The status of the habitat is nominal. The robot did a good job piecing the place together over the last few months. The reactor is up and operating within acceptable parameters. Thank God for nuclear power.
2025-August-10 09:37:25Z Hargrave(Mars habitat video): Helen is doing better and is now conscious. She saw a face in the habitat window last night. I did not see it myself, but I found more of those strange tracks leading up to the habitat. Considering recent events I think it’s time to admit the possibility that we are not alone.
I’d like permission to take the Mars rover out and recover our gear both at the landing zone and the last place we made camp. That gear is irreplaceable. Besides I want to recover those photos of the city buried in the rock.
2025-August-11 09:08:43Z Hargrave(Mars habitat audio only):Mission Control, we did not get your last transmission. Instruments show a massive electromagnetic field emanating from the South Pole. I expect that we will experience trouble communicating until it passes.
I’ve decided to take the Mars rover out and collect our equipment. I’ll be going as far as the last camp site to retrieve the gear we abandoned there. The equipment at the landing zone will have to wait a little longer.
Helen is doing well and agrees that we should recover our equipment, especially the photos. She’ll hold down the fort while I’m gone. I will be heading out at eleven hundred hours. It should only take four hours, round trip.
2025-August-11 14:14:12Z Hargrave(From the surface of Mars. Text): Mission Control, we are definitely not alone. Good God, the thing was huge. It was a black and hairless humanoid.
While I collected our gear, it appeared from behind a rocky outcrop. I was unnerved at the sight of the thing but managed to resist the urge to run. That was a mistake. It approached quickly, its long legs bringing it before me in moments.
The creature swung at me as soon as I was in arms reach. I managed to jump back but not before its long talons sliced my pressure suit. It cut me right to the skin. Fortunately only one compartment of my suit depressurized and I didn’t lose much air. Without pause it swung at me again. I ducked and managed to land a solid but wild kick to the thing’s midsection. I knocked it back at least three meters and it landed face first in the red sand. At first I was stunned by the effect of my kick then remembered, because of the Martian gravity, I was about three times stronger here than on Earth.
Without wasting any time I jumped into the rover and threw it into high gear. The thing got up and chased me. It leaped for the back of the rover and grabbed hold with its claws. I could hear its insane howls through the thin Martian atmosphere as it pulled its bulk onto the rover. I drew my 9mm, turned back and fired two shots at the thing. Even with my hands shaking I managed to score a hit. The thing’s head whipped back, black ichor spraying the air.
If anyone was wondering whether or not bullets would fire on Mars, there is no longer any doubt. The thing fell from the rover but I kept driving until I felt I was at a safe distance, before I stopped to look back. As I watched, the creature stood up its body covered in red sand and what could only be blood oozing from its head wound. When it started moving toward me again I got back into the rover and drove off at top speed.
This incident occurred approximately one hour ago. My heart is still pounding. I stopped to bandage my wounds and reseal my pressure suit. I lost a lot of blood. Painful muscle spasms are wracking my midsection. I don’t know if the cramps are caused by the wound or exposure to the low pressure of the Martian atmosphere.
I’m wondering what we should do next. If there is more than one of these things, God help us. I’m going to prep the return capsule. I’ll have Helen activate it when I get back to the habitat.
One good thing came of this: I retrieved the camera.
2025-August-11 15:43:26Z Hargrave(Mars habitat audio only): Mission Control, I made it back. I am transmitting the pictures I took of the alien structures and obelisk. Helen and I are in agreement we are making preparations for the return trip. We’ll have to remain in Mars orbit for a while though. Helen tells me Mars and Earth may not be in optimal alignment for up to fourteen months. We have lost the uplink with the command module but as soon as this electromagnetic storm passes we expect communications with both you and the command module will be restored. Once that happens we are leaving.
2025-August-12 09:13:29Z Hargrave(Mars habitat audio only): Mission Control, there has been no sign of the creature. There has been another development, however. My wound has become infected and I have a slight fever. I have taken heavy doses of antibiotics but it doesn’t look good.
Helen has finished prepping the return capsule. As soon as the uplink is restored with the command module, we are leaving this rock.
2025-August-13 09:20:58Z Hargrave(Mars habitat audio only): My fever is now at 102 but the infection seems to have slowed. I’m dreaming again. It’s this damn fever. It all seemed very real and tangible, a place that I can go back to if only I remembered how.
The alien city, I saw it as it once was. It must have been millions of years ago because all the rock is gone and two thirds of the planet is covered in water. Much of the world’s land mass is blanketed in lush green vegetation. Mars is alive!
A city sprawls for hundreds of kilometers across the surface of the southern continent. Sickly green towers claw at the sky as if seeking prey.
The inhabitants are vile, pus covered monstrosities, with masses of fluttering tendrils topped by translucent bulbous heads. Their brains are suspended within a cerebral fluid. These things worship a dark being who resides beyond our reality. They call to their dark god and it comes to them. The sky turns dark as its shadow engulfs the city. It’s both beautiful and horrifying, an ancient evil come to bless them in bloodshed. It descends upon the planet and devours those who dared summon it. When the dark god is done, it pours its being into the planet and Mars dies. It’s still here, in a lucid slumber deep within the planetary cadaver, waiting to be summoned once again. I can hear it even now, calling to me.
2025-August-13 22:18:16Z Hargrave(Audio only, Mars habitat):(Loud noise) (Static) It’s attacking! (More loud noise)We (Static)…ing Atmosphere. It’s sh… the whole habitat. (Multiple gunshots) (Transmission cuts out)
2025-August-13 22:47:21Z Hargrave(Mars habitat audio only): (Major Dorset can be heard crying in the background.) Mission Control, it came back. It shook the whole habitat. We are venting atmosphere from multiple locations and we have warning lights on the reactor.
I shot it again (disturbed laugh) it didn’t do much. I drove it off for the time being. (more laughter). (Major Dorset still crying in background) (Transmission cuts out)
2025-August-14 01:03:11Z Hargrave(Mars habitat audio only): (Laughter, which continues for eighteen seconds before transmission cuts out.)
2025-August-14 02:16:56Z Unknown (Mars habitat audio only):(Screaming female voice of Major Helen Dorset. Multiple gunshots followed by periods of long static. Transmission continues for twenty-nine minutes, fifteen seconds before cutting out. Major Dorset never stops screaming.)
2025-August-14 04:12:27Z Unknown (Mars Habitat audio only):(Hissing sound. It is believed the habitat is venting atmosphere. The transmission lasts two minutes, fourteen seconds then cuts out.)
2025-August-15 13:27:31Z (Data link to Mars Habitat restored. Internal sensors show the habitat has depressurized. Power to most equipment has failed. Internal Camera 12 is still functioning and reveals extensive damage.
The naked body of Major Helen Dorset lies on the floor. She is covered in blood. Her chest and torso have been torn open, her innards missing. Eleven minutes and sixteen seconds after the data link was reestablished a black hand can be seen reaching into the view of the camera. It takes hold of Major Dorset’sankle and drags her out of the habitat. Four minutes and eight seconds later the link is once again lost. It is unclear as to whether the hand belonged to Captain James L. Hargrave or not.)
2025-August-17 16:48:14Z Hargrave(From the surface of Mar
s. Text):It got her. God save me, it ate her alive. The thing was toying with us. It forced open the door to the habitat. Only demons can do such things. It must be a demon, it has to be. I shot it so many times but the bullets only pushed it back. When I ran out of ammunition it attacked Helen.
I squeezed into the small closet where the servers are and watched as it devoured Helen. She didn’t die quickly, she lingered as if some force delayed her passing. Her eyes begged for death, her screams pleaded for it. God it was awful.
When it was done the demon looked at me and for the first time I noticed its eyes. It had my mother’s eyes, dark ocean blue eyes with flecks of green. It grinned, revealing a maw filled with bloody fangs. I swear it was a smile. Then it just left.
I know where the dark god is, and it is calling to me. Its voice in my mind is a deep baritone that I can no longer resist. My life is over, I know that now. My soul doomed as well but I leave you this warning: Do not come back to Mars.
2025-September-03 23:21:52Z (Satellite photos confirm Mars Habitat destroyed.)
2026-June-12 07:17:03Z Hargrave(Somewhere on the surface of Mars, Audio Only): I have touched the face of God! I am bringing him home.
2026-June-15 21:37:36Z Data link Mars Command Module (Alarms report the return capsule has docked with the command module and has left Mars orbit)
2026-June-15 21:54:23Z (Data link to command module lost)
2026-June-19 10:28:32Z (Long range telemetry is tracking the Mars command module on its way to Earth. It is followed by a second object which rose from the surface of Mars. The second object is massive – almost nine hundred kilometers in diameter. At their current speed and trajectory, both will rendezvous with earth in approximately fifteen months.
D.B. Poirier is freelance writer, I.T. professional, and entrepreneur. His credits include; “Peng” Here There be Dragons anthology, “Baptism” Daily Frights 2012: 366 Days of Dark Flash Fiction (Leap Year Edition), and “Cimmerian” jukepopserials.com. He is motivated by his love of speculative fiction; some of his favorite works are Enders Game by Orson Scott Card, The Sword of Truth series by Terry Good Kind, A Princess of Mars the Barsoom series by Edgar Rice Burroughs, and The Call of Cthulhu and Other Weird Stories by H.P. Lovecraft. A New England native, he lives with his wife, two daughters and their goldfish “Flipper” in the great state of New Hampshire.
Doug’s websites: http://www.dbpoirier.com/ , http://www.facebook.com/DBPoirierWriter , http://www.jukepopserials.com/ .
Story illustration by Warren Layberry.
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Extraction
by Julio Toro San Martin
Through vast stellar space the Extraction Company crew travelled beyond their people’s safe cosmic horizon, the centre and spiral arms of galaxies wheeling and spinning past them. Unfathomable energies propelled the fleet forward and in normal spacetime they were nothing but an aggregate of co-ordinates and numbers, seen only in the minds of their cosmic theorists and scientists back home. This was because at this moment they were nothing but phantom voyagers, as close as they’ll ever come to being like the Immaterials.
Soon, one-by-one, the massive convoy of ships would leave the interdimensionality of hyperspace, and burst into real time and solidity and slower time speeds, capped by the near speed of light, and then their work would begin.
We’re coming, the Captain thought, get ready!
Beside him sat his Lieutenant Captain, a thin, lanky grey humanoid, with skin like the dangling wrappings of a mummy, and a head like a five pointed star. When they’d first been introduced Captain Sal Greta had thought he was an alien, until the creature told him he was from Earth. His phenotype, when they weren’t traversing outerspace, the Captain learnt, loved basting under a hot sun on Earth’s seas. The Captain himself had only ancestral connections to Earth, and so it was forgivable for him not to know this little detail. The Captain was born and raised on Earth 142.
“Nearing time to jump hyperspace,” the Lieutenant Captain said.
“Have all attack ships ready.”
Breaking into normal spacetime the fleet found itself alone, with only three moons for companions.
“Just as the Generals predicted, sir. Not a ship in sight. Should we command the fighter ships in.”
“Do so. Also, Brik, order for immediate construction operations to begin.”
Looking out the command window, Sal Greta saw infinite space stretch out before him. He also saw tiny pin-points of stars, a far distant sun, and then the real gem of these quadrants –A104X
He couldn’t actually see it, though he knew it was there, by observing the three moons which rotated around an empty spot. An empty spot which was planet A104X.
A planet invisible to sight and trapped, embedded, hidden in folds of space.
Sal Greta smiled as he remembered when his superiors had asked him if he was up to the challenge of going fishing for a world. He was and was now about to build the massive fishing rod that would pull the thing out.
The planets, the negative solids, the Immaterials, like this orb, were the diamonds of his people. With it they lived, died and maintained the survival of their civilization. The ship Sal Greta commanded was itself powered by an Immaterial. Its cosmic energies harnessed by the Dyson sphere or shell built around the negative planet. The shell was Sal Greta’s ship, named Earth 142.
“Should we go to the briefing now, sir?” asked Brik.
“No, you go on alone. I leave you in charge. I’m going to sleep. Wake me when the Construct’s finished.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yes. Wake me when its time for extraction. What could possibly go wrong now?”
When he awoke Sal Greta felt a cold sucker on his face. Grabbing at it he realized the top was a hand. He inferred the sucker was a palm, and began to panic. He knocked the hand away as he sat up quickly on his stasis unit.
“It’s just me,” he heard Brik say. His second-in-command then turned away from him and walked towards a holographic unit, on which were projections of starfish.
“Why were you touching my face?” the Captain asked, as he became acutely aware of the darkness of his quarters and the strange silence that permeated it. “I take it its time for extraction?”
“No,” Brik answered, while looking intently at the projections, “that began some time ago. I’m afraid you’ve been asleep for quite some time, Captain.”
Puzzled, Sal Greta slowly moved one of his hands towards his side-weapon. Brik paid no attention to him but merely kept studying the starfish. Had thousands of years ago Brik’s ancestors been only starfish, Sal Greta tried to remember?
“Why wasn’t I woken up when extraction began?” he asked sternly. He then slowly sat up on his stasis unit and quietly removed his weapon.
“Interesting specimens,” Brik said, “but mother must know all about it.” He then looked at the Captain and smiling, rushed headlong towards the wall closest to him, and stretching out his six arms, curiously began to melt into the wall. Brik’s species could not do this. Alarmed and sure his Lieutenant Captain was about to completely disappear into the wall, Sal Greta opened fire, but this didn’t stop Brik.
“If you wish to see where the rest of your people are, come and follow me down towards the planet, Captain,” Sal Greta heard Brik say. Instantly, he realized the voice was impossibly coming from outside.
He rushed towards his quarter’s windows in time to see the thing that had once been his second-in-command and his friend, falling eerily towards the half-extracted planet below, like a bed sheet blowing in the wind.
Outside, with his exo-skeleton suit on, Sal Greta held on firmly to one of the millions of steel girders that ran along the length of the Construct. He was alone in the immense emptiness of space. Atop, high up, he could see his greatly diminished home, its ribs only, since most of its material had been removed to supply the body for the Construct. His people had been doing this for aeons, as had all the other 579 Dyson spher
e worlds of the Extraction Company. It was this way of living which separated them from almost all the other alien and terre civilizations and also Earth’s great empire itself. They were a civilization of hunter-gatherers, and the beasts they hunted throughout the cosmos were the Immaterials.
Sal Greta blasted off the Construct intermittently, flying a few feet before landing and holding onto the girders. He slowly made his way along the Construct, which at this moment was, with inconceivable energies, extracting the black planet below him from its hiding hole in space. The Construct surrounded the planet like a great ring. As he advanced he felt like a tiny mite on a cosmic merry-go-round.
Cautiously he made his way to one of the few shaft elevators that stretched all the way down to about 20% of the distance to the Immaterial and which culminated in an observatory. From it he would blast down to the planet, thereby conserving fuel.
When first he’d left his quarters Sal Greta had run to the Dyson sphere’s main command bridge and had checked to see if he was in fact the only person left on his world. The computer told him what he feared and suspected –that this was indeed the case. He also learned that the ship-world was on low power and that most of its energy was concentrated on running the Construct.
Remembering what Brik had said to him he’d run a thorough diagnostic on the emerging planet below and had seen that Brik had not lied to him when he’d told him where his people were. Yet, why were they there and how were they alive? Never before had he encountered an Immaterial capable of harboring life, especially during the planet-wracking process of extraction, which threw out the equivalent energy of a flaring sun. At first he didn’t believe, but all systems said the life-forms were there –millions of them.
While he was checking and rechecking the readings the monitors had come on and he’d seen the barely discernable image of his world’s Supreme Commander, Oseia.
“Captain Sal Greta, is that you?”
Lovecraft eZine Megapack - 2012 - Issues 10 through 20 Page 49
