Ghost station, p.28
Ghost Station, page 28
As the PMU begins suturing at Ethan’s command, Ophelia retrieves the sample from Birch on her desk.
The PMU has a magnification setting, probably for examining a patient’s injury more closely. But it’ll also work for their purposes.
Once the PMU has finished with Liana’s stitches, Ethan changes the settings and slips the vial of black fluid underneath the central panel for a closer look.
“What is going on?” Suresh asks.
Ethan and Ophelia ignore him, leaning over the panel.
The curved glass of the sample vial distorts the view initially, but once the focus regulates itself, they have a clear look at the black fluid inside. The fluid from Birch’s nose and ears. Except, under magnification, it’s apparent that the liquid is actually clear. It’s just filled, jam-packed even, with tiny black particles, all shiny and identical in shape. Angled at the top, sharp lines down the side.
At the moment, suspended in this fluid, they’re cross-angled and scattered, some stacked into larger formations, others breaking down into barely visible particles.
All that same shiny black, that same familiar shape.
Ethan and Ophelia look up from the PMU to stare out at the crystalline towers jutting from the ground, flickering in and out of visibility in the storm.
An exact match.
27
Kate rubs her forehead. “I don’t understand. You’re saying we’ve got bits of a bloody building in us?” She still looks ashen. But she’s upright and seated in a chair Ethan dragged over from the table in the central hub.
The three of them, Kate, Ethan, and Ophelia, are convened near the airlock door on the A side.
“That’s the assumption we made. That everyone made. That those … structures were part of the city. But has anyone ever documented that?” Ophelia asks. “If someone confirmed it, that wasn’t in any of the files I read.” A fact that makes her feel like she’s staring down at the ground from a dizzying height.
“Are we really trusting Pinnacle’s reports?” Kate asks. “Either they missed something big or they’re lying about it.”
Heat burns up Ophelia’s neck and into her cheeks. Kate’s right. Ophelia has been operating under the assumption that, if anything, Pinnacle might have redacted or elided ugly facts that might have impeded a sale of the rights to Montrose. But this goes far beyond that.
The Bray greed strikes again. She doubts her uncle was directly involved, but he was certainly involved in the higher-level decisions that had landed them in this mess.
His message, followed so closely by her mother’s. Don’t go to that planet.
At the time, Ophelia had interpreted it as her mother’s fear of being exposed, as well as her perpetual fear of what the daughter of Bloody Bledsoe might do next.
But now …
Did her mother know about this planet? Did her uncle? Is that why they were pushing so hard to stop her? Were they trying to save her? Or, more likely, to save themselves, because she might find out what they’d done, lying to Montrose about the deal that landed them this planet.
Ophelia shakes her head. She can’t handle this right now.
“They’re not buildings. I don’t know what they are. The stuff, it changes its appearance, stacking together and then breaking apart as needed. We saw that when we tried to take it out of Liana,” Ethan points out. “It … they seem…”
Alive.
That’s the word no one wants to use. They may not be organic, or organic in the way humans would define it. But they are something.
“It responds to stimuli,” Ophelia says. “The pieces, they move when they want to get away.”
“Yeah, so does an autocar. That doesn’t mean anything.” Kate props her elbows on her knees, resting her head in her hands, her shoulders hunched with pain.
“Are you all right?” Ophelia asks, bending down next to her.
Kate turns her head to give Ophelia a tight smile. “Head hurts. Nothing I can’t handle. I’ve had worse hangovers.”
Ophelia doubts that, but she understands. Kate’s doing what she needs to do to keep herself calm. And if that’s telling herself she’s in control, then that’s fine.
“So we landed on their planet, took chunks of them, and now they’re pissed?” Suresh calls. He’s in the A side corridor, where he can keep an eye on Liana, who’s still unconscious. “Aliens. You’re telling me we’ve got actual aliens inside of us?” His voice rises to a point that sounds more like a screech with the last words.
“We’re not saying that,” Ethan says quickly.
But we’re not not saying that, either. Humans have visited thousands of planets and encountered weird animals, absolutely terrifying insects—as much as human classifications can apply to creatures not from Earth. But no one has ever found anything that indicates another intelligent species. Not one still active, anyway. The Great Filter theory, first posited a couple centuries ago as an answer to the Fermi Paradox, has been accepted as the reigning principle as to why.
As Ophelia understands it, basically all civilizations reach a point, some earlier than others, where they die out or extinguish themselves through violence, depletion of resources, or the inability to prevent natural disasters. Some never even make it to the animals-using-tools step.
But, for that matter, this could also just be tech, so far advanced that it simply looks alive. Probes sent from elsewhere to learn, to absorb.
“I don’t think we can assume anything about motive or purpose,” Ethan adds. “We don’t know what we don’t know.”
“Who fucking cares? We just need it out of us,” Suresh says, raising his voice. “So we can get out of here!”
Suresh has a point. They are not a scientific mission. What matters is doing whatever they can to get off this planet alive.
Ophelia meets Ethan’s gaze. He gives a short nod.
“All right,” Ethan says. “If we assume that—”
“How did it get in?” Kate asks suddenly, staring at something over Ophelia’s head.
“What?” Suresh asks.
“I checked the bio filters,” Kate says, nodding to Ethan. “Nothing. Not even in stasis. We’re sealed in here, and if we brought it in with us—”
“What difference does it make?” Suresh shouts. “I thought we just agreed that—”
“Because even if we figure out how to get this shit out of us, that won’t matter if we can’t keep it out,” Kate shouts back at him. “And if we can’t do that, there’s no fucking point to doing anything!” She winces and holds her head.
Ethan stays quiet for a long moment, then he asks, “Have you checked the samples you took from the city? The towers?” He meets Kate’s gaze steadily.
Oh, shit.
“Pretty sure they’re not actually towers, guys,” Suresh yells. “Fucking aliens.”
Emotions flicker across Kate’s pale face, one after another, so quickly it’s hard to catch them all. Fury, hurt, disbelief, then a flash of fear before a cold hardness settles in. “Are you seriously suggesting that one of us…”
“It’s happened before,” Ethan says evenly.
Her eyes widen, and she darts a look at Ophelia. But whatever she sees on Ophelia’s face isn’t what she’s expecting.
Kate straightens in her chair. “You told her?”
Ethan stays silent.
“Go ahead and screw us over, Commander,” Kate snarls. “We’re never getting hired anywhere after this.”
“Have you checked?” he repeats, unmoved.
“No! Not since Birch thought one was missing.”
Ethan takes that in, then pivots and heads for the C side corridor and the inventory room.
Kate stands. “No. I’ll do it.” She glares at Ethan. “I put the sample unit in the airlock so we’d hear the alarm if anyone went in.”
She pushes past Ophelia and toward the airlock.
Ethan doesn’t look at Ophelia—conflicted, no doubt—but he follows Kate. Ophelia does the same.
The alert blares, just as before, the moment the inner airlock door opens.
Once inside, Kate crosses to the sample containment unit, bends down, and then uses Suresh’s code to unlock the top of the unit. The seal releases with a hiss.
She steps to one side and tips the top rack toward Ophelia and Ethan. “See? All still present and accounted for. Double sealed, and they don’t seem to have moved or been messed with.” She dramatically lifts one vial, then another. “Weights match what we originally noted. Nothing missing.” She snaps the tray back into place and closes the lid.
“Satisfied?” she asks Ethan, but she doesn’t wait for the answer before storming back into the central hub.
“Kate, it doesn’t matter anymore,” he says with a sigh, a step or two after her.
Ophelia trails behind them, thinking. So the exposure didn’t come from those samples.
But then, it didn’t have to, did it?
Random pieces she’s been collecting all along without understanding how they fit together suddenly flow together, creating a cohesive line.
She stops abruptly.
The mess they found in the habs. The personal items left behind. The destruction in the labs, including the built-in sample containment unit in her office.
Only so much of that could be written off as a prank or a petty streak.
“It wasn’t us,” she says aloud, before she realizes it.
“What did you say?” Kate asks.
Ophelia clears her throat. “We didn’t breach quarantine or steal samples.”
“Yes, thank you. I know.” Kate folds her arms over her chest. “Maybe you’ll care to explain that to management so we aren’t arrested, assuming we survive.”
“What’s happening?” Suresh calls. “I can’t hear you.”
“The team before us did,” Ophelia says. “They were infected.”
Ethan and Kate stare at her for a long moment in silence.
Then Kate makes a dismissive noise. “You can’t possibly know—”
“Think about it,” Ophelia says. “The towers—”
“Aliens!” Suresh interrupts.
“—are an obvious point of interest, especially here outside the largest ruins. Pinnacle would have required samples. And we have evidence that something went wrong here. This place was a wreck. Their fancy sample containment unit is smashed, but the lab equipment, the hab, the really expensive things, are fine. And they left personal items behind. Photos, a wedding ring, a molar comm implant! Who would do that?”
“You found a tooth?” Suresh shouts.
“That doesn’t mean—” Ethan begins.
“And I don’t think they put Silly Bird Tattoo Guy, Delacroix, out there and left him. They were intending to come back for him as soon as they were done, just like we are. They were following level five protocol.” Ophelia looks to Ethan. “Just like us.” The body bag would have disintegrated in the conditions, and maybe the flag blew away or they didn’t use one, who knows. But she’s right. She knows she’s right, unfortunately.
“Guys,” Suresh calls.
“In a minute,” Kate shouts back at him, and then focuses on Ophelia. “You’re saying that this happened to the Pinnacle team and, what, they fled and Pinnacle covered it all up? So they could sell the planetary rights?”
The all-too-familiar sensation of gritty humiliation and fury rises up in her. “Turn a loss into a net gain and hurt a competitor? I would say that it would not be out of character,” Ophelia says tightly.
“And Montrose would be only too quick to bite,” Ethan says.
“Making it their problem,” Ophelia finishes. “Our problem.”
“Hey, hello!” Suresh shouts. He’s closer than before. “We have a problem.”
When Ophelia swivels to look, he’s backing out of the A side corridor, hands out in front of him. He stumbles over the threshold, his heel catching and sending him sprawling backward.
Liana steps over the threshold, perfectly, almost onto Suresh as he scrambles out of the way. Her eyes are open this time. But nothing about that offers the hope that she’s getting better. Small portions of the sclera are still visible, but the veins and black spots have gotten larger.
“Oh my God,” Kate whispers.
Liana pivots, heading for the airlock. “Out.” The word is clear enough, and it’s in Liana’s voice, but without any of her warmth or life. It’s flat, robotic sounding, as if something else is tugging on her vocal cords to make the word.
“She wants out, I say we let her,” Suresh says, picking himself up off the floor.
“Suresh,” Ethan says sharply.
“Not by herself!” He moves to join them, watching Liana disappear into the airlock through the inner door they left open. She can’t open the outer door with the inner door still open, so she can’t leave. “But, like, what if this is what they’re pissed about? You know, we stole their shit, abducted their mothers or fathers or cousins or whatever that junk is.” He flings a hand toward the airlock, and presumably toward the samples in the containment unit. “So let’s give it back to them. Maybe then they’ll leave us alone.”
A dull thud echoes from the airlock. Then another, with the slap of flesh accompanying it.
Ophelia flinches. Liana’s pounding her fists against the outer door.
“The storm—” Kate says.
“Is bad enough to keep us from taking off, I guess.” Suresh sends a sidelong look at Ethan. “But we can see those fucking aliens from here. I say we go.”
Ethan stays quiet. And Ophelia knows him well enough now to recognize that this means he’s thinking, considering.
Oh Jesus. This is why R&E teams are not ever sent to planets without confirming that there will not be first contact with an extraterrestrial intelligence.
“This is a bad idea,” Ophelia says. “We have no idea what they want. What they’ll do. We don’t even know if they’re a ‘they.’ To your earlier point, this could be the equivalent of attempting to negotiate with the anticollision system on an autocar.” She throws her hands up.
“Or it could be a hostage situation,” Kate says quietly.
“Okay, fine. But who are the hostages, then? Us or them?” Ophelia demands. “How do you plan to communicate that you intend no harm?”
“I don’t know.” Kate raises her eyebrows. “Aren’t you the people expert?”
“Are these people?” Ophelia shoots back.
“Do you have another suggestion, Doctor?” Ethan injects, before Kate can respond.
She grits her teeth hard enough that the enamel squeaks in protest. “No.”
“Besides, don’t you feel it?” Suresh asks, his voice softer. “It wants us to come back. To come home.”
Ophelia, Kate, and Ethan turn to look at him. He’s staring at the airlock as Liana continues her steady, even drumbeat of thumping. But more disturbingly, he’s leaning in that direction as if being pulled by the shoulders by a not-quite-strong-enough magnet.
“Suresh,” Ophelia says.
He doesn’t respond.
“Suresh!” She snaps her fingers in his direction, a gesture she despises, both for its condescension and the vague connection to hypnosis and the chicanery sometimes still associated with psychotherapy.
But it jerks him out of his daze enough to flip her off.
“Can I check your arm?” Ophelia asks.
He scowls at her. But then he offers his arm, pulling the sleeve up.
She moves closer for a better look. His skin is red and abraded from his scratching, but the bumps have vanished. Only, they’re not gone. She knows that now. They’ve just … progressed. The nosebleeds and headaches will come next. After that …
Thud. Thud. Thud.
“She’s going to hurt herself,” Kate says grimly.
“Now or later,” Ethan agrees. Ophelia winces at the idea of Liana fumbling at her arm with a blade of some type.
Ethan tips his head toward the airlock. “Let’s see what we can do to stop it.”
* * *
Wrestling herself into her envirosuit is quickly becoming Ophelia’s least favorite activity on an assignment that has been full of new lows. In the corner of the airlock, she struggles to pull her suit up over her shoulders. Opposite her, Kate and Suresh, already in their suits, are bickering while they attempt to shuffle Liana, who has gone quiet now that everyone is in here, into hers.
“Lift her foot. No, her other foot,” Kate says. “Are you even paying attention, Suresh?”
Ethan approaches Ophelia, closing the fasteners on the front of his suit with one hand. Show-off.
“I know you’re not happy about this,” he says quietly.
“It’s not about me being happy. I just don’t know how to make this better. How to fix this.” The fabric snaps out of her hand, too tight, or twisted somewhere that she can’t see or reach. “Fuck,” she mutters.
“If any of us knew how to fix this, we would do it. That’s not your exclusive burden to bear, Doctor.” Ethan reaches for the shoulder of her suit, meeting her gaze first, as if asking for permission.
He’s too close, inside that half-meter perimeter designated for intimate acquaintances.
She nods jerkily, breathing faster. This is trouble.
“The trick with these things is you have to take it one limb at a time and roll up from there.” His breath skates by her cheek as he talks her through it. The fabric at her shoulder loosens, his fingers working swiftly and efficiently, and yet she can feel every touch. He’s her patient; this is not okay.
She closes her eyes quickly, tears burning behind the lids. This is her weakness. To be taken care of. She wants to be respected, needed, but at the same time she’s so fucking soft for the slightest display of affection. She despises that about herself. Being aware of it doesn’t help, either. It’s like internal quicksand; struggling only makes it worse.
“It’s hard to do everything at once,” Ethan continues, his voice raspy. “To push constantly against what you can’t control, what you can’t change.”
He’s no longer talking about the suit.
Ophelia opens her eyes.
His exhaustion is plain on his face, but so, also, is the understanding. He knows—knows what it’s like to hold yourself accountable for a disaster you didn’t cause and yet can’t seem to escape.
