Contact

Mara Aegnir never wanted to go on a space expedition. All she wanted was to stay in her bed, watch Webflick, and listen to her favorite bands. But of course, nothing could stop the draft. So now she was here, trekking to planets millions of light miles from her home to explore and record new data for the expanding government. She hated her job, but she had to admit, it had some perks. Getting to visit new places - she thought of it as tourism, commanding her squadron around, eating freeze-dried ice cream, touching things no human had touched before. Mostly.

Her squadron had been sent to requisition a set of planets thought to have been put out of commission a few years ago. No one had heard anything. It’ll be a simple job, she thought, get in, grab some power cells and stuff like that, and get out. But as her pod approached the planet, the eerie radio silence made her think otherwise. But she didn’t think much of it. Most planets killed themselves after evacuation. There would be nothing but old metal and space dust.

“Comms check, Aegnir.” The commandant in charge of the ‘mission’ buzzed in.

She rolled her eyes, grateful they weren’t sharing video feed. “Here. ETA to ground is 2 hours.”

At least she’d have time to figure out to deal with his annoying demeanor. So she waited, her skin prickling with that expectancy of something. But she knew there would be nothing.

She was jolted from a short staring contest with the wall when the pod touched down, and she counted the sounds by heart, clicking her belt back and forth. The pressurizers started to whirr, and she clipped on her helmet, closing her eyes as it scanned her face to verify her identity. She grabbed a pistol from a rack - it was only precautionary, it wasn’t even military-grade - and moved out.

“Johnson?” She mused over the comms, finding their frequency. She skipped over a patch of sound channels, but didn’t think much of it.

“Here-”

She went back a few.

“Found ya. Ready? Let’s make this quick.” She cut off any reply he had. He might be higher in station, but not in experience. She started to trudge over the dusty landscape toward muted gray buildings in the distance.

“Wait.” She slowed, looking back to his pod. He still hadn’t exited.

“Get out here, Johnson. So we can get back...” She lilted, as if talking to a toddler.”

“You mind switching to the pod frequency?”

“It’ll drain the battery, dumb-”

“Do it.” He deadpanned.

Too exasperated to try and tell him his error, she switched to the secure, off-planet setup. “What is it?”

“Tune your radio to 45.6.” He droned.

She did it, wanting to get on with the mission. It was in the breadth of channels that yielded sound when she was finding their frequency.

There was… someone singing? “Did they leave an entertainment radio behind or something?”

“It would have died long ago.” He paused, still inside the pod. “Be careful.”

“Well, duh. Get out here now.”

“Uh, no.”

“Johnson…” She tapped her foot inside the insulated boot, putting her hands on her hips in hopes he would see.

“I just want to monitor some stuff, keep an eye from afar. The diagrams and sensors are much more accessible in the pod.”

She didn’t know what to say. “So you’re backing out because of some stupid rerun of a song?” She didn’t stop for an answer. “Fine.” She whipped around and started towards the buildings, taking bursts from her propulsion systems to get there faster.

She kept her radio tuned to 45.6. It couldn’t hurt to have some music.

The ghost radio played a mix of old songs, but there was something off about it. The transitions were… not there, each song simply morphed into the next. There were very little instruments in the background.

Who knew. Maybe someone on the old base took up music.

But why would it be playing now, years later? They would’ve locked up all the power cells. It was standard evacuation procedure. Maybe they had left one hooked up accidentally?

But their power cells couldn’t be that big. They were only a-

What kind of base were they?

Mara was getting closer, she could see the tall and looming airlock doors. She called up the useless commander. Or partner. Either worked. What kind of commander stayed behind?

“Hey Johnson, if you want to be useful pull up some info on the base. I want to see what it did so I can figure out where the loot is.”

No response.

“Johnson…”

“Yea-yeah? Oh, sure.” Came the startled reply. He was probably snoozing off. She snorted, not caring if the mic was still on.

She was almost there. Looking back, she couldn’t see the pod in the dust she kicked up. Some weird atmosphere to allow for dust clouds. She looked back, scanning the horizon. Nothing in sight, except for a few clusters of dust.

Why would there be dust -

Whatever. Probably geysers. The planet was dying anyways. She hoped it was, because most things would be dead.

Except for that radio.

They couldn’t have just left it on. Left it there. Oh well. At least she got a free thing to entertain herself on the trip back.

“Aegnir?” Johnson had finally found the files, it seemed. “The lab seems to have been genetically engineering hive... things.”

“The lab? What?”

“It’s a lab. That worked on these alien things called MATs… I don’t know what it stands for.”

“Are they dangerous?”

“Yeah. Found an old report file. Seems to me that one of them went feral. They shut it down.”

“So they’re dead now?”

“Probably.”

“You stayed behind and now you’re giving me half answers. What a useful commander.”

“I-”

“You should make me the commander, you know.”

“Mara-”

“I would do better.” She shut off the comm link out of spite. “Thanks a lot,” she whispered under her breath. “Now I have an actual reason to be scared.” She kept switching between frequencies on her radio while trudging towards the base, fingering her pistol she had brought. She wouldn’t have to use it, right? She hoped not.

Admittedly, she didn’t really know how. She was an explorer and maybe a half-pirate, not a soldier. So she reached the airlock door, and took a deep breath.

Smiling grimly, she dusted the seam between the two panels of steel to find the keypad.

“Do you have a passcode?”

His response was immediate. He must be bored.

He should’ve came….

“No, you’ve got to force your way in.”

“And how am I supposed to do that?”

“Don’t ask me. Maybe shoot the keypad?”

“That only works in movies.”

“You sure?”

Mara leveled her pistol with the keypad, and took a breath. Time to see who’s an idiot, she thought. She fired off a single shot, the light sucking into the metal. Nothing happened.

“Told you.” She replied happily.

“Wait.”

She groaned.

Then the door slowly started to slide open. Her mouth started to drop, but she closed it quickly.

“Lucky shot,” he quipped.

“Whatever.” She started to storm inside, but as soon as she reached the width of the foot-deep metal monoliths, she stopped.

“Why did that work?”

“Because I’m a genius,” he replied smoothly.

“No, even if it was supposed to work,” she admitted grudgingly, “If they cut off all power it shouldn’t. Should it?”

“The radio worked.”

“Malfunction.” She called it off as a simple mishappening. But as she gazed into the dark interior of the long-abandoned base, she couldn’t shake the feeling that something was alive and watching in there. Be it a system that the base forgot or… something more dangerous, she didn’t know. “I’m going in.”

“Finally.” She didn’t bother to respond. In and out, and done. It was a job she had done many times before. It would be over before she knew it, so she stepped into the shadows.

Nothing jumped out at her, and that small moment eased her tension a bit. So, allowing her shoulders to sink back to their neutral places, placing a hand on her pistol as a precaution - she wasn’t gripping it so firmly her knuckles turned white anymore - she started to head towards the monitoring room. Johnson had said that there was where the fuel cells and data logs were, right?

“Johnson, the data blocks are in the monitoring block, right?” She hoped she wouldn’t get berated for skipping ‘commander’.

She waited a bit for a response.

None came. He was dozing off again or watching the pod’s entertainment system, wasn’t he? They should have taken that out years ago. It was responsible for the making of several lazy commanders. Probably including Johnson. She knew he had spent too much time “checking the systems”....

“Johnson, you good there?” She tried again, her voice descending into the sarcastic ranges.

Nothing. But when she really concentrated on her headset, she could hear something. Static that sounded… familiar.

Probably no signal. Great. Resisting the urge to slap the side of her helmet, she continued into the base, following the updating map in the corner of her vision.

But she slowed as her brain caught up to her. The static was familiar. She listened closer, and in the background, soft, she could hear singing. Quite good singing, actually. She’d have to commend whoever chose the music back then.

But then her brain actually slid back into place.

It was static. On the pod secure channel.

Whatever it was, there shouldn’t be music on it. The same music they had heard on the local frequencies.

Unless it wasn’t in the static.

It was in the base. She stopped short in her tracks, her skin returning to its prickly, anxious state. There was something. Singing. Alive.

In the base.

No duh, she wanted to tell herself, but it wouldn’t help.

She hoped to the stars - those she hadn’t travelled to yet - it was only a recording on a radio tuned to the same frequency.

But something about it didn’t seem prerecorded. It seemed live.

It seemed that she had travelled to too many stars. Used too much hope.

So now that her hopes were so high in the sky, they just had to fall.

She took a deep breath, and turned the corner, pushing the opened metal door out of sight just as it started to close. She had turned off her radio - it would only throw off her senses, and she had found that it didn’t work inside the metal structure anyways. She really just shouldn’t have come here. Or she should’ve brought Johnson with her. The coward.

At least she could tell him when she got back and look at his face. Make a report to the company of his actions and maybe get a new commander.

If she got back. She tried not to think about that. So she cleared her mind one more time and started striding towards the control center, where hopefully there would be storage rooms and power cells, maybe even some research logs that she could bring back and bribe the scientific minds back there.

She concentrated on her steps, trying to tune out the singing and step towards the hallways, but she found she kept veering off towards the direction of the sound, drawn to it. Curiosity killed the cat. But she wasn’t a cat.

It couldn’t hurt to investigate, turn off whatever was causing it, and return to an atmosphere free of distraction. It would be better. So she turned her face to the wall, concentrated fully on it’s shifting tones and voice, and walked towards a shut door wreathed in shadow. It wasn’t locked.

She wasn’t sure if that was good or bad. She went through, twisting the knob slowly as to not make a sound - She wasn’t sure why she did that, something to do with her instincts saying that something was there. Inside.

She hated to believe it, but where there had been a seed of doubt was now a sapling, quickly flowering and spreading.

God, why had she even agreed to this. And what was she doing thinking about her life decisions when she should be aler-

“Oh-” She cut herself off as she stood, staring at a monolithic figure made out of bone. She hoped that it was just a scientific model.

But then it moved.

She finished her curse, and took a frantic step backward as she gaze up at it’s maw made of bone that clacked against more bone. She didn’t see its eyes. As her blood rushed to her ears and the singing was tuned out - she now could tell that it came from somewhere inside that… creature - her eyes widened, reflecting the thing’s bone like pale full moons. She took another step backwards, and when the think just kept leaning over her, she turned around and ran full tilt back towards the door, trying to muffle her footsteps against the metal floor, but to no avail.

“No no no no no…” she whispered. It had definitely heard her. She never should have investigated that singing. Its singing. She wanted to bang her head against a wall for being so stupid. But that would only make more noise.

She didn’t know if it was good or bad that Johnson hadn’t come. She pulled on the handle, thanking the stars that it opened, and threw it back, darting through and not looking back to see bones clatter against the heavy metal port. Vibrations emanated through the floor, but she was too focused to care about what the alien was singing.

She had been so stupid. She could see that now.

Sparing a glance behind her to see, what at least she could now make out in the dimly lit emergency fluorescent lights, a massive hulking figure made out of bone and metal that vaguely took the shape of an upright bear. It was otherworldly, and it scared her. That was what had been out there this whole time.

But now wasn’t the time for life reflections, she tried to tell herself, it was time to run. But she knew that she couldn’t outrun the epitome of alien engineering, even if it was from a few years ago. Her leg muscles kept working, but she could feel the tension, the knowledge inside the sinew that they could strain themselves to the max, but it would end. She wasn’t sure if it was fear or expectation.

She just kept running, careening through the dim facility that she didn’t know, walking through hallways at random. She might have been going in circles, all she knew was that she was moving, moving past walls, doors, tables, and-

Bone?

Another one. No.

Was- was it driving her towards something? A trap?

The shadow of her impending doom loomed over her mind, dimming it just as the adrenaline that coursed through her kept her awake, her eyes open, and yet she felt tired.

She was beginning to hear the song again. The lyrics were a bit unclear, mechanical clicking and noises that a human’s voice could never make cutting in intermittently.

But it lulled her mind into a monotonous rhythm of step, click, step, song, step, then step again. She didn’t have to think anymore. She didn’t pay attention to her headset as the oxygen levels slowly leveled off and mild orange triangles blurred in her vision.

She just heard the song, heard the rhythm, and started to give in.