Vessel

by Lisa A. Nichols

  She rubbed her mouth with the back of her hand, staring at the comms, waiting to see if there was an answer. It was Tom. It had to be Tom. But how could he have gotten out of the Habitat?

  Maybe he’d lied when he’d said he was messaging her from inside. If nothing else, it was clear that he’d wanted her to stay inside so she’d die with the others. But if he was outside in a suit, why didn’t she see him when she came out?

  The others were dead; she was sure of it. Once the fire had burned itself out, she’d explored the ruined Habitat. She’d found at least three bodies, but otherwise there hadn’t been much to identify; the fire had burned hot and fast in the Habitat’s oxygen-rich atmosphere. When no one else turned up, she made the logical assumption that she was the sole survivor.

  I have to go home. I have to tell the others what happened, if nothing else.

  Except . . . what could she tell them?

  She stared at the comm screen while she thought. At one point she checked the message log and confirmed that yes, those messages had actually come in.

  Okay. If she was going to go home, leaving was going to take some preparation. The ship itself wasn’t stocked with enough supplies for the long trip back. There was a supply shed on the far side of the landing area, on the other side of the Habitat—far enough to have been untouched by the blast. She’d have to raid and transport things one rover-load at a time. Thank God the second rover hadn’t been close enough to the Habitat to be destroyed, too.

  After the first round of messages, the comms had pinged throughout the night, destroying any chance Catherine had of restful sleep. No matter how hard she tried to convince herself that she’d imagined the whole thing, the string of messages telling her to surrender was real. She’d deleted them in a fit of fear and bad judgment. It wasn’t supposed to be possible to delete any of the comm records, but Tom had shown her how to bypass those protocols, showing off for her with a cheeky grin.

  Tom. He was still out there, and he expected her to surrender.

  There was a tiny cache of weapons on Sagittarius, intended for protection against any unfriendly fauna on TRAPPIST-1f. When there had been no fauna to be found, those weapons—modified roughly from standard handguns to fire in different atmospheres—had been locked up shipboard. Ava had confessed to Catherine one night that NASA had also meant for those weapons to serve as a last-ditch solution for the crew, should the worst happen. One usage NASA probably hadn’t anticipated for those guns was for the crew to protect themselves against one of their own. But the guns were locked up, and she had no real way to get to them. Ava had been the only one with the passcodes.

  “Okay. Okay. No guns, then. Fine.” Ah, well, the ability to improvise solutions in a crisis was one reason NASA had chosen them all, wasn’t it?

  No weapons at all, and she still needed to start getting things together. She grabbed the tool kit from the ship’s storage area and slid a heavy wrench into a pocket of her jumpsuit. It might be useless as a weapon, but the weight of it made her feel better.

  She drove the rover across the landing zone to the storage shed and started gathering some of the supplies. The entire time she worked, hauling crates onto the rover’s storage rack, the back of her neck prickled. Was Tom out there, watching her?

  While she was in the shed, she heard a thunderous crash outside, and ran out to see all her carefully stacked crates spilled to the ground.

  It was Tom.

  He was coming at her from around the rover. His expression was utterly blank, slack-jawed. One side of his face had livid burn marks on the cheek. There was no light in his eyes at all, almost as if he weren’t even looking at her.

  “Tom. Come on, it’s me. It’s Catherine.”

  He stopped, and his eyes focused, fixing on her, still dead and cold.

  “We have to work together to get home.”

  “Surrender.” His voice was flat, unemotional.

  He started toward her again, at a steady, relentless walk. She pulled the wrench from her pocket. “Stop. I don’t want to hurt you.”

  Tom didn’t stop. But Catherine couldn’t make herself swing the wrench at his head. At the last second she spun and tried to flee, but he caught her by the shoulder, reaching for her throat. His fingers burned hot through the material of her suit as they closed around her neck.

  Catherine fell back on her training. She fought hard and dirty, slamming a foot into Tom’s, clawing at his hands. Finally she hit backward with the wrench, connecting with his skull through his hood. Tom grunted and his hands loosened from her neck. She fled, leaving the rover behind for now. She looked back to see Tom still on his feet, blood on his head and his hand. He began to chase her.

  Once she was in the shadow of the rocks, she ducked and wove through them, hiding behind one to listen for his footsteps.

  He was easy to hear, trampling over the ground without any attempt at stealth.

  She waited for what felt like hours, until the footsteps receded and all she heard was silence. She had no way of knowing where he was, if he was searching for her in the distance or lying in wait. All she knew was that she couldn’t stay here. Slowly, quietly, she pushed herself upright, the wrench clamped tight in her fist.

  Silence.

  She didn’t see Tom. Couldn’t hear him. This was her chance.

  She sprinted back for the rover, her heart thudding in her chest. Everything was just as she’d left it. The metal crates were still intact. She shoved them up onto the rover, less careful about stacking than before, no longer interested in loading as much as she could in one trip. The entire time, her skin crawled, waiting, listening for the sound of Tom. Despite everything, she didn’t know if she could kill him.

  She climbed into the rover and started it up, pushing the little motor as fast as it would go back to the ship. Even if he pursued her, the ship was far enough away, and she had enough of a head start, to give her time to unload the rover before he could reach her.

  By the time she finished loading the crates on board Sagittarius, Catherine was exhausted and sweaty. Not to mention starving. She sealed up the ship, finally able to relax a bit knowing that Tom couldn’t reach her in here. Whatever had happened to him, he seemed too far gone for her to get him back.

  The question was, did that mean she was going to leave him behind when she left?

  * * *

  After she cleaned up, luxuriating in the feel of clean clothes, she started pulling together dinner. She was so hungry that waiting for everything to heat up felt like an eternity. She was just about to sit down in the galley when the comms started pinging again.

  Catherine froze, halfway between sitting and standing, her appetite vanishing. With her stomach twisting in knots, she went to the cockpit, expecting to see the demand to surrender flash on the screen again. Instead, she got Tom’s voice.

  “Sagittarius, this is Tom Wetherbee; if you’re there, come in. If anyone’s alive, please come in. Someone must be out there. The ship is locked; I couldn’t get in.”

  A chill shot down Catherine’s spine.

  “Sagittarius, I’m wounded. My suit’s torn; I’ve got some burns. I think something scratched me. Please help me.”

  Part of her mind insisted this was a trick, told her not to answer him. He sounded so desperate, though. So terrified.

  She settled in front of the console. “Tom, it’s Catherine.”

  “Oh thank God!” he cried. “What happened? The Habitat—it’s gone.”

  “Where are you?”

  “I’m in the storage shed,” Tom said. “The ship was locked, so I thought someone must be inside . . . Tell me what happened!”

  “You don’t remember the explosion?”

  “Jesus. No. Where is everyone?”

  I don’t know what I did last night . . .

  Catherine’s mouth was dry when she tried to swallow. “They’re dead, Tom. I thought you were dead, too.”

  There was silence over the comms, and when he came back on, it so
unded as if he were barely holding on to himself. “All of them? No. Oh God. How much time have I lost, Catherine?”

  “It’s been a day since the explosion. How did you get out?”

  “I don’t know. Last thing I remember I was under the console in the command center, elbow-deep in some wiring, trying to figure out how things had gotten so fucked up. Then I’m sitting in the middle of nowhere burned and bleeding.” He paused. “I think something attacked me.”

  Did he really not remember? Or was this all a ploy to draw her out? “You tried to kill me today. You’ve been sending me threatening comm messages.”

  “That’s ridiculous. I would never— I could never hurt you.” The betrayal in his voice sounded so real that she wanted to believe it.

  “I’ve got the bruises to prove it.”

  “I don’t remember that!” The quaver in his voice also sounded real. “Cath, I think I’m getting a fever.”

  “I can’t let you back on the ship. You’ve got to be quarantined, Tom.” Even if I trusted you, which I don’t.

  Tom’s voice grew hard. “You’re going to leave me behind. You’re going to just let me die.”

  “No.” Yes. Maybe. “Look, there’s plenty of food and supplies still in the storage shed. I’ll leave the antibiotics and painkillers you’re missing outside the ship. I-I’ll wait through your quarantine with you.”

  “You’re a shit liar, Wells.”

  “Hang on.” Catherine ran to the infirmary and grabbed the promised medication. If he was lying and was right outside instead of in the storage shed, she was taking an enormous risk, but she had to. Even if she wasn’t sure she could trust him, she needed to be trustworthy herself. She opened the ship’s main hatch. Tom was nowhere to be seen. She put the containers just outside the hatch before ducking back in and resealing everything. When she got back to the comms, she said, “The meds are waiting for you now.”

  “I don’t know if I can walk that far.”

  “You tried to choke me. I’m not coming to you.”

  “Fine. God, you always were a heartless bitch.” That was real, even if the tears had been fake. “If I die, my blood is on your hands.”

  Yeah, well, she knew that much.

  “If the meds work, we’ll talk.” Then she shut off the mic and walked away.

  There were no other messages that night.

  Exhausted as she was, Catherine barely managed to sleep. When the sun came up, she crept to the main hatch.

  What she saw shocked her, and, if she was honest, touched her a little. The meds she’d left were gone, and parked in front of the ship was the rover, loaded with supplies. Judging from the other crates stacked around it, there were plenty of supplies for a return trip home. Tom must have spent all night making trips back and forth.

  Was it a trick? Then she saw the message scratched in the dirt:

  PEACE OFFERING. QUARANTINE 48 HOURS. WAIT FOR ME? WILL MESSAGE.

  He was willing to wait outside the ship for two days to see if he came down with something or, like Catherine, stayed well. Even if she didn’t trust him, she couldn’t turn down what he was offering. The supplies he left weren’t tampered with. The seals on all the crates were still intact. He couldn’t have gotten to the contents.

  Faced with the prospect of trying to get a different batch of supplies and possibly having to fight off Tom again, Catherine decided to take the chance. She started loading the crates. It took the better part of a day, hauling things between the rover and the open hatch. By the time she was finished, she’d reached a decision: She’d wait forty-eight hours. If Tom was still alive, she’d worry about making a final decision then. In the meantime, she’d stay locked in the ship where it was safe. With the long trip back home, a couple more days wouldn’t make a difference one way or another.

  30

  CATHERINE WOKE IN her own bed, confused at first, thinking that she’d had a strange nightmare.

  The sound of someone moving around in her living room brought it all back. It had been real. Cal had driven her home in her car, made her tea, put her to bed, and—from the sounds of it—slept on her couch.

  Details were fuzzy, but she remembered what she’d gone to NASA to do. I almost killed them. I almost killed everyone on Sagittarius. The thought stuck in her head, echoing and rebounding. She crawled out of bed and pulled on her robe.

  Cal was in the kitchen making coffee. “Hey,” he said. “I heard you get up. How are you doing?”

  Catherine’s voice came out in a rusty croak, as if she had a cold, or had been shouting. “I tried to kill six of my friends last night—seven, counting you—but otherwise, I’m doing okay. You?” There were bruises on his face, but the cut on his cheek didn’t look as bad this morning. Her aches weren’t physical, but her soul felt bruised. How could she live with what she’d done? And what if she tried to do it again?

  “Yeah, okay, so maybe that was a dumb question.” He changed the subject, holding up the coffee can from her cabinet. “Seriously? You seriously drink this? You know dirt would be cheaper, right? And probably taste better.”

  Despite her misery, she smiled. “It gets the job done. Some of us don’t care about hand-roasted, carefully ground artisanal beans from some obscure corner of the world. It’s caffeine.”

  “My God. I see I have a lot of educating to do here.” He shook his head. Still, he started the coffee machine and came to sit next to her on the couch. “Were you able to sleep?”

  “Surprisingly, yes.” She lowered her face to her hands and rubbed with her palms. “Who knew attempted murder was so exhausting.”

  “You weren’t in control—”

  “That doesn’t actually make it any better.” She looked up at him, needing to voice her fears aloud to another person. “What if I try again? What if I already did kill someone, and just don’t know it?”

  “Now we know what the plan is,” Cal countered. “That makes it easier to stop. And maybe it will give us a clue about what’s going on here.”

  “But whose plan? Cal, there is someone in my head. Maybe more than one. I felt them!” Catherine sighed, slumping against the back of the sofa. “God. This is such a nightmare.”

  “I have a theory about that.” Cal turned, sitting sideways to face her. “The Longbow Protocol was supposed to prevent any sort of alien life-form from coming to Earth without our knowledge, right? The thing is, it already failed. We failed. There was one outcome we didn’t predict: that someone would bring something back with them, something we wouldn’t be able to detect until it was too late.”

  “What do you mean?” Catherine pulled her knees to her chest.

  “You’re carrying an antibody that has never been seen on Earth before. It means you were exposed to something during the mission—bacteria, a virus, a fungus—something that got into your body and caused a reaction in your immune system. And only one other human on record has ever had that particular antigen,” Cal said. “Iris Addy. The one other person who’s experienced similar memory loss and violent impulses after going through the wormhole.”

  “You’re saying we all were exposed to something out there?” A nightmare scenario grew in Catherine’s mind, all six of them falling into those fits. Oh God, had they all destroyed one another? Was that what happened?

  “It’s possible. I don’t know.” Cal watched her carefully as if he saw the tension spike in her. “Cath, don’t start jumping to conclusions. Stick to what we know. You and Commander Addy. That’s all we know.”

  Catherine took a deep breath to steady herself, then let it out. “Okay. Say you’re right. How could an infection make us do things and not remember them? How could it . . . control us?”

  “Have you ever heard of zombie ants? In Brazil?”

  “Zombie ants . . .” As bad as things were, that was just ridiculous enough to make her smile. “No. Please tell me you aren’t saying I’m a zombie.”

  “No! No, not at all. Okay. So there’s a fungus called Ophiocordyceps unilatera
lis. It infects certain species of ants and takes control of their bodies. It’s not sentient; it just makes the ants go to a specific place that’s most favorable for the fungus to spread.”

  “Something tells me that doesn’t end well for the ants.”

  “Well, no; they die and sprout fungi,” Cal said quickly, “but that’s not what I’m thinking about here. What if the original antigen represents some sort of similar method of control?”

  “But . . .” Catherine paused.

  “There’s no sign that it’s fatal,” Cal reassured her. “Iris Addy has been living with it for years.”

  “You said the fungus isn’t sentient,” Catherine said. She could remember the distinct feeling of another entity, an intelligent mind, directing her movements. “But there was a . . . a personality there. A mind.”

  “Yeah, it’s not a direct parallel. I’m just saying I think the antibodies are related—” Cal stopped. “Catherine. Do you realize what this means? An alien life-form made contact with you out there.”

  “Don’t jump to conclusions—”

  “It’s a small jump—a hop. First contact. Catherine, that’s huge.”

  “We could have it all wrong.” Catherine wanted to backpedal. He believed her almost too completely. She hadn’t counted on that. “What if I’m just crazy?”

  “I don’t think you’re crazy—at least, not delusional.” Cal got up to get their coffee, black for both of them. He brought it back to the living room and Catherine wrapped her hands around the mug, hunched over it.

  “Even if I’m not, and I have met aliens—or they’ve communicated with me somehow—they’re not exactly saying ‘we come in peace,’ Cal. They may have already had a hand in killing some of us, and . . . and if . . .” She couldn’t make herself say it.

  Cal leaned forward and touched her hand carefully, and she didn’t pull away. “Come on. Spit it out.”

  “If they see us the way that I saw people . . .” Catherine shivered. “They want us dead. All of us.” A worse thought occurred. “What if they made me kill them all? My crew? If we were all infected, what if we killed one another?”