Warning: Spoilers Ahead
A dead drop job offer. Break into secure and remote facility, retrieve items of interest. 200ckr payment on completion. 50ckr for partial fulfillment. Reliable contractors only. Further details provided once accepted.
Standard fare for a crew like theirs. Oz is the brains of the outfit. A botanist who is handy with machines. Joe and Hakon are the grunts. Ex-colonial marines who provide the much needed muscle and firepower. Bubba is their go to guy for scrummaging supplies, getting shit done. Then there is SHE-DROID-AL22 a philosophically minded android who provides tech support.
They accept the job, of course. Then the details come flooding in. Amongst the blueprints, maps and location briefing there is the guts of the mission. Get the samples from Choi Labs and get the research data off their servers. Drop it at the dead drop site and collect the reward. Take too long or run off with the goods, live with a massive bounty on their heads. Standard fare.
The pilot of the courier ship docks with DeLange station. “Two hours thirty minutes,” he says. “Then I’m off, with or without you.”
The clock is running so they get out into the arrival area of the space station. Dim lights, low gravity. They walk across the still conveyor belt to go through station processing. They clock the dead guy by the terminal. Brains blown out and smeared on the plasti-glass screen. Papers strewn about, one plastered by blood and brain juice to the screen. It’s a manifest – last date two weeks ago.
Oz is done with this station and heads back to the ship. “I’m not being paid to investigate any murders!” he says.
The ex-marines keep the android company as he explores further.
Hakon leads the way and they come to the shuttle docking area. Another corpse – this one a security guard, gunshot wound in the chest. The shuttle is parked up but has a massive hole in its hull. Like something exploded inside. They spot another potential corpse floating outside in a vacc suit. SHE-DROID counts the dead and compares it to the station’s reported crew number. “Three out of four so far,” she says.
Bubba wanders off to check out the storage supplies. Food, water, home comforts and various equipment. He spots the corpse slumped by the wall in the maintenance exit as he passes through. SHE-DROID and the marines follow up. They see the umbilical-air cord extended out of the airlock to the floater outside.
Hakon gets inside the airlock with Joe. They pull the floater in. No life signs but the helmet is fogged up. Hakon lifts the helmet off and a rusty red mist covers them. The head is missing. The neck stump is patched over with the same rusty red coloured mist substance.
Time to complete the mission is ticking away. They tell their pilot they’re going to need a lift to the planet-side base.
On the approach to Japline’s Ache, they get a good look at the planet. A frozen wasteland with no signs of life. The outpost is the standard Rim company faire. Cheap prefabs, no class, no style.
The ship lands. As they get out, they spot the frozen corpse. No gunshot wound on this one. They leave it be.
Oz and the grunts beeline for the lift down to Choi Labs. Bubba wants to check the outpost out and SHE-DROID follows. Bubba checks the garage and another dead body in the snow. Ran out into the freezing temperaturs with nothing more than slacks and a pollo neck. No gunshot wound on this one either. The all-purpose terrain vehicle that should be in the garage isn’t there. Plenty of tools for Bubba to pillage.
SHE-DROID checks out the admin block and takes one of the hazard suits she finds. Gives another to Bubba. Both are starting to get a headache. SHE-DROID feels likes there’s ants crawling under her synth-skin. Bubba got an itch he can’t scratch away.
The marines guard Oz as he takes the big lift down into the labs. It groans menacingly as it slowly descends into the freezing depths of the planet. They don’t waste any time once they’re in the lab’s surface access area, passing directly to the main access lift and going into the lab proper.
As the interior lift arrives, it opens into a crossroads which is flooded with icy water. The whole place is thick with rusty red mist. They spot two bodies sitting by the wall next to the lift. They’re tangled up in each other’s arms. There’s red moss all over them and their skin is smeared on the walls behind them like some piece of horrifying modern art. White flowers dot the putrid mess. Enough to put the creeps into them.
Hakon gets twitchy, not helped by the incessant itching he feels in his scalp. Oz seems to be having the same problem and Joe’s chest tightens at the feeling of his skin pulsating with something crawling underneath the surface.
Oz is determined to get the samples from the lab. He tries the door marked as leading to the laboraties but its sealed shut. He tries to work it open but it doesn’t budge.
In an effort to find another way in, they head to the monitoring station on this level. They see blood smattered all over the monitors and a malformed corpse. Its arms and legs horribly twisted. Its skin, bones and hair are fusing together. There’s a revolver sucked into its spongey mass. It throbs….
Meanwhile, SHE-DROID and Bubba have finally taken the lift down into the labs. Unable to raise the rest of the crew on short comms, Bubba heads to the monitoring station at the surface access level. He gets a view of the crossroads at the level below as well as checking the various other feeds. Many of them have gone black. But at least they know where the others have gone.
Despite the worsening headache and loss of focus, Bubba heads down the lift to the main facility. SHE-DROID remains on the upper level. Her internal diagnostics are warning her of a mass of invasive creatures inside her body. She is overwhelmed but cogitating a response.
Down a level, Hakon and Joe open fire as the malformed corpse lunges with its rusty red limbs. Hakon misses, distracted by the incision made by the crab-like limbs in his body.
Joe takes severe blows to his armour and then watches helpless as the monster rips his left arm off. Blood starts piping out of him at a rapid rate.
Hakon composes himself and fires once again, this time blasting the torso of the creature into smitherings. The marines look round and see there is no sign of Oz. They’ve got other priorities. Joe is gonna bleed out and their efforts to staunch the bleeding has come to nought. They move quickly hoping to find something in the labs to help.
Bubba moves quickly through the crossroads and down the maintenance shaft. Using the blueprints the client provided he heads towards the data servers. His eyes are all blurry and the itching is driving him mad. But he is determined to get the research data. He won’t live with a big bounty on his head.
Oz is running away back to the surface. Oz misses Bubba by minutes as he heads to the lift back up. Once at the surface access level of the labs, he heads to the creaky old lift to the surface. He sees SHE-DROID who tells him to go ahead and call the lift. She will wait for the rest of the crew to come and then join him. Oz questions her suspiciously but proceeds. When his back is turned, SHE-DROID hits him in the back of the head. The blow rips into his hazard suit.
Before Oz turns round, SHE-DROID notices the skin on the back of Oz’s head sliding down. Soon his whole scalp is coming loose. SHE-DROID watches as the scientist turns in surprise to face her in this moment of betrayal.
Hakon and Joe explore a large storage area hoping to find something to help Joe staunch his bleeding stump. The place is in complete disarray. Blooms of rusty red mist hover in the air. Salvaging some fabrics they stop the bleeding. But as Joe comes to thank Hakon, the other man’s face dissolves and falls to the ground like a banana peel. Red moss pushes his eyeballs out and instead of pupils, white flowers bloom.
Bubba is in the data server room, downloading the research that will be his payday. The itching has stopped now. He’s barricaded himself in. Nobody finds him for a long time. His head blooms into rusty red mist.
SHE-DROID records a warning. “This is the exploration team sent by Dyson Phytology R&D. We are all dead. We have been infected. You will die too if you come down here.”
Joe the marine sits down in an uncluttered part of the large warehouse. His symptons do not get any worse. But the time on his device says, the 2 hours and 30 minutes the pilot gave them is over. He puts his gun in his mouth.