That night, Johns and Rick were sitting in the hangar 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 until impact site,” 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. The pilot tried to regain control, but they had been flying too low. There was a loud explosion and the video feed ended.
“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 after pausing to consider if he had the stomach to watch it again. They watched again as the Puddlejumper lost control as the blue substance hit the windshield and burned its way through.
“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 hits the window. 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? A hundred feet in most 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? Site 3 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 1 back, and Site 2 is growing out of control in the middle of the damn jungle.”
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“How many security personnel do we have?”
“Total?”
Rick nodded.
“One-hundred-and-forty-nine. Well, one-hundred-and-forty-two now.”
“And firepower?”
“Enough for every man to carry multiple guns and a flamethrower,” Johns said.
“Then we need to hire a few more.”
“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 hundreds 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. 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 has 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.”