by Phil Rossi
There was a squeak. They both looked up, the breath catching in their throats. They looked first at the wheel and then at each other. Squeak. Right before their eyes, the wheel turned.
“Can there be someone in there?” Ina asked.
“Jesus. No. Of course not. You yourself told me how long these fucking mining stations have been here.”
“Maybe Kendall and his people beat us down here?” Ina took a step away from the building.
Squeak.
“Maybe. But I don’t think so,” Gerald said. He felt his bowels shift. “Fuck. It’s gotta be automatic,” he said. “Machine assisted bulkhead. I’m sure that’s it.” Yeah. He sounded sure, but he felt a lance of ice run through his veins every time the wheel chirped. The sound was too damn out of place.
The wheel began spinning at blurring speeds and then stopped abruptly. Its chirp was replaced by a terrible moan of metal rubbing stone as the door grated open. Darkness thicker than peat lay beyond. Ina waved something in front of his face. He looked at her stupidly, unable to focus on the object.
“Are you all there, Gerald?” she asked.
“Yeah. Just… Shit.” He shook his head and took the object from her. The heft of it told him it was a flashlight before it registered to his eyes.
If the darkness in the long building wasn’t impenetrable, it was damn near close. It wrapped around them like a thick blanket. The cones of light cast by the flashlights did little to hold it at bay. There were more of the shelves inside, climbing all the way the ceiling and stacked high with core samples. The whole interior of the building seemed to be a large storage facility, Gerald thought as they pushed further into the darkness. The tall shelves began to recede and the floor sloped downward.
“A geological outpost,” Ina stated matter-of-factly. The beam of her flashlight painted the dusty shelves with light as they passed. “Scientists were stationed here and they analyzed core samples that were brought in from all around the planet.”
Gerald didn’t respond. He couldn’t respond. He had stopped walking and was busy trying to determine whether his knees were about to give out.
His flashlight was aimed dead ahead.
Gerald had seen death before. Recently, even. But what he was looking at now—it was unnatural.
(Part XIII)
Gerald had been a brave kid, growing up. Without fail, he had always been the one sent to check out the haunted house while his friends waited on the other side of some rusty fence, shaking in their hand-me-down boots. Gerald was brave because he had never been superstitious. He didn’t believe in ghosts, the boogeyman, or monsters—none of it. Not even god. It was difficult to fear something you didn’t believe in. So why, he wondered, was a god he didn’t believe in putting his convictions to the test now?
The storage shelves inside Murhaté, the geological station, were pushed back against the thick walls, creating a wide clearing. The shelves leaned one against the other, and based on their cockeyed angles they had been pushed there in a hurry. The resultant open space was filled by a large circle of roughly hewn, black stones. Gerald surmised the rocks were carved from Anrar III’s surface. Long, jagged shadows cast by the invading beams of Gerald and Ina’s flashlights cut through the circle. Gerald raised his beam to illuminate a ring of soot-colored metal that was suspended above the center of the circle of stones. The ring was almost as wide as the clearing itself. It was hung in place by a high criss-crossing of thin cables. Shards of black Anrar III bedrock were set into the circumference of the metal ring at regular intervals.
The sight was creepy, but the abstract art display was not what had Gerald shaking in his boots like his young friends so many years ago.
The misshapen thing dangling at the center of the metal structure—that’s what had Gerald’s knees threatening to fail him. It might have been a person at one time. Tatters of fabric hung from petrified flesh so dark that it looked to be made from the rock of the planet itself. The poor creature’s wrists were bound by cables, its arms spread wide. Splintered, blackened bones and shreds of obsidian material were all that remained of a midsection. The pieces were bent outward, like the person had exploded from the inside. Two limp cables snaked across the floor. These flaccid cords were attached to two black stumps—all that was left of the poor bastard’s lower half. A pile of debris littered the center of the circle. Twisted bits of metal and hunks of stone. As Gerald moved closer, fragments crunching beneath his boots, he trained his light on the strange cadaver. A few long strands of golden hair still hung from a scalp that was lumpy with protuberances.
Ina knelt beside where the debris was concentrated. The pieces of metal and rock obscured the dusty floor. Her fingertips sifted through the scatter. Ina was looking for something. For what? She muttered to herself under her breath—Gerald could not distinguish what she was saying, but her whispers carried like phantoms in the dark, cold space. The shadows seemed to be creeping in closer around them. Ina continued to work her gloved hands through the bits of metal and stone. He aimed his flashlight where she was working and for a second Ina went out of focus. Gerald blinked and she was clear again. It’s just a trick of the light, he told himself.
He looked up at the hanging thing. Maybe it wasn’t even real. A sculpture or some such nonsense. Everything did have an abstract art sort of feel. But Gerald knew that wasn’t true. A sculpture didn’t belong in the geological storehouse, any more than the circle of stones or metal ring. It wasn’t a damn art show. But, shit, there it was. He panned his flashlight around the scene. There was a cart off to the side of the circle with a dirty plastic box atop it and two holes in its face. It reminded Gerald of the incubators that premature infants were placed in. There were two sizable black boxes mounted atop short tripods. These boxes looked to be speakers, the kind you’d see with a public address system. An optical disc player sat below one of the speakers. He returned the flashlight beam to Ina.
“What are you doing?” he asked her, his voice was swallowed by the wind that howled outside the structure. The storm was almost upon them. “Ina, what are you doing?” He spoke louder this time.
“It has to be here somewhere.” She looked up at him; her eyes flashed onyx in the beam of his flashlight. “This is the only place it could be. There should be some of it left. A piece, at least. Right here.” Her voice trailed off.
She’s talking like a crazy person again, he thought. Like in the cafeteria when I first met her.
Gerald decided that it was best to ignore her for the time being. He’d let her play in the dirt for a few minutes while he attempted to make sense of things. He moved away from her and deeper into the circle, beneath the metal ring, but when his foot crossed over the ring’s lower curve his stomach did an abrupt somersault. A shock, electric and cold, jolted up his leg and knocked him off balance. He landed on his ass. It just keeps getting better and better, doesn’t it? he thought. He was ready to cut the visit short when Ina shrieked—in delight. He clambered to his feet.
“This is it!” Ina exclaimed, and stood so abruptly that she tottered back over. She got onto her knees, where it took her several moments to regain her breath. “I knew it,” she said, between gasps. “I knew it.” She held something up in the beam of her flashlight: a palm-sized piece of stone. Gerald at first mistook it for more black stone, but when it caught the light of the flashlight, it took on a deep crimson hue. It was a stone knife.
“What the hell is that?”
“This, my dear, dear Captain Evans, is sanguinite.”
“Miner’s Bane? That shit is just a myth—a made up mineral to blame accidents on.” There was a rustle somewhere deep in the station. The wind howled. Gerald looked around uneasily. “Geology lab is over, Ina. Time to go.” She was ignoring him and continued to speak.
“This has got to be it!” She held it in front of Gerald’s face. “Look!” She shone her flashlight through it. Red again. Yes, he thought, I get it.
She was out of breath again and Gerald to
ok the opportunity to interject.
“Great. Lovely. Why is this such a big deal? What does it have to do with archaeology?” Gerald began to move toward the way they had come. Ina remained planted.
“No one has ever presented, for lack of a better word, hard proof of its existence—even after entire mines had been shut down because of it.”
“So say the rumors,” Gerald interjected but she ignored him and went on.
“And now we have it.” She pointed the knife in his direction. “The stone is a clue to what happened here—it’s part of all of this, somehow.” She gestured to the stone circle, a frown creasing her pretty features. “You don’t understand.”
“And I don’t really care, to be honest with you. Even better, I don’t want to know. I want to finish my job and get paid. To finish that job, I have to get you back off this rock. And now, it’s time to go. I don’t give a shit about pebbles,” Gerald said. He reached out, grabbed her by the arm, and yanked her to her feet.
“But there is more to see down here, Gerald. I didn’t come here for pebbles…”
“Some other time,” he said. Ina pulled herself out of his grasp and took a step away from him. Here it comes, he thought.
“We’re paying you very well, Gerald,” she said. And there it is.
“I understand that. And you’re paying me well for a reason—my expertise. And my expertise tells me it’s time to get going.”
A rumble of thunder shook the entire building. Large, puffy clots of dust floated down from unseen ceiling rafters; the motes looked like large snowflakes in the shafts of light. The hanging cadaver trembled and began to sway.
“I could always leave you here and come back later,” Gerald said, but he wasn’t serious. He was annoyed, and nervous.
“You certainly could leave me here. Maybe that’s what you should do. And come back later to get me.” Ina nodded once.
“How long do you think the power cell in that flashlight will last? I can’t remember for the life of me if I charged it or not.” This blow seemed to connect. She glanced back up at the corpse that still swayed, and then to Gerald.
She frowned, then nodded.”Fine, fine.”
Gerald ushered Ina ahead of him and turned for one last look. A flood of shadows had washed over their path, and in those shadows Gerald heard something flutter. Before he could even think to indentify the sound, it was gone. He turned to step through the open door and heard a whisper, harsh and dry. He looked to Ina to see if she had spoken, but her face was already obscured by the thick hood of the parka. For him to hear her whisper, she’d have to be up to his ear with her mouth exposed. Gerald quickly stepped out of the geological station and into air that felt super-charged with static electricity. He cast his eyes to the angry sky as thunder rumbled. Then came the impression of something rushing past him, causing Gerald to spin in evasion. The outpost door slammed shut in his face.
He took a deep breath and gazed up. It wasn’t raining yet and the sight of open sky helped bring back some sense of composure. The sky was bruised with dark, roiling clouds that looked absolutely swollen. Lighting arced to the ground less than a mile off—a little too close to their present location for Gerald’s comfort. He started away from the building. Ina followed in step.
The hike back to Bean was going to be anything but safe, but Gerald didn’t want to weather the storm in that place. The wind gusted. The assaulting particles of grit felt like a thousand tiny needles poking at his cheeks. He cinched the parka hood tight around his face and pulled the goggles down over his eyes. Ina did not have to be told to do the same.
(•••)
Albin Catlier finished the last drag of his cigarette. The tightly rolled stick of tobacco had burned past his knuckle, unbearably hot on his fingers and lips. He dropped the butt to the deck of the loading dock and stomped it out. The overseeing detail had taken longer than he would have liked. Had Albin known this task would have turned into eight hours of tedium, he would’ve rolled twice as many cigarettes. The farm workers were slow to fill the last of many long, gray crates. They were tired, which was no surprise. There were a lot of guns to move. Not to mention, they had spent the previous night disassembling the elaborate manufacturing systems that had been set up in the Farm’s belly. At least now the workers were filling the final box. If he had to endure another hour of overseeing the idiots, Albin would likely eat the barrel of one the rifles they had packed and shoot off the back of his own fucking head.
The workers placed the top on the crate. Magnetic locks activated with a loud clank that rolled off into the night. Two collector robots hefted the heavy container and disappeared down a service corridor. With the job done, the workers dispersed without a word. The entire stock of guns was now officially out of the Farm. Shipping and production would begin again in a new location, but not until the Core Sec auditor was gone.
That meant no sales. The stream of income from the gun running was officially dead for the interim.
Albin was damned if he wasn’t getting paid, though. It wasn’t his problem if Kendall wasn’t able to make shipments. He glanced up at the security camera. A thick smudge of shoe polish covered most of the bug-eye lens.
Albin hopped down from where he sat on the loading dock’s concrete platform and squinted into the empty shipping area. Only one of the large floodlamps was activated. It served to illuminate the area where he stood. That was it. The light was unable to penetrate into darkness that surrounded loading platform nineteen. The clicks and groans of the station echoed in the shadows. Albin shuddered involuntarily. He wished he had another cigarette. Distant eye nodes of a collector robot floated in the black void beyond the floodlamp’s dome of light, glowing sensors floating like a small swarm of orange fireflies. Albin stepped back into the Farm’s shipping and receiving office. The bulkhead slammed shut behind him, closing off the darkness.
“The fuck’sammatter wit’ you?” Jacob asked and looked up from the several feeds that monitored the exterior of the farm house.
“Nothin’.” Albin seated himself at the table where he had left his tobacco and rolling papers hours ago and began to roll a fresh cigarette.
“They all done?” Jacob asked and yawned. His bloodshot eyes were rimmed by dark circles. He turned them back toward the feeds and giggled.
“Yep. They’re done.” Albin placed the cigarette between his lips and got up from the chair. He walked across the small office and stepped behind Jacob, looking over the man’s shoulder. There were six feeds. One of them showed a children’s cartoon cat chasing a mouse with an oversized ball-peen hammer. The cat tripped and fell in a dramatic tumble of fur and dust, sending the hammer skyward; it landed square on the cat’s skull. Jacob erupted into laughter. Albin grimaced. The feed should’ve showed looped footage from an empty Hangar 19, not a damn cartoon. If any external monitoring stations accessed the loading dock feed, they should have seen a vacant concrete slab. With the cartoon running, the actual feed would be live.
“Jacob, what did I tell you about this shit?” Albin said and waved his hand through the cartoon. It disappeared in a burst of static and light.
“Aw, Albin. I got bored. At leas’ I wasn’t sleepin’, right?”
“Jacob, of all the fuckin’ feeds, why did you use our fuckin’ decoy?”
“I did?” Jacob scratched his greasy head. Albin inhaled a lung full of smoke and let it out with a sigh.
“Jacob, you’re getting careless on me. When’s the last time you slept?”
“I don’t know, Albin. Can’t sleep. I hear things at night,” Jacob said and glanced around the cramped office. Albin frowned and took another long drag on the cigarette. If Jacob mentioned the angels again, he’d stab the dim-wit.
“Did you take those pills I gave you?” Albin asked.
“Albin, the fuckin’ pills don’t work. I can hear them. I ain’t crazy. It’s not like I hear voices all the time. Only at night. When I’m in bed. I ain’t crazy, Albin. Honest.” Jacob was get
ting agitated and Albin held up a hand.
“Easy, Jacob. Go home. Take handful of those little red pills and sleep, got it? I’ll be back around tomorrow afternoon. You just need sleep. You’re fuckin’ delirious. And that’s no goddamn help to me or to anybody.”
“Yeah, Albin. I know you’re right. Just. It’s this place…Crescent. I don’t like it here.”
“Well, better get used to it. We’re gonna be here for a while.”
Jacob moved toward the frosted glass exit door and spared Albin one last look. It was the kind of look a ten year old boy would give his parents right before asking, “Can I sleep with you tonight?” Fuck that, Albin thought. He was having a hard enough time sleeping himself. The door whispered open, Jacob stepped through, and the door whispered closed. There was a muted click as it locked.
(•••)
“That is asking a lot,” Nigel said and folded his hands in his lap. He rolled back from a table that was buried in printouts and multiple glowing data pads, and turned to glance at the security monitors. A reflex, pure and simple—movement in one of the cycling feeds caught his eye. Swaren’s first years in Core Sec had been spent staring at wall panels full of glowing security feeds. Old habits died hard. Something moved. He looked. Simple.
“Marisa…how long have I been on Crescent?” Nigel asked. As the words fell from his lips, he realized he couldn’t exactly pinpoint how long he had been there. He thought it should’ve been a week, but it felt like he had been there for far less time. The only evidence of the length of his stay was the depth to which the table-turned-desk was inundated with audit materials. Marisa didn’t answer him at first. She sighed and tugged her uniform jacket.
“I know you haven’t been here that long and you hardly know me. And I know it’s asking a lot, but I’m not sure how to proceed. Kendall is not someone to be fucked with,” Marisa said.
“You don’t know how to proceed? Look, Griffin. I like you a great deal. You’ve been nothing but accommodating. Thus far. You bring me the data I’m looking for when I ask for it. And you’ve respected my space. But this is a bomb you’ve dropped in my lap. And it sounds like rubbish.” Marisa frowned and glanced at her shoes.
