Outpost

Three weeks didn’t sound like a long time when the chit printed with an offer too good to pass up. No mega-corporations were still paying well for exobiologists, but the government swooped in with grants and resources to keep us working. I didn’t like working for the Jackboots, but with hopes of starting a family, our options were limited. We jumped on the transport at Calisto Station and got straight to work. A twenty-one-day stint on an uncharted alien world cataloging flora and fauna was precisely the sort of hazard-pay kush job Sil and I needed.

That was nineteen days ago. We began as ten, and now only three of us remain. Two days left in this Hellscape. I question now if the pay is worth the haunting screams of the seven we’ve lost.

***

The first of two suns punched through the paper shade of our habitat. Sil stirred first. Always. She swung her legs off the bed and followed the momentum to right herself. The smell of Kinestrian coffee assaulted my nose. A memory flashed. The day we found the beans growing on a mountainside in the southern quadrant. Amazing how every world offers some measure of palatable caffeine-rich flora to brew.

“Your turn to cook, Dante.” She rubbed her eyes and shook out her curly locks while shuffling to the shower.

I let out an indecipherable groan that may have sounded affirmative to Sil’s ears. Sun two peaked through a pass in the steep terrain and brought the reset.

Daytime. Safe again. Only two more nights and we go home. There are myriad things unique about G15-V, Kinestria, yet one thing stands out. When the suns go down, an aurora sets the night sky alight with green and blue ribbons and, with it, an undeniable sense of euphoria. An unearned, false sense of joy and safety. A stillness falls over the valley.

Something is preying on us, and we welcome it with open arms. Our ride back home can’t get here soon enough.

I pulled on my pants and stepped out of the secure habitat. I surveyed the perimeter fence for signs of a breach. Nothing. Like always. The other mobile labs/living quarters sat vacant, their doors open, occupants absent. I should be more concerned than I am. I know this.

I’m just not.

***

“Colin asked if we should consolidate tonight. What say you?” I shifted my weight from one soggy knee to the other as I plunged the spade into the firmament.

Sil didn’t look up from her sample cup. “I’m not sure how that’s better.”

I let her intent ruminate in my brain while I scraped mycelial tendrils from my spade into a collection dish with my finger. “You think we stand a better chance alone?”

She looked skyward and wiped the foggy dew from her brow. “It’s coming for one of us. Together, it may take us all. Colin will only get us collected in his outcome.”

Her voice was steady and calm. Cold, indifferent to consequence. I couldn’t argue her logic, but part of my brain remained unaffected by this place and struggled to care. To feel. Residual from our time here. Like the loss of taste or sense of smell during an illness, my empathy is muted. I can’t help but feel it’s less suppressed than hers.

Each day, the effects of these dreamy, soupy nights take longer to wear off. She’ll feel differently by twilight. So will I.

“I didn’t hear screams last night, did you?” I took a pull from my canteen.

She shrugged and moved on to a new section. “B-18 is finished. You can skip to D-10. Those roots were ready to harvest.”

I turned to face D-10. In the distance, skies swirled a darkening purple-black. “Ion storms incoming.” Red-tinged lightning reached its deadly fingers from the clouds and climbed across the sky. “We have about an hour.”

Sil closed her eyes and sniffed the air. “More or less.”

We collected a few more moss and fungal samples and headed back to the rover. Our benefactors were negligent in sending us here without knowing we were in danger. They should have sent a proper scout team. Mercs. People trained for this sort of thing. Why send scientists to a place like this? Sil typed her report into her tablet, scanning sample cups as she annotated them. “Do you think they knew?”

She didn’t stop or look up from her work. “It doesn’t matter.”

The whine of the electric drive pitched up and down as we traversed the uneven terrain. Verdant mossy boulders lay far enough afield to allow us passage across the dark gray shale that covers most of the ground. “It matters to me. It matters to Colin and the seven who were taken.”

“We’re here, now. If we are still here when they come for us, you can ask them. Right now, it doesn’t matter.” She closed her tablet and stowed the samples, and sat in silence for the remainder of the trip. This is not the woman I married.

***

Sil and I stood in the kitchen area, each in our own heads, doing busy work. I sliced some indigenous root vegetables we decided to name Beetato. Seasoning came from here, too. Salt derived from dehydrated pond water and herbs growing near the patch of land our habitats sat on. We’d heard what we assumed were insects, but in all this time, never seen one. No birds or other animals, either. It was either the powdered meals we came with or local flora.

Jansem and Korin ran tests on anything we hoped was edible as soon as we arrived. About seventy percent of things were safe to eat. Of those, only about ten percent were palatable. Krieg argued that there must be pollinating insects and larger animals, or the diversity of plant life couldn’t survive. No one disagreed with that logic, but we also found no empirical evidence to support it.

A loud bang at the door broke my trance. Jokingly I said, “I wonder who that could be.”

Sil looked like she wanted to laugh, but some subtle, suppressed expression of fear presented instead. “Remember what I said.”

I gave a dejected nod. “Don’t worry.” I spoke the words, but I knew once the suns set, she wouldn’t be able to anyway.

Colin pounded again before I got to the door. I slid the small porthole open.

His face was red, his brow sweaty. “Did you talk to her?”

“I did.”

“And?” He was nervous. He kept checking over his shoulders as if he were being hunted.

But, of course, it was much too early for that.

“She doesn’t think it's a good idea for us to all be in one place.” The words came out as I promised they would, but my vestigial humanity whinged at the sound of my own apathy.

“Jesus Christ, Dante, what does that even mean?” He slicked his hair back as he paced in circles.

Was it sweat or the constant dewy air? I was reminded of Juneau. Cold, wet, gray. “If it comes for us, you’re better off alone.” I could have said that the other way, but why be cruel? He’s going to know what I meant regardless of how I say it.

Colin stopped pacing and stuck his face as close as he dared. “Fuck you, and fuck her too. There are three of us left and three days left. Do you think that’s a coincidence, man? Are you stupid?” He looked out at the long shadows as sun number one settled in below the valley wall. “Do you think they sent us here to dig up mushrooms?”

My mind bounced back to my earlier thoughts. “Do you think a scouting party would have discovered the—”

“Scout party?” He looked away at the setting suns. “What makes you think we’re not the scouting party?”

I hear the question. My mind fumbled the concept as I fought to focus on any modicum of care as to the answer I might give. The second sun dipped, and the aurora streamed across the clearing sky and my frontal cortex. “You should go back to your habitat, Colin. Have a good night.”

His features relaxed, as did his shoulders. He looked me in the eye and mumbled, “We’re not the scouting party. We’re something worse.”

***

When the second sun broke through the clouds and woke me, I reached a lazy-morning arm toward her side of the bed and found it cold. Sil was already gone. I sniffed the air for coffee. No coffee. The foggy haze of comfort retreated, and just enough panic insinuated its way in its stead. “Sil?”

No response. No sound of a running shower. Nothing. I called out again as I pulled up my pants. The kitchen was empty, as we left it the night before. The cutting board was stained by the red beetatoes. The knife lay beside it. I felt cold air blow on my bare chest.

The front door was wide open. As the other habitats had been after.

No.

I rushed to the door and yelled for her, “Sil!”

I could hear Colin in my head. I told you so. I warned you. We’re something worse. I walked toward his habitat. Through the center. Past the fuel cell. Around the second rover.

No.

Colin’s door was open, too. I called out for him. No reply. I knew better, but I called for Sil, for Colin repeatedly. Why would it take two? It had only ever taken one at a time. It left us be for ten days before it started culling. One sacrifice each night after that. Maybe it knew about the effects of the aurora? Giving it time to dull our senses.

Why change now? Three days and three team members. As long as the transport ship returned during the daylight on the last day, at least one of us would survive. How could it know? I just assumed it would come and take me on the last night. Take me and be sated. Take me and let Sil head home to raise the peanut-sized human in her belly.

No one answered. I was alone. Alone on an alien planet fifty light-years from home. A beautiful, deadly planet. It wasn’t supposed to be like this. It will come for me tonight, and that will be the end of it. My brain tells me I should be scared. I should be panicked. I should run and hide or arm myself and find a way to stay awake. But I just don’t care. It’s worse than apathy. The will, the motivation to save myself is suppressed by the aurora. The effects dissipate less and less every day. I think today is the zenith of that curve. Maybe. It doesn’t really matter. Should I journal this? So that any future visitors know not to come. Maybe later. Maybe.

I busied myself with work. Digging, scraping. I plunged my hand again and again into the mycelium network beneath the fertile topsoil. I couldn’t really make sense of why I kept at it. I only knew I’d go mad if I sat idly and waited for the inevitable.

The sky rumbled with anger behind me. When I turned to look, I found only darkness and those red, sharp fingers of lightning stretching across the sky. Searching in blindness for something to kill. Maybe everything on this planet wants to kill everything else. Maybe only us uninvited visitors. We didn’t belong here. Don’t belong anywhere. “Go home,” it says, now in not-so-subtle ways.

“I hear you,” I yelled, “I want me to go home, too.” The only rebuttal to my claim was more thunderclaps. I checked my watch. Time to head back already. I’ve started losing time, too. At least, I think I was. I think about Sil. She was so sure we shouldn’t be with Colin when the night came and the monster with it. I guess it didn’t matter. How could I sleep through that? Something came and took my wife. Just plucked her out of the bed next to me, and I felt nothing.

A battle waged within my mind between the hypnotic overlay of apathy that’s been applied coat after coat each night like varnish on a bare wooden table and the logical reasoning of a well-trained human brain that knows he should be screaming mad by now. Whatever was happening, it dulled my senses enough to offer no resistance but not so much I couldn’t suffer its attacks.

Thunder loomed closer. “Ok, I get it. Time to head back,” I mumbled to myself. “I wouldn’t want to be late for my death.” At least sarcasm was still functional. If only sarcasm could save me from this impending fate.

I should be scared. I just wasn’t. Is that kindness? A predator that torpefies your fears before it devours you? Should I be grateful for the mercy? The rover stirred to life as the raindrops plummeted in large blobs across the windscreen. “Hab-3,” I commanded, letting the auto drive deliver me to the settlement. I was cataloging the day’s fungi samples when I saw it; Some stray mycelium peeking out from beneath my cuff. I felt unsteady as I rolled back the sleeve. This alien fungus snaked its way from my wrist as far up as I could see. “Increase speed, emergency priority one.” The rover beeped acknowledgment of the command and took action. I wasn’t sure if the dizziness was from the mycelial tendrils on my flesh or the uncertainty of how it came to be there. Was I really that careless in the soil? So far, none of the fungus has adversely affected Sil or me.

So far.

The rover slid to a stop near our habitat. I reached for the lever to open the door, and the fungus grew around my fingers and held me in place. Panic managed to override the dullness in my head, and adrenaline coursed my inflicted body.

Pull, damn you. Get this shit off of you. Get inside.

The first of the two suns had already gone blow the valley walls. The second sun was following with speedy intent. I dug around in my chest pocket for a scalpel. The safety cap came off with bare teeth. “Last chance,” I warned as if the fungus could understand my ultimatum.

I felt the creature tightening around my forearm and wrist, working to keep me hostage inside the rover. The scalpel sliced through the enemy as I had hoped, but the tendrils kept regrowing and seemed to anticipate my actions. I didn’t have time for that. One last volley of cuts in concert with quick pulls finally rendered me free of the rover. I ran to our habitat and used my untainted hand to gain entry.

How long had this mycelium been on my skin? All day? Every day? I was being dragged deeper into the fog, and the more I tried to process my environment, the harder it became.

“Dante?”

I heard my name spoken from behind me. I knew the voice. “Sil?” I turned to face the voice.

“Come on now. It’s time.” Her outstretched hands beckoned me toward her, toward the bed.

Instinctively, I disrobed. This dominant fungus covered much of my body, like a suit of armor. I felt invincible within its cocoon. Was that the plan all along? Cloud our minds, slowly, day after day, until the mycelium had infected our flesh. I walked toward Sil, but it wasn’t me any longer. I was just a passenger in my own body. Sil slipped her robe off as I approached. Her flesh was crawling with thin web-like fungi, too. It writhed and undulated in increasing pulsations as my body approached hers. When I was close enough, red spiky fingers reached from each of us until they were one. A bridge had formed between us, then another, and another. Soon we were one solid mass. There was no longer a Dante and a Sil. Just one amorphous, dull, passive thing. I could no longer discern the end of me and the beginning of her. The end of me and the creature that intertwined us.

The habitat melted away. This trippy Peter Max meets Salvadore Dali dissolve neither shocked nor surprised me. It simply was as it should be. The ground called to us.

We were pulled into the loose rooty soil and laid supine. It was darker than it should be. Faster than it should be.

Night had come.

I had become aware of losing time as I was losing it. This suppressed, detached, peaceful anxiety was an emotion I was sure no one had ever felt before. I was dying. I was dying, and I welcomed it. Wanted it. Needed it. That last moment before you succumb to anesthesia. That fight you pretend you put up. The dark that washes down with its hot loving embrace. A million gentle ants that don’t make you itchy. The final prey. I surrendered.

***

“Dad? Are you with me, Dad?” Jade nudged my shoulder and pulled me back to the present.

“Yeah, sorry, I…”

“It’s ok, I understand. Do you want to take a break?” Her soft, thoughtful voice eased my indifferent tension.

“No, we can go on with, uh, what were we doing?” I had only begun to revisit the present. The past’s hold was strong and tugged at my consciousness.

“Cognitive Reclamation Assessment. Same exercise we’ve been doing for years.” She didn’t speak with a shadow of resentment or frustration, but I knew it had to lie somewhere.

“Years?” I remembered the tests. And Jade. But how long? I couldn’t say.

“Yes, Dad, G15-V was thirty years ago.”

Hearing that stirred me. I felt my eyes start to water. “The others. Sil. It took your mother.”

Jade held my hands and looked into my eyes. “Concentrate. Think it through. I wouldn’t be here if you and Mom died on Kinestra, would I?”

Some gray memories churned as dormant neurons fired. “No, of course not.” I smiled as the tears crested the damming eyelids.

“The G15-V mycelial network hijacked your brain on your tenth day in the field. It fed you a hallucinatory virtual reality and kept you in a vegetative state the entire time you were there.”

“What about the monster? The thing that was taking the team?”

“It was all in your head, Dad. There was no indigenous creature hunting your team.”

Details started to come back to me. Memories of waking back at Callisto station. Seeing doctors smiling at me, men in uniforms smiling. It was strange, those smiles. What is a smile? What is it for? The emotions came back slowly, or sometimes not at all. “I’m still infected, aren’t I?”

“Yes. That’s why we’re here.” Jade moved to the side, and I saw a verdant planet below through a large window.

“Kinestra?” My voice quavered with fear. That emotion I had regained a grasp of.

“Specialists have tried every day to free you from the mycelial cordyceps fungus, the MCF, with minimal results. We think the fungus in your brain is sentient. We believe that if we bring it home, it will leave your body voluntarily.”

A moment of clarity struck me as I asked, “Who funded this trip back to G15-V?”

Jade averted her eyes. It was plain that was not a question she wanted to answer. I looked around the room we occupied. This was not a private charter. “This is a military ship.”

“Yes. There was no other way,” she said sheepishly.

I shook my head. I had coalesced into a functional version of myself. “Why would the military fly us fifty-eight light years from Earth to clean my brain of an alien fungus?”

“Dad, listen to me…”

“No, you listen to me. You listen while I am still lucid. I don’t know how long this will last. They’ll want to weaponize this fungus. That’s all they ever did with any discoveries we made. Your mother and I were out of options. We wanted to have you. A family. We had to do what they asked of us. But, listen, your mother made it out. I made it out. The others are all fine and healthy, right? That’s what you told me. You can’t let the military subject anyone else to what I’ve been through. You have to stop this. You stop it, or I will.”

An announcement came over the PA. “Entering low orbit of G15-V. Landing party, please report to RDAV for sortie.”

“No one is stopping anything. We’re way past that now. You’ll just have to trust me.” She stood and walked away.

I looked out the window and let my mind go blank. I think it was me, anyway.

***

A tall man in uniform called Jade into a small office. “Are we going to have a problem again this time?” The man took a seat behind a desk.

“No, I have him under control.” Jade sat too.

“I lost fifteen men last time,” he stated stoically.

“I’ve taken as much blame for that as I intend to. Your men were warned about triggers.”

He pursed his lips and acquiesced. “So, you’re confident he doesn’t know?”

“It’s like I keep putting in my after-action reports; he has no direct memories of what actually happened on G15-V. As long as we control the narrative, we can continue to harvest the MCF.”

“And what happens if he does remember?”

“Remember what? That he was the monster? That the MCF took control of him, and he slaughtered the whole team, including his pregnant wife? What if he figures out I’m not his daughter? Or do you mean, what if he remembers that’s exactly why you sent those exobiologists to G15-V?”

“Any of it. All of it.”

“Then we put him down, find a new host, and start this harvest all over again.” Jade spoke in cold absolutes.

The tall man’s eyebrows shot skyward as he slid his chair back against the bulkhead. Jade turned quickly to see what had startled him. There, in the doorway, stood Dante or what was left of him. The size of a man but made entirely of slithering fungal growths, red spiny vines, moving so much faster than ever before, latched onto Jade’s face and infected her brain. She reached out and collected the tall man just as quickly.

They had become a singularity of sorts. One hive mind existing in every cell of the MCF. It made its way through that ship, room by room, floor by floor, infecting everyone it encountered. Either adding them to the collective or killing them outright.

They should have quit when only fifteen had died.

***

When the sortie landed, Dante, Jade, and the tall man exited. Like salmon or turtles returning to their birthplace, the MCF landed them directly over the heart of the network. The three stood in a circle and let their essences merge into one cohesive entity. The ground soil boiled with writhing hoop snake-like roots and welcomed them back.

As the dirt reached Dante’s neck, he witnessed the Mothership burning up in the atmosphere. Darkness closed in, and for a brief moment, Dante smelled fresh Kinestrian coffee brewing and heard the familiar sound of their habitat shower.