The Fall of Acheron

by Julian Miles | May 3, 2016 | Story | 0 comments

Author : Julian Miles, Staff Writer

The clouds are limned in blood. Carmichael said it was a trick of the light; I have to take it as a warning ignored.

We came to Acheron – actually Acheron IV, but as the rest were uninhabitable, we dropped the designator – to build a paradise. The planet was the right distance from the sun, had oceans, freshwater lakes, gloriously rich loam, and no creatures bigger than a sparrow. The bird-drop seed cycle was handled by a beautiful, green avian that fell perfectly between Swift and Hummingbird. It was also the fastest bird ever recorded, routinely achieving speeds in excess of 180kph as it shot through the night.

Acheron was to be the utopia that Homo sapiens deserved. The omen of seeking to build that fabled ‘no-place’, and the abysmal history of previous attempts, did not matter: we were the ones who would succeed.

Eight months and our cattle were breeding spectacularly. A second harvest was in. Our log haciendas had already been featured on lifestyle feeds. We had completed acclimatisation for all Terra-originated organics. The start of our ninth month would be marked by the atmo-dome being dissolved so we could finally experience our new home properly.

We were all outside, champagne in hand, when Teleon released the collapsers. High above, a tiny, bright circle appeared. It spread rapidly as the nano-nibblers consumed the dome, repurposing the ‘stem’ material into more nano-nibblers. The ring expanded until it dropped to the ground all round us and we cheered, raising our glasses in toast to our paradise home.

Our noisy cheer masked Teleon’s death. His wife found the pockmarked slab of bloody ruin that he had been. She screamed loudly, then even louder after a cloud dropped on her. Most of us stood about in confusion: that deadly moment of hesitation. But those who acted were the first to fall. Clouds rained down and the dying began.

I got to watch from the single greenhouse as my friends were consumed by nebulous entities that looked like clouds, pounced like leopards and fed like frenzied sharks. The scientist side of me noted a pack order in feeding, with some ‘clouds’ circling slowly while the killer fed. After the killer rose, multiple ‘lesser’ pack members would swarm the remains. They were all messy, wasteful eaters.

I knew my mind was using clinical observation to distance itself from the horror, but could not stop. My heart raced as my brain sought survival options, whilst I calmly observed that these were obviously the apex predators of this planet’s trophic hierarchy. They were why the Emerald Proto-Swifts were small, nocturnal, and ridiculously fast. Why there were no large fauna. It seemed like paradise was guarded by monsters of suitably legendary nastiness.

A cloud has squeezed through the skylight into the greenhouse. It’s a small one, probably last in line for the feast hogged by its bigger kin. Did it’s finding of me indicate an improved hunting ability, or was it a common trait?

I smile. Ever the scientist. As the cloud slowly approaches, I lift a ground sensor and ram the half-metre spike through my heart. Sweat runs from my forehead. I bite my lips to stop myself screaming: I suspect a scream will make the monster lunge. To die quickly, I need to pull the impaling spike out. The sensor beeps, determining my temperature and mineral content.

The scientist inside howls as the observer yanks the spike from between my ribs.

That hurts even more. I look up.

The clouds are limned in blood.

Creepy

by submission | May 2, 2016 | Story | 0 comments

Author : Beck Dacus

“Oh my God! I found life!”

Kenrin was kneeling on the ground, peering at something in the dust. As Ederford, Roana, Viccison and I walked over to him, he shifted position, suggesting that whatever he was looking at moved, and rapidly. He had found an animal!

The four of us skidded to a stop around him, and huddled together to try and get a glimpse. It took me a second, because both the creature and the regolith were a very dull brown, basically grey, but it was there. Life.

Life was a precious thing in the universe, as it only occurred on approximately one planet for every fifty star systems, and interstellar travel wasn’t easy. Sixteen times the speed of light may sound pretty fast, but light isn’t all that fast in the first place when talking about galaxies. To get from Gerfysa to here, Manklenon, took four years.

The little beast was around five centimeters long, with a body that looked like a pine cone and… fourteen legs. Each one was very thin, and had something that looked like a hook at the end. Despite my fascination with exobiology, I couldn’t help but admit that it did seem a bit too “buggy” for my liking.

That should have told me that we never should have filed the report.

Kenrin deftly clapped the animal into a specimen jar, and handed it to Viccison. “Get that back to the lab,” he said, “and do what you gotta do. I’m gonna try and find more organisms. You three, spread out and help me look.”

Over the course of our adventure, we found a few more life forms, all equally buggy in nature. When we all returned to the hab, we ran a few tests on the bugs, figured out what they were made of and what they could do, and sent our report back to Gerfysa at a slightly improved 20c. We never imagined the consequences.

Twenty Six Years Later

Achpersson Drives have improved in the past few decades, allowing more people to get to Manklenon that would have ever been possible when my team found its biosphere. Being a living planet, it attracted a lot of tourist attention, and civilian tours began eight years after I first arrived. That’s how everything died.

No one could stand the little “Manklenites,” as they were called. Anyone with any kind of arachnophobia went berserk on them. The creatures, unfortunately, had a knack for creeping into normally sealed spaces, ending up in people’s hotel rooms and luggage. But, despite the disgust, the attraction of alien life made people keep coming. Keep killing. Now, with a more complex ecosystem than previously considered riddled with holes, Manklenon’s biosphere could no longer support itself. It has become the lifeless stone we thought it was on approach. Now here I stand, on Ganorpeña, in front of an alien that is the spitting image of a centipede.

I think I’ll hold off on that report.