Chapter Eleven

IT HAD BEEN an ugly affair, but in the end, Caspersen accomplished what none of us had thought possible. She convinced the professor to share some of his precious knowledge with the lieutenant. And somehow, Granges made it through the hours of condescension without strangling the professor. It was a display of extraordinary willpower, on all sides.

I stayed up for the festivities because, well, who wouldn’t? But shortly after that wrapped up, I turned in. Sleep didn’t come right away. Despite the long hours of rest lately, my body felt like it would welcome another long sleep. My mind, by contrast, buzzed with energy. I was torn between hope and fear, filled with wonder at the sheer uncertainty of our current position, and worried about what would happen on our new world, and what had happened on our old. I wracked my brain with scenario after scenario of our entry into the atmosphere and what had befallen the ship and her crew. I imagined what might be out there in the world beyond. I envisioned vibrant civilizations we might wake up to find, and imagined a hundred types of chaos we might find instead. I thought of Earth, my home, and wondered how the rest of humanity had fared. Had they figured out how to stabilize our home world before it killed them all? Did they rebuild, smarter and better than before? Did they survive at all? Every time I tried to quiet my thoughts, every time I managed to put one possibility to rest, another popped up.

I didn’t slip into sleep until nearly dawn, and it wasn’t a clean, deep sleep either. My mind kept churning away, now full of muddled scenarios and confused musings. Questions kept playing out in my mind, but the answers made less sense than before.

And then, very abruptly, it came to an end as a cracking sound split the air—a sound all too familiar to a soldier. Gunfire.

I was on my feet, Death in hand, after the first shot. A split second later, a second and then a third followed. They sounded near the ship but definitely outside it. I raced for the exterior.

Caspersen and Cohen got there first, and Russell and I made it out at about the same time. Somewhere in the back of my mind, it registered that he had a sidearm—and not only Russell, but all the rest of the military personnel as well. This wouldn’t have been noteworthy except that the armory was with the rest of the Genesis—missing—and regulations had prohibited individual possession of weapons on board the ship. Apparently, I hadn’t been the only one to take issue with that particular rule.

And in the moment, unsure of what awaited in the night beyond, I was exceedingly glad of it—although I was admittedly less so when the professor broke onto the scene a moment later, a .45 like my own clasped tightly in his trembling hands.

As it happened, we were on edge unnecessarily. A clear voice cut through the night, calling, “Stand down.”

“Connor?” Caspersen answered.

“Yes, ma’am.” Her voice carried from the direction of the latrine.

“What the hell’s going on? You okay?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

I think we all breathed a sigh of relief as her lanky form, bathed in silvery moonlight, stepped into sight.

She was grinning sheepishly. “Just a little…pest control.”

“Pest control?”

“Some sort of creature. Small, like a dog. But hairless, and slimy. Shaped like a rat…but much bigger.”

“It wasn’t a Thing?” I wondered.

“A what? You mean, the winged thing that took you? No.”

“Did it attack you?” This was Caspersen again.

Connor shook her head. “I don’t think so.”

“You don’t think so?”

“It damn near bowled me over, but…I don’t think it was attacking me. I think it might have been bolting.”

“Did you shoot it?” Dr. Ellis, who had emerged sometime after I had, wondered.

Connor’s red hair bobbed up and down, indicating a pretty definite yes. “After what happened to Johnson? You better believe I wasn’t taking any chances.”

“Did you kill it?”

She snorted. “If I shoot something, it’s dead.”

Kayleigh seemed almost excited as she said, “Can I see it?”

It didn’t seem to be the reaction Connor was expecting, and it certainly wasn’t the one I was anticipating.

Connor shrugged. “Sure. It’s down this way.”

Kayleigh moved to follow her, but Caspersen stepped forward. “Let us check it out first,” she cautioned. “Just in case.”

“Of course.”

“Johnson, Cohen, with me. Russell and Granges, stay with the civvies, just in case. Connor, show us the way.” Caspersen glanced behind her at the professor, who was shivering visibly, whether from cold or fear I couldn’t say. “And Carter? Put that damned gun down before you kill someone.”

With that, we headed down the path and the familiar trek toward the latrines.

Connor explained, “I was going back to the ship when something jumped out—from over there.” She pointed to a dark patch of gravel and rock. “Collided with me. I thought it was coming at me, but after the first shot…” She frowned. “I think it was trying to get away from me. But I had already wounded it, and…I didn’t want to take any chances. There.”

She pointed to a dark form, slumped out in the moonlight. Her description, peculiar as it had been, turned out to be fairly accurate. The creature looked like a hairless rat, if rats grew to be about the size of an average Labrador retriever. And judging by the reflection of its skin in the moonlight, I gathered it probably was slimy as she’d observed. I was content to take her word on it, rather than investigating for myself.

Caspersen seemed to have other ideas. Gun at the ready, she walked up to the slick form and prodded it with her foot. The folds of shimmering flesh absorbed the pressure, but other than the ensuing jiggle in the area, it didn’t move. Once she’d contented herself that the creature was dead, she surveyed the area. “Were there any others?”

“Not that I could see.”

Caspersen nodded. “All right. Dr. Ellis can come down. And anyone else who is interested. Johnson, will you get them?”

I nodded and headed back. Kayleigh waited for me at the edge of the group. I could see the gleam in her eyes as soon as I rounded the bend in the path.

“Is it safe?” she asked.

“Yeah,” I said, “it’s right down there.”

She practically sprinted past me, clearing the rocks along the way and flying over the gravel underfoot with an eager athleticism that matched her demeanor.

“Umm…anyone else wanna see it?” I asked over the crunching of her footfalls on the path.

More than a dozen hands reached into the air. Along with the Marines and Rangers, and the professor and Dr. Kim, the rest of the crew had assembled and was waiting. Dr. Verner, our resident astrophysicist; Wu, a biologist with an emphasis in evolutionary biology; Patel, Evans, and Robinson, the geologists; and Lee, Rodgers, and Madison, our engineers. Even Law’s hand was raised. It was the second time I’d seen them all together—and, unlike when we’d assembled for the professor’s meeting, they were actually excited this time. Everyone wanted to see Connor’s kill.

I wondered at that, at how someone, much less all of them, could be eager to view that great hairless slug. But this is the first life-form they’ve seen on Kepler. I had already encountered the Thing, and while it had quite cured my own enthusiasm, they’d yet to discover the beasts that inhabited this place.

So I led them to the spot, where Dr. Ellis leaned over the corpse, remarking on its curious form. The scientists hurried forward as of one impulse, with all the hushed eagerness of children waiting for Christmas morning. Even the professor was oddly quiet.

It unnerved me a little. My own reaction had been something like what I supposed prompted Connor to pull the trigger: mortification. But they were thrilled, exclaiming in the same curious way as Kayleigh.

Different strokes, different folks, my mind kicked in. I might have been thinking in cliches but at least I wasn’t still talking to myself in the third person.

Not that improvement did me much good in the short term. All it meant was that Kayleigh cleared me to work, and Caspersen assigned me protection detail for the scientists. Which sounded boring and turned out worse. Protection detail was never much to write home about, but when the mission entailed trailing a bunch of science geeks as they ogled every oddity, monstrosity, or other feature of a new world? Hell on Earth. Or, Kepler-186f, I guessed.

That day’s suffering didn’t last too long though. After about half an hour, Caspersen stepped in to relieve me. “You might as well head back to the ship, Johnson. Not much going on out here.”

I didn’t argue. It wasn’t that I was looking to shirk my responsibilities, exactly, but sleep did sound significantly better than wasting the last hours of night standing guard over a slimy corpse and morbidly fascinated scientists. So, I returned to the ship and wound up sleeping soundly until sunup.

I woke to find that things had changed somewhat during my rest. The professor, Connor, and Ghoul had already set out. Kayleigh and Dr. Wu, meanwhile, had turned my old room into a sort of lab. They’d cleared away the rubble, blocked off the broken window, and managed to get the door open. At the moment, they were inside, hovering over what looked like a dissection table.

I made the mistake, as I walked down the hall, of pausing to do a double take. My eyes confirmed my initial suspicion. The room had indeed become a lab, and both Wu and Kayleigh were busily exploring the entrails of Connor’s kill.

I moved on, a quicker step to my pace. I’d spent the better part of these last fifteen years flirting with death—either delivering it or avoiding it as my country demanded. And yet I wouldn’t be caught rummaging through something’s guts if my life depended on it. But these civilians, who had probably never shed a drop of blood in their lives, seemed not to blink at the thought of dissection. Different strokes, my mind offered up again.

Thus musing, I ducked out of the ship and almost collided with Dr. Kimutai, who had been about to duck inside.

“Captain Johnson, pardon me.”

“My fault,” I acknowledged. “Sorry.” I stepped out of his way, but he held up his hands.

“Actually, Captain, it’s you I was coming to see.”

“Me?”

He nodded. “Is now a good time to talk? Or are you otherwise occupied?” He glanced significantly down the trail in the direction of our makeshift latrines.

It was a good point as it had been half a day since nature last called. “If you don’t mind…?”

“No, please.” He gestured. “I will wait.”

I made my way down the familiar trail, my boots sinking here and there into the gray-green crushed rock underfoot, but mostly, the going was smooth. In a minute, I reached the spot of the night’s gruesome excitement. I could see exactly where the creature had fallen thanks to a residual blackish stain.

But as I neared the spot, I saw that it wasn’t truly black, but more of a green. Not any sort of green seen naturally on earth—not a deep forest green or an airy spring green. This was another color altogether, so deep, so dark as to be almost black. Almost, but not quite.

Despite myself, I knelt to examine it. I found my thoughts wandering back to the Thing and the great puddle of blood I’d stepped in on its ledge. It’d been very nearly the same color, hadn’t it? Lighter. But not by much.

I frowned at the stain, feeling suddenly, on that green rock, under that red sky, very alone and out of place. I wasn’t alone. I could hear the voices of my companions just down the path and up the rise, just out of sight.

And somehow, that was worse. It meant they, mad fools that they were, were stuck here too. I, mad fool that I was, was trapped here, and they were my companions in our self-imposed exile.

In that instant, the enormity of this vast new world, of the unknowns all around us, hit me as it had never done. Before we’d ever left Earth, I’d thought I had come to terms with it all—with the risk, with the change, with the permanence of it.

Crouching in the gravel, trembling from head to toe, I realized I wasn’t so comfortable with matters as I had thought. Somehow, through all of our planning and training and preparation, I seemed to have harbored some notion that Kepler-186f was just another planet Earth. We’d been warned about that, warned about all the unknowns, the questions that our instruments couldn’t answer over the span of five hundred light-years of space.

And yet, here I was. On some level, I knew we’d actually been pretty lucky. We’d arrived on a planet with an atmosphere that could sustain human life; a planet that had liquid water, animal and plant life, and all the building blocks of life; a planet that seemed, from all we could tell, relatively stable. We were incredibly lucky to have made it at all across the void of space and through a death-defying crash.

But this was no Earth. There were no blues here, no earthy browns and greens, no rainbow of colors. There were no songbirds, no butterflies, no man’s best friend. For all I knew, there weren’t many men left at all, never mind dogs.

I felt a weight like lead pressing down on my chest, compressing my lungs until I could barely breathe.

I sank back into the gravel. It seemed to me in that instant I had nothing to hope for and everything to fear. I’d left everything I’d ever known, and all that remained was this place, where even breathing came with an effort, where nothing was familiar. What the fuck have I done?

I sat there for some minutes just breathing. And then the feeling of despair passed, and anger bubbled up inside me to replace it.

Anger at myself for having agreed to this in the first place; anger at mission control for having sent us on this suicide mission; anger at my fellow passengers for the infectious madness that had prompted them to agree; anger at the monsters that inhabited this place for being unfamiliar and loathsome; anger at Kepler’s star for burning red and painting the entire planet in the same damned color.

I stumbled to my feet. I was not a baby, to sit and cry. I was a United States Army Ranger. And if I’m going to die on this damned planet, I’m going to do it on my feet.

I pushed on. Dr. Kimutai was waiting for me. They’ll be sending out a search party soon. Literally. I better—

I stopped short, my eyes resting on the rocks opposite me. There, nestled among the stones at the side of the path, was something that most definitely hadn’t been here yesterday—a strange bundle of greenish material. And not just any kind of green—Kepler green.