Crucible

Crucible, Part 1

Chapter 1:

Day: 58

Location: Gliese 380 d, surface

Subject: Shannon Fallow, Human Female,

Rank / Affiliation: Heavy Exoskeleton Squad Leader, Engineering and

Survey Team, Haspus Consortium,

Colony Mission Status: Green

Haspus Mission Status: Green

“We’re already far enough behind schedule with the two survey teams overdue I don’t think we can afford to…” the screaming sound of an alarm interrupted Shannon mid-sentence. She had been talking to one of the geologists but the klaxon sound coming from the speakers pretty much ended that conversation. Weeks of pre-deployment training kicked in and Shannon found herself reacting without thinking. She turned and started running for the exoskeleton hangar completely forgetting what it was she had been saying.

Her boots crunched across the broken shale of the hillside. It hadn’t been the best place to set up an engineering and survey base but it wasn’t like they had been spoiled for choice. The entire planet was like this. Bare rock hills stretching out in every direction interrupted only by the occasional mountain. There was little surface water to be found and even less in the way of vegetation. The planet did have potential though. It had an oxygen rich atmosphere as well as large mineral deposits and underground aquifers full of water. With a little bit of effort this uninteresting rock of a planet had the potential to support millions of people, and that was the reason why they were there, to prep the rock for a colony.

The continuing sound of the alarm chased her across the compound past the barracks to the low squat structure of the exoskeleton hangar. Like all of the buildings on the base the hangar was oddly shaped with brackets and attachment points sticking out of it at unusual angles. It was the result of the structures repurposed nature. Most of the construction materials used in building the base had come from disassembling the ship that had brought them to the planet. Despite its odd shape the hangar was her rally point in the event of an emergency, and the alarms were only supposed to go off in an emergency.

The heavy steel doors of the hangar were already open when she arrived. The expedition’s other heavy equipment squad leader, John Henesey, was in the hangar marshaling his team members into their exoskeletons. There were five of them in total, two women and three men. They all looked tired, but that was natural since they had just been getting to the end of their shift.

Out of reflex Shannon directed her own team to their exoskeletons as they arrived. The first one in was Mathew. He didn’t say a word and just ran straight to his exoskeleton. He was a quiet man, but dependable. Alice, the only other female member of Shannon’s squad, ran in with damp clothing and her hair soaking wet. It looked like the alarm had caught her in the shower and she had been forced to throw her clothes on before drying off. Mark and Samjay arrived last. They were both wearing coveralls and Mark had some sort of grease smeared across his chest. They must have been in the midst of some sort of mechanical repairs. In contrast to John’s team all four of her squad members looked fresh and rested. There should have been a fifth member of the squad, but Kevin hadn’t made it through cryo-sleep so they were one person short.

Seeing that all of her team had arrived Shannon started strapping herself into her machine. After years of experience her movements were nearly automatic and required little in the way of thought. The heavy exoskeletons were electrically powered humanoid metal frames that the operator stood inside of with a harness strapping them in. Whenever the operator moved their arms or legs an onboard computer would detect the movement and apply hydraulic force to move the exoskeletons frame in the exact same way. On the outside a thin sheet of armour and a roll cage protected the operator against falling debris and accidents. When in use the equipment looked like a seven foot tall robot built out of tinker-toys with a person inside.

Despite its silly appearance the heavy exoskeleton was a useful piece of equipment. The hydraulics operated by the computer was orders of magnitude stronger than a human allowing it to lift and carry hundreds of pounds effortlessly. Special mounting brackets allowed the use of power tools like drills, jackhammers, and scoops. This allowed tasks that would normally be assigned to forklifts, backhoes, and front end loaders to be easily accomplished by a single machine. Normally the exoskeletons were painted blaze orange for safety purposes however these ones had been painted in a complicated red-brown pattern. It was a little odd to see them the wrong colour but Shannon hadn’t been offered an explanation for why that had been changed.

With a flip of her wrist Shannon closed her visor and switched on the heads up display. She was greeted by a series of network errors filling the bottom left hand side of her screen. The onboard computer was trying to connect to the base’s network and was failing miserably. Something was wrong but she couldn’t figure out where the problem was. As a team leader she was supposed to report that her squad was ready and accounted for, it didn’t look like that was going to happen over the network. Computer problems weren’t exactly unusual so the exoskeletons were equipped with short range two-way radios. Flicking the radio on with her thumb her ears were assaulted by loud static, it was so loud she had to immediately turn it off again.

“Hey Shannon,” John called out from where he was strapping into his own exoskeleton. “Do you have a network connection?”

“No, radio is out too,” she replied.

“That’s weird. How the hell are we supposed to know why the alarms are going off if we can’t talk to command?”

“Don’t know,” she replied, “there’s one obvious way to find out though. I’m going to step outside and take a look around.”

Pushing off with her left leg she started to take a step. The onboard computer read the force from her muscles and milliseconds later started moving the exoskeletons leg in response. The result was the familiar sensation of slight resistance as she walked her exoskeleton out the door of the hangar.

Outside the hangar a burst of loud banging sounds echoed from the far end of the compound. They sounded like gunshots but that didn’t make any sense. There were a small number of armed guards at the compound but there wasn’t supposed to be anything bigger than a rabbit on the planet. There certainly wasn’t anything large enough to explain the alarms, and even if there was an issue with indigenous life that wouldn’t explain why the network and the radios were down. Bringing her exoskeleton through a gradual turn Shannon started to walk around the hangar so she could see what was going on. She wasn’t looking at her surroundings though. She was busy fiddling with her network systems as she moved trying to get the onboard computer to connect. A loud scream brought her to a stunned halt. The scream had been human and it had come from someone in a great deal of pain.

She stopped poking at the network interface and looked around. Something was wrong, seriously wrong. There was thick black smoke coming from the far side of the compound, a fire of some sort in the same direction she had heard the gunshots coming from. Out of the corner of her eye she spotted a survey team member dashing between two of the barracks buildings, he had his head down and was moving at a sprint. A crunching sound of tearing metal brought her attention back to the smoke. More loud popping sounds rang out. They were closer this time and now she was certain they were gunshots. Whoever was doing the shooting was firing in short controlled bursts. It wasn’t ammunition on fire and it certainly wasn’t one of the guards trying to pick off a rodent. The geologist she had been talking to earlier stepped into view. The woman was walking backwards with an expression of terror on her face. She was looking up at the communications antennae.

The communications antenna was the largest structure in the compound, easily seen from miles away. It was a tower used for both radio and network communications. At first glance Shannon thought someone was playing a joke. The creature hanging from it couldn’t have been real, and then she saw it rip part of the tower off with one of its pincers. It was as big as a horse, and looked like a cross between a bear and some sort of insect. It was a three sectioned creature with a massive oversized head, a flexible waist supporting six long spiky legs, and a bulbous abdomen. All of it was covered in thick slabs of armour. The creature sported large mandibles and its front legs ended in thick pincers. It was hanging off of the coms tower about halfway up, tearing and gouging at the steel beams with its pincers. The steel tower started swaying with the creature’s weight.

Shannon’s stomach dropped and she could taste bile in the back of her throat. She knew what the creature was. It was a Termian warrior.

After colonizing dozens of planets out to a distance of nearly twenty-five light years from earth mankind had only ever encountered one intelligent life form. It was a nasty one though. The Termians were a race of insect-like creatures that were aggressive, violent and territorial. To make matters worse their intelligence was that of a hive mind, individual Termians couldn’t or wouldn’t communicate and thus every attempt at peaceful contact had failed. The only thing the Termians seemed to understand was violence, and they were really good at it.

Several military campaigns were fought against the Termians before the decision was made to just leave them alone. They were hard to kill, fought with a stubborn tenacity, and were quick to adapt new tactics. Where there was one there were thousands. Fighting them wasn’t worth it. If there were Termians on a planet then the human race simply didn’t go there.

Shannon stared at the creature in shock and horror. It shouldn’t have been there. It wasn’t like the base had been set up as a spur of the moment decision. It was the result of decades of unmanned missions to the planet. If a single one of those probes or deliveries had detected a trace of Termians then no humans would have been sent to the planet. Hell, the entire planet was their territory as far as colonial law was concerned. This was bad, really, really bad.

Directly in front of her one of the compounds guards came into sight, he was running towards the barracks building, a rifle held loosely in his hands. With a crash a Termian warrior smashed through the outer wall of the compound using its armoured head as a battering ram. Shaking itself free of the remains of the wall it reared up, aiming it’s abdomen at the fleeing guard. A steaming spray of liquid jetted out of the creatures abdomen striking the guard. The guard cried out and then seemed to fall apart in midstride. His legs and upper torso fell in opposite directions with his midsection having been completely removed. The stream of high pressure boiling chemicals had simply dissolved the guards body everywhere it touched him.

Behind the first warrior more of the creatures forced their way into the compound. The limited rifle fire faltered and then fell quiet. The survey base hadn’t been set up to repel attack and it certainly wasn’t going to stop an assault by Termian warriors. One of the creatures turned towards Shannon, raising its abdomen. In a flash she realised that if she didn’t move she was going to die the same way the guard had. She turned and started running back towards the entrance of the hangar.

Heavy exoskeletons were not designed for running. The onboard computer could handle the shifts in balance and the leg movements well enough but they were a lot heavier then they looked. The operator generally didn’t notice the weight because of the hydraulics but when moving at a running pace the extra mass quickly became apparent.

Shannon scrambled back into the hangar, pushing her exoskeleton to the limit. The extra mass meant that she had a lot of forward momentum as she came through the door. In training they had taught her that a running exoskeleton couldn’t stop quickly, experience said that it could. She braced herself and ran straight into the inside wall of the hangar making no effort to slow down before she hit. The exoskeletons reinforced roll cage slammed into the wall with a reverberating clang throwing Shannon hard against her restraints and leaving her slightly dazed but otherwise unharmed. Rebounding off the wall she grabbed the hangar door and slammed it closed.

The sound of her breathing echoed in the room, between the fear and adrenaline she was nearly hyperventilating. With wide eyes her fellow operators stared at her as if she was insane. They were completely oblivious to what was going on outside.

“Jesus, Shannon what’s wrong?” Alice asked.

“Termians!” she gasped . She was gulping for air and trying to calm herself down.

“That’s not funny,” Mark said.

“I don’t think she’s joking,” Alice replied.

Suddenly the entire hangar shook as something big and heavy impacted outside the door. With a little panicked noise Shannon started backing away. The door was made out of steel but it wasn’t going to last long. She had seen one of the Termians cutting through the thicker steel of the comms tower. Behind her the reality of the situation started to sink in amongst her fellow operators.

“No, no, no, no, this isn’t possible,” one of John’s team members said, her voice rising in panic.

“Ok jokes over,” Mark yelled, “This isn’t funny!”

“They would have showed up on the scans, right? The corporation never would have sent us if there were Termians here.”

There was a loud scraping sound from outside as something hard and heavy scratched at the doorway. The door started to slowly deform inwards at the upper right hand corner.

“Oh god no!” someone yelled.

“We need to run away!”

“How? That thing is right outside the door.”

“The hatch!” Alice yelled pointing upward. The hangar had been designed with a hatch in the roof for lifting and lowering heavy pieces of equipment using a crane. It would be difficult to climb out using the hatch, difficult but not impossible.

As a group they started making a pile of equipment so that they could reach the hatch. A single exoskeleton working alone was a powerful machine capable of moving tons of equipment around with speed and ease. A dozen exoskeletons being piloted by operators who were afraid for their lives was like a force of nature. Heavy tool cabinets were flung across the room to be stacked up like a child’s blocks. Work benches were ripped out of the walls to be thrown on top. Anything in the room that was big enough to add to the pile was stacked up whether it had been bolted down or not. In less than a minute there was a pile of equipment in the center of the room high enough that if someone climbed it they would be able to reach the hatch.

With a screeching metallic sound that was painful to the ears one of the thick mandibles of a Termian warrior sawed through the metal of the hangar door at the weakened corner. It immediately sawed its way out again repeating the horrible metallic screeching sound and leaving a foot wide hole in its wake. A thick pincer appeared at that opening, pulling and yanking at the hangar door and causing the entire doorway to flex.

“No, no , no, no, no!”

“We aren’t going to be able to get out of here before that thing gets in.”

“We need to fight it off!”

As soon as Shannon heard the words she knew it was a hopeless thought. The only real weapons on the base were the rifles that the guards had, and those were only supposed to be for animal control. They would need military grade weaponry to kill a Termian warrior, and they simply didn’t have any. An exoskeleton was strong, strong enough to do serious damage if it was used in a fight, but a Termian warrior was out of their weight class. They simply wouldn’t stand a chance if they tried to fight.

With a hiss of compressed air the hatch at the top of the hangar opened. John, the other squad leader, had climbed out of his exoskeleton and was up at the top of the pile of equipment. He was high enough to reach the hatch but he had a problem. The hatch had been designed for loading and unloading equipment, not for people to climb through it. He was able to lift himself up and get his upper body through the hatch but he was having a hard time getting up. His feet waved around in the air as he scrabbled around trying to get a hand hold.

Suddenly he cried out in fear. There was a sudden flash of movement and his legs momentarily lifted out of the hatch. There was a damp crunching sound and then his legs dropped back. With a wet splatter of blood the legs tumbled down the pile of equipment leaving two red smears across the cabinets and benches. John’s body was gone. All that was left was his legs lying on opposite sides of the pile of equipment.

Everyone froze staring in horror at John’s severed legs. No one said a word, there was a whimpering sound coming from one of John’s team members but otherwise the group of them had been silenced by the sudden death of their friend and team member.

They were trapped. There were only two ways out of the hangar, the hatch and the door. There was something outside of the hatch ready to kill them if they climbed out and a Termian warrior was forcing its way in through the door. There was no way out

With the high pitched sound of metal shearing the hangar door tore wide open. Standing in the doorway a Termian warrior gave the remnants of the door one last swipe with its pincer ripping the doorframe out of the wall. Up close the creature was hideously alien. Its large head was smooth and heavily armoured seemingly too big for the rest of its body. Two glistening black eyes were set on either side of that fearsome head. It had oversized spiky mandibles extending from its jaw with a bunch of flexible finger like feelers surrounding the mouth. The thick pincers it had used to tear open the door were attached to its front two legs while the other four legs supported its weight. The creature’s body was covered in overlapping plates of armour that appeared slick and wet, as if it was covered in some sort of liquid. Lowering its head the creature started forcing its way inside the building, ramming itself forward through the hole it had opened.

In a moment of fearful realization Shannon noticed that she was closest to the door, she was closest to the creature forcing its way inside the hangar. It was ripping its way inside in order to kill them and she was the first person it was going to encounter. It was going to kill her. Shaking in terror she started backing up, away from the incoming monster. In her haste however she hadn’t looked behind her. Stepping back her exoskeleton’s feet came down on a shattered piece of cabinetry, debris from building the pile in the middle of the room. The slick metal slid out from under her, taking her feet with it. With a metallic clatter she fell backwards landing in a sitting position. The creature surged forward out of the shattered doorway and straight at her. She screamed cowering in terror.

The creature reared up on its hind legs aiming its abdomen in her direction. It then hesitated, studying her with its big black eyes. Small antennae on the top of its head quivered back and forth as it looked at her. Shannon found herself staring at a small horn like structure at the base of the creature’s abdomen. It was actually more of a nozzle and it was pointed right at her head. She knew what it was from her exobiology briefings. It was the business end of the Termian warrior’s ability to spray acid. Inside of its body there were two specialized glands, one that produced concentrated nitric acid, and a second that produced a mixture of ethanol and various enzymes. It could spray those two chemicals into a thick walled organ inside of its body where they mixed together. The result was a controlled explosion that accelerated a stream of enzyme enhanced boiling Nital out of the nozzle she was staring at, the nozzle that was pointed straight at her head. She had seen the results when the mixture hit the guard out in the compound and she had no illusions that the armour on her exoskeleton would be able to resist it. She was staring down the barrel of the appendage that was going to end her life. The Termian warrior was going to kill her, melt her face off with a spray of acid and there was nothing she could do to stop it. She brought her arms up in a feeble attempt to protect herself. It sprayed.

A fine mist of liquid settled over her. It wasn’t a superheated jet and it wasn’t acid, just a harmless smelly liquid. Before she could react the Termian warrior surged forward. It struck her with one of its pincers. The creature was incredibly strong, without her exoskeletons armour the blow would almost certainly have been lethal. Even with the armour the blow left her dazed and sent her exoskeleton sliding across the floor. Skittering into the room with surprising speed the Termian warrior followed her.

In a panic the other exoskeleton operators tried to get out of its way, but it wasn’t trying to hit them with its pincers or mandibles. It reared up a second time bringing the nozzle at the end of its abdomen to bear on the group of them. As one of the women in John’s squad screamed in panic the Termian warrior hosed down the entire room with a liquid mist.

Once again the liquid was odorous but harmless. It stood there eyeing them for a moment, as if waiting for them to react. Her fellow exoskeleton operators eyed it back. They had been herded into a corner and didn’t know what to do.

“Oh yuck, I got some in my mouth,” Alice exclaimed.

“We have to…”

One of the other operators started to speak but the Termian warrior chose that moment to attack. It charged forward and grabbed the exoskeleton of the operator who was talking in its mandibles. It then lifted him up and slammed him down on his back with brutal force and a resounding clang. Letting go of its first target the creature then scuttled to the side sweeping one of its pincers in a scything motion and taking the feet out from under a second squad member. The rest of Shannon’s fellow exoskeleton operators panicked. They tried to flee but there was nowhere to go. Some of them tried to push past the Termian warrior but it ruthlessly and efficiently knocked them off their feet and sent them tumbling back into the corner.

Mark, one of the operators from Shannon’s squad, had been knocked down by the creatures sweeping pincers. He started to get his exoskeletons back on its feet when the creature turned on him. It planted one of its feet in the middle of his back and shoved slamming him back onto the floor.

Suddenly Shannon spotted a pattern to the Termian’s behaviour. It was knocking her fellow exoskeleton operators down but inexplicably it wasn’t killing anybody. The creature was incredibly strong and had enough power to rip any of them limb-from-limb even with the exoskeletons, but it wasn’t. It was just knocking them off their feet and it was essentially ignoring them once they were prone.

“Stay down,” she yelled, “everybody lie down on the ground.”

It was difficult to tell if her fellow operators listened to her or not. Half of them were already prostrate and either too stunned or scared to try and stand up, while the Termian warrior was actively trying to knock the other half of them down. Within moments however they were all supine, some of them stunned and a couple moaning in pain but they were all prone. The Termian warrior reacted by scuttling backwards a few steps and rearing up on its hind legs. It sprayed the group of them a second time, taking a moment to adjust its aim and hit Shannon as well. Once again the spray was harmless. Eyeing them the creature then slowly backed up until it was standing in the doorway.

“What the hell is going on?” Mark asked.

“What do we do?” another operator asked.

“Why aren’t we dead?”

Shannon looked up and realised they were asking her. She had ordered them to lie down and with John dead she was the ranking member in the room. She was responsible for them. The problem was that she didn’t have any answers. She didn’t know what was going on and she didn’t know why they weren’t dead. She had never heard of the Termians taking prisoners. Everything she knew about the Termians said that the one Termian warrior should have killed the group of them, but now it was just standing there in the doorway staring at them. She didn’t know what they were going to do.

Chapter 2:

Day: 58

Location: Gliese 380 d, surface

Subject: Shannon Fallow, Human Female,

Rank / Affiliation: Heavy Exoskeleton Squad Leader, Engineering and

Survey Team, Haspus Consortium,

Colony Mission Status: Red

Haspus Mission Status: Yellow

“This is squad leader Shannon Fallow, does anyone read? Over.”

Nothing but squealing static answered her over the radio. She was lying on her side in the middle of the room, or rather her exoskeleton was lying on its side and she was still strapped into it, with the Termian warrior looming over her a couple meters away. She didn’t know what to do. As far as she knew she should be dead. All of them should be dead, but they weren’t. Her instincts were telling her to call for help but neither her radio nor her network connection were working, not that there was anyone who could help them.

“Does anyone have a signal?” she asked looking around the room. The room was a shambles. Broken debris and pieces of equipment were scattered around from their aborted escape attempt. The heavy exoskeletons of her fellow operators were lying strewn about wherever the Termian had knocked them down and everything was wet and glistening from the foul mist that the Termian had sprayed. A chorus of subdued no’s answered her question.

“They must be jamming our radios,” One of John’s team members called out.

“How can they jam a radio? They’re just bugs.”

“Is anyone injured?” Shannon asked shifting her exoskeleton so that she was lying on her back. The Termian warrior reacted to her movement. It suddenly scuttled sideways and tilted its head to bring one of its big black eyes to bear on her. She froze.

“No, we’re all okay Shannon. A little bruised and a bit sticky but nobody is injured. Maybe you should stop moving though ok?” Alice called out.

Shannon took her friends advice and stayed very still. The creature looming over her had her undivided attention. It was watching her, studying her with its big black eyes. In turn she watched it back, trying not to panic at being so close to such a deadly creature. The Termian was a horror. It looked like a giant version of an insect from earth. Its head was oversized, smooth and glistening. The mandibles extending from its head looked like a weaponized pair of metal sheers with serrated blades that it had already proven could cut through structural steel. Below the mandibles was a disproportionately small mouth that was dripping with an oily liquid and surrounded by creepy little feelers. The creature’s body was covered in spikes and armour scales that slid across each other as it moved, all covered in a film of liquid that looked similar to what was dripping from its mouth. It stood on six legs with its front legs tipped with thick pincers and its other four legs ending in flexible pads. It was colored in a mottled pattern of greys and browns from the tip of its head to the end of its bulbous abdomen.

Time seemed frozen as they looked at each other. She held as still as she could while the creature moved its head around studying her. Suddenly a pair of short antennae near the back of its head twitched upwards and the Termian stopped moving. It was a subtle reaction, something she probably would have missed if she hadn’t been watching so intently but it was there nonetheless. Moments later the Termian warrior started scuttling backwards, it then turned around and rammed its way back out through the ruined door. It was gone.

“What the hell?” she whispered to herself gingerly moving her exoskeleton into a sitting position.

“What’s going on, why didn’t it kill us?” one of John’s former team members asked.

“You complaining?” Someone else asked.

“Is it safe to get up?”

Her fellow operators started the slow process of getting their exoskeletons into sitting and kneeling positions. It wasn’t easy to do. The simple fact was that exoskeletons weren’t designed to lie down. Moving one from a prone position back onto its feet required a lot of leg and arm movements that the equipment wasn’t built for. Out of the corner of her eye Shannon spotted Feven, one of John’s former squad members, hurriedly popping her.

“No, stay in your equipment,” she called out, “If that thing comes back and starts slapping us around again you’re dead without the armour.”

“Speaking of which,” Alice said looking at the shattered doorway.

A pair of big black antennae was probing around the broken door. They were quickly followed by another Termian. This one was different from the warrior that had attacked them earlier. It was the same general shape as the other creature but there were significant differences. It had the same three sectioned body but its head was significantly smaller and lacked the smooth armoured look of the warriors head. It had long flexible antennae extending from the back of its head and its pincers and mandibles were smaller, looking less like weapons. Similarly to the warrior it looked moist as if it was covered in a thin layer of liquid.

Shannon recognised the creature from her exobiology training. It was a Termian worker. The going theory was that the workers did all the heavy labour for a colony while the warriors did the fighting. Her instructor had claimed that the workers didn’t fight or attack, staying passive or running away in response to aggression. Of course they were never seen without a warrior escorting them so their temperament was hard to test.

“Okay so here’s the obvious question. Why the hell is that thing the same colour as our exoskeletons?” Samjay asked. It was a good question. The red-brown colour pattern on the shell of the Termian worker was almost an exact match for the pattern that had been painted on the exoskeletons.

“Bug armour,” Feven said.

“What?” Shannon had heard that term before but couldn’t remember where.

“Do you remember back in basic we had orange exoskeletons but in work-up training they changed the colour? The marine I was dating called it bug armor,” Feven replied.

“Somebody did this on purpose?” Mark asked. “Why the hell did they make our exoskeletons the same colour as the bugs?”

Shannon didn’t know the answer, but she couldn’t help worrying that if there was a good reason then they would have been told about it. It was noteworthy that their exoskeletons weren’t the same colour as all of the Termians. The warrior that had attacked them was a brown and grey pattern. The exoskeletons had been painted to match workers.

Suddenly the worker started moving towards her. It was fast, she had managed to get her exoskeleton up onto one knee but she wasn’t going to be able to get out of the things way. The workers jaws weren’t as large as the ones on the warrior but they were big enough. They looked like hydraulic shears, a tool that could cut through her exoskeleton with ease. The workers weren’t supposed to be aggressive but they also weren’t supposed to take prisoners. She didn’t know what was going to happen and those jaws were terrifying. She cowered, raising her arms up to protect her face.

The worker stopped within arm’s reach. The antennas at the back of the creatures head uncurled towards her, gently touching her exoskeleton on either side of her head. This caused an immediate burst of static from her radio accompanied by a string of communication errors from her onboard computer. It was almost as if the creature was trying to talk to her exoskeletons computer but it didn’t have the right frequencies or codes.

Before Shannon could react to what had just happened the worker scuttled passed her straight for Mark’s exoskeleton. It repeated the same motion with its antennae, touching the exoskeleton on either side of Mark’s head. He flinched away from the creature but the worker didn’t seem to care. It just moved on to the next exoskeleton and did the same thing.

“What the hell?” Mathew said as it got to him.

“What’s it doing?” One of the operators who hadn’t been touched yet asked.

“Get away from me you slimy thing!”

As it went around the room touching everyone’s exoskeleton the reactions varied from whimpering terror to cautious curiosity. It made no attempt to hurt or attack anyone and in turn they, some grudgingly, allowed it to complete its little ritual. After touching the last exoskeleton with its antenna it turned and walked out of the hangar through the hole where the door used to be.

“Ok, Shannon what is going on here?” Mark demanded.

“How the hell should I know?” she replied.

“My computer says it received an amplitude modulated encoded signal but it doesn’t recognise the code,” Samjay said.

Shannon looked down at the computer errors on her heads up display, to her they were just communications errors but then again coms weren’t her specialty. If Samjay said he could make sense of them then she trusted him. She just didn’t know what to do with the information. Shrugging she finished the process of getting her exoskeleton on its feet. Her fellow operators did the same, some of them helping each other by moving debris out of the way. Dana, one of John’s former team members, had her exoskeleton leaning up against a wall and was quietly crying.

Without warning the Termian worker walked back into the hangar. Shannon’s heavy exoskeleton twitched as her onboard computer tried to interpret her alarmed jump. Without pause the worker walked up to her and touched her exoskeleton with its antennae again. The result was the same as last time, a burst of static and a stream of communications error messages. The worker started walking out the doorway again and then hesitated turning its head to look at her.

“I think it wants us to follow it,” Alice said. That’s what Shannon had been thinking as well. She carefully shifted her balance and slowly walked her exoskeleton over to the doorway. The worker reacted by walking outside, but it stayed in sight, eyeing her and moving slowly. She followed it outside.

Outside the hangar the base was a shambles, the coms tower was down, the barracks were a shattered and smoking mess, and the half completed greenhouses were nothing but rubble. The sight tore at her heart. Every building had once been part of the ship that had brought them here, repurposed for the engineering and survey base. The once carefully placed structures were broken and ripped open. Weeks of effort, years of travel, and decades of planning had all been destroyed in mere minutes. The broken structures weren’t the only thing that tore at her, she could see dead bodies. Here and there, lying amongst the rubble were the remains of people. Some had been shredded, splashes of scarlet on the grey-brown terrain. Others were half melted and blackened near puddles of bubbling liquid. One woman was lying half buried in a pile of debris, she looked like she was sleeping, but her chest wasn’t moving and it was obvious she would never wake up. They were all people she had known, people who had dedicated their lives to the dream of building a colony. A dream that was now just as dead as they were.

The base had been destroyed but it was still busy with activity. A large number of Termians were inside the compound, most of them workers. They were tearing apart the buildings. It wasn’t mindless destruction though, they were being methodical. Some of the workers were using their powerful jaws to cut through the thick metal of the buildings while others were picking up the pieces that had been cut and carrying them away. There was a random disorganised nature to the destruction but there appeared to be a purpose to it. The workers were taking the base apart and removing the pieces. The workers weren’t alone. There were Termian warriors in the compound as well. The warriors weren’t participating in the destruction. They were just standing around looking threatening.

One of the workers walked up to the dead woman who was half buried in the rubble. It sliced into the woman’s chest with its mandibles and pulled, dragging the body out of the debris. Once clear it started using its front legs and mandibles to crush and fold the body, gathering it into a more compact shape. Shannon turned away in disgust.

Out of the corner of her eye she could see the worker that she had followed out of the hangar. It had walked towards the edge of the compound but had stopped and was staring at her. She had the sense that it wanted her to follow it, to follow it out of the compound. It wasn’t a difficult decision to make, to stay and become the next bundle that got crushed and folded into a more manageable shape or walk her exoskeleton out under its own power. She followed the worker.

“Where are we going?” One of John’s former squad mates asked.

“We’re following that worker,” Alice replied.

“Why?”

“Do you want to stay inside? Wait for the warrior to come back and kill you?”

Shannon stayed out of the debate and kept walking, staying behind the worker. Her fellow operators followed her out of the building. Each of them reacted as they stepped out of the hangar and saw the devastation. Some of them cried out, others halted or stumbled at the sight. It was heartbreaking to watch. All of them followed her though. There really wasn’t much choice. They could stay and die like John and so many others or they could follow the worker.

The creature led them out of the compound at the tail end of a group of about twenty other workers. Some of them were carrying pieces of the base while others, like their guide, weren’t carrying anything. They were loosely disorganised, it was clear they were all going in the same direction but they weren’t walking single file or marching in ranks or anything similar. Looking around Shannon realised that there were more workers behind them. They had been absorbed into a column of Termians walking away from the ruined base. There were warriors at the front of the column and on either side but they were looking out, ignoring her and her fellow exoskeleton operators. It felt like they had been taken prisoner. She wasn’t clear on how it had happened or why they had been spared while everyone else in the compound had been killed but for all intents and purposes they were prisoners.

The crunching of crushed shale under the feet of the exoskeletons quickly developed into a martial two-beat pattern as she and her fellow operators instinctively walked in step with each other. The pattern of their movement clashed with the sinuous random sound of the Termians walking out of step on six legs. A cloud of dust from their movement started to form obscuring the view of the ruined base. They were heading towards a set of low hills that was surrounded by broken rock. In point of fact they were going in the same direction one of the overdue survey teams had gone. Shannon hoped that the survey team had escaped, that they had somehow avoided the Termians, but deep inside she was worried that she and her fellow operators were the only humans left alive on the planet.

Alice stepped up beside her so that their exoskeletons were walking side-by-side. “How you doing,” she asked.

“I’m sticky and I smell bad and I’m getting itchy, but I’m not hurt,” Shannon replied.

The dust from the Termians in front of them was mixing with the liquid the warrior had sprayed them with. It was flaking off of the metal surfaces on the exoskeletons but it was caking on her exposed skin. She was getting itchy and uncomfortable.

“Yeah, I really wish the corporation hadn’t ripped out the rain proofing,” Alice said. It was a reference to the heavy exoskeletons they were operating. The electronics and batteries were water proof and there was no danger of whatever the Termian warrior had sprayed them with leaking into the electronics, but the operator was a different matter. The spray had gotten inside the exoskeletons covering their skin and soaking their clothes. It was ironic because the exoskeletons were designed to be operated comfortably in wet weather. The models they were operating had intentionally been stripped of the rain proofing to save on weight. The theory had been that since the planet they were going to didn’t experience rain the weather proofing would be useless.

Out in front of them a Termian warrior took a sudden interest in one of the workers walking in the column. It was moving its head back and forth in front of the worker and wiggling the little antennas at the back of its head. The movement drew Shannon’s attention because up until that point the warriors had essentially been ignoring the workers. The warrior reared up aiming its abdomen at the worker and sprayed it with a fine mist. The worker shuddered in reaction and then did something strange. It folded its front legs and extended its back legs so that its head was on the ground and its abdomen was sticking up in the air. It then started wiggling some sort of organ at the tip of its abdomen. The warrior responded to this weird display by climbing on top of the worker so that their abdomens lined up and making an unmistakable thrusting motion.

“Oh my god! Are they having sex?” Shannon exclaimed.

“No, that’s impossible,” Alice replied, “Both workers and warriors are female. I remember that much from my exobiology course.”

“What are they doing then? Because that looks a lot like sex.”

“I have no idea,” Alice said sounding mystified. The two Termians didn’t keep it up for long, less than a minute later the warrior climbed off of the worker and went back to watching the perimeter of the column. The worker in turn resumed walking as if nothing had happened.

“Damn, she didn’t even get a peck on the cheek afterwards, those warriors are cold,” Shannon joked.

“I’m telling you that wasn’t…” Alice started to reply.

“Whoa, look out,” one of the operators behind them yelled interrupting her. Shannon looked up in time to see something small and fast zipping through the air. It was about the size of a cat with dragonfly like wings and a long tail. It zig-zagged in front of the column and then came speeding back straight for them. She yelled out in surprise and tried to duck but her exoskeleton wasn’t really built for evasive maneuvers and it just kind of staggered drunkenly. The creature didn’t hit her. It stopped in midair hovering in front of them on its dragonfly wings.

With the creature in a hover Shannon was able to get a better look at it. It had a big head covered in eyes, a three sectioned insect like body with small feet, and a long tail. The tail looked similar to the antennas on the worker Termians except it had a nasty hook shaped stinger on the tip. It was hovering in front of them, looking at her and her fellow exoskeleton operators. It flitted back and forth around the group of them, getting a good look at them, and the suddenly zipped away in the direction they were marching.

“What the hell was that thing?” Alice asked.

“No idea,” Shannon responded, “I’ve never heard of a flying Termian before.”

With the creature gone Shannon went back to walking. She concentrated on putting one foot in front of the other, intentionally avoiding thinking about what had happened back at the base. She knew that if she stopped to think about it, it would be overwhelming. Her speedometer fluctuated back and forth between six and seven kilometers per hour, a fast walk for a person but a comfortable speed in the hydraulically assisted exoskeleton. She could go faster but even with the hydraulics helping her out a run would be tiring. She released the arm controls and reached inside the exoskeleton for her water bottle. It came out of the bracket dripping with whatever the Termian warrior had sprayed on them. Wiping it off with a corner of her coveralls she took a sip.

“You know, other than that flying thing they don’t seem to be watching us,” Travis, one of John’s former teammates, called out. No one said anything in reply. They just kept walking lost in their private thoughts.

“They’re ignoring us,” he said a couple minutes later.

“What’s your point?” Mark asked.

“They aren’t guarding us. They seem to think we’re just going to keep going with them. We could just walk away.”

“That’s not a good idea,” Shannon said.

Travis waved away her words and started walking towards the edge of the column. As he moved his path took him past several of the Termian workers. Their only reaction was to step out of his way. They were essentially ignoring him.

“Travis, get back here,” Shannon said. She wasn’t sure if he heard her though. He was far enough away that her voice might not have carried over the crunching footsteps.

Travis got to the edge of the column. He positioned himself so that he was halfway between two of the warriors and then walked between them, angling away from the column. He didn’t run, he just walked. For a few moments it looked like it was going to work. The distance started opening between him and the column, but then a warrior reacted. It suddenly turned its head to look at him and moments later it was charging at him. It was fast, far faster than the heavy exoskeleton was capable of moving. Travis saw it coming and cowered, raising his arms in front of his face. The warrior went past him and then turned in a sinuous movement that created a corkscrew of dust. It had positioned itself so that Travis was between it and the column of Termians. The warrior then reared up on its hind legs bringing its abdomen and the lethal nozzle shaped organ on its tip to bear on him.

Travis panicked. With a yell of fear he turned his exoskeleton and started running back towards the column. The warrior hesitated for a moment, cocking its head to the side. Its apparent confusion didn’t last long, before Travis could cover more than a few meters it surged forward violently striking Travis in the back with its front legs. The force of the blow knocked him off his feet sending his exoskeleton crashing to the ground face first. The Termian followed using its huge mandibles to grab the exoskeleton around the torso and pin him to the ground. With a squeal of shearing metal the Termian warrior closed its mandibles cutting the exoskeleton in half.

“Oh god,” Dana cried out.

“It killed him,” Mark said his voice trembling with fear.

The warrior stood up, shook its head, and walked away from the ruin that had moments ago been a human being. It rejoined its position at the edge of the column as if nothing had happened. In turn three workers turned off their paths and walked towards Travis’s exoskeleton where it was lying in the dirt. They moved together as if answering some unheard communication. Once they reached the body they immediately started cutting into it. Their metal shear shaped mandibles easily sliced through the former exoskeleton cuting it and its once living contents into smaller pieces. They used their front legs and mandibles to gather the pieces together and pick them up, carrying the horrid cargo as if it was a bundle of rocks rather than the remains of a person. The workers started walking back towards the column leaving a dripping trail of blood and hydraulic fluid behind them.

Looking around Shannon could see palpable fear on the faces of her fellow operators. They had all stopped to watch the grisly scene and were staring in horror at the three workers walking towards them with their grisly cargo.

“Let’s move people,” Shannon called out pointing in the direction the column was walking. She didn’t know what to do so she got everyone back into motion. Travis had shown what would happen if they tried to get away.

Moving amongst her fellow operators Shannon tried to keep everyone together near the center of the column, as far away from the warriors as possible. As she moved she noticed that Dana was muttering to herself and wiping her hands across her face over and over. She was about to ask her what she was doing when she noticed Samjay quietly praying as he walked. Looking around she could see despair on the faces of her teammates. They weren’t in a good place mentally. Then again they weren’t in a good place period. They were being force marched by a group of murderous insects. Right behind them was a reminder of what would happen if they stopped walking, pieces of their friend chopped up into manageable bundles carried in the mandibles of Termian workers.

They needed reassurance and it was her job as squad leader to give it to them, but she didn’t have any to give. Walking, putting one powered leg in front of the other was the only answer that she had. She was scared, not just for herself but for the squad members around her. She didn’t know what to do and she had no idea what was coming next. Were they just being marched to their deaths? Was it simply more convenient for the Termians to make them walk then to chop them up and carry them, or was there something more sinister going on? She still hadn’t figured out why their exoskeletons had been painted to match the colouring of a Termian worker when the planet they were going to wasn’t supposed to have any Termians on it.

She mulled it over in her head, trying to avoid thinking about Travis’ death. Time passed and their pace didn’t slow. Eventually Feven, one of John’s former squad members, walked up next to her.

“How are you holding up Feven?” Shannon asked.

“Not good,” the young woman replied, “I’m scared to death, but that isn’t why I wanted to talk to you. I don’t want to add to this shit-storm but I’ve got a problem.”

“What is it?”

“My battery just dropped below fifty percent charge,” Feven said.

The exoskeletons were powered by a high output battery pack. There was no onboard engine so when the battery got low they needed to be plugged into a charging station. For obvious reasons that wasn’t going to be happening any time soon. Shannon’s squad were on fresh batteries but John’s squad had been near the end of their shift when the alarm happened.

The heavy exoskeletons were just short of a hundred kilograms of equipment. An operator could walk short distances with a dead battery, and in fact part of their training had been to walk an exhausting hundred meters in a dead exoskeleton, but it was hard to do.

Feven was bringing the problem to her because that’s what she was supposed to do, bring her problems to her squad leader. Feven was looking to her for answers but she didn’t have any. She didn’t know what would happen if a battery ran out while they were being force marched by the Termians. One glance back at Travis’ remains being carried by the workers gave her a pretty good idea though. The battery life remaining was like a countdown clock of death. She was horrified at the position Feven was in, to be watching her time remaining slowly ticking away on her heads up display. Feven looked at her face and then hung her head.

“Yeah,” she said, “I don’t know what to do either.”

Shannon wanted to comfort her and tell her everything was going to work out but she couldn’t force the lies out of her mouth. They had watched John die, they had seen the dead bodies in the remains of the camp and they had watched Travis die. Death was marching with them and Shannon couldn’t help but despair that none of them were going to live much longer.

The course the Termians were leading them on started up the slope of a hill and the terrain started to change. There was less dust and more in the way of broken rock. Splotches of brownish red amongst the broken stone marked where exposed iron ore was rusting in the atmosphere. They worked their way around large boulders and were forced to find their way up stone ledges. The Termians that weren’t carrying anything had little trouble with the terrain, easily scaling over the rocky terrain with their six legs. The exoskeletons had a hard time keeping up. They weren’t designed for fast movement through rough terrain. Fortunately the Termians that were laden down with cargo in their mandibles were also having trouble. They kept getting their loads snagged on the rough stone, which was slowing them down.

A series of caves slowly came into sight ahead of them. They were obviously unnatural. Instead of being rough holes in the hillside they were round with smooth edges. The little that could be seen of the inside of the caves looked textured and glinted as if wet. It was almost as if there was something organic inside of them. The cave entrances were surrounded by piles of sharp edged broken rock. The exposed minerals in the rock piles around the caves showed little sign of oxidation, suggesting that they had been excavated recently.

As they approached the caves the column started breaking up. Individual Termian workers began heading towards different caves while the warriors stood in seemingly random positions across the hillside. Shannon didn’t know what to do. She didn’t want to anger one of the warriors by going in the wrong direction but she also had the sneaking suspicion that stopping and staying where they were wasn’t going to be allowed.

“Now what?” Mark asked echoing her thoughts.

“I think we should go in one of the caves,” Alice said.

“Which one though?” Shannon asked.

“Hell no,” Mathew piped up, “I’m not going underground with those things.”

One of the worker Termians walked over to them as they argued. It touched Shannon’s exoskeleton with its antennas causing a familiar burst of static from her radio. It then went from exoskeleton to exoskeleton doing the same thing to all of them. It was a sign of how inured her people had become that not a single one of them flinched away from the creature. After finishing off with Alice’s exoskeleton the worker turned and started walking towards one of the cave entrances. Knowing what it wanted Shannon followed it without a word.

The worker didn’t hesitate at the cave entrance, it walked right in. It wasn’t as simple for the rest of them though.

“If we go down there we won’t come back out again,” Mathew said.

“What the hell else do we do?” Alice asked, “You saw what happened to Travis.”

“There’s a Termian hive down there somewhere. Even the marines don’t go in those things, there’s no coming out if we go in,” Mathew said.

“And we die if we don’t. I don’t want to be chopped up into more portable pieces, do you?” Alice asked, “Shannon what do we do?”

She was in charge. A decision needed to be made. Everyone was looking to her for answers. It was too much pressure piled on top of the horror that they had been forced through. She wanted to scream. They were both right, going inside was suicide, how could they hope to survive? Then again they had been shown in no uncertain terms what would happen if they disobeyed. As Alice had said they would be cut up into portable pieces and carried inside. It wasn’t much of a choice. Die now or probably die later.

If it was just her she didn’t know what she would do, but it wasn’t just her. Like it or not she was in charge and she was responsible for the safety of her people. It was her job to keep them alive as long as she possibly could.

“We’re going inside,” she said. A few of her team members nodded at the decision, they had done the same mental math and come up with the same result.

“No,” Mathew said shaking his head, “I’m not going in.”

“I won’t force you to,” Shannon replied. She wasn’t going to argue with him. She didn’t know what the right answer was, or even if there was a right answer. All she knew was that the best chances of survival seemed to be in following the Termian. She turned her exoskeleton and followed the worker inside the tunnel. Seven other exoskeletons followed her, one by one in single file, everyone except for Mathew. They left him behind standing at the cave entrance. Shannon looked back and saw his exoskeleton framed by the sky. That was the last she ever saw of him.

Chapter 3:

Day: 58

Location: Gliese 380 d, sub-surface

Subject: Alice Montague, Human Female,

Rank / Affiliation: Heavy Exoskeleton Operator, Engineering and

Survey Team, Haspus Consortium,

Colony Mission Status: Red

Haspus Mission Status: Yellow

Alice felt like she was stuck in a nightmare with no way of waking up. Everything had been chaos and confusion with the Termian attack. There had been a sense that it wasn’t real, as if she was in some sort of super realistic simulation. Then John died. His death had been fast, brutal, and final. One moment he was alive and the next all that was left of him were a pair of dismembered legs lying on the ground. When the Termian warrior came crashing through the door it had brought with it the sudden realisation that she was going to die, not peacefully in the distant future but violently and very soon.

Everything Alice knew about the Termians told her that she should be dead, that they should have been killed by that first warrior. No one had ever been taken prisoner by Termians. The only people who had ever survived a Termian attack were soldiers, and they always had to fight for their lives. An unarmed colonist being attacked by Termians was supposed to be a death sentence. It was such certain death that it was practically a trope in the literature back on earth. Despite all of that they were alive, and as far as Alice was concerned that was because of Shannon.

They had been friends since basic training. She was always confident, seeming to know what to do even when she shouldn’t. So when the Termian attacked it hadn’t surprised Alice to hear her friend giving orders. Despite the insane nightmare they were stuck in Shannon still seemed confident. She was probably just as scared as the rest of them, but it wasn’t showing. Alice didn’t know what to do. She didn’t know how to survive. Shannon did. She had kept them alive this long and that was practically a miracle. Now she was leading them into a tunnel. At this point Alice would have followed her pretty much anywhere.

The tunnel wasn’t natural. It had been carved into the rock and then coated in some sort of organic resin. On the ceiling and the upper half of the walls parallel cut marks poked through the semi-translucent material covering them. On the floor and the lower half of the walls the coating material was thicker, opaque, and wet. The underground passageway wasn’t wide, wide enough to fit their exoskeletons but they had to walk in single file behind the worker. It was also dark, and the further they walked from the entrance the darker it got.

“Alice, Mark, Samjay turn on your lights,” Shannon ordered.

Alice flipped a switch inside her harness and the hallway lit up as the heavy duty flood lights mounted on her shoulders turned on. Shadows danced across the walls as Mark, Samjay and Shannon flipped their lights on as well. The exoskeletons were built for construction, designed to work day or night. The lights were standard equipment. You didn’t do construction in the dark.

The multiple banks of flood lights mounted on exoskeletons walking in a line created a lot of shadows. Shadows that lurched, swayed, and moved across the walls as the exoskeletons moved. In normal circumstances the shadows would have been unnerving. Following a Termian underground into its hive made them terrifying. The tunnel followed a twisting and winding path as it burrowed under the hillside, with every twist and turn spawning new shadows that danced in Alice’s peripheral vision. As they progressed Alice realised they were going deeper and deeper into the hillside. It was a good thing she wasn’t claustrophobic because there were already tons of rock above her head.

There was a smell to the tunnel. The air wasn’t stagnant, but instead a continuous breeze blew an unpleasant odour in her face. It was a complex smell, difficult to identify, a combination of rotten eggs and old oil. Not that anything related to their captors smelled particularly good. She still had a foul oily taste in her mouth from whatever that first Termian had sprayed them with.

Without warning the tunnel widened and branched off to the right. A hulking Termian warrior blocked the path straight ahead, its smooth head glinting wetly in the glare of the flood lights. The worker that Shannon had been following took the side branch leading them into a large room.

It was a roughly square chamber about twenty five meters across with a domed ceiling. The ceiling, floor and three of the walls were covered in the same organic resin as the tunnel. The far wall was different. It wasn’t made out of stone, but looked like some sort of organic red-brown material. Ridges radiated out in an asterisk shaped pattern away from a fist sized dent in the center of the wall.

Inside the chamber another warrior was waiting for them, along with two of the dragonfly shaped creatures. One of the flyers was perched on the back of the warrior while the other was walking across the far wall. It looked disconcertingly like a giant fly crawling on a giant anus.

“Make way!” Mark’s voice called out from behind her. This was followed by the sound of metal striking metal and a cry of alarm as several of the exoskeletons behind her banged into each other. Leaning forward Alice jogged her exoskeleton into the middle of the room, with several of her fellow operators following suit. Turning around she spotted Chad and Mark’s exoskeletons stumbling into the chamber pushed from behind by the first warrior from the hallway. The creature then backed up and settled down onto its haunches, seemingly getting comfortable in the doorway. With its oversized head combined with the narrow tunnel it was completely blocking the only way out of the chamber. They were trapped in the room, there was no way out.

The warrior with the dragonfly winged flyer riding on its back moved towards them. It reared up onto its hind legs bringing its abdomen forward. Alice’s eyes were drawn to the lethal nozzle at the base of its abdomen. In the close confines of the chamber the creature could kill all eight of them with its acid and there was nothing they could do to protect themselves. She cowered bringing her arms up to shield herself from what she was sure would be a lethal spray.

An unpleasant smelling fine mist washed over them. It was harmless, again, if rather pungent. The liquid ran across the metal of Alice’s exoskeleton and penetrated inside, soaking her clothes and mixing with the sticky remnants of the previous spraying.

“Yuck,” Chad said.

“As if I wasn’t wet enough,” Mark chimed in.

The warrior waited for a moment after spraying, waving its short little antennae at them. It then thumped down onto its front feet and scuttled forward a few steps waving its head and oversized mandibles. As a group they backed away from the creature. It seemed to be getting more and more agitated. It shook its head at them, opening and closing its mandibles, and even waved its front legs in their direction. Finally it reared up on its hind legs and sprayed them a second time. This time however the Termian worker was caught in the spray.

The worker reacted immediately. It began to shake, its entire body shuddering with its antennae curling and uncurling in spasms. Then its front and middle legs folded up as if the creature was collapsing under its own weight but simultaneously it extended its rear legs. This pushed the workers head down onto the ground while at the same time lifting its abdomen up into the air. It almost looked as if the creature was bowing.

The warrior wasted little time, immediately climbing on top of the worker so that their abdomens lined up. The behaviour was just like what Alice had witnessed during the forced march, but this time she was close enough to see a small opening at the tip of the workers abdomen iris open. With a thrusting motion the warrior pushed its nozzle inside the opening at the tip of the workers abdomen. It didn’t succeed on the first attempt, needing to make several thrusts before the nozzle and the opening lined up properly.

“What the hell?” Chad said, “I thought all Termians were female.”

“They are,” Shannon replied, “I don’t think they’re having sex.”

Alice ignored her fellow operators and watched what was happening to the worker. The creature shuddered as oily liquid began dripping off of its body. The fluids appeared to be coming from the joints and overlaps of its shell. It opened its mouth and more of the oily liquid poured out as if the worker was throwing up.

The warrior climbed off of the worker and the flow of liquid tapered off. It was at that point that Alice realised what had happened. The oily liquid coming out of the workers mouth and dripping off of its body had come from the warrior. It had sprayed inside the other Termian and the liquid had come dripping out of its body and flowing out its mouth. Alice had no idea what she had just witnessed but it definitely wasn’t sex.

Fresh from climbing off the worker the warrior turned back to face them. It looked agitated again, waving its antennae and mandibles at them while making sudden movements in their direction.

“Take a knee!” Shannon yelled carefully kneeling her exoskeleton down in front of the warrior.

“What?” Mark asked.

“It wants us to react like the worker did. As soon as it got sprayed the thing bowed down. Get your exoskeleton down on one knee,” Shannon explained.

The warrior was looking more and more agitated. This was the same type of creature that had killed Travis with a single bite, and it was looking angry. Alice quickly maneuvered her exoskeleton down onto one knee. As she moved she saw the rest of her fellow operators do the same thing.

“I’m not putting my butt in the air,” Mark said.

“Yeah that’s probably a bad idea,” Shannon replied.

The warrior seemed to calm down as soon as they started maneuvering their exoskeletons into a kneeling position. It backed off and stopped waving its mandibles. It was still incredibly intimidating, but at least it wasn’t actively threatening to kill them. The worker, for its part, didn’t look any worse for wear after its fresh internal rinsing. It just stood off to one side eyeing them, waving its antennae, and dripping. The flyers were more active, crawling around and eyeing them from different angles. They didn’t approach, they just waved their tails and watched. Alice and her fellow operators in turn watched the Termians back.

“Now what?” Mark asked.

“No idea,” Shannon replied.

As Alice knelt on the ground she started to notice something. The flyers seemed to be moving in a pattern. They would sit still while waving their tails and then move around looking at the exoskeletons from different angles before sitting still and moving their tails again. The tails of the flyers looked like the antennae’s on the workers and warriors

On a hunch she pulled up her radio on her heads up display and set her onboard computer to scan for signals. It didn’t take long to get a result. The computer picked up three signals, two weak and one overpoweringly strong. All three of them were amplitude modulated encoded signals, the same as what Samjay had reported when the worker touched his exoskeleton. As she watched the bearing to one of the weaker signals moved. Looking up she could see one of the dragonfly winged flyers moving simultaneously with the weaker signal. The flyers were the source of the weaker signals.

“Hey, get away from me,” Mark said.

While Alice had been operating her computer the worker had walked over to Mark’s exoskeleton. The worker was poking and pulling at Mark’s exoskeleton with its pincers and mandibles. One of the flyers hovered close examining everything the worker was doing. From his kneeling position Mark couldn’t get away easily and the worker wasn’t giving him a lot of space to maneuver. While the worker poked and prodded Alice’s computer faithfully reported radio signals coming from the flyer.

It looked like they were trying to learn how the exoskeleton worked. The flyer was serving as the eyes, examining the exoskeleton from every possible angle while the worker served as the hands, using its mandibles and pincers to manipulate the exoskeleton. Constant radio signals were going out from the flyer and coming in from that overpowering third source.

“Ow, god-dammit,” Mark yelled.

From where she was kneeling Alice couldn’t see what was happening. The worker was close to Mark’s exoskeleton moving its head around near his legs. Suddenly Mark shoved the worker backwards. He had the workers mandibles grasped in the power gauntlet of his exoskeleton. Pulling on the mandible and pushing with his legs Mark maneuvered his exoskeleton into a standing position. The worker struggled throwing its head back and forth, but it was no use. The power gauntlets on the exoskeletons were designed for grasping and lifting heavy loads. If Mark had managed to grab hold then the creature wasn’t getting away until he let go.

A twitch on Alice’s radio scan was the only warning before the Termian warrior surged into movement. It crossed the room in a fraction of a second swinging one of its front pincers to sweep the legs out from under Mark’s exoskeleton. With a resounding crash he slammed down dragging the worker to the ground with him. A flashing movement from the warrior’s mandibles yielded a spray of blood and hydraulic fluid. Mark screamed in pain as the worker stood up, the dismembered power gauntlet still attached to its mandible. Inside the power gauntlet was Mark’s hand, severed where the warrior had sliced through both his exoskeleton and his wrist.

The Termians weren’t finished with him. The warrior stomped down pinning Mark’s exoskeleton to the ground as he struggled uselessly to get away. At that point the worker moved back in flexing its mandibles while the flyer maneuvered around to get a better view. Mark couldn’t do anything but scream and bleed.

With a lurching movement Shannon shifted her exoskeleton up onto its feet. She started yelling and waving her arms at the warrior standing on top of Mark. It wasn’t clear what she was trying to do. Against the worker or one of the flyers her heavy exoskeleton would have stood a fighting chance but against the warrior she was hopelessly outclassed. As soon as she was close enough the warrior swung one of its pincers with vicious force. Shannon was knocked backwards, stumbling several steps before careening into the ground with a resounding crash. Thankfully the blow had been to the center of her chest and it didn’t look like it had penetrated her armour. She was dazed but would probably be all right. Mark on the other hand was in desperate trouble. He was pinned, bleeding heavily, and screaming with the worker poking and prodding at his legs. He couldn’t do anything to get away and after what had happened to Shannon it was clear that the rest of them couldn’t do anything to help him either.

They watched in horror as the Termians kept poking and prodding at him. The sounds of metal bending and being ripped apart began to mix with Mark’s creams. Suddenly a spray of blood and hydraulic fluid spattered across the ground. The worker stumbled backwards holding a single dismembered leg in its mandibles. The shell of broken metal around the leg did little to hide the fact that Mark’s leg had been ripped in half, bloody threads of flesh hung from the piece of metal in the workers mandibles. With one last whimper of pain Mark went silent, a large pool of blood spreading across the ground where he was lying pinned under the warrior. It was too much blood, if he wasn’t dead yet then he soon would be.

“Oh god I’m going to be sick,” Dana said.

She opened her helmet and barely managed to slide it up and out of the way before throwing up on the ground. This drew an immediate reaction from one of the flyers. As she gagged and spit on the floor it launched itself into the air and flew straight at her. She cried out and lifted her arms to ward it off but it maneuvered deftly through the air landing on her shoulder.

The creature peered at Dana’s helmet, looking inside of it where it rested on the back of her exoskeleton. It waved its tail around making Alice’s computer twitch as it recorded the radio transmissions. The stinger on the end of the tail waved menacingly in front of Dana’s unprotected face.

Dana started freaking out. She tried to reach up and knock the creature off but the heavy exoskeleton wasn’t dexterous enough to touch its own shoulder. This resulted in her moving around erratically while waving her arms. She wasn’t doing anything useful, either she was going to tip herself over or piss the creature off and get stung in the face.

At that point the warrior that had been pinning Mark started to move. It opened its mandibles and started scuttling towards Dana, stepping through the pool of blood surrounding Mark’s body and leaving a trail of bloody footprints behind it. Seeing it coming Dana whimpered and tried to get away but she was hopelessly off balance and only succeeded in careening off to the side and slamming into Feven’s exoskeleton.

Critically off balance Dana toppled to the ground with a crash, the flyer that was riding her shoulder saved itself from being crushed by jumping into the air at the last moment. For her part Feven somehow managed to keep her exoskeleton from falling over. Waving her arms for balance she brought it lurching to its feet. Unfortunately she ended up right in the path of the approaching warrior.

Without a seconds hesitation the warrior lashed out with one of its pincers. Feven had no time to react as the pincer struck her with brutal force right in the face. She fell over backwards with a crash and stopped moving.

The warrior didn’t even slow down, it walked over to Dana’s prone exoskeleton and put a pincer down in the middle of her back. She whimpered and tried to move but the warrior’s massive weight had her pinned. The flyer that had been knocked off her shoulder swooped down returning to its perch. It went back to peering at her helmet as if it hadn’t been interrupted. Finally the worker that had ripped Mark’s leg off started moving in as well. Its mandibles were dripping with a mixture of blood and hydraulic fluid, leaving a butchers trail as it walked towards her. Seeing it coming Dana started to scream.

Alice knew she had to do something. She couldn’t just watch another one of her friends get ripped apart. Any attempt at intervening physically was pointless. Shannon and Feven had proven that much. She racked her brain trying to figure out what to do. Earlier she had picked up the impression that the Termian’s were trying to learn, that the poking from the worker and the peering from the flyer was intended to gain some sort of information. When Dana had opened her helmet it had grabbed their attention, so the exoskeletons had to be what they were trying to learn about. Well if they were trying to learn about exoskeletons, then what she needed to do was teach them.

“Hey, over here,” she yelled getting her exoskeleton up onto its feet.

She started waving her arms back and forth and flipping her flood lights on and off in an attempt to get the attention of the flyer crawling around on Dana’s exoskeleton. It ignored her but the second flyer started looking in her direction, good enough. Having gained the flyers attention she opened her helmet and folded it back into its storage position.

“Alice, What the hell are you doing?” Shannon asked, her exoskeleton still lying prone on the ground.

“I don’t think they’re trying to kill us,” she said, “They’re trying to figure out how our exoskeletons work.”

Having gained the flyers attention she took a deep breath. If she was wrong about the Termian’s motivations then she was dead. Then again after seeing what had happened to Mark she might be dead either way. Letting out the breath she pulled her arms in and hit the emergency release on her suits roll cage. With a hydraulic hiss her exoskeleton’s chest separated and lifted, exposing her from the waist up.

This garnered an immediate reaction from the Termians. The flyer that had been watching her launched itself into the air and hovered in front of her eyeing her carefully. The second flyer, the one crawling on top of Dana’s exoskeleton, looked up and then similarly threw itself into the air. It flew straight at her and with a loud buzz of wings landed on the shoulder of her exoskeleton. Seeing it coming she braced herself for impact but it landed softly, barely causing a shift in her balance. Finally and more importantly, the bloody worker that had been walking towards Dana stopped with a twitch of its antennae. Whatever else happened, opening her armour had earned Dana a respite from having one of her legs ripped off.

There was no turning back now. She had their attention and unless she wanted to end up ripped apart and bleeding out on the floor then she had to keep going. Pulling her shoulders back Alice positioned her exoskeleton’s arms in the rest position and then reached down and pushed the crotch piece out of the way. This exposed the buckle for her five point harness. Straps led from the buckle between her hips, across both thighs and up over both shoulders. The harness kept her secure inside the machine and was never supposed to be disconnected while the exoskeleton was operating. Taking a deep breath Alice released the buckle and shrugged out of the shoulder straps, causing an audible alarm to start sounding. It was faint, but only because it coming from inside her stowed helmet. Both of the Termian flyers were watching her with rapt attention. She wasn’t finished though. There was still one last thing for her to do. Reaching above her head she flicked a switch locking the roll cage in the open position. Then she grabbed the sides of the roll cage and lifted her legs up and out of the exoskeletons legs. Pulling her legs off to the side and pushing off she landed in a crouch next to her now empty machine. It wasn’t the normal method of taking off a heavy exoskeleton, that involved a ten minute process of shutting the system down, but it was something she had done before. Emergency egress is what they had called it during training. Only to be performed in life or death situations. She was pretty sure this counted under that category.

The winged Termian hovered in front of her, eyeing her. She felt naked without her exoskeleton. All she had on was a simple jumpsuit, dripping wet with oily liquid from the Termian warrior. The stinger on the end of the Termians tail waved back and forth as it looked at her. It looked lethal, as long as her hand and likely designed to deliver some sort of poison or deadly chemical.

The flyer darted towards her. She ducked letting out an involuntary squeak of fear. It was too fast, she couldn’t avoid it. It went passed her with a buzz of wings to land on her empty exoskeleton next to the other flyer. It had dismissed her as unimportant, she was being ignored.

The two flyers crawled around on the exoskeleton moving their heads around and looking at every part of the machine from every possible angle. One of them clambered inside examining the harness while the other stuck its head inside the helmet. They were examining everything.

Suddenly a large form loomed in Alice’s peripheral vision. She jumped out of the way as the worker scuttled passed her. It was close enough to touch, and if she hadn’t moved it would have brushed up against her. It was a scary sight being so close to the creature. It moved sinuously with plates of chitin that slid across each other making up its outer shell. Liquid dripped off of it as it walked, the same liquid that had been sprayed inside of it by the warrior, and likely the same liquid that her jumpsuit was soaked in. The worker walked up to her exoskeleton, completely ignoring her. It started manipulating the empty exoskeleton with the feelers around its mouth, moving the arms and poking at the buckles while the flyers watched.

“Alice can you check on Feven?” Shannon asked.

Looking over at Feven Alice was surprised to see that her exoskeleton was flat on its back and that she still hadn’t moved since being hit by the warrior. She had been hit in the face with one of the warrior’s pincers but the helmets on their exoskeletons were designed to take a hit, with the face shield made out of thick polycarbonate. She tentatively walked in Feven’s direction, watching the Termians for any reaction. They ignored her, continuing to fuss around and poke at her exoskeleton. She knelt down next to her teammate to take a look. Feven’s face shield was cracked and splintered and her face was a mass of blood behind the broken polycarbonate. Carefully opening the helmet Alice took a look inside and then let out a sigh of relief.

“She’s breathing,” Alice called out, “she has a broken nose and she’s unconscious but she’s alive.”

On second glance there was blood dripping from her ears as well. Hopefully that was from the broken nose and not something more serious. Hearing no response to her news Alice looked up. Everyone was watching the Termians. The worker was walking towards Chad, who was already bracketed by the pair of Termian dragonflies.

“Now what?” Chad said, his voice cracking in fear.

“Stay calm and don’t fight them,” Shannon said.

The worker didn’t hesitate. It walked right up to Chad opened its mandibles and used the feelers around its mouth to pop the emergency release on Chad’s roll cage. The hydraulic hiss of the roll cage opening was drowned out by Chad’s yelp of surprise. The worker didn’t stop there though. It started manipulating his exoskeleton. It popped open buckles, worked the roll cage up and down, manipulated the crotch piece and generally fiddled with the moving parts. There was some swearing from Chad but he did his best not to interfere with the worker. The whole time the flyers buzzed around changing positions in order to get a good view of everything the worker was doing. The Termians were experimenting, learning how the exoskeleton worked.

“Ow! Ow! Thigh straps!” Chad yelled out.

The worker had grabbed him by the waist and was pulling him out of his exoskeleton, or at least it was trying to. Chad wasn’t resisting, he was frantically trying to undo his thigh straps. Alice suppressed an inappropriate giggle. The thigh straps in the heavy exoskeleton were annoying, redundant, and uncomfortable. Despite regulations to the contrary she usually didn’t wear them. Apparently when she had taken off her exoskeleton in front of the Termians she hadn’t been wearing them. As such the Termians didn’t know that the thigh straps had to be undone before an operator could be removed from their exoskeleton. With a pair of clicks Chad managed to get his thigh straps unbuckled allowing the worker to pull him out of his armour and dump him on the ground. He rolled up onto his feet looking scared but uninjured.

“Sorry,” Alice called out.

“For what?” Chad asked looking confused.

She didn’t answer. If he hadn’t figured it out then there was no point explaining. Besides, the worker wasn’t finished with Chad yet. It reached up with a pincer and pushed against the middle of his chest causing him to stumble backwards. As he recovered it followed giving him another nudge. Scrambling away from the creature Chad tried to keep his distance while it advanced on him. There wasn’t a lot of space for him to move and he soon found himself within a couple meters of the strange red-brown wall at the far end of the room. At that point the worker stopped moving, as if waiting for something.

“Guys what’s going on?” Chad asked.

The wall he was standing next to looked odd, as if it was made out of some sort of organic material rather than the resin coated rock that made up the rest of the chamber. The ridges on the wall looked less like natural rock formations and more like folds of skin. At first glance Alice had thought the asterisk shaped pattern of ridges leading to a central dent looked like a giant anus. Now that she was looking at it more carefully the impression didn’t go away.

Stepping to the side Chad tried to edge around the worker but it kept pace with him. It was blocking him, keeping him near the wall.

“Chad, I think you should just stay where you are,” Shannon said.

Suddenly the wall started to move. The dent in the middle widened and circular ridges lifted up in concentric circles around it forming a dartboard pattern. A rapid series of pulses rippled across the ridges causing the dent in the middle to open. In a span of seconds the dent became a puckered hole that abruptly widened into an opening large enough for one of the Termian warriors to walk through.

“What the hell?” Samjay yelled out.

“It’s alive, the wall is alive,” Sahil said.

As soon as he said it Alice knew he was only partially right. It wasn’t just a living wall. The wall had to be part of some sort of huge underground creature. It was bigger than any living thing she had seen or even heard about. It was also the direction that the most powerful radio signal had been coming from. The creature they were looking at, whatever it was, was part of the Termian hive mind.

The dynamic of the room abruptly changed. Whereas before they had been trapped in the room with the only exit blocked now there was another opening, one that a termian warrior wasn’t blocking. The only problem was that it appeared to be an opening inside a giant Termian. Was it a mouth preparing to eat them? Or was it a possible escape route? Alice could see the confusion in her fellow operators faces.

It was dark inside the opening. A darkness that none of their floodlights were positioned properly to pierce. Peering into the opening Chad squinted his eyes.

“I think I can see something moving,” he said.

Before anyone could answer, the worker behind him stepped forward and shoved him with one of its pincers. With a strangled cry Chad stumbled through the opening and into the darkness.

“Oh no,” Dana cried out.

“Chad!” Shannon yelled, “Can you hear me?”

“I’m okay,” Chad’s voiced called out from inside the opening.

Alice let out a sigh of relief. When she had seen Chad stumble through the opening her imagination had gotten the better of her and she had thought he was being eaten.

“I think you just got shoved inside a giant Termian’s ass,” Samjay called out.

The Termian worker and one of the flyers moved over to Samjay as if summoned by his voice. Without pause they immediately started working on his exoskeleton, opening the roll cage and popping his buckles.

“Looks like you’re the next suppository Samjay,” Sahil said.

“Yeah, thanks for showing them how our exoskeletons work Alice,” Samjay replied.

Even though he sounded angry there was no real venom to his words. He was just trying to put on a brave face during an incredibly scary situation. The worker pulled him out of his exoskeleton and gave him a push in the direction of the living wall. He didn’t resist and walked over with little in the way of prodding from the worker. Within moments a segmented appendage reached out and pulled him inside the opening as well.

Without waiting for Samjay to disappear inside the opening the Worker and flyer moved over to Dana’s prone exoskeleton and started unstrapping her.

“Okay I’m seeing a pattern here,” Shannon said, “Alice if Feven isn’t awake can you start taking her out of her exoskeleton?”

Looking down at Feven Alice could see that she wasn’t awake, and it didn’t look like she would be waking up any time soon. Pale fluid was leaking from her ears and her face was starting to swell up around the eyes and her badly broken nose.

“I don’t want to move her Shannon. She could be badly hurt,” Alice replied.

“It’s either you or the Termians babe,” Shannon said.

“I’ll help,” Sahil said sliding up beside her.

He wasn’t wearing his exoskeleton. It was sitting empty halfway across the room. He must have gotten out of it while she was distracted. He reached down and popped open Feven’s roll cage. Shannon was right Alice realised. If Feven did have a life threatening injury then she would have a much better chence of surviving if they pulled her out of her exoskeleton rather than letting the Termians do it. They started popping her buckles, working together to get her out. Unfortunately the heavy exoskeletons weren’t designed for removing someone from inside while it was on its back. They tried to be gentle and protect her head but it was difficult, she was a rag doll completely limp in their arms.

A noise made Alice look up from what she was doing. Shannon, minus her exoskeleton, was being herded through the opening by the worker. There was no sign of Dana, Samjay or Chad. It was just her and Sahil with the unconscious Feven held between them. No, that wasn’t true. There was also Mark slowly cooling in a pool of his own blood.

Without ceremony the worker started pushing at them trying to get the three of them over to the opening. It proved to be very difficult to carry the unconscious Feven and still support her neck, so they settled on dragging her. They lifted her by the shoulders, supporting her head and neck with their arms and dragging her across the ground. It was slow but the worker seemed satisfied that they were going in the right direction.

The opening was dark and gloomy. Alice’s eyes were accustomed to the flood lights in the other room thus she couldn’t see anything through the opening. They stepped inside onto a slightly spongy floor. As soon as Feven’s legs crossed the threshold the opening closed behind them trapping them inside.

Chapter 4:

Day: 58

Location: Gliese 380 d, sub-surface

Subject: Alice Montague, Human Female,

Rank / Affiliation: Heavy Exoskeleton Operator, Engineering and

Survey Team, Haspus Consortium,

Colony Mission Status: Red

Haspus Mission Status: Yellow

With the opening closed behind her Alice was plunged into total darkness. In the absence of the floodlights mounted on the exoskeletons in the other room she couldn’t even see her own hands where they supported Feven’s unconscious body. Suddenly a pair of bright lights sliced through the dark, one after the other in rapid succession. Illuminated in the beams of light were Samjay and Shannon, they were both holding industrial sized flashlights in their hands. Several of Alice’s fellow operators winced and brought their palms up to their faces as they realized they had left their own flashlights behind with their exoskeletons.

In the glow of the flashlights Alice was able to see the inside of chamber. It was large and cavernous, easily fifty meters on a side. The walls were reddish-brown and had an organic texture to them with ridges and folds that reflected the light back as if they were wet. The floor had the same appearance but it had a spongy feel to it, similar to that of a rubber mat under her feet. The ceiling stretched high above their heads but it was impossible to tell how high it was due to an organic mass hanging down. The thing was oddly shaped and rounded, like a giant version of an internal organ that had been sliced out and hung from the ceiling. Tubes that looked like hoses ran from the mass into the walls, more of the tubes hung freely almost reaching down to the floor. The mass was bigger than she was and with a shudder Alice realised that it was throbbing.

Scattered throughout the room were a dozen Termian workers. Some of them were standing around while others were sitting on the floor. They didn’t react to the light from the flashlights nor did they make any movements towards Alice or her fellow operators. For all intents and purposes they seemed to be ignoring the humans in their presence. They looked harmless but Alice knew better. Mark’s dead body in the previous chamber was proof of that.

“Now what?” Chad asked.

“I have no idea,” Shannon replied.

“I don’t think you’re supposed to say that,” Chad said, “As our fearless leader you’re supposed to be confident at all times.”

“I’m confident I have no idea,” Shannon replied. The words were playful but her tone was flat. The two of them were trying for light banter but their hearts weren’t in it.

“So are we be eaten or something?” Dana asked.

“I don’t think so,” Sahil replied, “This doesn’t look like a stomach.”

“But we are inside a creature of some sort right? Some sort of giant Termian. I’ve never seen a creature this big.”

“I hate to say it,” Sahil said, “But this can’t be the entire creature. I don’t see a heart or lungs or anything similar which means this chamber is just one small section of a much bigger Termian.”

“Crap!” Dana replied in an awed tone. Alice couldn’t help but agree with her sentiment. If Sahil was right then they had just walked inside a creature that dwarfed anything that had ever been seen before.

Shining his flashlight around the room Samjay revealed more of the chamber. Off to one side half a dozen giant hemispheres of what looked like sodden white fabric stood in rough rows. They were about twice the size of a person and looked like wet and slimy cocoons of some sort. On the other side of the chamber, opposite the cocoons, was a pile of organic debris. Chunks of what looked like native plants and mushrooms were mixed with unidentifiable objects and pieces of dead Termians. There were dismembered legs and pincers along with big chunks of Termian shell lying in the heap. It was a pile of garbage, goopy and wet garbage. An oily liquid was pooling near one end and it was giving off a disagreeable odour.

The chamber was unpleasant to say the least. Termians didn’t smell good to begin with, Alice still had a foul taste in her mouth from the last time she had been sprayed, but this was different. The room smelled foul. It was warm and moist, not the heat of a sauna, the heat of a tropical swamp. She could already feel herself starting to sweat.

“Alice, Sahil bring Feven over here,” Shannon said indicating a spot on the floor. It didn’t look different from any other spot on the spongy floor but Alice didn’t see any point in arguing. The two of them started dragging Feven over to where Shannon had indicated.

“Sahil, you’ve got advanced first aid training right?” Shannon asked.

“Umm, yeah,” he replied cradling Feven’s head as they put her down.

“So how does she look?”

“Bad,” Sahil replied, “She has pale liquid leaking from her ears. It could be ruptured eardrums but combined with how unresponsive she is I suspect it’s something worse. I think that blow cracked her skull.”

“So what do we do?” Shannon asked.

“My training says to move her as little as possible and wait for more competent medical assistance.”

Silence greeted his answer. They all knew that no assistance was coming, medical or otherwise. They were probably the last humans left alive on the planet. Looking up from Feven’s prone form Alice could see the grim realisation on the faces of her fellow operators. Feven needed a doctor, most likely surgery as well. She wasn’t going to get it. She was going to die.

“Woah, what the hell is that?” Samjay yelled interrupting Alice’s morbid thoughts.

His flashlight was illuminating the far wall of the chamber where something weird was happening. A roughly circular portion of the red-brown wall was swelling open and something was being pushed through. It was pale yellow in colour, organic in appearance, and covered in mucus. It entered the room in pulses as if it was being pushed by something that couldn’t exert continuous effort. As the yellow object extruded into the chamber a thin leg flopped through the opening and started twitching. It was alive. With more pulses of effort the thing slowly extruded onto the floor of the room. It had a three segmented body with eight legs and it was covered in a thin film of slime. Little Antenae extended from its head and its mouth was sporting a pair of mandibles. It looked like a Termian worker without a shell.

The newborn creature flopped around on the floor, feebly moving its legs. It was unable to stand up let alone move around. The orifice it had come through let out a last surge of mucous and then closed in on itself leaving nothing more than a fold in the wall.

Samjay started inching towards the creature but then jumped back as a pair of workers purposefully skittered in in its direction. The workers grasped it in their mandibles, moving slowly and carefully almost as if they were worried about causing harm. With slow and deliberate motions the creature was dragged across the room until it was lying next to the cocoons. At that point the workers let go, one of them wandered away but the other one wasn’t finished with the newborn. It grasped a tube that was hanging from the organ in the center of the room and pulled it over to the creature. The tube was hose-shaped and the worker started poking with it at the rear end of the feeble creature. It poked and prodded with the hose shaped tube for a few moments before finding an opening and sliding the hose inside. The newborn twitched and squirmed around, feebly trying to move away from the tube that had penetrated it. Suddenly liquid started flowing. It was unclear where it was coming from at first but it oozed everywhere before a stream of it came surging out of the creatures mouth. At that signal the worker pulled the tube out of the newborn leaving it twitching feebly in a pool of goo.

“Damn,” Samjay said.

“So is that how little Termians are made?” Dana asked.

Before anyone could answer her another worker started moving towards the newborn with a hose in its mandibles. Once it was within a couple meters of the twitching creature a spray of white liquid started shooting out the end of the hose. It looked like the newborn Termian was being hosed down with white cotton candy. The worker maneuvered around the prone Termian systematically covering it in what began looking like wet layers of white cloth. Within a minute there was no sign of the creature, other than a cocoon identical to the other cocoons.

“That thing looked like a larva,” Samjay exclaimed, “Do Termians have a larval stage?”

“I don’t know. I suspect we’re the first people to have ever witnessed that,” Shannon replied.

As a group they stood waiting for the next development. Every twitch of movement from the workers would cause them to start in surprise but nothing came of it. There was nothing happening.

“Can we get out of here?” Chad asked.

Samjay and Shannon shone their flashlights around the room illuminating the four walls. All four of them were similar in appearance, possessing folds and ripples but nothing resembling an exit. It was even difficult to tell where the opening had been that they can come through to enter the room. There was nowhere to go.

“I guess we just sit and wait,” Shannon said.

“Wait for what?” Dana demanded.

“Do you have a better idea?” Shannon asked.

Dana didn’t answer. She didn’t have to answer. There was nothing they could do and nowhere to go. No amount of arguing was going to get them out of the room. With a sigh Alice sat down on the spongy floor next to Feven’s prone body.

Time passed. There was nothing to do and nobody seemed to feel like talking. Shannon came over and sat down next to Alice. They leaned up against each other in silent comfort. Chad and Samjay stood silently looking around the room, seemingly lost in their own thoughts, while Dana sat on the floor hugging her knees. Sahil occupied himself by tending to Feven.

“Hey boss,” Chad said breaking the silence. He gestured towards the pile of organic debris. “I’m going to go take a piss.”

“Yeah okay,” Shannon replied, “Take a flashlight and don’t go alone.”

Chad looked over at Samjay who shrugged an affirmative and the two of them started walking over to the pile of garbage.

“Shannon?” Chad’s voice rang out a few minutes later.

“What?” she replied.

“You need to come take a look at this.”

“I don’t want to watch you pee Chad,” Shannon said. Despite her words she got up from where she was sitting and started walking in his direction. Alice followed behind her.

The pile of debris was a wet and disgusting mess. A jumbled foul smelling heap of rotting vegetation and mushrooms mixed with parts of dead Termians. It stood waist high at some points and slumped against the wall of the chamber. Samjay played his flashlight beam across the heap illuminating the garbage. The cold light flashed across the shattered shell of a Termain warrior, broken and splintered pieces of a Termians legs, and even the wings from a flyer, all mixed in with rotting vegetation. The beam came to rest on a pale white object flecked with spots of reddish-brown. It took Alice’s mind a moment to place what she was looking at but when she did she recoiled in horror. It was a human leg. A dismembered human leg was lying in the pile of garbage.

The leg wasn’t the only part of a human body lying in the heap of garbage. Now that she knew what to look for Alice could see other pieces in the jumbled pile as well. Humans, people who had been discarded like garbage. It was horrifying and mind numbing. This was what she was to the Termians. What they all were, organic waste to be thrown away and forgotten.

“Who are they?” Shannon asked.

With his flashlight Samjay gestured to a shoulder patch from a ripped jumpsuit lying in the pile. It was a survey team patch. The bodies were members of one of the survey teams that had gone missing before the attack. That added to the horror in Alice’s mind. The bodies weren’t faceless strangers. They were those of people she knew.

“Damn-it, they were just thrown here to rot like garbage,” Shannon exclaimed echoing Alice’s thoughts.

“Yeah,” Samjay replied, “but that’s not why we called you over.”

Holding his hand over his mouth and nose Samjay stepped up to the garbage pile and shoved at one of the dismembered human bodies with his foot. It was a woman’s torso. The arms and head were gone, nothing but ragged stumps remained. The torso was lying next to a pair of dismembered Termian legs. As Samjay shoved the body with his foot it shifted in the heap, and the Termian legs moved with it.

“What the hell?” Shannon asked.

The woman’s legs were gone, but in their place were a pair of Termian legs. The Termian body parts extended inside the woman’s torso, right where a human’s legs would attach to the pelvis.

“That’s fucked up right?” Samjay said, “And look at the swelling where the shell goes inside her hips. She was alive when this was done to her, at least for a little while.”

Now that he pointed it out Alice could see what Samjay was talking about. The flesh where the insect like legs were connected was swollen and puffed out. It was something that could only have happened if her body had been alive when they went in. A dead body wouldn’t have swollen up like that.

“I’ve got another one over here,” Chad called out.

The beam of Shannon’s flashlight flitted over to illuminate a severed human head. It wasn’t just a human head though. Two antennae were sticking out of it. They were similar to a worker’s antennae but they extended out through the back of the skull. Alice couldn’t see if there was any swelling around where the antennae entered the head but she also didn’t want to look too closely.

“It looks like some sort of biological experiments,” Chad said, “As if the Termians were trying to turn humans into Termians.”

It was a horrifying thought. The idea of the Termians trying to turn living humans into some sort of human-Termian crossbreeds was sickening. It wasn’t possible. At least Alice didn’t think it was. It was science beyond her understanding, but that didn’t mean it wasn’t happening.

The Termians weren’t intelligent like human beings. Theirs was a different type of intelligence, a hive mind, but it was intelligence none the less. In the battles against humans they had proven time and time again that they weren’t stupid. They had also proven that in the science of biology the Termian hive mind was beyond human technology. Termian hives had shown an ability to genetically engineer their warriors to overcome nearly everything humans had thrown at them. They were able to do things that people couldn’t even dream of, or in this case have nightmares about. Now they were experimenting on humans, apparently with the intent of making some sort of crossbreeds, and she was trapped in the room where it was happening.

“Now I understand why we’re still alive,” Chad muttered.

“Don’t say it,” Shannon replied, “We aren’t going to end up like that.”

“Yeah, so how are we going to stop it from happening?” Chad asked. Shannon didn’t answer. There was no response.

“Hey guys, we need some light over here,” Sahil called out.

Within moments he was illuminated by both of the flashlights. Shielding his eyes from the sudden glare he pointed in the direction of the far wall. A new larva was being extruded. The process had the same biological birth vibe as the last time, and it was producing a similar three segmented slug-like creature, but there were differences. This larva only had six legs and it had a strange centipede like growth on its back straddling the joint between its head and the central segment. The head looked wrong too. It was proportionally too small for the body and wasn’t where the antennae were attached, those extended out of the growth on its back.

A pair of workers walked over and gently grasped the larva in their mandibles. They started dragging it across the chamber, not towards the cocoons this time, but into the center of the room.

“What the hell?” Samjay asked.

He stepped forward shining his flashlight on the creature. In the cold light of the flashlight they could see the centipede like growth on the larva’s back squirm independently from the body. It seemed to have four or five sets of mandibles and dozens of legs or feelers, all writhing around against the back of the newborns small head.

The workers holding the creature shifted around changing their grip. One grasped the body of the larva while the other grasped the head in its mandibles. With sudden violence the two workers pulled in opposite directions. The result was a wet popping sound as the larva’s head was ripped off and fell onto the ground leaving a wet trail behind it. The main body kept squirming and twitching, seemingly oblivious to the fact it had just been decapitated.

“Samjay!” Shannon’s voice rang out in warning.

He had slowly been drifting closer to the larva trying to get a better look at it. At the sound of Shannon’s voice he turned back to look at her and then followed her gaze behind him. A second pair of workers was circling towards him with their pincers raised aggressively in the air.

He tried to run but the workers were too fast. One lashed out and grabbed him around the legs with its mandibles, tripping him, only for the second one to grab him around the torso stopping him from hitting the ground. He cried out as the workers started dragging him backwards towards the decapitated Termian in the middle of the room.

Without hesitation Alice launched herself across the room towards him. In her peripheral vision she could see Sahil and Shannon running forward as well, she didn’t know what they were going to do but they couldn’t just stand by and watch Samjay have his head torn off.

Unfortunately the three of them weren’t the only ones charging. Alice didn’t get more than a few steps before a worker came hurtling towards her with its mandibles open. She tried to dodge but it struck her in the chest with a blow that staggered her backwards before it closed its mandibles trapping her in its jaws. She had a moment of panic at the thought of being sliced in half, clawing at the mandibles she tried to escape but the grip was too tight. With a powerful surge the worker reared up lifting her off her feet, and then slammed her face first into the ground. It then released her and stepped back.

Dazed and bruised Alice lay on the floor unable to do anything more complicated then breathe. The blows she had suffered hadn’t broken anything but they had struck with bruising force. Across the room Sahil was flat on his back groaning and Shannon was crumpled up against the near wall with her feet in the air. Both of them were alive and conscious but they looked just as stunned as she felt. The message was clear, don’t interfere, all they could do was watch as Samjay squirmed in the grip of the two workers.

Samjay was dragged across the floor in the direction of the decapitated larva, a trail of torn clothing left in his wake. The workers were stripping him, grabbing at his clothing and pulling until pieces came off or ripped whichever happened first. Samjay squirmed and fought, flailing at the workers in an attempt to get away. As he struggled his flashlight fell to the ground illuminating the headless Termian. Suddenly Samjay let out an incoherent scream of pain, one of the workers had rotated his ankle unnaturally in the process of ripping his boots off. He was completely overpowered, helpless in their grasp.

In less than a minute the workers managed to strip him and drag him over to the larva, naked but for the remnants of sleeves hanging from his arms. They shifted their grip, one grabbing him around his head and arms while the second grasped his legs. Alice cringed expecting to see him torn in half, but that didn’t happen. Instead the workers stuffed him feet first inside the body of the decapitated Termian.

Thick liquid splashed out in all directions and Samjay’s cries of fear took on a surprised tone. There was a confused jumble of limbs as the decapitated Termian twitched, liquid sprayed, Samjay flailed about, and the workers moved around. Alice couldn’t tell what was happening until the workers finally retreated leaving Samjay covered in ichor and embedded up to his waist in the decapitated body of the Termian.

“What the hell?” Samjay yelled pushing at the yellowish white flesh wrapped around his hips.

The decapitated larva had been lying on its side when the struggle started but now it was upright with its legs folded underneath it. Samjay had been shoved in such that his upper body replaced the missing head. It looked like he was kneeling inside of the creature with the wound from the decapitation having sealed around his waist. He pushed at it and tried to pull it off but he couldn’t get it to let go of him. The sinister looking centipede shaped growth on the decapitated Termian’s body was now lined up along his spine with all the little feelers squirming up against the skin of his back and the mandibles hanging threateningly.

“Get this thing off me!” Samjay yelled.

Shaking off her mental fog Alice rolled over, getting her feet underneath her. In response the worker that had knocked her to the ground moved menacingly in her direction. Its intent was obvious. If she tried to interfere it would hit her again.

For his part Samjay struggled to get away. He was trying to escape from the Termian flesh trapping his body while simultaneously squirming to avoid the feelers touching his back. He wasn’t going anywhere though, he couldn’t get away.

There was a sudden crunching sound and Samjay screamed in agony. A pair of mandibles was slowly slicing into his back at the base of his rib cage. The mandibles weren’t long but they were jagged and sharp. Samjay convulsed in pain as they sliced into his spine. With an oozing motion he was pulled further into the decapitated larva’s body, the yellow-white flesh sliding up from his waist to the bottom of his ribs. Alice could see the feelers on his back lining up a second pair of mandibles higher on his spine.

Stuck half submerged inside the Termian larva’s body Samjay stopped screaming, he just hung there panting and whimpering.

“It’s okay Samjay, you’re going to be all right, we’ll get you out of this,” Shannon said. Her words sounded good, but she was lying. None of them had the slightest idea how to help him and with that thing slicing into his back he certainly wasn’t going to be all right.

“I…I… can’t feel my legs,” he replied in a whimper. Shannon didn’t say anything in response, none of them did. No-one knew how to respond.

“What’s it doing to him? Is it eating him?” Dana asked in a low voice.

“No,” Chad whispered, “It’s worse than that.”

“What? I don’t understand.”

Dana hadn’t seen the bodies in the refuse pile. She didn’t know about the horrific human experiments. With a dark glare Shannon shut the two of them up. Samjay didn’t need to hear a description of what had been discarded as garbage while he was suffering.

As he hung there panting, the centipede shaped growth settled in getting more intimate with his back. A second jagged set of mandibles slowly sliced into him right between the shoulder blades. His resulting cry of pain was more of a moan then a scream

The Larva’s body sucked him deeper into itself. The pale flesh oozing up his chest until it was right under his armpits. The centipede shaped thing was bonding with the Termian flesh as it crept up his body, taking on the appearance of some sort of living back brace connecting him with the larva.

“Shannon?” he whispered.

“Yeah, Samjay, I’m here,” she replied.

“I can feel it inside me Shannon.”

With a gasp of horror Alice realised what he was talking about. The dozens of feelers between the centipede shaped things mandibles, they had been crawling on his skin before the mandibles had sliced in. They were nowhere to be seen, but they had to have gone somewhere because it was pressed tight against his back. They were inside of him.

A sickening crunch heralded another biting motion by a third set of mandibles, this time at the base of Samjay’s neck. His arms twitched violently and then hung limp leaving him hanging lifelessly slack in the creature’s morbid embrace. His mouth was working, as if he was trying to say something but Alice couldn’t hear any words. She wasn’t even sure if he was breathing.

The larva’s body didn’t suck him any deeper this time. Instead they were treated to the sight of its feelers slicing into his skin, pulling the centipede like back brace into his spine. It was bonding him with the larva in what looked like a permanent if not fatal connection. The feelers pushed his head forward, lining up the last set of mandibles with the base of his skull.

He was helpless and Alice couldn’t do anything to save him. There was nothing she could do but stand witness as the mandibles closed with a crunch on the base of his skull. A flinch of pain registered on his face before his features slowly went slack and his mouth stopped moving. The last set of feelers slowly pulled his head back as they slid into the back of his head and into his brain.

“Samjay? Samjay can you hear me?” Shannon called out.

He didn’t respond. He just hung there slack and lifeless inside the still twitching larva. In a horrible way the two of them looked like a single creature, some sort of horrific insect centaur. The yellowish-white of the Termian flesh clashed with Samjay’s dark skin but otherwise it was difficult to tell where one of them left off and the other began. From mid-chest down he looked like a shell-less Termian worker that was missing its front legs. His upper chest, arms, and head replaced the workers head. The center of his back up his spine to the base of his skull was fused with the Termian flesh and two antennae extended out from behind and below his head.

One of the workers approached with a tube hanging from its mandibles, it was one of the hose like tubes hanging from the organ in the center of the room. It started probing around the rear of the Termian larva with the hose, eventually finding the opening it was looking for and sliding it inside. Moments later the larva started twitching, moving spasmodically in response to whatever the hose was doing to it. Then Samjay started moving as well, his arms and head spasmodically waving back and forth.

“He’s moving,” Sahil exclaimed.

“Samjay can you hear us?” Shannon called out.

Thick liquid started oozing out of the Termian larva. First it could be seen dripping down the flesh of its body before it started bubbling up through the seal around Samjay’s chest. Moments later it started seeping out of the thing that had attached itself to his back and skull. Then in a sudden torrent the thick fluid began gushing out of Samjay’s mouth and nose.

Recoiling in disgust Alice realised what was happening. The liquid was coming from the hose, going into the Termian larva, and coming out Samjay’s mouth. He was connected to the larva, not just trapped inside of it but physically connected. She couldn’t imagine what had been done to him, to his anatomy, beneath the termian skin covering his body.

Eventually the liquid stopped pouring out his mouth and the worker pulled out the hose. With its departure the room fell silent. In the silence Alice could hear Samjay breathing. His breathing didn’t sound healthy, it sounded laboured and liquid. His wet and ragged breathing started to slow down, with long pauses between breaths, until eventually it stopped. The larva attached to him gave one last twitch and then it too stopped moving.

Alice could feel bile rising in the back of her throat. She had just watched a team member, a friend die in some sort of horrific experiment. As she fought to keep from throwing up one of the workers began poking and prodding at Samjay’s body.

“Is he dead?” Chad asked.

“Yeah, I’m pretty sure he isn’t breathing,” Sahil replied.

“What the hell? I mean what the fucking hell is going on here?” Dana demanded.

“The…,” Chad started saying something but he was interrupted by a wet tearing sound. The worker was ripping the centipede shaped brace off of Samjay’s back. The cold beam of the dropped flashlight illuminated chunks of flesh falling to the ground as it was ripped off. Parts of Samjay’s spine tore out of his body still clutched in the things mandibles. That did it, Alice’s stomach had seen enough. She hunched over and began throwing up on the spongy ground.

“Nope! Not me! I’m not going out that way,” Chad said as he walked over to the near wall. He started shoving at it with his hands, pushing at parts of the wall while he braced his feet. It took Alice a moment to figure out what he was doing. They had come into the chamber through that wall. It had opened and closed like some sort of giant living orifice. Chad was trying to force it open.

“The Termian warriors are out there,” Sahil objected.

“I’d rather die out there then end up like Samjay,” Chad said.

He was right. Wiping her mouth Alice got up off of the ground and walked over to the wall. One by one the others followed behind her.

They started trying to force the wall open. The walls, just like the floor, weren’t hard. They were made out of some sort of spongy material. Unlike the floor though there were hard ridges underneath the spongy material. Positioning herself near a pucker shaped formation Alice started pushing as hard as she could on one of the ridges. The opening had closed in a circular pattern so in her mind’s eye if she could force one of the ridges to move then the entire thing might open. Around her Chad, Shannon, Sahil and Dana pushed and pulled at the wall as well.

Nothing happened. Despite a lot of grunting and groaning the wall didn’t move an inch. They may as well have been trying to bend steel beams with their bare hands.

A wet squelching sound drew Alice’s attention as a pair of workers grabbed what was left of Samjay and began dragging him carelessly over to the pile of refuse. With a casual toss his corpse was thrown onto the pile of garbage, broken and discarded.

The sight brought on a resurgence of effort. They tried everything they could think of to get the wall open. They worked together all pushing on the same ridge, nothing. Chad retrieved a piece of Termian shell from the refuse pile and they tried to lever it open, it didn’t budge. Nothing worked. In the end Alice found herself exhausted and on her knees punching uselessly at the spongy barrier.

She was trapped. The entrance simply wouldn’t open, and there was no other way out. She couldn’t escape. What had happened to Samjay was going to happen to her as well, dying as a human experiment, dying painfully and horribly.

“I don’t want to die,” Dana whimpered.

“That isn’t the worst fate,” Sahil said.

“What?”

“The worst fate would be to live,” Sahil explained in an emotionless tone, “They weren’t trying to kill Samjay. They were trying to merge him with a Termian, to make some sort of half Termian half human monster. The worst fate would be if they succeeded.”

Before anyone could respond to his dark words there were wet sounds of movement from the far side of the room. Shannon shone her flash light in that direction revealing another larva being extruded from the wall. Within moments however it wasn’t alone. Multiple orifices swelled open along the wall, each of them giving birth to a mucous covered larva. As they excreted into the room it became obvious that each of them was visually identical to the larva that had been used on Samjay. The mandibles and feelers from the centipede shaped growths on their backs began waving threateningly in the air. There were six larvae in total, one for each of the humans left in the room

Moving in pairs the Termian workers carefully grasped the larvae and began dragging them towards the center of the chamber. Dana screamed in panic, jumping to her feet she frantically pounded her fists against the wall they had been trying to open. Chad and Sahil scattered in opposite directions, running towards the debris pile and cocoons respectively. For Alice’s part she stood side by side with Shannon and waited. Running was pointless, there was nowhere to go. She could at least go out with a bit of dignity. Realising that her throat was getting sore she closed her mouth and stopped screaming in fear.

Feven, still unconscious and lying on the ground, was closest to the larvae. Depositing their burden the workers began moving towards her. No, not just her, the workers were moving towards all six of them.

Chapter 5:

Day: 58

Location: Outer edge of Gliese 380 system

Subject: George Ferguson , Human male,

Rank / Affiliation: Logistics Officer, Colony Ship Jaques Cartier,

Haspus Consortium

Colony Mission Status: Green

Haspus Mission Status: Green

Finding himself a convenient spot George leaned up against the bulkhead wall, nervously plucking at the white cotton robe he was carrying. He wanted to be close enough to watch but far enough so that he wasn’t in the medical team’s way. For their part the two nurses and the doctor making up the medical team ignored him and set about getting ready to wake their new life sciences officer from cryosleep. Of course she wasn’t aware that she was the new life sciences officer but then again she wasn’t really aware of anything.

Her cryotube was set into the floor of the chamber. From where George was standing it looked like a giant fish tank, just big enough for one person to lie down in. Through the polycarbonate lid he could see her suspended inside. She was floating peacefully in the near freezing liquid with tubes sticking out of her arms and legs. Armatures held medical implants in place against her chest, face, and groin. The grim faced nurses busied themselves taking readings and flipping switches, bringing the cryotube into an active state after its decades of slumber. The grim faces of the nurses fit the cold industrial feel of the chamber, hell grim and industrial was a good description for the entire ship.

The Jaques Cartier wasn’t built for comfort. It was built to carry colonists and their supplies as efficiently as possible through the grim timeless void between stars. It consisted mostly of cryotube chambers like the one they were in, linked together with bulkheads and emergency doors. Airlocks connected the chambers with a set of dropships which would be used for the one way trip onto their destination’s surface. There was also a bridge, a small living chamber for the crew that were awake, a power core, and it was all strapped to the Kurita-Brown drive pack that was busy decelerating the ship.

“The tube is in good condition,” the doctor said, “We’re ready to start.”

“Go ahead,” George replied trying not to let the fear show in his voice.

With a push of a button the process of waking up Melissa Henneberry began. A pump started drawing the liquid out of the tube leaving her to settle on the bottom. As soon as the liquid was gone the nurses opened the lid and reached down affixing restraining straps to her arms, legs, chest, and head. The restraints were for her own protection, waking up wasn’t going to be gentle.

She lay there motionless at the bottom of the tube, her skin slightly green from the fluids inside of her. Intellectually George knew that the devices attached to her body were rapidly preparing her to wake up, pumping out the cryogenic fluids and replacing them with the necessities of life. It didn’t look that way though. Melissa looked like a dead doll, wet and lifeless at the bottom of a fish-tank.

The medical team were focused, observing the monitors on the cryotube, watching for any problems. Every once in a while one of them would press a button, but George didn’t know why or what effect it had. As time passed agonisingly slowly Melissa’s body took on a healthy skin tone. In itself that was a promising sign but there were still a dozen different ways the cryosleep process could go wrong.

“Shocking,” the doctor said in a loud voice pressing another button.

Melissa’s body twitched in response. Moments later her eyes snapped open and she jerked hard against the restraints. There was a look of mindless panic in her eyes. She was awake but she couldn’t move and her body was being violated in multiple very painful ways.

She started shivering uncontrollably, thrashing against the restraints. It was the cold. Her body temperature was dangerously low. The heaters in the tube were scientifically designed to heat her up perfectly but her body didn’t know that and it was fighting frantically to stay alive. Which was good, and the waking process relied on that reaction, but George knew from experience that it sucked to be on the inside as it happened.

The medical team worked quickly and efficiently. They removed bulbs and a catheter from her groin before sliding the armature holding them out of the way. Thick tubes were pulled from her chest resulting in deep oozing wounds that were quickly closed with artificial flesh plugs. In low voices they talked her through having the tubes pulled from her throat resulting in a strangled cry of helpless pain as the last one slid out of her mouth.

In moments the restraints were removed and Melissa curled up into a fetal position shaking and shivering. Her shaking wasn’t just from the cold. She was making heart wrenching sobbing sounds as she clutched at her chest. It hurt to be woken up from cryosleep, it hurt being woken from the dead.

The medical staff stepped back, giving George some space. Their job wasn’t complete. There were blood tests and other monitoring that would need to be done, but the hardest part was over.

They didn’t try to comfort Melissa. It was heartless of them to step away from a sobbing woman but their heartlessness had a reason to it. Far too many people didn’t wake up from cryosleep. Even with expert medical help and state of the art cryotubes one percent of patients didn’t survive. On a ship of five thousand that was going to be at least fifty. The Jaques Cartier was a colony ship, most of the crew were married to other crew members and those that weren’t had paired off or were in long term relationships. Every one of those fifty deaths would be mourned. Every death would leave at least one person blaming the medical team for not doing enough. That wasn’t even considering the children who were in cryotubes. Heartlessness was an unfortunate side effect of their job.

In the wake of the medical team George walked over and knelt down on the floor. It was hard to offer Melissa any real comfort with her still in the tube but he didn’t dare interfere with the heating cycle before it was complete. He settled for reaching in and gently resting his hand on her shoulder.

“Everything is going to be all right,” he said in a quiet voice, “The pain will go away, just breathe.”

Beneath his hand she continued sobbing, shaking with the cold. He kept repeating himself, talking to her quietly, offering her comfort. He wasn’t sure if he was helping but there wasn’t much more he could do. Shifting his weight he started to move his hand when she reached up and grabbed it, squeezing hard.

The shaking and sobbing slowly subsided as Melissa warmed up and her body recovered from the shock of waking up. She let go of his hand and uncurled groaning as muscles that hadn’t moved in decades stretched out.

“I feel like a used condom, that’s been picked up off the ground, rinsed out, and shoved back in its packaging,” she said.

“That was graphic,” George said shifting so that he could see into the tube.

“Umm yeah, sorry, I mean thank you for being here.”

“Not a problem,” he replied.

He knew how hard it was for her to thank him. He looked down at her where she was lying in her tube. She was wet and naked with dark circles under her eyes and vivid bruises forming on her chest where the skin plugs had gone in. She was going to be all right though. The medical team wouldn’t have stepped off otherwise.

“Stop smiling at me like that,” she said. There was no venom in her words though and she was smiling back at him.

“Come on help me out of this damn thing.”

Standing up George grabbed the white cotton robe he had brought with him and held it out for her. She didn’t need any real help getting out. At normal gravity she would have been shaky but at the one third gravity of their deceleration she was able to get on her feet without problems. She stepped up out of the tube and into the robe, sliding her arms through the sleeves and leaning her back against him in the process of putting it on.

She stayed there for a moment leaning on him as she burrowed into the robe wrapping it around herself. In the process her shoulder rubbed up against the edge of one of his chest plugs causing him to hiss in pain. She turned around at his reaction and gently rested her hand on his chest.

“Sorry,” she said.

“It’s fine.”

Her fingers traced down his shirt below where the new chest plugs were healing down to where a matching set of scars were hidden under the material.

“Did it hurt as bad when you were in the marines?” she asked.

“Yes,” he replied taking her hand, “It hurts every time you wake up from cryosleep.”

“Why would you do that twice?” she asked making eye contact with him. He didn’t answer, he didn’t need to. She knew the answer. He had stepped into a cryotube for a second time so he could be with her.

There was a long silence as he looked down into her eyes and she looked up into his. Eventually she was the one to break eye contact.

“I expected more activity, less people still in their tubes,” she said looking around.

“We’re still a few months out,” he replied. That got her attention. A playful smile lit up her face and her hand started wandering down his shirt towards his pants.

“Why’d you wake me so early? You wanted some?” she asked. Gently trapping her hand with his before it could wander too far George leaned forward and kissed her forehead.

“You know it,” he said, “But unfortunately I need you in your professional capacity. Bryan didn’t make it.” Her face fell in response to his words.

“Does Sarah know?” she asked.

“No, she’s still sleeping.”

A sad silence fell between them. Bryan and Sarah had known the risks, they all had, but the news still hurt. And as much as it hurt the two of them to lose a friend it would be devastating for Sarah. Without saying a word Melissa wrapped her arms around him and hugged him hard. It didn’t last long but the message was sent, she was glad he was alive.

“Ok, so without Bryan there were multiple options for whom to take lead on life sciences,” she said eventually.

“Maybe I pushed for it to be you,” he replied answering the unasked question.

That brought the flirty smile back to her lips and this time when he leaned down to kiss her forehead she turned her face up and kissed him on the lips. The salty taste of cryogenic fluids intruded into his mouth along with a quick flick from her tongue before they broke the embrace. She would be off limits for a week while her body recovered but from the look in her eyes that was going to be a very long week.

“Anything else I should know?” she asked.

“Well, other than Bryan everything here on the Jaques Cartier is going according to plan,” he replied, “Planet side though not so much. We’ve lost contact with the engineering and survey team. They were sending daily reports but those have suddenly stopped. We aren’t sure why. It’s probably instrument failure at their end, there’s nothing wrong with our coms.”

“What’s the worst case scenario?”

“Some sort of natural disaster wiped them out,” he replied, “But that’s really unlikely. We’ll assess the situation once we get into orbit. I’m not worried. The planet was scouted out thoroughly decades before we left. If there was anything dangerous down there, we never would have been sent. It should be a perfectly safe place for us to set down and start a colony.”