Traversal

Once she’d finished programming the autopilot for the next leg of the journey she turned her attention from the nav terminal to the antique CB radio she had installed when she first started cobbling together the crawler. She flipped a large switch which lit up the still working lights on the device. She then turned a chunky knob to line up the marker scored into it with a line on a piece of tape adhered to the dashboard of the small cockpit, and after adjusting the squelch she keyed the transmit button and spoke into the microphone dangling from the ceiling by its cable.

“Fi to Home base, can you read me?”
After a few moments of silence she keyed the mic again.
“Fi to Home base, Home base, can you read me? Isaac, am I coming through?”

When only static greeted her she let out a huff and cranked the dial over to a second marking before trying to call the research station.

“Fionna McLaren to Westwatch Research Station, can you read me? Arlo are you there?”
Still nothing but silence and the occasional burst of static came through the airwaves.
“Damn storm must be worse than I thought, I should be able to get both of them from here…” she mumbled to no one in particular.

She cranked the heater a little higher, being mindful of the battery reserve in the crawler, and reached under the bench seat to grab a blanket. It was already thoroughly frozen through and through, but every little extra bit of insulation helped retain some of her quickly escaping body heat.

The following several hours dragged on as progress was slowed or set back entirely due to the intense weather. The high winds had caused an avalanche along the usual route that Fionna had to bypass. She chuckled at the thought that none of the other drivers would have made it this far, let alone been able to plot a new route like she could with the paper charts that they mocked her for.

The storm finally began letting up as she left the mountainous crags behind and made her way back onto the crater peppered flatlands. Now more than ever her charts were of great import, some of the small and medium craters had been completely obscured by the snow buildup, and careening off into one of them could do anything from damage the crawler, to permanently end her journey.

Slowly she made her way towards Perepelkin, careful to make sure her measurements were exact. If she was off by a degree or two back here it could send her careening off the carved slope and down into the base of the almost eighty kilometer wide crater. The rocky outcropping peeking out of the thick snow grew closer and closer as the crawler trundled toward the rim of the crater. Once at the crest of the slope Fionna made the final adjustments and set the autopilot one last time before, with a groan, the crawler shifted into a low gear and began its descent down the slope.

Everything was going smoothly, until two kilometers down the slope the treads lost traction and the crawler began to slide down the incline at an angle. Fionna, as quickly as her nearly frostbitten senses would let her, yanked the steering controls out of the locked position, disabling the autopilot. This stopped the crawler from lurching farther down the path under power, but it did nothing to break her from the sliding spin she had entered. Fighting against the controls for what felt like minutes, she finally wrangled the crawler to a stop.

Sitting in the now still vehicle, Fionna let out a shaky breath, her helmet visor fogging up from the sudden wave of warm air. She sat there a few moments, both waiting for the visor to clear, and letting the crawler settle before trying to ascertain what direction she was now facing. Visibility outside of the crawler’s cockpit was still basically zero, with the floodlights on high she could maybe make out scant glimpses of the ground a few feet away. Once she’d managed to get a compass bearing she carefully rotated the crawler so it was on the correct heading before slowly and carefully continuing down the natural ramp, this time without incident.

Thankfully for Fionna the Westwatch Biotech Research Facility was built into a dome centered in the crater, so even with the crawler knocked off course it was only a matter of driving straight towards the center and strafing around the crystalline glass structure until she came upon the airlock. Once on the relatively level ground of the base of the crater the remaining trip to the Research facility only took around an hour and a half, and much to her surprise, she was only about three minutes to right of the airlock upon finally reaching the dome.

She attempted to call the inhabitants of the facility again several times to no avail before resignedly getting out and braving the frigid temperatures to open the airlock herself. Even here in the depths of the crater the wind was adding a not inconsequential chill to the already staggering -95°C temperature outside. She pulled the blanket tight around herself like a cloak and got to work on opening the outer airlock. This was a process she was not unfamiliar with, they had the exact same Dererebus door system back at headquarters, and sometimes when Alec, the maintenance guy, would let the systems go for too long without servicing them she’d have to get out and physically crank open the doors herself.

The cold was quickly robbing Fionna of her faculties, every second she was in the wind she could feel more and more of her body grow sluggish and slow to respond. She’d only managed to get one of the four dog arms opened before she had to retreat back into the cab of the crawler and crank the heater to high. After a few minutes of defrosting she snapped it back to low to try and conserve as much power as possible, since she assumed she’d be stuck there for a while, and once she felt she’d thawed out enough to give it another go, she rolled out of the cab and made a run for the next handwheel.

What would normally be a two minute process ended up taking over an hour and brought the crawler down to a dangerously low thirteen percent battery, but finally Fionna had cleared the dog arm and slid open the airlock door. Running back to the crawler she slowly eased it into the docking space and hooked it up to the charging station in the floor before making her way back to the large door and pulling it closed to allow the space to fill with oxygen. As soon as the last of the locks was set the automatic fill routine began and once there was enough air in the large room to carry sound she could hear the hiss of the tanks emptying their contents through the vents.

After several minutes the red hazard lights changed over to green, indicating that Fionna could remove her helmet and that the internal atmosphere had reached ideal conditions. As she released the clasps on her suit and twisted off her helmet she took a deep breath of the station’s air, happy to finally be out of the stifling recycled air of the suit, only to be assaulted by an overwhelming rusty, metallic scent that caused her to gag. She quickly covered her nose and mouth with a grease covered rag from the floor of the crawler, it was a smell she was quite familiar with. Even now, with the mask of a familiar scent, it was concerning how potent and permeating the rusted smell was.

Worried that something bad had happened to the researchers here, Fionna began making her way deeper into the facility. She’d been taken to the infirmary once a few years ago to have some popped stitches replaced, so she simply tried to remember the path they’d taken back then. The facility was a maze of cold steel, tile, and formed plastic fixtures emitting a soft white light. Besides the colored lines running waist high along the smooth white walls, the only features of note were the occasional air vent , foam nozzles for fire suppression, and boxes with hull patch kits like you’d normally see in the halls of a Philomelus ship.

A thin layer of dust had accumulated on the floor, she looked back down the way she had come and saw that she was leaving faint bootprints as she traversed the hallways. Unsettlingly there were no prints other than her own. Maybe this is just an unused hallway unless there’s an injury? She frowned and tried to push the thought out of her head as she continued toward the infirmary.

Much to her chagrin the heavy, iron smell of blood was omnipresent, every time she pulled down her oil stained mask to test the air it was seemingly, confusingly, the same concentration as it had been in the airlock. It got no fainter or stronger as she wandered through the bare halls of the Westwatch facility, it was as if the air itself was soaked in blood. The thought gave her pause, and almost made her sick to her stomach, but what if someone had fallen into one of the fans in the vast mazes of life support systems? Surely they would have been found rather quickly, given this overwhelming stench.

Fionna fought the growing urge to break into a sprint back to the crawler and leave this place, but she knew she would have to stay at least a few hours while the crawler recharged. The horribly metallic smell was starting to seep through the saccharin scent of the spent motor oil soaked rag, and her nerves were on a razor edge, but she continued on towards the infirmary. If anyone was still around they would either be there or in the security office, and since no one was answering her calls over the radio, that was stop number two.

Once she’d finally made it to the medical office she was somewhat relieved to find that there was nothing of note there. It was exactly as she remembered it, she could almost see Arlo fussing over the wound on her back and trying to sew it back closed. It brought a smile to her face, Arlo had always been the most chatty of the Westwatch employees she dealt with, when he wasn’t on shift during a delivery one of the other security guys would just sit in the airlock with her and wait for the crawler to charge before ushering her back out into the cold. Alro would always have food from the rec room, and would at least entertain a conversation.

Fiona carefully lowered her makeshift mask and hesitantly sniffed at the air. Thankfully the infirmary had the overwhelming smell of antiseptic, and the bloody scent that permeated every outside hallway had not made its way into this area yet. Fionna thought back to where Arlo had retrieved the sutures from and began searching through the cabinets and bins for supplies. She managed to find and grab some surgical masks and alcohol bottles hoping that would counteract the smell better than a rag as she made her way through the other parts of the facility.

Looking back into the sterile white room one last time one last time. It looked sadder now after she’d ransacked it, cabinet doors hung open, boxes of useless medical apparatus’ piled on the floor. She thought maybe she should go back in and tidy up after herself, but shook her head and turned, heading back into the hallway. Hoping, praying that there was good explanation as to why no one was answering the comms, let alone allowing her to wander the halls of their ‘top secret’ facility unattended.

As she made her way back through the chilly hallways, the new alcohol drenched masks did the job of hiding the acrid scent. Fionna was still confused and on edge, perturbed by the lack of any signs of other humans, and the heavy, oppressive scent. Now that she had cleared her head somewhat, she’d managed to find a “map” of the facility, if you could call it that. Different sections of the Westwatch facility were color coded on a directory and thin stripes painted on the wall led to the specified areas. With this in mind, she gathered the fortitude to leave the medical lab, and set off following the navy blue line for the security office.

The alcohol was cold on her skin, and made her eyes water, but it hid the noxious odor permeating the facility amazingly, she only caught small hints of it when she shifted her face and opened a gap. The only downside was that the alcohol was quickly making her woozy, so she tried to pick up the pace and hoped that the security room, like medical, would be free of the smell of blood. All hopes of that were dashed when she could finally see the end of the navy blue line, off to the side a small plaque read Security Operation Center, and the door propped open with what looked like a body.

It took every ounce of mental strength to not turn tail and run back to the airlock. She slowly approached the door and pulled it further open, steadying herself to see the corpse of one of her contacts from the facility, only for the pile of riot armor to fall away into separate pieces once the door was no longer putting pressure on it. She let out a half whimper half sigh, expelling enough air to shift the mask and let the horrid scent of blood back into her nose.

Combined with the stress, and the alcohol induced lightheadedness, the sight of what appeared to be a dead security guard was enough of a shock to unsteady her and cause her to lose balance, reaching out for purchase. Failing to find any handhold, Fionna tumbled to the ground and landed on top of the pile of armor. She laid there for a moment, the reality of her current situation slowly sinking in. A cold sticky liquid pressed out of the cloth parts of the armor and clung to her skin. The room began to spin, she pulled her hand up above her face to inspect it, trembling. It was coated in blood.

She quickly scrambled to her feet and ran into the office, looking around frantically. She found a large bank of monitors and started trying to figure out how to activate the emergency signal. Steadying herself on the desk, Fionna took as deep a breath as she could, not wanting to get dizzy from the alcohol again, and sat down to start trying to figure out the system.

After what felt to her like hours, but the large analogue clock on the wall told her, was only about twenty minutes, she’d managed to activate the emergency beacon and find the security cameras. As she scrolled through the various feeds and tracked back through their recordings a new pit started to grow in her stomach. None of the recordings she was scrolling through showed any movement until she had come in. Days of empty film, nothing but empty halls all the way back to the end of the recorded archives. Manually checking all of the hundred or so cameras around the facility was going to take several hours minimum. There must be some way to check all of them at once and only show movement.

While she was sitting there, in the dark security office trying to dig through the recording archives, a light on one of the monitors flashed and the screen changed views to show an empty hallway. Fionna squinted into the dark image on the screen to try and discern why it had popped up, but she could not find anything out of place, or see any movement. She continued to sit there and look through footage, but her eyes no drifted up to the live cameras with regular frequency to see if things had moved or changed.

When the light blinked again she snapped her eyes up and caught the slightest hint of movement against the wall of the room this camera was in. Grabbing the little control stick next to the computer and zooming in, she could see the blurry shape that had moved was a ventilation grate. And a pit formed in her stomach.

Using the label on that camera Fionna referenced the paper site map she’d found in a dusty binder next to the control panel. Thank God someone other than me still uses physical maps! She quickly scanned the pages to find where that camera was in relation to the security office. Once she’d traced a line back to herself from the spot on the camera, she tried to muster all the gumption she could manage and readied herself to go investigate in person.

She checked the small room labeled “Armory” in the back of the security office, and was disheartened to find that it was empty, save for a shock baton and a few chem lights. Not even a spare flashlight was to be found in the ransacked room. She grabbed what she could carry in her jumpsuit pockets and started to make her way out of the room, when she was stopped by the pile of armor in the doorway.

Her stomach churned as she ran what she was about to do though her head. Would she be able to pull the actual armored pieces off of the blood drenched soft-suit it was attached to? Would it then even be able to attach to her cold weather gear? And then the thought that really made her stomach drop: if there hadn’t been any recorded movement in over a week, how was the blood on the armor still wet? It should have dried in a few hours, let alone several days.

Fionna began to shake where she stood and needed to sit back down in the chair to collect herself. She started hyperventilating, which only proved to make her feel more groggy and erratic as she inhaled mouthfuls of medical alcohol. After a few moments her breath slowed and she felt like she was about to pass out, and she pulled the mask off of her face to try and get the astringent smell away from herself.

The moment she did so, the overwhelming saccharin smell of blood flooded over her senses and she had to fight a losing battle to keep the contents of her stomach inside. While vomiting didn’t feel great, the smell of her own stomach acid was stronger than that of the miasma of blood around her, and she took the moment of clarity to reapply a clean mask, only dowsing this one with a small amount of alcohol, hoping it would still hold the outside stench at bay.

After calming herself down and steeling her nerves, she returned to the entrance of the room and knelt down next to the armored pile of gore. Reaching out, she stopped and thought it through before grabbing one of the rags and trying to wipe off a bit of the blood. Despite its wet look, nothing lifted up with the cloth, so she poured a bit of alcohol on the armor piece and tried to scrub it off. Much to her surprise the alcohol reacted incredibly violently with whatever was on the armor, as it began to bubble, smoke, and dissolved its way through the armor and started eating away at the floor.

Jumping back from the acidic mess, Fionna scrambled to her feet. She backed away from the caustic pool and frantically looked around before noticing the vapors rising from the slowly melting composite. Not wanting to add any more stressors to the already anxiety-inducing situation, she simply backed away from the armor and ran out of the security office toward the location on the camera.

Once again following the colored wall markings, she kept her eyes peeled for anything moving in the shadows as she slowly made her way towards her destination. The green line went off back towards the airlock where she’d entered, and it took every ounce of willpower she had to not sprint down the hallway and lock herself in the familiar safety of the crawler. She let out a sigh and steeled herself before rounding the corner to the spot she was looking for.

Above her and to her left, she could see the camera she’d looked through only a few minutes before, and straight ahead was the vent. Cautiously she approached and looked for signs of the movement she’d noticed on the security feeds. At first glance there was nothing, but after standing perfectly still and watching, she noticed some movement behind the ventilation grate. Whatever it was, it made her hair stand on end, and thinking about it, in combination with the smell, made her head spin. She steadied herself and switched on the shock baton, the crackle of the electricity filled the sterile hallways.

She reached forward and tapped the metal grate with the probes at the end of the shock baton. Besides the spark on fist contact, there was no reaction, so she tried to pry off the vent grate with the baton to get a better look at what was inside. The stench seemed to be getting worse, which was concerning, since the concentration had not seemed to fluctuate all during her time in the facility. With one last surge, she managed to rip the covering from the vent, exposing the ducts, and whatever lay within.

A thick, viscous liquid dripped from the top of the ductworks and seeped through the metal joints behind the walls. Cracking a chemlight and tossing it in, she peered into the dark hole in the wall and tried to examine the fetid pool of goo. It appeared to be the same substance that was on the armor in the security room, so she was careful to not get any on her or her equipment, but the color was too orange to be blood.

Referencing the paper maps she’d taken from the security office, Fionna was dismayed to see that her initial speculation might have been correct, as the hallway she was standing in was alongside the life support and air handlers. Following the map, she marched around the hallways until she came upon the double doors leading into the maintenance area. The doors were secured by a card reader, but concerningly, one of the doors was ajar, and more of that orangish blood colored liquid was pooling out across the threshold.

She considered throwing a bottle of alcohol at the door to see if it had the same caustic reaction as the armor, but thought better of it in case she needed to go into the room to save someone or find evidence of what had happened here. Instead, she slowly approached the door from the side and with the shock baton to give herself extra distance, pulled the door open and braced herself for whatever was behind it.

Nothing she could have done would have prepared her for the noxious wave that assaulted her once the door was opened. The stench of metal and blood when she’d first entered the facility was unbearable, but it was downright pleasant compared to the downright rot that wafted from the dark maintenance room. Gagging and fighting back vomit, she cracked a chem light and tossed it into the room to provide some illumination.

Fionna stared in horror as the chemlight illuminated a gruesome scene before hitting the floor and sinking into a sea of viscera and fluid. In the brief moment of illumination she saw what looked like torn open bodies hung from the ceilings with that orange fluid pouring from their rent open chest cavities, and some sickening looking bulbous growths protruding from the sides of the machinery with fleshy tendrils burrowing into the various chunks of flesh that floated in the pool of liquid.

Something primal took over and she turned and ran, no longer concerned with anything except escape. Everything was a blur as she scrambled down the long white hallways. Her muscles ached and burned but she didn’t stop until the airlock was in sight. Once she could see her crawler through the open vestibule she finally began to relax and stopped a minute to catch her breath, as difficult as that was through the sweat and alcohol soaked rag.

She stepped through the airlock door and took a moment to take stock of the situation now that she was in the relative safety of familiar ground. What the hell was Westwatch working on? She considered going back in and trying to find some research notes in the labs or security rooms, but decided she should get out while she could and simply call the planetary authorities to sort it out.

Fionna leaned into the crawler to check the battery gauge to make sure she could make it back to the Barabashov Dome. The crawler had only charged back up to thirty three percent, and she would need at least a half charge to make it close enough for a pathfinder unit to head out and tow her the rest of the way in.

She slumped down on the seat and rested her head in her arms. Remembering that the smell hadn’t hit her immediately when entering the airlock she tentatively removed the mask from her face and tested the air. It was stale and stagnant, and while the grotesque smell from deeper in the facility had made its way into air here as well, it was almost tolerable to breathe free of the astringent alcohol soaked rags.

The situation up to the point had drained her, both mentally and physically, and she was ready to simply close her eyes and sleep, but something felt off in the room that made the hair on the back of her neck stand on end. Anxiety quickly overtaking her, Fionna scrambled out of the crawler and frantically looked around the airlock, and then it hit her, the smell had suddenly gotten much, much stronger. She glanced toward the vestibule and could see something moving in the anterior space. She reached into the pouch on the door of the crawler and felt around for the handle of the antique firearm she’d inherited from her grandfather.

She pulled the gun from its resting place and blindly fired a shot into the airlock’s anteroom and heard an ear piercing screech before she saw what had made it. Before her stood a ragged, disfigured creature. It looked like a cross between a man and a dog, like the werewolves of ancient myth. Long tangles of wiry hair were matted to its lanky body, and it dripped with the orange liquid she had seen in the maintenance area, almost as if it had burst out of, or more likely torn into the men hanging from the ceiling there.

The creature snarled and whimpered while it probed the bleeding wound in its shoulder that Fionna’s gun had inflicted. She tried to slowly back away from the hulking monstrosity, but the moment she made a move it snapped its head towards her and rushed. It reached out with a gnarled hand and slashed at her, the sharpened bones protruding from its fingers slicing through her suit and tearing open the flesh on her arm. Her arm fell limply to the side and she let out a blood curdling scream. The creature loomed over her and stared at her for a moment before leaning down and sniffing the air around her before locking eyes with her.

“Fee.. Own.. Ahhhhh”

The sounds that escaped the creature’s maw were harsh and anguished. She looked up at the thing towering over her, draped over its shoulders were the tatters of a labcoat, and she could just barely make out the small badge clipped to what was left of the pocket.

“A.. Arlo? Is that you? Wh.. What happened to you?”

For a moment the creature looked at her in the eyes and it seemed as if some recognition was sparking in it, but a spurt of blood from its shoulder wound dripped down onto her face and just as fast as the humanity had returned, an animal rage swept over Arlo’s mutilated face. He snarled and leant down to start snapping at her. Fionna kicked up and tried to push herself away from Arlo, but only managed to anger him. Arlo slashed at her and tore a chunk out of her leg, also breaking open one of the alcohol bottles in the process.

The alcohol splashed across Arlo’s arms and as it reacted with the liquid soaked into his hair, he let out a wail as the now caustic solution began to burn through his flesh. Fionna was starting to fade from the sheer amount of blood she’d lost, but managed to reach for one of the unopened bottles and splashed it across Arlo’s chest. He howled an ear piercing, animalistic wail and darted away from her, deeper into the facility, leaving her alone in a steadily growing pool of her own blood.

Summoning all the strength she could, Fionna rolled onto her stomach and drug herself over to the crawler. Her vision faded in and out, but she was determined to record a warning for anyone else who might come here. She struggled but eventually managed to pull herself into the cockpit and close the door. Operating on autopilot she triggered the air cycling sequence and waited for the outer door to open, praying that it hadn’t frozen over again.

Trying to keep herself conscious as she bled to death in her autowagon, she flipped on the emergency message recording and tried to leave a coherent message to broadcast. Finally as the sirens wailed and the outer door cracked open she punched in travel command and set the crawler on course straight toward Barabashov, stabbing the close buttons on the warnings popping up on nav menu with her blood soaked fingers.

The autowagon began to trundle home, guided only by the previously mapped routes in the computer’s memory. Without her input she’d probably wind up at the bottom of a crag or crater. She faded in and out of consciousness as blood slowly poured from the wounds on her arm and leg. During one of her quickly shortening bouts of lucidity, Fionna managed to turn the emergency broadcaster on and started sending the recording out in hopes that someone would hear her eventually.

Her eyes got heavier by the minute, but she forced herself to stay awake as long as she could. The weather outside had not let up, and the blizzard was still raging, limiting her vision to sheets of white and the occasional dark shape as the autowagon slowly crawled across the barren Martian surface. Despite her efforts to stay awake, eventually darkness took her. She felt light and at peace.

The rocking of the crawler eventually jostled her back, she felt cold and stiff now, and outside the window was so dark. The storm had finally let up, she craned her neck and looked up into the sky, millions of stars twinkled back. In all her years looking out from underneath the domes, or even walking the surface in her EVA suit, she couldn’t remember the stars ever being so bright. She stared out into the celestial ocean, completely overtaken by its sheer magnificence, and shut her eyes for the last time.

This is Lilly Fleson from NewCom Media. After last week’s reports of a deadly pathogenic release at one of Westwatch Biotech’s research facilities on Mars caused a massive sell off of Westwatch stock, Rival Biotech company Raschke has officially put in a final bid to purchase all remaining assets. The sale, while still pending approval from the United Terran Government and the Sol Pact oversight committee, has unprecedented shareholder support, and is expected to pass in the following weeks.

Some critics, however, are worried that the shuttering of one of the few corporations producing Biomods will cause the already inflated prices to increase further. When asked to comment, a representative of Raschke provided NewCom with the following statement:

“We at Raschke Biotech pride ourselves on the affordability and availability of all of our products, and with hundreds of production facilities across, Terra, Lua, Mars, and even the Independent Belt, We expect to provide the same great service you know for years to come.”

“I just heard the news blast, I take it everything at Perepelkin was swept up?”

“Yes sir, our operatives located the woman and kept the signal jammed until they were able to secure her and the specimen. The officials in Barabashov brought the story about the pathogen breakout and we sent a team in to clean up the facility.”

“Good, and were you able to recover the samples from the labs?”

“Yes, we also managed to recover quite a few bodies, all of which were infected by the mutagen, the boys in the lab tell me that the DNA changes are replicable, and have already begun working on production prototypes, both military and civilian.”

“And will there be any issues concerning the provenance of the research?”

“No sir, even if the sale doesn’t go through, and with the lobbying we’ve done, I have no doubt that it will, but there is nothing tying our developments back to Westwatch.”

“Excellent, please keep me informed on the project’s progress. Now I have to head to Lua and meet with the damned oversight committee and get this deal pushed through, you best hope you weren’t over exaggerating, if they don’t allow the purchase I’ll hold you personally responsible.”

“Of course sir, and not to worry, should any of the council members find themselves opposing the deal, my team will take care of them.”