Deceit of Humanity

by Arthur McMahon

  Kapoor fired away with total abandon, the plasma rounds burning through the bark and flesh of the man-eating vines. Dominski stepped to Kapoor’s side and joined in on the snake-shoot. “I guess they’re only the little ones,” he shouted back to Silhouette, “but let us know ahead of time, will ya?”

  Silhouette backed away from the gunfire, still wary of Kapoor’s descent into madness. She was sure that Dominski was aware of the circumstances, but he was either ignoring Kapoor’s decreasing emotional restraint, or trying to make the best of a bad situation until he was in contact with the rest of his crew.

  Green flesh and sweet-smelling goop splattered all over the elevator lobby. Dominski ceased firing once he saw that all of the tentacles had either retreated or been turned into juice, but Kapoor kept going until her plasma cartridge was emptied. She dropped the shell onto the floor and took a full canister from her belt, snapping it into place on her gun. “The stairs, then?” she asked.

  * * *

  They walked through the mess of plant parts and left behind a trail of sticky footprints on their way to the stairwell. The tight corridor opened to a larger space where glass panes walled off different sections of a laboratory, each with a seemingly different biological purpose. What surprised Silhouette and the others was that there was still power in this section of the facility. The lights were on, some of them, at least, and a few lab machines buzzed with electricity.

  Though the area seemed operational, all of the lab-grown lifeforms had expired. Each glass room held something that had died, be it dried vegetation, genetically altered bugs, or corpses of small mice and other mammals. It was like a museum of misery.

  Mold grew just about everywhere it could in the lab, something which Silhouette had not really seen on this damp planet. Black, white, blue— the mold seemed to have originated as a specimen in one of the enclosed spaces, but it spread throughout the lab without any mentally stable scientists to keep it in check.

  “If anything could find a way to live on Thuun without our help,” said Dominski, “it would be mold.”

  They continued to the far end of the lab where the stairwell came into the view of Silhouette’s enhanced vision. It wasn’t a good sight.

  “The stairs are not an option,” said Silhouette.

  “What do you mean?” asked Dominski.

  “They’ve been destroyed by two giant worms which now occupy the space. Everything is crushed, and those worms are as fat as whiskey barrels. I don’t want to tangle with them.”

  “Well then how the hell are we going to get up to Nguyen and Yost?”

  “We can use the freight conveyer,” said Silhouette. “The facility’s blueprints show a thin maintenance staircase alongside the belt system that will lead us right up to the top floor.”

  “Jeden,” barked Kapoor. “We can go and investigate the stairwell for ourselves. Don’t trust what she says.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous, Kapral. Silhouette has guided us safely so far.”

  “You’re the one being ridiculous, Jeden.” Kapoor spat the words through her teeth. She raised her rifle and pointed it once more at Silhouette.

  Her shadowsuit was plastered in too much sap and pollen to hide in the shadows of the laboratory. There was nowhere to run, so Silhouette stood perfectly still and studied Kapoor’s eyes. She only needed a minor distraction, a moment of weakness.

  “You led Dr. Fukumura out to that bio-dome,” hissed Kapoor. “YOU diverted the Jeden’s attention while the doctor went out into the forest on her own. YOU said she was eaten by that monster, but no one else saw it. There’s no evidence except for whatever you say is recorded on that fucking Ocu of yours, but you won’t let us see any of it.” Kapoor lowered her head, aligning her right eye with the barrel’s sight. “YOU tricked me into leaving the facility, then led me and the Jeden into the caves, where you hoped we would die, didn’t you? YOU pulled us away from the rest of our crew. Now the facility is being taken over. The others are mad. Our comms are dead.

  “And now you’re trying to lead me and the Jeden into another trap. The Cooperation wants us dead, don’t they? The Senator sent you here to kill us, to make it look like an accident.”

  “Kapral!” shouted Dominski. He had his own weapon pointed at Kapoor.

  “Jeden,” said Kapoor, glancing over at Dominski. “Don’t let her do this.”

  Before she could take another breath, Kapoor found herself on her back with her own rifle’s everlight pointed down at her face. A foot was on her throat, pinning her to the ground.

  “Drop the weapon, Silhouette,” shouted Dominski. His voice screeched in panic. “Step away from Kapoor. I swear, if you hurt her I will empty this entire cartridge into your skull!”

  Silhouette unscrewed the everlight from the rifle’s barrel, then let it fall to the ground. She unlocked the plasma charge and threw it across the room where it bounced and rolled under some lab equipment. She popped out the trigger, removed the compressor rods, and dropped the pieces around Kapoor’s face, each part causing the Kapral to flinch away from the clanging noise it made upon impact with the hard floor.

  “There is an outdoor grated staircase which goes directly to the landing pad,” said Silhouette. Her foot was still on Kapoor’s throat. “Head back to the garage and make your way around to the opposite side of the building. You’ll see it. I’ll be heading up the freight shaft. It’s the safest way to go.” She stepped away from Kapoor, who then coughed for breath. Dominski lowered his rifle. “You can look for yourself if you want, but the main staircase is impassable. Outside is crawling with vines. You two can decide what you want to do and I’ll see you at the ship if you make it. Good luck.”

  Silhouette walked out of the laboratory. Dominski went to Kapoor’s side as she scrambled for breath, but she rolled away from him and went to gather her scattered rifle pieces. Sweat dripped from Dominski’s brow. He was losing control of his crew and didn’t know what to do.

  Chapter Eleven

  BREAKING APART

  SILHOUETTE ENTERED THE FREIGHT CONVEYER shaft alone. She climbed the stairwell, passing floor after floor until she reached the topmost level where the lights were on and the nearby area looked to be clear of dangerous weeds. The freight passage continued on to the landing pad where the Krajova waited, but Silhouette exited through a doorway into the main corridors and made her way toward the command center.

  A loud crack travelled across the complex, followed by a violent tremble that caused Silhouette to stumble into a wall. Deafening moans of twisting metal echoed through the halls. The lights flickered, but they remained in working order after the shaking had stopped.

  The facility was being slowly crushed by the gaia. When the Krajova had arrived on planet Thuun one of the first things Silhouette noted was the slime and damage on the outer walls of the building, but the structure hadn’t been destroyed. The scientists must have figured that the gaia was able to sense the electricity being used to power the facility and the domes. They were able to save themselves by shutting off the power, but it hadn’t halted their descent into madness.

  The Krajova Team had turned the power back on and caught the attention of the gaia once more. There would be no way to colonize this planet with the gaia still alive, but was it possible to kill something so large? Thuun would likely be a dead world without it. Silhouette couldn’t help but wonder about the future of Thuun as she traversed down the empty thruways. A livable world was such a rare find in the universe, but maybe Thuun wouldn’t be livable without its gaia. Was there an inner convection cycle without the gaia? Would there even be an atmosphere, or was it all being produced by that creature?

  Silhouette was shocked out of her thoughts as she entered the building’s concourse and found the corpses of Dr. Fitzpatrick and the other facility scientists.

  Their lifeless bodies were strewn about the seats in the front of the room, each with a plasma burn in the back of their head, execution style. They had been too weak to flee from Yost
as he murdered them in cold blood. These unfortunate people had feared for their lives, had hid away in a dungeon of their own making from a planet-eating monster that had poisoned their minds. They had been abandoned by one of their own who had taken away their only means of escape, and were left to wither away in their own filth.

  Then we showed up. We found the scientists, offered them food and a way home, but they just wanted us to leave. Their sanity had deteriorated and they only wanted to be left alone, for us to escape before we were trapped like they were— both on this world and in our own deranged minds.

  The air was thick with body odor and death. There was nothing to investigate here. Silhouette knew what had happened. Kapral Yost had lost control of his logical thoughts as his destructive impulses took over, convincing him that these poor souls needed to be put to death. No blasts scorched the walls or floor of the room. Each shot had been made up close with precision and purpose.

  She left the room and caught her breath. Silhouette didn’t yet know the current condition of the other Krajova members, but she wasn’t going to let Yost leave this planet. He was a part of Thuun now, of the gaia, and had to be put down.

  * * *

  She approached the command center and could see with her Ocu that Kapral Nguyen, Dr. Bourdain, and Dr. Carter were together in the room. The nearby infirmary door was open and Yost was nowhere to be seen. He had escaped, somehow, but he hadn’t attacked the Krajova crew, not yet.

  Silhouette was on her guard, but she couldn’t locate Yost anywhere nearby. There were some plant tentacles on the roof above, however, and it looked like a few had penetrated the outer walls near the command center. She had to get the other survivors out to the ship before it was too late.

  Walking into the command center, Silhouette saw that Kapral Nguyen was tending to Dr. Carter, both of whom had small breathing apparatuses over their noses. Carter had a black eye and his left arm had been put into a make-shift sling. Dr. Bourdain was away from the others, lying on her back. She had shoved her plump upper body through a tight access panel underneath one of the command consoles. There was a pile of hand tools at her side.

  “Where is Yost?” asked Silhouette. The others were startled by her sudden appearance. “How did he escape?”

  A look of shock contorted Nguyen’s face, but her features quickly softened as a comforted smile brightened her cheeks. Bourdain shimmied out of her hole and stared at Silhouette with a blank expression. Carter looked as if the devil herself had appeared in front of him.

  “No!” he shouted. “No, no! Not you!” He hoisted himself up. Nguyen tried to restrain Carter, but he started backing away from Silhouette’s direction. “Stay back. Leave us alone!”

  Silhouette stepped into the center of the room. “Calm down. Have you been able to contact the pilot yet?”

  “You’re not supposed to be real,” said Carter. “I can’t hear you. You’re nothing! You’re not real! Ahh!” Carter pushed Nguyen away and ran down the nearest corridor.

  “Dr. Carter, wait! It’s ok!” Nguyen hollered as she chased after him.

  Silhouette turned to look at Bourdain, who didn’t seem surprised.

  “He’s gone wacko.” She reached under the console and pulled out a cable, then she grabbed a tool and stripped away the wire’s casing. “Not as bad as Yost, but he’s been seeing ghosts and shit for hours. Probably thinks you’re one.”

  “Where is Yost, and how did he get out of the infirmary?”

  “That girl,” Bourdain pointed in the direction Carter and Nguyen ran off in. “She’s not the brightest lightbulb. I guess Dominski said we had to wear these masks, so Nguyen went into the infirmary to grab them while she thought Yost was still knocked out.” Bourdain chuckled to herself and snorted. “He wasn’t, of course. Came in here ranting about aliens, trying to convince us to hunt them down with him. I just need to get this place up and running and everything will be peachy.”

  “So, where is he?”

  “I don’t know. Ran off just a little bit ago. I think maybe he went to go shoot at some of those creepy crawly plant things.”

  “You don’t seem to be concerned by all of this.”

  “Just have to finish my work here and then we can go home once everything is up and running.”

  “You know that Jordan has locked us out of this ship, right? Fukumura is dead. The air is poison. The mission is a failure, Doctor. This building is being crushed by a gigantic monster at this very moment.”

  “Oh, nothing to worry about. We can go home in a little while once this place is up and running. They said to get this place up and running, ya know. Got to get the domes back online and everything will be peachy, then Fukumura and Carter can work on revitalizing the terraformation. You all can just take it easy until I get everything up and running. Full power should be restored...”

  Her voice was muffled as she shoved herself back under the command console. Silhouette wished she had a sane person to commiserate with, just someone she could ask ‘what the fuck?’ to and get an empathetic shrug or nod in return.

  She left Bourdain to her work. Nguyen may have still had some sense in her, and if that were the case then she would be worth saving. Silhouette followed down the hall in which Carter had fled. She tracked their path, but didn’t have to search for long as a shrill cry rang through the corridor.

  She hustled toward the source of the sound, ignoring the pains of her leg and running as fast as she was able. Turning a corner, she saw several small vines slithering out of a restroom doorway. Ear-piercing shrieks erupted from inside. Nguyen was in trouble.

  Silhouette ran into the room, deftly stepping around the reaching vines that tried to latch onto her.

  A massive maw had broken through the outer wall. The thing was as thick as a redwood, and it had Dr. Carter in its clutches. He had been grabbed by his backside and was being pulled into the worm torso-first. Nguyen had both of his hands in her grip, but she, too, was held by the biting flaps of several smaller vines which had started to coil around her limbs.

  Silhouette moved forward and grabbed the knife that was strapped to Nguyen’s side.

  “Help me!” screamed the recruit as she turned to see Silhouette. “Carter’s going to die!”

  Silhouette severed the vines which had attacked Nguyen. Their biting flaps held tight despite having been separated from their sources, but they would fall off eventually. More drooling tentacle mouths wriggled in through the hole in the restroom wall.

  Carter’s pleading screams were squelched as he was smothered by the revolting beast. His body had been folded in half— his arms and legs the only parts of him still outside of the slobbering maw.

  “Please,” yelled Nguyen as she lost her grip on Carter’s slime-covered fingers and clasped her hands onto one of his boots. “Help me! He’s a good man— he doesn’t deserve this!”

  Silhouette was bitten on the calf of her bad leg. She stomped on the vine with her other foot and squashed it, its innards spilling out as if it were a plantain. The room was crawling with the hungry beasts. There was no time for hesitation.

  Silhouette grabbed Nguyen by the waist, pulling her away from Dr. Carter and the creature that was eating him.

  “No!” shrieked Nguyen. “Stop it!”

  The maw pulled tighter in response, puckering its mouth’s appendages into itself and absorbing the whole of Dr. Carter except for his one foot. A series of muted cracks sounded from within the beast, and then Carter’s deadened screams came to an end.

  Nguyen hung on to the hardened sole of Carter’s boot, but Silhouette repositioned herself so that she was shoving her shoulder into the recruit’s stomach, pushing her backwards and then tackling her out of the restroom and into the adjoining hallway. Silhouette rolled off of Nguyen. The girl sat up and cried into the empty boot that she was still holding onto.

  Silhouette scanned the nearby area, ignoring the recruit. The vines were advancing on them and more had broken in farther down the hall. It was
time to get off this planet.

  She grabbed Nguyen under her arms and pulled the recruit up to her feet. Silhouette shook the girl as she spoke. “Your Jeden and the others are waiting for us at the Krajova. Get moving if you want to live.”

  A small object fell out of Carter’s boot as Silhouette jostled the recruit. Nguyen put the shoe on the ground and picked up the piece of folded paper, then she straightened it to see a picture of Carter’s wife and his two teenage sons. They were on a beach together. ‘Love you, Dad!’ was written on the back of the photo in red marker. Nguyen tucked the photo into a pocket and then was pulled down the hall by Silhouette.

  “Dr. Bourdain,” called Silhouette as she ran back into the command center. “We need to leave immediately. Carter is dead. The vines are— dammit.”

  Bourdain was still lodged under the control panel, but now a pool of blood had puddled around the woman’s still body. Blast marks scorched the edges of the control panel she had been working in.

  “No,” said Nguyen as she entered the room. She put a hand over her eyes, then pulled it down her face, covering her mouth as she spoke. “Dr. Bourdain. She’s...is she?”

  “Fukumura’s gone too, kid,” said Silhouette. She wasn’t more than a few years older than Nguyen, but experience-wise she was far beyond the recruit’s level. ‘Kid’ seemed to be an appropriate nickname in the moment. “I didn’t have the chance to tell you yet.”

  Nguyen was nervous, scared. She looked Silhouette up and down, then peeked about the room in search for a blaster. There was none. “Did you kill them?”

  “Of course not.” Silhouette scanned the nearby area, searching for any heat signatures. “You saw what happened to Carter. That same plant monster killed Fukumura and knocked your Jeden unconscious. It’s also what’s making everyone go nuts and why you have to wear that breathing mask. You ever heard of a gaia?”