Chapter Four

I WAITED UNTIL the numbers started to tick upward on Caspersen’s charts and then left her quarters. There were about a dozen more units on either side of the hall, presumably all still containing frozen crew members. I had to wake them all. And it probably wouldn’t hurt to do a little reconnaissance while waiting for the process to finish.

The contrast in Kepler-186f’s oxygen levels with earth levels hit me again as I stepped from the sealed unit into the open passage. Damn. This is going to be hard to get used to. I was huffing and puffing just making my way up the hall toward the next chambers—Russell and Cohen.

Russell looked the part of a grizzled, square-jawed former soldier; he was built like a bull and looked meaner than hell even in the deep freeze. Cohen, by contrast, looked like a kid barely out of training. His baby face and dark hair were the sort of thing that made some girls swoon. No one would have guessed, looking at him, that he was a trained killer. While I hadn’t had the opportunity of working with either beyond training, I knew them by reputation. And both were exceptional.

Russell had been in and out of so many scrapes with death that they called him Ghoul; no man of flesh and blood, they said, could have his luck. And Cohen had been one of the youngest to make Ranger in history, and he’d already received more commendations in his short career than most people achieved in a lifetime.

Their resuscitation processes kicked off without issue, and I moved on. They were the last of the special forces in the area. Everyone else from here on was either a scientist or a researcher. Everyone except Matt Law, that was.

The Genesis II passengers had been chosen for what they could bring to the mission: military expertise, scientific acumen, and in some cases, a pioneer’s personality and ability. But sometimes, it had just been about money. Law was young and reasonably fit, and that might have played some role in his selection. But mostly, it was the last-minute infusion of cash that his billionaire father had pumped into the project. He’d put most of his fortune toward it, if the rumors were true.

Then again, it was just money. The government needed it to get the Genesis II off the ground, so it bought his son a chance. A chance in hell, maybe, but a chance.

And that was more than the rest of his family had had when all that money had been safely tucked in this account or that investment. Matthew Law, Sr. probably never saw it coming. Few had then, and those who did thought their money would insulate them.

It turned out, though, that nature didn’t give a damn about the size of your yacht or the number of your offshore accounts. Rising sea levels swallowed up the coastal mansions as readily as the little towns that no one cared about. The billionaires disappeared along with the common men as earthquakes ripped cities asunder. Melting ice exposed long-buried volcanoes, rising temperatures brought new and more terrible storms, and disease and famine followed each new catastrophe.

We had spent the decade before at war. Maybe we’d been too busy killing one another to really think about what happened when we killed our planet too. Or maybe we believed on some level that we were above facing the consequences of our actions. Maybe we’d relied too long on the idea that some Invisible Hand would swoop down to save us from danger.

It never came. Instead, we got death on a scale previously unknown. The war was but a preview of what Earth had in store for us. And by time we realized we’d made our home inhabitable, that the doomsaying scientists had been right all along, we had frittered away so many of the resources we’d destroyed ourselves to attain, that we were hardly able to get off the ground at all.

The Genesis mission was humanity’s second chance, our Hail Mary play. Six hundred human beings, with the fortitude and skill to face the challenges that we imagined would be waiting, jettisoned into the void, toward the planet that promised to be the most hospitable. Six hundred, less the Matt Laws—they were the passengers who let their wallets or, in Matt’s case, their parents’ wallets, do the talking. Not their ability, not what they’d bring to the future of humanity. Just cash.

It struck me as particularly galling as I stared at Law’s features, frozen in peaceful repose. I was surrounded by the wreckage of humanity’s efforts, perhaps surrounded by the last vestiges of humanity within hundreds of light-years—or maybe at all. And instead of a worthy pioneer, someone up to the challenge of settling a new planet, there lay a smug kid who had never earned a thing in his life, much less admission to this elite crew.

Some things never change. I slapped the controls and waited until I saw his vitals monitor flicker on. Then I crossed the hall, toward Dr. Ellis’s room. Kayleigh Ellis was a researcher with an alphabet’s worth of letters following her name, each denoting a degree or certification she’d acquired. She was a top scientist and a respected voice in more branches of science than I could name, and she couldn’t have been more than thirty or thirty-five. I didn’t know much more about her than that.

The machinery hummed to life at my touch, and I waited for the countdown to begin. The numbers popped up on a screen, and I moved toward the door.

And then a shadow passed over us. I froze. The reddish glow that had illuminated the room had gone dark.

In a moment, the shadow left, and the red hue returned. But I had no doubt about what I’d seen. Something, something large, had cast a pall over the ship. What it was, I didn’t know. But it had been big enough to obscure all the windows in Ellis’s room.

A plane? Another ship? One of the shuttles?

Genesis II had left the space dock with a number of shuttles onboard. Had the hanger survived whatever had demolished our part of the ship?

The wild hope that Earth had sent a second mission after us crossed my mind, although I knew it was a long shot. But maybe…maybe they had been able to muster a second launch?

Or… Other options started to crowd my mind—darker options. What if it’s a Kepler craft? We had assumed the planet was uninhabited since we’d been unable to detect traces of life. But our scientists were five hundred light-years away. There was a lot that could be missed over that distance. What if the Genesis II had been spotted entering the atmosphere, and this was some manner of craft come to search for us? Would they be friendly, or hostile? And what manner of creature could be out there? In my mind, I envisioned a humanoid…but my knowledge of the planet’s atmosphere was limited, and my understanding of Kepler’s ecosystems—if they existed—even more so. It seemed plausible that the evolution of life might follow a similar path to what we witnessed on Earth, in the right set of circumstances…but I’d emerged from the Genesis II to find a seemingly barren planet. I couldn’t begin to guess what lay beyond this mountain or what circumstances had guided the process of life on Kepler-186f.

The same ice that coated the rest of the craft covered the windows of Dr. Ellis’s quarters, and I could see nothing of the sky outside. So, in that moment of curiosity, I made what was quite possibly the worst call of my life. I decided to investigate.

I left Dr. Ellis to her cryochamber and hurried to the end of the hall. My breathing was choppy when I reached the opening. I peeked outside, cautiously, and looked around. Nothing.

I crawled out, keeping low by the wreck. But for the dim red of Kepler’s sun, the sky looked exactly as it had when I’d reentered the ship: clear and cloudless. I saw no hint of a plane, shuttle, or anything that might blot out the sun.

I crept up the side of the mountain, staying as near the Genesis II as I could for cover. Something had passed by the ship; something had cast that shadow. I needed to gain a vantage point, some way to see beyond the mountainside, to figure out what that something was. Desperate eagerness and a vague hope fueled me.

Still, I hadn’t succumbed entirely to the madness of the moment. Some better sense warned to proceed with caution, so when I ran the length of the ship, I still stuck to cover. Skulking from rocky outcropping to shadowy crag, I made my way farther up the mountain.

The going was not easy. Ice slicked the rock in places; climbing took time. Time and energy. The more I exerted myself, the harder I fought to breathe. I had trained in mountain terrain on Earth and defended high-altitude positions. But the constant, burning need for oxygen dwarfed my worst experiences back home. Five minutes in, I was already exhausted and trembling. My breaths came in ragged gasps, and my heart hammered against my sternum as if to shatter it.

I stopped to recover, leaning heavily against an oddly green rock, wondering what the hell I’d been thinking to ever take this gig. This low oxygen is going to get old fast. For a few minutes, I forced myself to take controlled, steady breaths. Then, I looked around. The ship perched below me, the burgundy sky loomed above, with nothing but stone in every other direction.

I was about to set off a second time when the shadow passed overhead again. I darted for the nearest cover, catching only a glimpse of the Thing as it glided past. And that was sufficient to strike a sort of terror, hitherto unparalleled, in my heart.

The Thing was unlike any beast or machine I had seen. It had great wings of quasi-transparent material, through which a little light seeped, and a squat, solid center, from which the wings sprouted and through which no light passed. If this contraption was mechanical in origin, it struck me it must be controlled remotely or operated by tiny creatures. The center—presumably, the cockpit, if it was an aircraft—was twice as tall and at least twice as broad as a human.

But I had the sense that it was a biological entity. I couldn’t have explained why. I had no clear reason, just an impression. It might have been that its motions seemed lifelike, or that I caught some other clue to its organic origins.

Regardless, in the moment, I was sufficiently convinced of how foolish I’d been in abandoning the safety of my ship and interrupting the work of resuscitating my fellow passengers to chase airborne monsters.

I had the idea I should return to the ship and complete my duty there forthwith. The skies were once again empty. The creature, whatever it was, had gone somewhere beyond my field of view. I waited a few uneventful minutes before deciding to take my chances. I would make a break for the Genesis II.

Scrambling down the rockface, I stayed as near the mountainside as possible. I had no desire to draw additional attention to myself.

A good plan, but with my eyes glued to the sky rather than my path, the execution left something to be desired. I barely made it two minutes before I hit an icy patch of mountainside. And half a moment later, I pitched down a steep incline.

My elbows and back in particular seemed drawn to every outcropping of rock along the way, although the rest of my body took a handy beating in the process too. In what was nothing short of a miracle, my head avoided all but minor brushes with the rocks lining my way down.

Still, when I finally came to rest some twenty-five feet below the miserable spot of ice that had started my rapid descent, pain blinded me. Literally. For a moment, I saw nothing but white light and felt nothing but pain. Then, I noted the hot trickle of blood on my face and brushed it away as it seeped into my right eye.

I winced as my fingers found a nasty gash above the eye. Still, I needed to get to cover. If we had any medical staff left, they could take care of my ample cuts. But getting to safety had to be my top priority.

I pushed to my feet with an effort. Another wash of pain flooded my senses, and when it let up, I threw a glance around. I saw nothing overhead. I might be a dumbass, but it seemed I was a lucky one. The creature, if it had been a creature, apparently missed my painful crash course on Kepler-186f’s gravitational forces.

And, on the plus side, I am that much closer to the Genesis.

I hobbled toward the ship, tilting my head to keep the blood out of my eyes. I’m going to need bandages. I wasn’t far now. In a few minutes—

My mind froze as the shadow returned. It was bigger now—much bigger—and it came with the sound of wind. Which meant only one thing: the creature was nearer. My conscious thoughts might have been arrested, but the soldier’s instinct kicked in. I spun around, at the same time pulling Death from its holster.

And there I was, face to face with a thing straight out of nightmares. It had a wingspan of some twenty feet, and an audible gust of wind accompanied each beat of its leathery wings. Thick ropes of sinew stretched along the wings, flexing with every movement. The body was a squat, shapeless mass covered in coarse fur. Though indiscernible in proportion and shape from the rest of the mass, the anterior end seemed to serve as a head. It bore three enormous blackish discs and a mouthlike orifice from which protruded a set of chelicerae that terminated in elongated, dark fangs. The fangs were positioned horizontally on either side of the mouth and curled toward it. But as the beast came in, they drew back as if readying for the strike.

The creature was certainly strange to me, but the pose was not. When one spent a lifetime doling out death on command, recognizing the intent to kill became second nature. Even with an alien monstrosity like this, as I stared into that gaping maw, the situation was obvious. One or the other of us wasn’t likely to outlast the encounter.

I whipped my pistol upward, planting one shot mid-torso and the other in the head area. I saw a jolt run through it and then another, but it continued on its course.

The winged terror had almost reached me. I dove to the side, firing a third shot. The move took me out of reach of the Thing’s fangs but not its wings. A crashing force of prickly hair and slick leather bowled me over.

The hairs on my neck stood up, and terror crept into my soul as the creature unfurled a set of stubby legs that ended in massive talons. I hadn’t seen them before; they must have been tucked up against the shapeless blob of its body. But it wasn’t the talons that worried me as much as the fact that it stood at all. I had planted three .45s in this grotesque son of a bitch, and it hadn’t even fazed it. Hell, I hadn’t even seen it register pain. Instead, it stood there silently, fangs parting for another go at me.

I loosed a scream of preternatural fear, emptying my magazine into the Thing. In that moment, I was no more rational or sane than my prehistoric ancestors who’d trembled behind their painted cave walls at the sound and sight of thunder and lightning—a sky raging with violence that would have seemed unfathomable to them at the time. That fear of unknown terrors, so long buried by our species in the light of knowledge and rationality, was as real to me in that moment as it had ever been.

I didn’t see the movement of a wing rushing toward me. I’d been too wrapped up in shooting and screaming. But I felt. God, I felt it. A whiplike sinew slashed my face and shoulder with so much force it threw me to the ground. I blinked upward at the red sky, almost insensible for a long moment.

Then I saw it approach, and I went to swap out my empty magazine, but somehow, I’d lost the gun. I tried to get up, to search for it, but my head throbbed, and movement sent a wave of nausea over me. I collapsed back to the rock beneath me, calling feebly, “Help. Somebody.”

It was ridiculous, of course. I was alone. I knew that. My companions were in their cryochambers, half of them still in deep freeze and the rest hours away from consciousness. I was my only hope against this monster. And I had failed—myself and them.

A stink of decay—the only odor I had detected so far on Kepler-186f—hit me. The creature hovered above me now, its monstrous fangs drawing back to reveal a tubular mouth.

I tried to pull away, crawling backward. But a piercing agony split my sides and put an end to my squirming. The Thing had its fangs in me, and suddenly, a burning sensation reached my ribs like liquid fire pouring straight from its chelicerae and into me.

In a moment, the pain ended. My breathing slowed, and the world went dark. My last memory was of vague terror and the rhythmic beating of wings.