US!” I shouted.

He jogged back to the ship, bouncing in the low gravity of Aris. He fell into the drone shuttle, and the shuttle took off.

---

Greta paced anxiously outside the shuttle bay, her arms crossed, chewing her lip. When the Shuttle finished docking, Casimir stepped easily out, his helmet already off and under his arm.

Greta smacked his arm, “What happened down there!” Greta shouted, her brows furrowed in concern. “You can’t just go dark like that, you gotta talk to me!”

“Neither of us could hear over the noise. Something happened. The flare—all it revealed was a long cylinder, an 8 second drop, and some caves connecting to it. I don’t know what it means. The signal happened right after.”

“You aren’t supposed to go dark like that, Casimir—”

“You’re not the ground-man, I am.” Casimir pointed at me with surprising ferocity.

“We are doing this by the book—” I retorted,

“And I did it by the book. When I’m on the ground, I’m running the show, not you. I acted for my safety. Don’t second guess me from orbit.” Casimir frowned, and slammed his helmet in his locker. “Both of you, get out of my way. I’ll document the debrief and put it in the file.”

The air sizzled with energy, I’d never seen Casimir so angry. Greta was mad, but kept quiet. She excused herself by saying, “I’ll check on the sensors,” and stalked out of the room. I heard the metallic echoing of her steps down the causeway.

I waited for the steps to fade, while Casimir stared at me, expecting me to leave.

“Do we have a problem Casimir?” I asked coldly.

“Do you?” He retorted, turning his massive body to face me.

“I want us doing this by the book.”

“When I’m on the ground, I am the book.”

“You should have gotten a photo—”

“Photos don’t matter when my safety is on the line. I have to look, so I looked. You’ll read it in the debrief.”

“Casimir—”

“Get. Out.” He turned his back to me.

“Take a load off, Casimir. I’ll bring us around to Graben.” I stalked out of the room, deaf to my footsteps but for the pounding of my heart in my ears.

---

Quiet hours. We slept in rotations, ate in rotations. There energy on the ship was nervous, tense. I couldn’t tell if we were avoiding each other, or just focused on the job.

It was another two days before Graben came into view—a swirling green-blue world, almost featureless. It had three major moons, the innermost called Scarp, then Falt, then the outermost called Plume. As we got closer, each of these three worlds introduced themselves, gleaming in the sun, moving slowly across the strange and massive Jovian planet.

The strange, tense silence of the ship was broken by my intercom crackling to life. “Hey, Jarrad, can you come check this out?” It was Greta. I didn’t respond—just got up and tromped down the causeway to where her sensor station was.

“What have you got?” I said, entering behind her.

“I’ve been analyzing this signal.” She had turned the volume low, but it permeated her whole space. Her eyes had dark bags underneath, it was clear she had not been sleeping during her turn. “Look, we’ve got three bands. I tried isolating one of them.”

She manipulated the screen and highlighted one of the bands, then isolated it from the other three. “I figure, I can’t get the whole spectrum but what if we pinpoint just a piece of it? And look—triangulation works. As we’ve been moving they’ve been changing in intensity, all three. This band I’ve highlighted here—it’s coming from Aris.”

“Aris, we were just there! Interesting.”

“Yes. And the other two—this middle one, that’s coming from one of the moons of Graben—the middle one, Falt. And the last one is coming from Outworld.”

“That’s…that’s very strange.”

“Yes, but get this. That’s why we can’t triangulate it. Because it’s triangulating us.”

I was silent a long while, my mind swirled. “What are you saying?”

“When Casimir was on Aris, there was a subtle but distinct shift in the signal. It’s not enough to be conclusive, but I think it focused on him. He got blasted with this signal.”

“Impossible, that kind of precision—”

“Is unfathomable, yes. But something is happening. It’s like these three worlds are communicating with each other—and monitoring us.”

“But there’s nothing out here. The colony at Marinas hasn’t pushed out this far.”

“I know, I know. None of this is making any sense.”

“Well now that we can isolate a frequency, let’s try it with Falt. Let’s see if we can find where it is.”

“Got it.” Greta nodded quietly, pensively.

“What’s on your mind?” I asked.

“It’s just…you said that ship was lost around Graben—”

“Greta,” I interrupted her, put what I hoped was a reassuring hand on her shoulder, “go get some rest.”

She shot me a defensive look, then softened. “Alright,” she said quietly, then wandered off to her bunk.

---

My viewscreen was filled with the Purplish hues of the moon, Falt, tinted blue-green in the light of Graben.

Casimir and Greta once again stood behind my chair as I showed them the viewscreen. “It’s there. Another wide basin, and it looks like there’s a similar depression at the center,” I said as I pointed to the moon.

“Is that where the signal is coming from?” Greta asked.

“It’s coming from underground actually, but yes. Probably within the caves. We were probably right over it on Aris and didn’t realize. Casimir, did you make any observations?”

“Yes.” He said, succinctly.

“And?” I prodded.

“Look, near the central depression is a blemish—I think it’s a crashed ship.”

It was hard to tell on the viewscreen, but this was the navigation station, Casimir would have seen it closer from the observation room. “Are you sure?” I asked

“Almost definitely.”

“I thought they said it was a malfunction! They said ‘lost’, not ‘crashed’,” Greta said, confused, maybe even scared.

“You’re right,” I said. “We need to check that out, too.”

“Lot of work for one man.” Casimir said.

“That’s why we’re all going. Something’s not right here.” I turned around in my chair to see Greta and Casimir with confused and concerned expressions.

“By the book?” Casimir said, stroking his beard.

“We’re deviating from the book in the name of safety. You’re right—I don’t want to second guess you from orbit. So let’s all go. We’ve got two targets to investigate and many hands will make light work.”

Greta was fiddling with her hands, it was unusual for her to be this quiet. “What’s on your mind, Greta?” I asked.

“It’s just—I’ve never been on-ground. No one will be on the ship—that’s a huge risk. You said you wanted this by the book—”

“And put Casimir at risk again? To hell with the book, Greta. I don’t like the thought of sending Casimir down and not knowing what is going on with this signal. We don’t know a lot about this situation, and there’s a crashed ship down there. If…” I let the ‘if’ hang on the air, “Anyway, we can’t get to the surface again if Casimir has the Shuttle. We’d have to recall it and then go down again. That wastes a lot of time.”

Casimir crossed his arms, his brows furrowed, his eyes intense. “Orders is orders,” he said, “but one thing.”

“What’s that, Casimir?”

“When we’re on the ground—I am the book. Understand?”

There was a tense exchange delivered silently between Casimir and I. I relented: “Understood.”

Casimir visibly relaxed. “You know,” he said, “I thought about what the signal reminds me of.”

“What?” Greta asked, anxious to think about anything other than going to the surface.

“Cicadas. It sounds like a cicada tymballing.”

“Interesting,” I said, “but I don’t see how that tells us anything. Lots of things sound like lots of things. There are satellites around the Adille system whose monitoring frequency sounds just like river dolphins.”

Casimir shrugged. “Just was bothering me, it sounded so familiar.”

“File that one away for the debrief. I’ll get us into orbit so we can all go down on the shuttle. You and Greta get ready.”

Casimir nodded. “Orders is orders.”

---

The drone shuttle was cramped. There were no windows, only one port hole on the outside door of the airlock, which was hard to see from the porthole on the inside door of the airlock. It was designed to hold four, the maximum crew of a survey ship, but was by no means spacious due to the requirement of having to fit it within the interior of the survey ship. It was a risk, the whole crew going together. I realized I was chewing my lip, trying to adjust to the jostling and jolting as the drone shuttle shed speed and descended to land in the basin on Falt.

Greta had her helmet on already, but the visor was open so she didn’t deplete the suits air supply. She was frowning, clutching her stomach as if she was trying not to be sick. Casimir, for his part, was smiling. I supposed it must be nice to have company on the descent, for once. Usually this was a solitary trip for him.

My stomach swirled as the forces on the drone-shuttle shifted—we no longer felt like we were moving “forward” but instead “down”—we must be close to the surface.

Casimir turned, and spoke. “A reminder to you both—this is my domain, and my expertise. For your safety, please—it is an urgent requirement that you listen to my every word. Understand?” Greta Nodded. Casimir turned to me: “Understand?” I nodded too.

Casimir continued: “The airlock only has room for one at a time. Seal up your suits only before it is your turn. I will exit first. Then Greta. Then you, Jarrad. We have three hours of oxygen in our suits, and if we have to we can refill at the shuttle but it is probably best to limit our excursion here to three hours. I am setting a timer for 90 minutes, and another at 120 minutes. To avoid any urgency or emergencies, at 120 minutes we should return to the shuttle. Understand?”

We nodded again.

I said, “I think it is important that we stick together, Casimir. The signal makes me nervous, and I want to make sure we all get back to the ship in one piece.” I hesitated—I realized I need to defer to him here, so I added: “Do you agree?”

“Yes, good point Jarrad. Stay close to me, both of you.”

The drone shuttle settled, and the alien purple and cerulean hues of this moon illuminated the airlock.

“OK.” Casimir stood, and hunched slightly where the ceiling of the shuttle was too low for his large frame. “Time to go.”

---

When I finally stepped out of the shuttle, I felt an electric chill crawl up my spine. Graben loomed ominously , a wide crescent illuminated by the distant star Tharsis, and the remainder an eerie dark blue, visible against the black of deep space. The purple surface of Falt crunched beneath my feet, my steps were careful and light on the low gravity of this moon.

Casimir was all business. “Hey, over here, Jarrad.” He and Greta had already begun marching a few paces away.

“Coming.” I said. I bounded carefully after them.

“The crashed ship is this way—let’s check that out first.”

We walked in silence across the gravelly dust of Falt, towards the wreckage. As we got closer, the crash resolved and some markings became discernable. It clearly wasn’t a Surveyor Corps ship, but maybe a local variant they had commissioned for exploration purposes. Only the rear section remained, the front end of the ship was missing. I noticed a long groove leading towards the cave at the center of the basin. “What do you make of that?” I asked out loud.

“I don’t know…” Casimir replied, pensive.

Greta walked ahead as we got closer, and was first to peer into the wreckage. “This is a cruise-liner. Look at the way it’s divided into two sections. That upper section would be a living area, this lower one for storage. Cass—cruise-liners don’t just crash.”

Casimir arrived second, and put his hands on his hips. When I arrived, I saw what they were looking at—hollowed out wreckage of a large cruise-liner just as Greta said, the interior was still recognizable, even if it was scorched and depressurized.

“Can we find anything identifying? Sounds like no one at Marinas knew what happened here. We should get something.” I offered.

“You’re right. Let’s see if we can find something, and let’s save most of our time for the caves. Twenty minutes. Let’s go.”

We each took a different path through the wreckage. I started going through what Greta had identified as a storage area. Maybe there was something identifying—a manifest, maybe, or even an inventory with a name from someone who signed off. Something that connects this ship back to Marinas.

I was looking through cabinets, storage, empty rooms, all bleak and devoid of any markings—surely anything not bolted down flew out when the ship depressurized. But there wasn’t any debris around the crash-site.

I wasn’t sure how long it had been—Greta let out a screech through the intercom, which echoed in my helmet. I winced, and then took off back towards the entrance, to find her. Casimir got to her first. “What is it?” I heard him ask.

Greta had been in the living area and was exploring the few cabins that remained. She had fallen onto the floor or wall—the ship had settled at a strange angle, so it was hard to walk straight, it was more like climbing. Casimir was helping her back to her feet. “What did you see?” He asked again.

“In there…” she pointed with a shaky hand. “I thought it was…I thought…”

I nodded to Casimir, and opened the door. It was a large room that looked vaguely medical. Resting at the bottom was an enormous, translucent, empty shell. “I’m going to take a look.” I said.

I descended carefully down the slope of the floor to reach the shell. It was large—bigger than Casimir, perhaps the size of two men. It had eight legs, the ‘face’ part of the shell looked like it had two big eyes the size of melons on the side. The mouth was sealed, yet—still showed fangs and teeth larger than my hand, pincers or mandibles. Along the back of the shell was a single long open seam. “Would you look at this.” I said, astonished.

“Do you think they found this or was it brought here?” Casimir asked.

“Impossible to say. Whatever creature lived in this shell would have been a sight to behold.”

“You know what that reminds me of…”

“Save it, Cass,” Greta said. “Jarrad, did you find anything?”

“Nothing. There’s no bodies either.”

Casimir said, “Strange. But, I’m sorry—times up. Let’s go look at the cave.”

---

It didn’t take very long for us to follow the groove leading from the ship to the edge of the cave. It was wide, an almost perfect circle, and maybe two dozen yards across. It’s walls were a sheer vertical drop into blackness. Nothing was visible below the edge of the light being cast onto the sides of the cave walls.

“Dropping a flare.” Casimir pulled a small metal cylinder from a pouch on his belt. He extended it, and then pressed a button on one end and it flashed with a brilliant white light. Casimir tossed it down the cave.

I heard Casimir counting quietly to himself—I tried to count the other cave entrances as the flare fell past them. Eventually it landed at the bottom—revealing a surface littered with those translucent shells like the one on the ship.

“What in—” I began.

“I counted eleven seconds to the surface. That’s a long way down in any gravity, but—”

Casimir was interrupted, as the signal blasted their com system. That shrieking, echoing tymbaling sound. I fell to the ground, trying to orient myself despite the awful noise. Greta was gesturing with her hands, a pained expression on her face. It was numbers—a frequency! I entered the number on my wrist-panel, and the tymbaling faded to a manageable background noise.

Greta said, “Check check, everyone ok? Everyone on frequency?”

“I’m here,” I said.

“Me too,” said Casimir.

“It isn’t enough to block out the signal but it takes us away from the worst of it.” Greta said. “Cass, what’s next.”

I climbed back up to my feet—the tymbaling sound like white noise echoing in my helmet. It made it hard to think—but it was at least tolerable on this frequency.

“I think we should get down to one of those caves and look around. There’s one not that far—”

The ground beneath our feet rumbled—more sensation than sound.

“Uh, Cass?” Greta said.

“I felt it. Quiet.”

It wasn’t a rumbling—but a vibrating, almost rhythmic. Like the surface itself was the source of the tymbaling sound. But—that couldn’t be. “What is happening?” I asked.

“I don’t know.” Casimir said. “I’ll drop another flare. Start moving back to the shuttle.”

Greta turned and began running as fast as her suit and the low gravity of Falt would allow. I took a few tentative steps backwards, and watched as the light fell into the cave. Casimir peered down behind it. The rumbling increased in intensity, my heart quickened, sweat began to drip from my forehead. I tasted salt. “Everyone…” Casimir said, after a moment. He turned, and saw me, frozen with fear. “RUN!”

He took a bounding leap forward, just as the massive creatures spilled over the lip of the cave. There were so many—each of them bigger than Casimir, their melon-sized red eyes glimmering in the strange light of this world. Casimir grabbed me as he ran past, and pushed me towards the shuttle. I caught my footing, and matched pace.

“What do we do?” I asked, breathless.

“Holy—” Greta said—she had arrived at the shuttle and finally turned around to see what was happening.

“Get in, Greta!” Casimir called. “Jarrad, go on ahead. I have some tricks up my sleeve.”

“Casimir—the Airlock!” I shouted, my voice cracking.

“I know! Greta, get in NOW!”

I looked at the shuttle in time to see the airlock close behind Greta, her face in the porthole.

I stole a glance behind me and saw Casimir waving another flare, trying to draw the attention of the hideous creatures, bounding in a kind of zig zag away from the shuttle.

“Casimir, you’ve got to get to the shuttle!” I called. Everything was going wrong. Some of the creatures were still following me.

I was getting close to the shuttle, just as Greta called, “Airlock clear! Cass, talk to me!”

“Jarrad, they’re too close. They’ll rip apart the shuttle if they get to it—” he took labored breaths over the intercom. “You have to go.”

“We’re doing this by the book, Casimir!” I slammed into the shuttle, opened the door, and the airlock closed behind me. The airlock began to pressurize.

There was a sickly clawing, grinding noise on the walls of the shuttle. “I AM THE BOOK!” Casimir called. “GO!”

I looked to Greta, already in the shuttle, her helmet now off. She looked to the walls—the hideous grinding noise vibrating the whole ship. She looked to me, her eyes confused.

“JUST GO, DAMMIT! HIT THE BUTTON!” Casimir called. I smashed the emergency-return button, and the shuttle rumbled to life. I stared out the airlock.

“Casimir—”

“See you on the other side Jarrad, Greta.” He disconnected his coms and went dark. I watched him turn and charge towards the creatures. I could swear, for just a moment, I saw black wings.

There was a bright flash, an explosion. The grinding sound had stopped, and the shuttle accelerated. We were away.

The airlock door opened behind me, but I didn’t move—I watched the strange purple moon all the way back to the ship.

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Epilogue

“Jarrad, thank you for your candor and patience as we review the records from the Tharsis expedition.” One of the two men, I called him Brown tie, said, with an air of finality.

“Can I leave now?” I asked from the opposite end of the conference room table.

“No, not yet. We have some things we need you to sign,” Black tie said. Black tie was scarier than Brown tie, and said much less over this whole debrief process. It’s felt more like an interrogation.

“Sign? I’ve never signed anything after a debrief,” I said.

Black tie stood, adjusted his eponymous tie, and checked his watch lazily. “In return, we won’t litigate your breach of protocol in abandoning the Extrapolator and taking your whole crew to explore that moon, which resulted in the negligent death of Corps veteran Casimir Kowalski.”

The threat landed like a thunderclap in the tiny conference room.

“What do you want me to sign,” I said through gritted teeth.

Brown tie smiled. “Non-Disclosure agreements. And, frankly, your retirement papers.”

“Retirement?! Wait just a second.”

“You broke protocol, Jarrad. A man died. We can’t let you on another ship. However—the information you’ve returned to us is valuable, so that is why we have granted you this deal rather than taking stronger measures,” Brown tie continued.

I clenched my fists and released them, a second time, a third time.

Black tie said, gravely, “The aliens you encountered on Falt: this is not the only system where we’ve found them. We are working on a containment plan but that is for us, not for you, to worry about.”

“You’ve seen them before?”

“Yes—they’ll lie dormant for hundreds of years, and then emerge all at once, develop all manner of technologies, spread to other worlds—and then go dormant again,” Brown tie added.

“This particular brood was a surprise. Now that the Tharsis system is already colonized, we will need to move up our containment strategy. They seem to be emerging earlier than we predicted,” Black tie said this almost addressing Brown tie, but concluded by looking back at me.

“Anyway—again, that’s for us to worry about, not you. Now…” he placed the papers, and a pen, firmly in front of Jarrad. “Sign here.”

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The End

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If you are here, you have made it to the end! Thank you very much for reading! This story was a labor of love and, at times, sheer frustration with the writing process. I hope you enjoyed it!

If you did, please consider leaving a like, telling me what you thought in the comments, or sharing this story with a friend? If you would like to read more, please check out my collection of longer fiction at The Volume.

God bless!

AJPM