Unification – Iteration 3: Landfall

Iteration 3: Landfall

Marathon’s hull rattled and shook violently as its altitude dove drastically. The carbotanium bulkheads strained and creaked under the immense pressure being exerted upon them, craning in monstrous desperation to remain whole; its Xenonium structure fought valiantly to keep everything together. One solar array began to twist from its joints as the ship entered the Martian atmosphere at a dangerous angle, followed by a second, then a third. The reinforced ceramic heat shields began to glow as the friction of Mars’ atmosphere challenged the integrity of Marathon. The dark eternal ebon void of space threatened to swallow up every possible light, leaving nothing but the cold, dead world that is Mars, behind. 

Inside Marathon, everything flashed with blinding light. Warnings, klaxons, and alarms of every kind crashed into one another in a cacophony of noise and dissonance. Jonas shouted clear orders as David tried his best to gain some modicum of control over the ship. Sarah did her best to coordinate with Ani, but the quirky AI replied in broken transmission and static-riddled reports. Something was interfering with her systems. She did her best to reroute any and all power she could to help stabilize their ship, but nothing seemed to work. The Marathon had slowed from its orbital speed of 1,200 kilometers per hour to nearly that of the planet’s rotation, a mere 870 kilometers per hour, but was still more than enough to turn the 200-meter ship into a pile of debris in a matter of minutes if it were to aim directly at the planet. Which is precisely what it was doing.

“Give me a thirty-percent thrust on the port side at five-second intervals for twenty-five seconds, on my mark,” Jonas dictated with stern urgency. “Mark!” At his station, David pushed forward the ship’s manual throttle until it aligned with Jonas’ recommendation. The ship continued to shake violently.

“Is it working?” shouted Sarah as she looked over at her two companions. The viewscreen of the ship was nearly filled with the surface of Mars. The flashing red alert lights added to the crimson hues of the dead planet.

“Sir, the throttle isn’t responding!”

“Manual override,” Jonas suggested. The urgency never left his voice.

“Already on it,” David replied as he left his seat, plunged beneath his console, and detached a maintenance panel.

“Commander, I am de—” Ani began to report as an explosion erupted from the rear of the bridge. The fire suppression system activated almost instantaneously but was not functioning at maximum capacity. A massive crack forked across the starboard side of the viewscreen with a thunderous announcement.

“Ani – containment panels!” Jonas yelled in terror. Ani, who had to resort to electronic beeps and chirps, complied by lowering several carbotanium plates around the bridge of the ship. The final plate secured itself along the port side of the bridge, but not before the viewscreen completely gave way to the stresses it was under, shattering into thousands of pieces. For an all too long, yet brief moment, the vacuum of space had made itself known to the crew inside with a hollow, empty, bellow. Everyone took in a collective breath as their breathing returned to normal. The cabin still shook, and now, they could not see outside. The red emergency lights continued to flash inside the darkened room.

“Ani, are you there?” Jonas asked, “Ani, respond!” For a while, the three-person crew was left on their own, sealed within their spaceship tomb with the numb explosions which rocked elsewhere in the ship. Sparks suddenly spewed from under David’s console as he unleashed a string of curses. The hull gave a groan of disapproval and the stresses of gravity took their toll. Another series of explosions rocked the bridge as Sarah found her way back to her console.

Everything had gone silent suddenly, even their own breathing could not be heard. The emergency lights flickered as Sarah’s vision came in flashes. In all her years of training, she never thought this would happen to her. Everything had happened so quickly. There was no time to think, only to react. The containment panels had been torn from their housing, exposing the bridge once again to the cruel void of space. Sarah immediately engaged the emergency boosters, which increased Marathon’s speed, accelerating it even more towards the red planet.

If we could only get beneath the atmosphere, she thought to herself, then maybe, just maybe, we’ll be able to survive. David and Jonas both looked over at Sarah, who had begun to strap and secure herself into her command harness. They soon followed suit, understanding what their crewmate had done and what she had planned. 

Once secured in their seats, the stations transformed into simple protective pods. A helmet released itself from behind each respective seat and was placed upon the head of their occupant, while their bodies were wrapped in a rather new invention: bio-circuitry. Developed by several medical and space agencies, the rudimentary suits acted like a forcefield around their subject, forming around their unique form, offering limited protection from the elements and most bacterial and viral entities. What made them truly remarkable was the fact that the system could be spliced into their subject and essentially became a part of them in a sort of symbiotic relationship: the suits run off of the host’s bioelectricity and the host is protected from the elements. All that was required was a breathing apparatus, provided by the sleek exploratory helmets.

As their suits enclosed them, Sarah glanced up and out towards the red planet as it drew closer and closer. A sudden chill of dread coursed through her body, but it was not due to the circumstances she now found herself in, but rather it was from an instinct between predator and prey, the feeling of being watched intently, of being stalked. Her eyes remained focused on the surface of that dead planet, of that empty gravesite of who knows how many ghosts, or if ghosts ever roamed its desolate surface.

Her attention suddenly snapped back into focus as the ship’s HUD was projected upon the crew’s helmets. In the lower right corner of their screens, the face of Ani appeared.

“Can everyone read me?” came Ani’s cheerful, albeit stressed, voice. Everyone chimed in with their callsigns. “Good, apologies for my sudden absence. In all of the chaos, I found my memory cores being purged by an outside source. I attempted to block the transmission but felt it would be too taxing on our resources, so instead, I uploaded my subroutines and primary memory cores to the Argus Network.” The ship shuddered once again as the crew listened to the AI as intently as possible.

“And what about the ship?” David asked, filled with concern and worry.

“I am attempting to guide Marathon in for an emergency landing, but with most of the navigation systems unresponsive or offline, it may be a bumpy ride.” The severity of their calamity grew tenfold at the news, but they remained confident that they would survive. “Honestly, I wasn’t sure if I’d be able to get back in contact with the ship or any of you once I was transferred to Argus. Doctor Hutson’s quick thinking just may have salvaged this whole situation.”

Both Jonas and David glanced over at their crewmate with pride, but their celebrations were cut short as Marathon began to shudder even more violently than before. It now entered the Martian atmosphere.

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In the sky, a new kind of star fell. Its fiery tail cleaved through the vaporous dust clouds, tearing the sky asunder like a sea of red. Sand and dust swirled along the rocky surface of the Ares Vallis, that ancient lakebed that was once the site of catastrophic flooding, now lay arid and bare, patiently awaiting a flood of another kind to come, a flood no one would expect, let alone imagine. A flood that has been coming for many eons and is on the verge of arriving, of welcoming the three inside their tiny nutshell spacecraft. Something is coming; something is waiting for them; something has been awoken and yearned to be free…

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“Hull integrity dropping, heat shields holding at forty-two percent,” David shouted above the ruckus of the ship. Sparks flew across the bridge in various directions. Fear laced the faces of the three, a lattice of dread, anxiety, and woe. Alarms and warnings blinked and blared on every console, some signaling the loss of a portion of the disintegrating ship; others cried out dangers of the hull breaches and toxic fumes gathering within. Down and down the massive ship fell like a meteorite, as if a star had been plucked right out of the sky and dropped upon the Martian surface below. 

The crew quarters we now engulfed in an unchecked inferno. Personal belongings had been turned to ash, blown out into the cold void of space, or lost altogether. In the cargo bay, Minerva rocked back and forth as unsecured storage fell from their perch. Papers and debris flew across the housing with careless abandon and a complete disregard for cleanliness. Further down the ship, the primary engine room was a concoction of toxic chemicals, electrical fires, and unbearable heat and pressure, pressing against the structure of the ship, a bomb waiting for its inopportune moment to erupt. And erupt it did.

Marathon’s rear portion was a decently contained wreck one moment, and a massive fireball the next, shooting out fiery jets of incendiary plasma, superheated chemicals, and burning chunks of what used to be the main engine room. The explosion shook Marathon from a near level descent to a terrifying eighty-degree nosedive.

“What the hell was that‽” shouted Jonas, in a tone that suggested he was concerned but did not really care. The gravity of Mars was less than half of the Earth’s, but it was still enough to cause a pull upon the crew as the ship dipped towards the surface, pointing down at the desolate landscape like some kind of celestial sword of Damocles.

“I’m not reading anything from the main engine room,” David yelled in reply.

“I think that’s because main engineering is gon—” Sarah had begun to say, as another explosion rocked the ship. Marathon’s aft had begun to accelerate quicker than its bow, causing the entire body to flip and rotate unto its top. Proximity sensors suddenly blared, surprising everyone due to the simple fact that they did not expect them to still be online, but before anyone could react, the ship was jolted once again, more violently than any time before. A massive gash of reinforced carbotanium was sheared off in a vicious and primal manner, exposing the bridge to the Martian elements outside in a wave of electrical sparks and shredded metallic debris. It was abundantly clear to the trio inside that they had struck some Martian mountain, but without their navigation system operational, they had no way of knowing where they were. 

Inside, Jonas, Sarah, and David stared wide-eyed at the exposed section of the bridge. The harsh Martian landscape flew by at astonishing speeds, and despite their protective coverings and personal capsules, the rushing wind was a deafening roar or ghastly sand and rocks. The granules of sand speckled the innards of the bridge like some kind of chaotic rain stick as the Martian rocks ricocheted off of everything, leaving a web of cracks wherever they impacted, threatening to shatter the very translucent aluminum which shielded the three. 

Several moments later, Marathon was flying through the air upside down and entirely reversed. The smoke from the raging fire that was once the main engineering compartment now streaked along the hull of the ship, enveloping it in an ashen cloud of poisonous gases and chemicals. The vile plume filled the bridge as it blackened everything in a layer of soot and tar, leaving the occupants in the dark. The faint glow of the sun struggled to break through the ebon cloud, which did very little to help the trio within. Marathon’s hull continued to strain against the stresses and pressures being placed upon its structure. It would not be long before Marathon met the cold embrace of a Martian hug. 

“Huts-n…” came a garbled message in Sarah’s helmet. Whether it was Jonas or David, she couldn’t tell. Too much was going on for her to worry about such things. “S-ra-, can you -ear m-?”

“I’m still here, barely reading you,” she replied as clearly and loudly as she could. The panic and strain in her voice fought to get out, but she swallowed hard and maintained her discipline. All those years studying at the academy, all those months spent training at the I.S.C. compound, have boiled down to this moment, this test of her collected experience and skill, and she was completely helpless, entirely at the mercy of gravity, momentum, and fate.

“Sar-h, wh-t’s our alti–de?” the man’s voice asked. She wanted to ask if it was her commander speaking, but she knew it didn’t matter. Information: that is what mattered right now. She began to input commands on the digital console of her capsule, which somehow still functioned, though it should not have been a surprise, as each capsule acted as its own escape pod. Static rained in her ears as she attempted to access the remainder of Marathon’s systems. Warnings flashed before her eyes as she jumped from one screen to another. System after system reported being destroyed or offline. She was beginning to lose hope that any system, outside of the emergency lights, was still functional when she came across the Argus uplink. A quick query placed them at roughly fifty meters in the air. Her shock doubled upon herself. 

She immediately opened a channel to her crewmates, when the ship gave a devastatingly violent jolt, worse than any car crash Sarah had ever experienced. The impact was so powerful, that her capsule was dislodged from its housing, sending her tumbling towards the aft of the ship, as it fell towards the ceiling, taking out several non-functioning monitors along the way. Sarah grabbed hold of her head, her helmet keeping her hand from actually touching her face. Her vision blurred as voices came in and out of her hearing. All around her, the bridge spun like a giant cylinder. She figured she must have hit her head pretty hard until she realized what she was seeing, was not due to a concussion. 

Marathon continued to twist further, as Jonas and David tried desperately to get a hold of their comrade. They had witnessed in useless horror, as her capsule was sent flying around the bridge, like a child’s toy within a washing machine. Sarah’s helmet rocked from one side of her harnessed position to another. She could feel the bruises forming on her body as the ship continued to descend. Another loud shearing metal screech ripped through the bridge as the entire weight of the ship seemingly dropped upon its ceiling. Jonas and David hung precariously from within the relative safety of their capsules as an endless array of sparks and debris thrashed around in a chaotic cacophony of destruction and mayhem.

Sarah did her best to orientate herself, but the forces which acted upon her left her in the hands of an unknown fate. Her capsule continued to be battered around until one final force of momentum flung her out towards the breach in the bridge. She saw her crewmates and then she saw one of the ship’s support beams, and then her capsule collided with it as it all turned to black. No one could not see where they were, but one thing was certain: Marathon had landed on Mars in the most unglamorous way.

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The massive ship collided with the surface in a calamitous impact before skidding to a halt along the desolate surface of Mars. Its foreign metal body left behind a canyon scar through the Ares Vallis, disrupting the sleepy rocks from their eons-long slumber. In the skies above, clouds began to form, clouds unlike anything seen on the planet in centuries, if not millennia. Asperitas formations blanketed the sky, coming in shades of oranges and purples, greens and reds, blues and blacks and whites, a prismatic showing, and yet in no natural order. A flash of violent violet cracked across the deadened horizon, followed soon after by a harrowing hollowed thunder. Another flash, echoed by another, and another; grievous greens, outrageous oranges, pulsating purples, and ravaging reds all tore the Martian sky in a cross-stitch of illumination. The thunder continued to roar its arrival, a sound as older than time itself, muted by the vastness of the universe itself. 

Around the smoldering ruins of what was once a glorious spacecraft, a dust storm began to form. Sounds from ancient hymns began to sing once more, vibrating from the very stones of the graveyard planet. Ghosts from the remnants of time itself reached out and around, their ambiguous tendrils fingered the minds of those who came within their reach, as they had time and time before, filling their dreams with the visions of their unification, all in the hopes that someone would be able to bring these dreams into fruition because dreams come true.

Ares Prospect-1 was silent. It too had fallen to the lullaby of the Martian ghosts. Its manufactured hallways hummed their breath in the same empty gasps of the Valles Marineris. In these hallways, the ghosts swam through the dreams of the slumbering inhabitants, searching, always searching, for that which would make them whole.

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David painfully opened his eyes and saw only darkness. Smoke had begun to fill the bridge of the Marathon. He was still strapped into his seat which remained suspended upside down. He glanced over at Jonas. He was not moving. He immediately checked his air supply and breathed a sigh of relief when it flashed a bright blue 84% on his HUD. He pressed several commands into his suit’s systems and managed to link up to Jonas. He was alive, unconscious, but alive. Sarah’s vitals returned a blood-red “No Signal” message. Either she was dead or her suit was damaged. Either way, the situation made David’s blood run cold. 

He began to look around his surroundings, attempting to get a hold of his current situation. From his vantage point, he could barely make out what was below him. The hull breach had been filled with Martian soil. David deduced that the ship had dug itself into the surface, but without further investigation, would not be able to gauge how deeply the ship buried itself. Continuing to scan his immediate area, he took note of several small fires that still burned. He attempted to raise Jonas on his personal comms but got only silence in return.

Feeling the blood continue to rush towards his head, he thought to himself that the best course of action was to right his orientation. Carefully, he detached himself from the capsule’s harness and lowered himself unto its polycarbonate canopy, similar to those used by fighter jets. The structure of his little protective nutshell groaned in disapproval as his weight shifted from his suspended posture to a more natural stance. Keeping his breathing as calm as possible, David estimated that he had around 3 meters to the ceiling below him. He held his breath and began to countdown from ten. He hoped that there was not any major debris hidden below him and that his canopy would land away from where he expected to set foot.

With one final count, David prepared himself and entered the ejection command. The polycarbonate shield shot out and to his left as he felt the pressure in his legs give way, and he fell towards the ceiling. His boots made a sizable thud as he landed safely. He rose to his feet and looked back up at Jonas, who was still unmoving within his own capsule.

“Jonas, do you read me?” he asked through his comms. “Commander, please tell me you’re alright.” He kept his eyes trained on his unconscious crewmate for another minute before looking around for a way to rescue him.

“Hang in there buddy, I’ll get you out.” David carefully began to walk around, but not before activating his suit’s lights system. A bright, thin, horizontal LED light shone from atop his head, while two other similar lights beamed from his collarbone. His body-forming suit glimmered in the illumination as he slowly rummaged his way through the distorted remains of the bridge. His first destination was the last place he had seen Sarah’s capsule, but nothing was there. If it were buried, it would be buried as a thousand different pieces.

Again, he checked on the status of his crewmates: Jonas, unconscious; Sarah, no signal. Making his way back towards Jonas’ capsule, he found a plasteel supply container, something that was sturdy enough to hold his weight. He figured he could stand upon the supply container with ease as he freed Jonas from his protective shell before it became his coffin. 

As he knelt down and placed a hand upon the cubed container, a sudden flash erupted in his eyes. He felt as though someone had punched his mind, not his face or forehead, but directly at his brain. Numb, yet powerful as images blinked before him, like a slideshow projector flipping through pictures in an uncontrolled manner within a house of mirrors. David’s mind spun and throbbed as he saw empty hallways, desolate landscapes, an explosion of light which engulfed the horizon, a monolith floating amidst the stars, broken in three sections, and faces – so many faces.

When he opened his eyes again, he found himself lying upon his back. He felt like he had just suffered the worst migraine in his life. He placed a hand against his helmet and shook his head lightly when suddenly everything fell silent. He could still see the billowing smoke moving, albeit at a greatly reduced speed. individual embers rose, flickered, and faded away in intricate detail, almost like watching a blooming flower of flame. David calmly stood back up again. The dust and ash at his feet billowed in a hypnotic slow-motion wave. He turned and looked at Jonas. He was still secure in his capsule. Everything passed in a beautiful, yet slow fashion, he could even see the individual pulses of his bio-circuitry suit as it continually modulated and adapted to its environment. Curiously, David himself did not appear to be affected by this spatial anomaly, but before he could investigate it further, an explosion erupted somewhere within Marathon’s dying hull and everything returned to its normal passing. 

David, without much time to think, knew he had to get out of the ship as soon as possible. He turned back around and picked up the plasteel container and brought it over to where Jonas sat. Setting it down underneath the commander’s capsule, he began to manually detach the polycarbonate canopy. A few moments later, he dropped the curved shielding and tossed it to one side. Now came the difficult part: how to remove Jonas from his harness without dropping him to the ground. Admittedly, David had not thought this far ahead. With the constant explosions all over the ship, his mind could only focus on so many things at once. 

Having checked Jonas’ vitals one last time, David secured his footing and began to remove his commander from his capsule. It was a slow and arduous task, but he managed to get through it with discipline and patience. Finally, he came to the last set of straps. Taking a deep breath, he began to detach them right as Jonas woke up, and immediately flailed in sheer fright at his predicament.

“What the shi-” Jonas began to shout, just as the last strap came loose. David did his best to grab hold of Jonas, but his sudden movement threw the specialist off balance and they both came crashing upon the ceiling in a muted thud.

“That is not how I wanted to wake up,” groaned the groggy commander.

“But at least you’re awake now. You wouldn’t believe what I have been through in the past 15 minutes,” David moaned. Jonas sat up and looked around at the wreckage of the once sleek ship.

“I can only imagine.” After shaking the cobwebs from his head, Jonas stood up and, with a helping hand, David joined him. “Sarah?”

“Haven’t seen her, at least not on the bridge. Her capsule is missing as well. She may have been jettisoned during the impact, but I can’t be sure. All I can get from her vitals is that vague ‘no signal.’ So either she’s dead, or she’s out of range.”

“Let’s hope for the latter.” Jonas surveyed the area and noticed the pile of Martian dirt filling the breach. We must have crashed hard to have that much soil inside, he thought to himself. Glancing back at David, he took a mental note of all that he could. “Have you been able to get in touch with Ani?”

“Honestly, getting you out of your cage was the only thing I’ve been able to do.”

“Thank you, David, for saving me.”

“Don’t mention it, commander.” The two men stared in admiration and respect towards one another, not just in their professional setting and colorful careers, but as two people who have grown to trust and know one another. Their moment of silence was short-lived, however, as another explosion thundered somewhere inside in the derelict ship. 

“I think that’s our sign to get out of here,” said David with little hesitation.

“Agreed, let’s get away from the ship and orientate ourselves. Once we’ve established our location, we can proceed towards Ares Prospect.”

“And Sarah?” Jonas paused for a moment.

“If she’s alive, she’d head towards the base as well. That was our mission after all. If she didn’t, there’s not much else we can do right now.”

“And if she’s injured?”

“We’d be wasting our time and resources, not to mention her air supply, if we go out looking for her from there. The base is far better equipped than we are. If we can mount a rescue, we’ll do that at the first possible opportunity. I’m not going to leave her if she’s still alive, do you understand?”

“Yes, commander. I wasn’t doubting you, I just needed to hear it, sir.”

The two men nodded to one another, and with a goal in place, they set about into the harsh Martian environment and towards Ares Prospect, unaware of who or what awaited them there.

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The capsule was heavily damaged but kept itself together long enough to protect its precious cargo. Its canopy shot out and away leaving the person inside exposed to the raging dust storm. Sarah turned on her suit’s lights and immediately checked her surroundings. 

“No signal,” she said to no one in particular, “must be out of range.” Her HUD showed her a map of her location based on the last satellite readings. The six kilometers between her and Ares Prospect did not seem appealing, but she had her mission. She looked around once more, but could not find any sign of the Marathon, let alone Jonas or David. Whatever the case, something told her that they were okay. Going over her instruments once again, she double-checked that everything was functioning properly. She took what she could from the capsule: first aid kit, a multi-tool, and extra batteries. Turning to face her destination, Sarah looked at her oxygen levels.

“Eighty-seven percent. That gives me a few hours.” She was confident that it would not take her that long to reach the silent base, but what worried her was the obstacles that may be in her way. She glanced back at the ruined capsule once again, before turning to face the storm and disappeared into the rusty winds.

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