In the darkness, the TGGS Harbinger drifted listlessly. Thrusters dark, the ship was silent and lonely as an asteroid. The three - Shishone, Yu, and Yarns - sat staring at each other for a moment, before Shishone turned back to the controls of the gunship and shivered. Yarns stared at him, then at Yu, before his gaze fell to his lap. He brushed the wrinkles out of his dress uniform, unsure of what to say. Yu watched him for a moment, her helmet at her side.
“You’re going to need to change out of that,” she said, looking him over. “There’s a spare suit of armor in the bay. Go throw it on, and then we’ll talk.”
“Wait, I want to know what’s going on here. I thought I was getting arrested.”
Yu shot him a sharp glare. “Go change, boy. Then we’ll talk.”
Yarns stared at her for a moment, and then, sheepishly, nodded silently, standing and heading out of the cockpit and into the gunship’s passenger bay. Once he stepped out, Yu turned to Shishone and said, “You sure it was a good idea to grab this kid?”
Shishone glanced to her from the corner of his eye, and nodded, turning his view back to the space in front of him. “I’m sure. Yarns is a good kid. And we need help.”
“How can we trust him not to crack? Kid seems sweet, but what we’re doing is going to get us killed, I can almost guarantee it.”
Gritting his teeth, Shishone shrugged. “I just have a good feeling about him. He’s smart, spry, energetic. We need that right now.”
“Well, either way,” she said. “He’s stuck with us now. No way he can go back, even if we let him.”
“He’ll come around,” Shishone said.
Just then, the cockpit door hissed open, and Yarns stepped in, holding a helmet under the crook of his right arm, dressed in all black special operations armor that was adorned with the nameplate for someone with the last name of Jenkins. Metal boots, metal breast plate, metal pauldrons, and ballistic ceramic everywhere else, he looked ready for a drop. He came in and sat in the third, center chair of the cockpit, and looked at both of them.
“So, um, what exactly is going on here?”
Yu turned to face him. “Technically, you’ve been kidnapped. Or, more accurately, shanghaied. Welcome to the crew.”
He gave her a confused glance, before looking to Shishone. “What happened to you? You went MIA one day, nobody knew where you where, and now you show up looking sick, and ‘shanghai’ me? What is this?”
Cpl. Shishone shot a brief glance at him, before staring out the glass before him. “Something big is going on here, Yarns. We need you.”
“Okay, but what? I don’t get it! You guys need to be upfront with me. And who are you, anyway?” he asked, looking to Yu.
Nodding, she flipped her hair, and said, “I am Yu Solarum, Director of Communications of the Kuiper Belt Region, daughter of Xiao Solarum. It’s a pleasure to meet you, Corporal Yarns.”
His jaw dropped and his eyes grew to the size of saucers. “You’re… who?”
Shishone grunted. “She’s put a lot on the line to help me out. We have the same thing in mind.”
“What’s that?” Yarns asked, blinking.
“To find out,” Yu said, “what has happened to my father. For me, at least. For Shishone here, it is to find, at least I assume, a way home. But both of these intersect at my father. Shishone isn’t getting out of here with Xiao standing in the way. And I can’t sit by as my father descends deeper into insanity, or whatever has gotten into him.”
Shishone nodded and gripped the controls tighter. “Something is going very wrong here. Yarns, they shot my captain and arrested me. Threw me into a psych ward on Eris. Drugged me. And something is going deeply wrong on MK2. Nothing really makes sense.”
He bit his lip and turned away. “So Yu and I here are going to make it make sense. But to do that, we need your help. Yu isn’t a soldier, and I’m a pilot. You’re trained and bred infantry. And while I have great marksmanship, two of us can cover a lot more ground and keep an eye on our sixes. Plus… well, it’s just good to see you.”
There was a tension in the air as Yarns looked to both of them, then to the helmet visor, which mirrored his reflection back to him. “You guys are going against Xiao? The Commander?”
Yu reached out and put a hand on his knee. “My father is sick. Something has gone wrong in his mind. He’s hearing voices, disappearing people, acting erratically and impulsively. It’s not like him. He’s… dangerous.”
Staring at her, Yarns, in disbelief, shuddered. “This is insane.”
Shishone cleared his throat. “It is.”
Yu turned to Shishone, and looked out the cockpit window. “We’re headed to MK2, correct?”
He nodded. “We need to refuel and stock up on provisions. Besides, Yu?”
Yu sat back in her seat. “We have a plan.”
“Won’t they arrest us?” Yarns said, shooting a concerned look at her.
Shaking her head, she said, “They shouldn’t be aware of what we’ve done just yet. They’re likely to help us. The biometric transponder in your suit will disguise your identity, so be sure to keep your helmet on at all times. Your name for the day is Sergeant Lucas Jenkins. Congrats on the promotion.”
Yarns looked down at his helmet, at his reflection in its visor. He looked pale. His soft brown eyes looked tired, and there were dark circles under them. His hair, which had grown out a bit, was rustled. He looked shaken. Something in his eyes flickered, shining in the reflection. Fear, perhaps, or something deeper. “What’s the plan then?” he asked, looking at them both, clearly lost.
“We’re going to stop on MK2 and resupply and refuel,” Yu said. “From there, we head to Weywot, to the water pumping facilities to plan out our next move.”
They stared at each other for a moment, before Yarns sat back and crossed his arms. “There has to be more to it than that.”
Shishone grunted. “You’re right. We’re looking for something. Someone, really. She went missing on MK2 two months ago.”
“Two months?” Yarns exclaimed. “She’s toast by now, right? All this for someone who’s probably dead?”
“She’s not dead,” Yu snapped. “She’s a smart person. I’m sure she’s alright.”
Yarns blinked. “No way. Everyone in Shishone’s team went MIA. Whoever this is that you’re talking about, she’s MIA for a reason too. Who even is it?”
“Allister McCullinay,” Yu said, “head of the research team on Arrokoth. A high level scientist, and someone who may have some insight as to what has been going on here.”
“Okay,” Yarns said, skepticism in his eye and tone, “suppose you find her. Then what? Xiao is still going to kill all of you - us, I guess…”
“We’re hoping that Allister can help us. We spoke about it before we picked you up. We’re going to use her and my accesses on Arrokoth to gain access the communications center and send a message off to Earth. Then, we’re going to lay low on Weywot and plan our next move. That’s the plan, insofar as we have it. You’re all caught up.”
“It’s insane.”
“Drastic times,” Shishone said, shrugging. They were currently gliding away from Makemake to MK2, and he was being careful not to light up their thrusters too much so as to keep their radar signature to a minimum. He estimated they’d be to MK2 in around thirty minutes, so in about fifteen he could throw the thrusters on. He could, from here, see the lights of the QPF’s - the ones that were still illuminated, at least - and soon, would hail the flight tower on the Fourth QPF, where they would land.
He turned over his shoulder, and said, speaking more to Yarns than Yu, “Anyone have any last questions before we do this?”
Yarns nodded. “Yeah, just one: what happens if they don’t take us in?”
Shishone frowned. “I’m not taking no for an answer.”
With that, he flipped on his comms, and beamed a signal to the Fourth QPF. “This is Captain Brandon Cullers of the TGGS Harbinger, does anybody copy, over?”
There was a moment of static, and Shishone checked the channel and frequency on his instruments. “MK2 Four, This is Captain Brandon Cullers of the TGGS Harbinger, does anybody copy, over?”
Then, a voice came through. “Copy Captain, this is MK2 Four, reading you loud and clear.”
“Requesting permission to land for refueling and restocking,” he said into the radio.
There was a pause, and then, the voice said, “Copy that Captain, you’re green to land, head for pad thirteen near the south pole. Coordinates dispatched.”
“Copy,” Shishone said, coordinates appearing on the dash screen.
With that, the line went silent. Shishone hooked the radio onto its holster on the dash, and said to Yu, “Flipping on thrusters now. We’re gonna have some radar impact, but our signature shouldn’t be too large. This thing has an IFF in it?”
“I’m… not sure,” Yu said.
“Well, we’re gonna find out.”
Shishone flipped some switches and pulled up on the throttle on the dash, and the thrusters of the Harbinger roared to life, blue candle-flames on the wings that pushed them forward. MK2 loomed over them within moments, the maze of metal pipes, buildings, smokestacks, the treads of ground rovers, the lights of the factories all shimmering - it was a sight to behold. Down near the southern pole, there were a series of octagonal landing pads, and as they approached, Shishone flipped the gunship around and threw his thrusters at full throttle, slowing their descent. Then, he flipped out the landing gear and landed gently. The magnetic pad latched onto the gears, locking the ship to its surface.
As the ship settled, the lights on the pad flipped green and began to flash, and the pad itself started to sink into the ground. The maw beneath them consumed the ship, and teeth-like doors closed above them, leaving them in darkness for a moment, where they sat still while the chamber pressurized. Then, they sunk further, before finally, the walls around them gave way to a large chamber cut into the rock where several ships had been docked on similar pneumatic pads. As theirs touched down, Shishone put his helmet on, and Yu and Yarns did the same.
“Remember,” Yu said. “Do not let your name slip. And let me do the talking here. I’ll stay with the ship while you two hunt down Allister. Find a way to the second QPF’s fusion reactor, it’s the last location her PDA pinged from. Go with my flow.”
Yarns looked to Shishone, who shivered, but nodded, and Yarns gave her a nod of understanding too.
“Good,” she said. “Pop the back.”
Shishone hit a latch that lowered the back hatch of the gunship, and Yu stood, motioning for Yarns and Shishone to follow. They stood, and, Shishone and Yu clad in blue and white elite guard armor and Yarns in black special operations armor, they departed the cockpit, headed through the belly of the gunship, and stepped down the ramp.
The hangar was bustling with activity. Carts and trucks moved this way and that, the piston-pushed landing pads were up, or down, or in between, as forklifts moved crates and men moved boxes with exoskeletons. It was a hive of life, noise, and momentum.
Yu looked around, and spotted the foreman’s office, cut into the wall on the side of the hangar. Over her radio - which had been set up by Gorsin’s men to have a programmable, encrypted frequency just between the three of them - she said, “I’m going to go talk to the foreman about resupply and refueling. You two go meet with the vehicular requisition office on the other side of the hangar. Tell them you’re here on Major Sellshark’s orders. They should give you a cart. Get to the second QPF, find Allister. I’ll handle things here. Understood?”
They both nodded, and turned to head to the VRO across the hangar, as Yu headed to the foreman’s office. As they walked, Yarns stuck close to Shishone, and when he spoke, his voice was tense and weak.
“This is insane,” he whispered.
Shishone coughed. “Just keep your head on a swivel and let me do the talking. I’ve been through worse.”
“You’re not nervous?”
Shishone shot him a sideways look through his visor. “I’m scared shitless.”
As they approached the VRO, Shishone looked around. There were eyes on them. Of course there would be, he thought; two elite guards and a special operator depart from a gunship during a tense time of blackouts in the QPF’s? Everyone watching must’ve been aware that something big was going down, even if they were wrong about what.
The VRO was cut into the rock here, separated from the hangar with a thick window that housed a vent in the center to allow those in need to speak to the assistant on the other side through. Shishone approached, and pressed his hands on the counter lip on their side of the window, eying the inside of the office. It was, really, just a small box room, with a door in the back, and a woman sitting at a computer up front. She looked at them through her glasses, which rested on the bridge of her nose, and eyed them cautiously.
“Can I help you?” she asked.
Shishone nodded. “I am Captain Cullers, and this is Sergeant Jenkins. We’re with the 15th special operations unit, and we need a ground rover to head to the second QPF.”
The woman chewed on her lip for a moment, and then looked down at her computer, punching in some information on the keyboard. “And what is your business at the QPF, Captain Cullers?”
“It’s classified,” he said. “Need to know basis. I can give you my orders and credentials if you need.”
She hummed in thought for a moment, and then shook her head. “I’ll assign you one of our ground rovers, but you’ll need clearance from the top to head to the QPF.”
Shishone shook his head now. “No need. Our Major already cleared us with the top brass. Just need the vehicle ma’am.”
“Al-right,” she said, punching in more information into the system. Then, within moments, she reached down below the desk and pulled up a key attached to a small tag, and said, “Here’s the key. You’ll find the rover in the bay over to your left. Be safe, Captain. And please return the rover in one piece. My job is on the line.”
“Won’t be a problem miss.”
The woman eyed him over one last time, before reaching over and sliding the key into a small slot in the wall. It jingled out on the other side, and Shishone took it, and motioned for Yarns to follow him. The two of them headed to a vehicle bay off to the side of the noisy hangar, where several black and green ground rovers, blocky vehicles with four large tires that resembled old-world dune buggies, sat parked. Checking the number on the key tag and matching it to the rover in front of them, Shishone and Yarns climbed in. Shishone started the vehicle, and within moments, after zigzagging through a few tunnels and past bustling roads of trucks and personnel, the two were on their way down a long corridor that acted as a highway between the QPF’s.
The tunnel was empty, now. As they entered the highway to the second QPF, the sudden lack of activity and noise was in itself deafening. Signs for the second QPF, which were once illuminated with neon and LED’s, sat dark, and only every so often would they pass any sign of life: a crate or two here, a truck passing them, or a light, flickering in the dark.
“It’s creepy here,” Yarns said, looking around.
Shishone nodded. “If you’d been there with me when we hit the QPF the first and second time, you’d understand it’s way more than creepy here.”
Yarns looked to him. “What happened there?”
Silence. Shishone thought back to it, to the screams and the darkness, to the splattering of blood on the ground and the way his captain bounced off the surface of MK2. He shivered. “Terrible things, Yarns. Be on the lookout for terrible things.”
“Why aren’t we armed, then?”
“I am,” Shishone said, patting a black pistol at his side. “Yu had some trouble getting rifles, but each QPF has a security station. We’re stopping there first. Let’s just hope this little sidearm gets us there in one piece.”
Yarns grit his teeth for a moment, and looked around, fidgeting restlessly. “Shishone,” he said, swallowing. “What did you see?”
“I saw nothing. Maybe that’s the worst part,” he said with a sigh. “I saw nothing at all. I’m not sure any of my squad did.”
Yarns squirmed.
The pair sat in silence for a while, neither speaking, neither having anything to speak about really, as the tension in the air was thick enough to be cut with a knife. Soon, however, they came upon a series of blast doors, shut tight with interlocking teeth, and a checkpoint staffed with five men all wearing black armor like Yarns’. Shishone slowed the rover to a stop, and climbed out, looking at Yarns and saying, “Stay here.”
He stretched out for a moment, to give the appearance of feeling casual, as most elite guards likely would in this situation thanks to their severe training and discipline. One of the men guarding the checkpoint approached, rifle in hand, and called out to him.
“State your business.”
Shishone stared at him. “I am Captain Brandon Cullers, of the 15th Special Operations Unit. I’m here on orders to retrieve an object from the second QPF. Mission details are classified, but I have my orders. Requesting permission to access.”
The man looked to the others with clear confusion in his body language, and they seemed just as lost. “We were told not to let anyone through. The QPF is sealed off.”
“Major Sellshark has orders from Admiral Gorsin. I could show them to you, if you need.”
The man stared back at him for a moment, before saying, “Hang on.”
Then, he turned and went back to convene with his compatriots. They chatted for a moment, before the man reached up to his helmet, clearly saying something over his comms. Then, after a second or two, he nodded, and approached Shishone again. “Alright, you can go through. But the door’s shutting behind you, and you’re on your own once you’re inside.”
Shishone nodded. “Understood.”
The man watched him for a second, before turning and nodding to the others, one of whom walked over to the side of the blast doors and punched something into a keypad on the wall, causing the doors to, slowly and with a grating screech, begin to slide ajar. Shishone walked back to the rover, hopped inside, and started it up again.
Within moments, they were through, into the dark, empty tunnel connecting the Fourth and Second QPF, and the doors shut behind them as though they had been sealed in a sepulcher, leaving them in blackness, save for their headlights. Yarns looked to Shishone as they started down the highway. “Do you really have fake orders?”
Shishone shook his head. “No. But we do have Admiral Gorsin on our side.”
“Who?”
“I’ll fill you in later. I only just found out today myself. But it’s how Yu has access to the suits, the ship, the accesses. I may not have fake orders, but I do have his reputation.”
“Seems risky for him,” Yarns said, fidgeting.
“It’s risky for all of us.”
Yarns nodded slightly, and fell silent, staring ahead of them and into the murky lights of the rover that spilled into the tunnel. For a time, they drove without a word, following the signs for the second QPF. The only sound in the tunnel came from the tires on the asphalt, echoing through the corridor. The jagged rock overhead, reinforced by beams of steel alloy, made for excellent acoustics here. The echo bounced off of it, reverberating through the corridor.
As they neared the QPF, they came across another set of blast doors that seemed stuck open. Carefully and slowly, Shishone maneuvered his way through them, sliding them deeper into the belly of uncertainty. They were here. He was back in cursed lands.
Shishone looked to Yarns. “Keep a good eye out. I don’t have a map of this place, so we’ll be going from memory, but there should be a security station up ahead, where we can pick up some weapons. There may also be a map in there.”
“How are we supposed to find this scientist in all of this?” Yarns asked.
Shishone pulled out his PDA from his side cargo pocket on his armor. “Yu uploaded the last known location of her PDA to mine. We’ll go from there.”
“Not a lot to go on – if she is still alive,” Yarns muttered.
“Yeah,” Shishone said, looking away. “If.”
They pulled over a bit further into the tunnel, where the security station jutted out like an old WWII bunker in the stone. Here, they stopped, and climbed out of the rover. Shishone reached up and flipped his helmet’s flashlight on, motioning for Yarns to do the same. With two sources of light gleaming anywhere they cast their vision, they trained their sights on the security door. Shishone approached it, and found it to be slightly open – odd, he thought, considering that security was likely incredibly tight before the QPF was locked down.
“C’mon, in here.”
They stepped into the station. It was a small room, with desks and computers, and a lazy turret on the ceiling accompanied by several blind cameras. A window looked out into the tunnel, and there was a door at the back of the room, though it appeared locked shut. On the wall was a green mesh cabinet with a lock on it, and within, Shishone spotted three rifles and four magazines of ammunition.
“Stand back.”
He pulled out his pistol, aiming for the lock, and blew it off. The shot echoed through the station and down the tunnel, causing Yarns to flinch. Shishone backed away as the smoking lock fell off and the cabinet doors swung open. “Grab a rifle and two mags,” he said, reaching in.
He took one of the blocky rifles, stuck a magazine in it, and clipped the second one to his magnetized utility belt. Yarns did the same, and they both cocked their weapons to check for jams. Both seemed to be in perfect working order.
“Alright,” Shishone said, looking to Yarns. “You look good with a rifle.”
Yarns chuckled nervously. “I’ve only ever shot one of these in boot camp.”
“Well, today might be your lucky day. C’mon, we have to find a map.”
He started looking around for a working terminal. If he could link his suit to the terminal, maybe it would accept his access, and show him a map of the QPF that he could cross reference with the data Yu sent him on Allister’s last location. Luckily, the terminals all seemed to be in working order. He booted one, and plugged a cord from his suit into its thin client, and within moments, he was granted access to the terminal under the provisions assigned to Captain Cullers.
“Alright, I’m in. Let’s see…” he muttered, typing on the keyboard. He wasn’t exactly savvy with technology like this, but he knew enough to do some rudimentary database searches. He pulled up the database command prompt and searched for a map, and pulled up a detailed, three-dimensional map of the QPF’s corridors, hubs, rooms, and factory floors. Then, he plugged in the coordinates given to him by Yu, pinpointing a flag on the map that showed that Allister was near the fusion core of the facility the last time her PDA pinged.
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The reactor was near the dead center of the facility, next to the control room and panopticon. He frowned. That’s where the initial hole was. That’s where this all began. The screams. The gunfire. The confusion, and the loss. It all began with that hole, and the dust. It all began there.
“Is everything ok?” Yarns asked, noticing his silence.
Shishone blinked, snapping out of his thoughts. “Ah, yeah. Yeah, I’m fine. I found her PDA. It’s near the center of the facility. Luckily, if we go… here,” he said, pointing to an access route that split off from the main highway, “it’ll take us right to this highway here, which will take us to the fusion core, which is where her PDA is. Should be a relatively straight shot.”
Yarns leaned in and looked, before nodding slowly. “Alright.”
“Alright, good.” Shishone hoisted his rifle over his shoulder, and looked out to the rover. “Saddle up.”
Fusion was a relatively new technology. A major breakthrough in fusion technology had occurred around the year 2154, allowing, for the first time, for fusion reactors to be brought into the mainstream of technology. This near unlimited source of green energy allowed for vast advancements in areas such as space travel, stellar expansion, and extraplanetary living. In fact, many posited that without it, travel to such places as Pluto and the Kuiper Belt would have been impossible.
That wasn’t to say it was without its flaws. A runaway reactor in the throes of a meltdown could heat to temperatures only ever seen on the sun, as happened in the great Venus Meltdown of 2218. Venus, which had for some time been an energy hub of the Solar System thanks to its already polluted atmosphere and mineral rich crust, had nearly cracked – at least, that’s what was posited as a potential outcome, had the meltdown not been contained – and since then, many safeguards had been implemented to prevent such disasters from happening again.
One of these safeguards involved a kill switch for the whole reactor, that prevented reactions from occurring. This involved lead plates and radiation absorbers, and was far above Shishone’s paygrade. All he really knew were two things: one, that any runaway explosive power within the reactor could set it off; and two, that by looking at the reactor from the window in the control room, it was shut down. As in, completely off. Dead to the world. The large reactor cells were dark, the centrifuge locked in place, the core in the center clamped down with lead plates. The kill switch had been flipped, and he wasn’t sure if there was any coming back from that.
He looked around, and then said to Yarns, “Alright, this room is where her PDA last pinged from. Take a look around, see if you can find any sign of her or her team.”
Yarns nodded, and the two proceeded to check the area, from the multi-faceted and button laden control board that faced the window, to the tiers of steps that led down to the base of the large viewport, to the chairs, and the panels, and eventually, beneath the control board.
There, Shishone spotted it.
It was a PDA.
“Hey, I found something.”
Yarns scurried over and looked beneath the board, and sure enough, it was what they both assumed was Allister’s PDA. Shishone reached down and brushed some of the strange sinew off of it – the tissue like strands were everywhere, this deep into the maze that was the QPF, including inside of the reactor – and pulled it out. The strands crumbled to dust with his touch.
He wiped off the PDA, and checked its battery. It was dead. He thought for a moment, and then plugged his own PDA into it with the linking cord from his suit, and soon, a little bit of power began to transfer from his PDA to this one. The data pad lit up, and though it was cracked, he could still access some of its features.
He pulled up the data logs, and found that there was a recording on it from the day that Allister had gone missing. “Look at this,” he said to Yarns.
Yarns, looking over his shoulder, said, “A recording?”
“Yeah. I’ll play it.”
Shishone pushed the play button on the screen, and then, Allister’s voice echoed out from the device like a mournful ghost. The audio was slightly distorted, but still they could make out most of it.
The recording played: “This is Allister McCullinay of the Arrokoth Science Team. We’ve been left here to die on MK2, and –”
Another voice piped up: “We’re gonna die!”
“Calm down,” Allister snapped. “Calm down. We need to keep our heads clear and level, okay? We’re going to get out of here. As I was saying… we were left here to die by Xiao Solarum, Director of the Kuiper Belt Administration. If anyone finds this at any point, we are making out way for the control room of the facility to send off a distress message. From there, we will –”
“What was that?” another voice said, shrill and scared.
The recording fell silent, yet still continued to play. Shishone and Yarns listened intently, and sure enough, they could hear a knocking in the distance. Or was it a scraping? Like something being dragged?
“I don’t know,” Allister eventually said. “We should keep moving, I don’t want to –”
“There it is again,” came the same voice.
Once more there was silence, and this time, the dragging sounded louder, as though it was approaching.
Allister’s voice, now taut and tense, came over the recording again. “Come on, we have to get to the control room, it’s our only hope of –”
The recording stopped.
“Damn thing is busted,” Shishone muttered.
“Why was it just laying here?” Yarns asked, reaching for it.
Shishone handed it to him, and said, “I’m not sure.”
“There aren’t any bodies…”
“There weren’t any when I was here last either.”
Yarns frowned, and looked at Shishone. “What do you think that noise was?”
“I don’t know, and I don’t want to know. Let’s go. They said they were going to the control room, and it’s just a few halls over. That’s our next place to look.”
Shishone placed the PDA in his side pocket, and hoisted his rifle up, clearly tense. Yarns did the same, and together, crunching on the strands of red sinew beneath them, they left the control room of the fusion reactor, and headed for the QPF control room.
They made their way up a set of stairs – the reactor was buried underground – and through a long hallway, that then opened up into a sort of interchange for produced goods from the facility. Conveyors ran this way and that, many dead ending at cargo bay doors, all of which were sealed shut. Pipes ran along the wall, and crates lined the floor. Having downloaded the map to his PDA, Shishone checked it, and said, “This way. There should be a corridor that leads to the reception area of the control room.”
“Wait,” Yarns said, holding up his hand. Shishone froze, and shot him a look, but Yarns just motioned for him to be silent by pressing a finger to his helmet, where his mouth would be.
They listened for a moment, but there was nothing. Shishone waited, his stomach churning, remembering the last time he was here. The violence. The death.
But then, after a while, Yarns lowered his hand and said, softly, “Sorry. I thought I heard something.”
“Heard what?” Shishone asked, staring at him intensely.
Yarns blinked. “I… I don’t know.”
“That’s not good enough Yarns, I need to know what you think you heard.”
He shrugged, uneasy. “Ah, like a plop, or something.”
“A plop?”
“Yeah, a plop.”
Shishone frowned. “Alright. If you hear it again, let me know immediately. Got it?”
He nodded. “Got it.”
“Alright, let’s move.”
Taking point, Shishone guided them across the room, and through a corridor that lead to a large room with a circular far wall, where carpets and a desk lay dormant and covered in sinewy vine. Overhead, a chandelier hung, draped with the stuff. The place looked as though the red tissue had found a home here, coating the walls, the floor, the ceiling. Every step they took, they crunched down on it, reducing it to dust.
“This way.”
Shishone led them through the doors, and into the main hall of the control room. Just stepping foot here sent shockwaves through Shishone’s brain. He could see the face of his captain, the face of his comrades, as they blindly and naively walked into their fates. He could hear them, their voices, whispering in his ear. Telling him things. Telling him terrible, terrible things. And they were many, too, many voices, all with different desires. They wanted things, and…
And he blinked as Yarns put a hand on his shoulder.
“Are you sure you’re ok?”
Shishone shook off the rust. “Yeah, I’m… I’m okay. Sorry.”
Yarns looked at him for a moment, and then nodded, and said, “Let’s find this woman and get out of here. This place gives me the major creeps.”
“Yeah, me too,” he said, the daze fading. “There has to be some sign of them.”
The computer terminals here, all dark, were covered in more of the red sinew-weed. The panopticon in the center looked like a vine covered tree, with red moss hanging from its top and out of its shattered windows. They cast their lights around the room, slicing the darkness up, searching for Allister McCullinay’s team.
As they searched, Shishone looking under the terminals and atop the desks, Yarns examining the floor and the walls for anything at all that might tell them where the team went, they neglected to listen. Surely they heard their footsteps crunching down on the sinew, and of course they heard their own breath, but they didn’t hear, couldn’t hear the dragging that was making its way slowly down the panopticon stairs.
“Shishone,” Yarns said, bending down below a desk. “I think I found something.”
Shishone turned and rushed over to Yarns, who stood and held up a white patch of spacesuit. He took it, examined it. It was bare, torn, and without identifiable markings. “Interesting,” he said. “Might be from the lab team.”
“I found it underneath here,” Yarns said, motioning to a desk that had a radio system on it.
Shishone looked down at the equipment. “They must’ve been trying to radio for help.”
And if that were the case, they likely didn’t get far, seeing as the whole control room was offline. So… where did that leave them? Where would the team go next? He pulled up his PDA and examined the map, puzzled.
There was the control room, and the fusion reactor below it, and then, a little north was the communications tower… which would make sense. “Here!” he exclaimed. “Here. Yarns, we need to head north a bit, get to the communications tower. I have a hunch that might be where they headed next if they were trying to get a signal.”
Yarns looked at the map. “Oh, that’s just north of here, you’re right.”
“Come on, we’ll –”
Something scraped behind them. They both jumped, and aimed their rifles and lights in the direction of the sound. It came from the door to the panopticon, which now swung loose on its hinges. There was nothing there, but…
“That door was closed,” Yarns said, starting to shake. Shishone could see him shivering by the way his light quaked.
Shishone flashed his light and rifle around the room, his heart thumping in his chest. He wasn’t sure he could handle much more of this. He thought back to Carmichael, to Captain Collers, their lifeless bodies, the crashing and crumpling of the tram, and he shuddered. If he had to see Yarns in that state, he would surely lose touch with the last bits of hope he had left.
“Come on, we’re leaving,” he said with more gusto than he actually felt.
He turned and tapped Yarns’ shoulder, and they both hurried out of the control room. Within minutes, they were climbing up the large, windowed tower to the communications tower center. It looked much like an air traffic control tower, only surrounded by and topped with pointed antennae and dish radars that, at one time, spun like steel ballerinas. They hurried up the stairs, hearts pounding, crushing the vine beneath their feet with every step.
Once they reached the top, Yarns shut the door behind them and leaned on it, finally able to breathe. At least here, it seemed somewhat safe. One way in, one way out, which meant there was only one way to keep an eye on. Yarns pressed his back against the door and slid down, before landing on his bottom and holding his head in his hands, his rifle at his side.
“This place scares me,” he said, shaking his head.
Shishone didn’t want to let him know, but he was scared too. His heart raced, his palms were sweaty, his legs were weak. But he had to appear strong for Yarns, or else the kid might completely break. He’d probably never seen combat before, and this was leagues beyond what he or they or anybody had been trained for. Shishone watched him for a moment, before turning, and beginning to examine his surroundings.
Communications equipment ringed the room, and angled glass loomed over the abyss of the facility below from above the circuit boards and radios. Though he had but a narrow viewport of light, he could still get a good feeling for how the place was laid out, and headed to the far window to take a look out upon the facility.
From here, he could hardly see anything. The sun itself, though high in the sky, barely made a dent with its light on the darkness of the factory. Still, he could make out silhouettes of pipes and buildings, and if he looked close enough, he could see… wait. He could see movement. At least, he swore he could. It was there, and then it was gone. Something had jumped from the rooftop of one factory building to another, before blending back in with the inky darkness. He shook his head, but felt a cold chill run down his spine. He wanted to be losing it, he realized – he wanted to be going crazy – because the alternative, that this was all real, was far, far worse.
He turned, and looked to Yarns, who turned his gaze up to meet his.
“You alright kid?”
Yarns nodded, but remained silent.
Shishone sighed. “Alright, I’m gonna take a look around.”
He cast his light around the room, and pretty quickly, it landed on another PDA sticking out from beneath a particularly thick vine. Shishone gripped the vine with a sort of light anger and crunched it in his hand, clearing the way for him to grab the PDA.
“Found something,” he said, walking back over to Yarns and squatting beside him. This PDA was damaged, just as the last one, but it too had a final recording on it, and so Shishone let it play.
It was Allister’s team.
“Oh my god, oh my god,” came a voice. “What were those things? Oh my god, they got him, they took him, oh my god…”
Allister’s voice chimed in. “Get it together Itomi,” she said. “We have to figure out our next move.”
“Our next move?” Itomi exclaimed. “Power is out, we can’t get a com link, there are things here, our next move is to die, Doctor!”
“No!” she said. “No. I have a new plan. The three of us are going to head to the nearest security station and grab some weapons. Then, we make for the storeroom near the command center. If my data is correct, it should still be relatively well stocked with O2 supplies, food, water – we can wait there for rescue.”
“Rescue? We’ve been left to die here,” came a third voice. “We’re going to die here.”
“Dammit!” Allister sounded tense and angry. “Do you want to die here? Or do you want to at least give survival a shot.”
“Doctor McCullinay,” said Itomi. “I’ve never seen you like this before…”
There came a sigh. “I… I’m sorry, Itomi. But I’m scared too.”
With that, the recording ended.
Shishone put the PDA with the other one, in his cargo pocket, and stood, looking down to Yarns. “Guess we know where to go next.”
Yarns looked up at him, and though they couldn’t see each others’ eyes, Shishone could feel the fear in his body language. The kid was huddled up, sunken into himself.
“Come on,” he said. “We’ll make it there. It’s just around the corner.”
He held out his hand and helped Yarns up, and together they made their way out of the tower, down the stairs, through the command center. Soon, after some walking, they found themselves on the outside of the storage room adjacent to the control room. Here was a set of blue double doors set into the wall, with a small placard reading “STORAGE” to the right of them. Yarns tried the door, and, though the handle turned, the door did not budge.
Shishone and Yarns examined the doors for a moment, and then Shishone said, “Keep an eye out. I’m gonna try and get these open.”
Yarns nodded, and raised his rifle, covering Shishone’s back as he stepped back from the doors a bit, and began to kick them. The doors buckled, but didn’t open. So, he kicked again, and the bang of metal on metal rang out through the hall, making Yarns flinch each time. Again, again, again Shishone kicked, until he was huffing and panting. The doors seemed to be giving just a bit more each time, but in general, it seemed they would truly not give in.
“We need another way in,” he said, hands on his knees as he tried to catch his breath.
Yarns looked over his shoulder at Shishone, and said, “What do you suggest?”
He looked around the hall, and finally found a vent near the top of the wall beside the door, and pointed at it. “There. Help me up.”
Yarns looked up and saw what he was alluding too, and nodded, taking up position near the vent. Shishone placed his foot in Yarns’ hands, and Yarns hoisted him up to the vent. It was screwed on, but the vine was here too, leaking from it, and it appeared to have bent and weakened the bars of the grate.
Yarns, struggling, grunted out, “Can you even fit in that?”
“Barely,” Shishone said. “But I’m gonna make it work.”
“You don’t even know that it connects,” Yarns said, clearly struggling.
Shishone wrapped his fingers around the bars, and gave them a good yank. They budged, but didn’t break. “Well we’re gonna find out,” he said.
Then, he tried again, and thankfully, the screws came loose and the grate popped off. He tossed it down and looked down to Yarns, who looked back up at him.
“Go!” Yarns said. “I can’t hold you much longer.”
Shishone hoisted himself into the steel vent, struggling but eventually crawling deeper into it with his legs like an animal digging into its burrow. He had to clear the vine from before him with each pull, and the fit was extremely tight, especially with his armor, but eventually, he was making good progress.
“Yarns,” he said over the shortwave. “Can you hear me?”
“I can,” said Yarns. “Hurry, please.”
“I will.”
There was a junction, and Shishone took a right, before he hit another grate that seemed to lead into the dark storeroom. He wiped the vine from the grate and looked around with his helmet flashlight, casting a halo of light into the depths of the shelves and aisles of the room. There was no sign of Allister, but there were open crates, open food tins, spent O2 canisters, and more debris on the floor. His heart leapt.
He pressed his hand to the grate, and pushed. No good. So, he balled his fingers into a fist, and began hitting the gate. The armor was thick, and slightly powered, lending strength to his assault, and soon, the grate popped off, falling to the floor with a loud clatter. He was in. He pushed himself into the room, and tumbled to the floor with a grunt.
Standing and looking around, Shishone brushed himself off and slung his rifle from his back, aiming it straight. His light shone through the layers of shelves, the goods and the refuse. Carefully, he started making his way through the aisles, toward the back.
“Hello?” he called out. “Doctor McCullinay?”
Nothing.
He pushed further into the room, accidentally kicking an empty can of food.
Just then, the loud bang of a gunshot rang out. He ducked, aiming his weapon in the direction of the bang, heart racing, hands shaking. He stood still, rifled pointed it into the darkness. There, he could see between the shelves, in the back corner of the storeroom, was a woman with red hair that was frayed and frizzed, gaunt green eyes, thin features, and a thousand yard stare. It was her.
He had found Allister McCullinay.
“Doctor McCullinay,” he called out.
Another gunshot rang out, and he ducked again. She was wielding a pistol and aiming it at him, though she was either too weak or too afraid to aim straight, and the bullets were ricocheting off of the shelves and walls.
“Doctor! It’s me! It’s Shishone!”
The QPF had been pressurized once it was sealed, so he removed his helmet, and shone his light on his face. “See? It’s me. We met before you came here. Remember?”
She stared at him from the darkness, the light of his flashlight reflecting in her hollow eyes.
“S-Stay back,” she croaked. “Stay back!”
He put his helmet back on, and slowly walked out from behind the aisle. She kept the pistol trained on him, shaking, obviously weakened and scared. He lowered his rifle, and raised his hand to placate her.
“Doctor,” he said. “Allister. It’s alright. I’m here to get you out of here.”
She started to shake harder, and for the first time, he noticed the corpse beside her, still clad in its white suit and helmet.
“Who is this,” he gently asked, looking down at the body as he approached.
“Stay back!” she cried, thrusting the pistol before her, but in a moment of weakness or fear, it slipped from her hands and fell to the ground. Swiftly, Shishone moved in for it, kicking it away before she could grab it. She hesitated, looking up at him with wide, terrified eyes.
He squatted in front of her, and reached out. She flinched, recoiled, and so he retracted his hand. “Doctor,” he said. “We’re gonna get you out of here.”
For the first time, the light of understanding appeared in her eyes. She began to mutter something, but couldn’t seem to muster the words, as tears appeared in her eyes.
“Allister. You did really good to make it this far. It’s time to get you to safety.”
“I tried to save her, to save them,” she said, tears streaming down her cheeks now. “I tried. All of them. They’re all gone.”
Shishone nodded solemnly. “I know Allister. Believe me, I… I know.”
He reached out and offered her his hand, and carefully, delicately, she took it, and he helped her to her feet. She struggled to stand for a moment, leaning on him.
“Who is that?” he asked, looking at the body.
She looked down too, a haunted expression passing over her face. “Itomi Pratchett.”
Shishone looked at her, then the body, and licked his lips uncomfortably, at a loss for words. “I’m sorry, Doctor. I assume she meant something dear to you.”
Allister nodded emptily. “Yes.”
Pausing, Shishone turned away, and said, “I’m sorry.”
She looked up at him, then to her, without saying a word.
“Well, come on,” he said. “We need to move before we end up like that too.”
Then, radioing to Yarns, he added, “Yarns, I’ve got her. We’re headed back.”
After Shishone and Yarns returned with Allister, they found Yu had stocked the back of the Harbinger with foodstuffs and munitions, as well as having had refueled the craft. Upon seeing them, Yu silently ushered them aboard, and took Shishone into the cockpit, leaving Allister and Yarns in the back, where Yarns was tending to Allister’s conditions as best he could. In the cockpit, Shishone radioed out that they were ready to depart, and with approval from the flight tower, the landing pad began to ascend, shooting them through the jaws of the airlock, and out.
They were spaceborne again.
At Yu’s behest, Shishone took the Harbinger to a darkened corner of MK2 and hovered her there in synchronous orbit with the planetoid moon, engulfed in shadow. Setting the autopilot to maintain their holding pattern, Shishone then turned to Yu and said, “We should get back there and see how she’s doing.”
Yu nodded, and removed her helmet, letting her hair drape down in front of one eye. “Agreed.”
So, they both stood, helmets off, and departed the cockpit, slipping into the back of the gunship. Here, there were several crates of munitions and food, barrels of water, all strapped to the walls of the ship. Between them, Allister sat, staring blankly through Yarns, who was trying to talk to her.
“Miss McCullinay, right? Miss McCullinay, are you hurting? Injured?”
She said nothing.
Shishone looked to Yu, who looked to Allister. When Allister met Yu’s gaze, a spark of recognition ignited in her eyes. Yu seized the moment.
“Allister,” she said, bending down and carefully placing a gloved hand on the woman’s knee, “It’s alright. You’re safe here. Can you talk to me? Tell me what happened?”
Allister licked her dry lips, and shuddered. “Can… I have some water? Please?”
“Sure,” Yu said, reaching into the overhead compartment and pulling out a flask, which she then proceeded to fill from the spout on one of the barrels and hand to Allister. “Here, drink up.”
Pressing the metal lip of the flask to her own cracked lips, Allister drank lightly for a moment, and then more greedily, guzzling down the flask’s contents as though she’d been in a desert and had forgotten the very concept of water itself. When she was done, she set the flask down beside her and sighed, leaning her head back and closing her eyes.
Yu watched for a moment – they all did – before she said, “Allister, what happened?”
For a moment, it seemed as though she would not speak. Yu looked to her companions, who seemed on edge. But finally, Allister did speak, with a husky, dry voice, and little inflection, as though the spirit animating her voice had died on MK2.
“My team… Xiao, he left us to die. They all, they, they’re gone…”
Her eyes seemed empty, her voice hollow. Still, she continued, “We were sent to research the tholins that had made their way into the facility. But Xiao, he…”
Tears started to form in her ducts. She wiped them away, but they were welling up faster than she could tend to them, and soon they were trickling down her cheeks.
“He killed them,” she said, staring up at Yu, and then Shishone. “He killed them. And then he left us to die.”
Yu bit her bottom lip, pain flashing through her eyes and her body like lightning. “Do you know why?”
Allister shook her head. “No, I don’t.”
Nodding, Yu then said, “And what about your team? What happened to them?”
“There are things down there,” Allister said, her bitter tone cutting through the air. “The things, they look like people, but they aren’t.”
“Can you elaborate a bit?”
Allister frowned and let her gaze fall. “When the communications lines went down, we tried to find a way to send off a distress signal. We tried the control room, then the communications tower, and both times, these… things, these things came out of the darkness and took people. Itomi and I barely made it to the storeroom, where we barricaded the door, but she was injured and… oh God, she was injured and… and…”
More tears began to flow down her stained cheeks. She tried wiping them away, but it was of no use, as they continued to flow. More and more they came, and her voice began to crack, soon becoming little more than a soft sob.
Yu stood up and watched her for a moment, lips taut.
Yarns looked to Shishone, both of whom had been watching the exchange, and said, “What do we do now?”
Shishone looked to him, then to Yu, who looked back at them and said, “We go to Arrokoth. There’s a long range telescopic transponder there, we can beam a message directly to Earth about what’s happening here. From there, Weywot. It’ll be the easiest place to lay low for a while, at least until TerraGov sends help.”
“How do we get there?” Shishone asked. “All of the Belt is going to be looking for us soon.”
“Then we don’t have much time,” Yu said. “Allister, we need you.”
Allister looked up at them, her tears slowing a bit. Her eyes displayed loss and grief, as well as confusion. “Me?”
“Yes,” Yu said, “you. We’ll need your accesses as the head of the science team to reach the transponder. If we can make it there, if we can get Terra to get out here, we can save our own skins, and probably the lives of many others.”
Shishone nodded, thinking back to the thrumas he’d discovered. In the wrong hands, those munitions could inflict severe casualties on the Belt and the rest of the Sol system.
“I guess I should mention something,” Shishone said, looking at them.
They all turned to face him, and Yu cocked her head, curiosity in her eyes. “What is it?”
He swallowed. “Yarns knows already.”
Yarns looked at him with confusion written on his face.
Shishone nodded to him, and turned back to Yu and Allister. “There are thruma delivery systems in the Belt.”
Yu and Allister looked him, obviously lost. He sighed. “Thrumas are rapid delivery bombardment munitions that typically carry plasma warheads. They’re meant to glass planets.”
Coughing, Yu said, “What? There are bombardment munitions out here?”
He nodded. “Xiao has bombardment munitions. Heavy ones too.”
“Why would he need those?” Allister asked, a little bit of life returning to her pale cheeks. “He wouldn’t raze the Belt, would he?”
Yu shook her head. “No, I don’t think so. Planetary bombardment munitions, that had to come from TerraGov directly. They’re in on it, so they must know something we don’t.”
Yarns sat down, and slumped. “None of this makes sense.”
“I have more information,” Yu said, rubbing her chin, and then folding her arms across her breast. “I was trying to find Shishone, and I did some snooping in my father’s office. There’s something called the ‘Manet Vivus’, it’s some secretive project my father was working on. I don’t know much about it, but it’s located on Charon. Probably on the dark side, I’d imagine. The two are tidally locked, after all.”
“The ‘Manet Vivus’?” Yarns said, looking at her. Shishone nodded, curious as well.
Yu continued, “Yes, and I don’t know too much about it other than it’s carrying embryos. Presumably human ones. Seemed incredibly hush hush.”
She flipped her hair, and looked away. “I don’t know anything more than that.”
“I do,” Allister said, quietly. They all turned to her, and with all eyes on her, she shrunk down a bit, meek. “The tholins. They’re critical to abiogenesis. Ah, in other words, I theorize that they’re one of the building blocks of life as we understand it. And I think Xiao has taken a special interest in that for some reason.”
Yu leaned on the wall. “Why would he do that?”
She sighed, and leaned forward, letting her head fall. “Tholins were my area of specific research. They are inorganic compounds that, through certain chemical processes, transform into organic compounds that make up nucleotides – the building blocks of RNA.”
Yu’s eyes grew wide. “So these tholins are pre-life compounds?”
Allister nodded. “Sort of. But the weirdest thing about them is – and Yu, you know this – is that they’re vibrating at nearly imperceptible frequencies. And when you listen to them, when you translate them into sound waves and listen to them…”
She shuddered, and a pain clapped in her brain like a thunderous headache. She gasped, clutching her head, but in a moment, it was gone as swift as it’d come. She shook her head.
Yu leaned in. “Are you alright?”
“Yes, yes, I’m alright,” she said, gulping. “I’ve been getting headaches ever since I listened to the tholins. They’re vibrating, when translated, it’s… they’re whispering. Whispering.”
Shishone seemed taken aback. “Whispering? What do you mean?”
She shot him a desperate look. “They’re whispering. I couldn’t make out anything being said. I don’t think it’s any language I’ve ever heard before, not Martian slang nor Arabic nor English… but they’re definitely speaking.”
Yarns stood up and began to pace. “This shit is weird,” he said, holding himself in a close embrace. “This is all really weird, I don’t like it. I don’t like it at all, I really don’t, I –”
Shishone grabbed him by the shoulders and forced their eyes to lock. “Get a hold of yourself Yarns. We need you here, not up there,” he said, tapping Yarns’ skull.
Yu turned to Allister, and said, “Listen, we need to get to Arrokoth to get a signal to TerraGov. It’s our best chance at getting out of this alive. Will you help us?”
She looked up to Yu, then to Shishone, who was trying to console Yarns, and then let her gaze fall to the floor as she thought. What choice did she really have? There was no going back to business as usual, not anymore. Not with what they knew, nor with the betrayals they’d faced. There was no more research to be done, no more friendships to be had. There was just survival at this point.
“Yes, I’ll help,” she said, looking up at them with despair and anger in her eyes. “I’ll help you. Thank you for helping me.”
Yu mustered the best smile she could, and nodded. “It’s settled then. Shishone, take us to Arrokoth please.”
Shishone let go of Yarns with a pat on his shoulder, and turned to Yu, saying, “Roger. But when we get there?”
“Put us down on the private pad near the center of the labs,” Allister said. “I can get us that far. I also know some people on Arrokoth that can help us. But we’ll have to be quick.”
“Alright,” Shishone said, giving them all one last look over before heading to the cockpit. “Everyone buckle up, I’ll get us to Arrokoth.”