Vessel

Sagittarius I Mission ^{DAY 1142, FIVE DAYS AFTER THE EVENT TRAPPIST-1F TWILIGHT LANDING AREA, ON BOARD SAGITTARIUS}

Catherine moved around the command module of Sagittarius, getting it ready for takeoff. She’d tried to salvage as much as she could from the wreckage of the Habitat, thinking it might help the team back home figure out exactly what had happened. She knew that Tom was behind it, but she didn’t know how. Or why. She hadn’t seen him since the day he’d left her all the supplies. His quarantine was over, but he hadn’t contacted her again. She’d tried once or twice to find him, halfheartedly, but had no luck.

She suspected he was dead. And deep down, part of her was relieved at that. The idea of leaving without knowing for sure ate at her, but there was nothing she could do. She could search for weeks and not find any trace of him, alive or dead. Longer, if he was alive and hiding from her. All she could do was go home and hope that whoever came back after her learned more than she had.

She looked around the command module. Everything was locked down and ready. She could leave at any time. One last walk-through of the ship. Just to settle her nerves. Theoretically, she knew how to take off on her own, but in practice… Even her experience as a test pilot hadn’t fully prepared her for this.

Everything was in place. She was doing one last check of the main cabin, the biggest open space on the ship that served as an all-purpose living, working, and—right now—storage area, looking for any loose items that needed to be stowed when she heard the ominous click-clack of a handgun slide being racked behind her.

Tom stood between her and the ship’s cockpit. He looked like hell. The burns on his face were… Catherine swallowed uneasily. Something was growing on them. Glittering and green, like the lichen outside. He was pale and sweaty, and the hand holding the gun had a faint tremor.

“Don’t move until I tell you.” Tom’s voice was so hoarse as to be almost unrecognizable.

How did he get into the guns? How did he get on the ship?

“Tom? Didn’t you take the meds I left you?” Her mouth went dry. Her eyes kept going back to the burns, forcing her to think about the cut on her forehead.

“Shut up. Of course I did. Didn’t help, did they?”

“H-how did you get on board?” She had to keep him talking. As long as he was talking, he wasn’t shooting her. As long as he was talking, she had time to think. She needed a weapon. Trying to look calm, but with her heart threatening to pound out of her chest, she glanced around for anything she could use as a weapon. Something. There had to be something.

He leaned heavily against the bulkhead, but kept the weapon pointed at her. “You think I brought all those supplies over here out of the goodness of my heart?”

She had, foolishly. But that was—that was days ago. “You’ve been on board this whole time?”

“Didn’t know this ship had so many places to hide, huh?”

A prickle ran down her spine. She thought she’d been safe, and all this time…

Tom smiled, and it was more like a grimace, the livid red-and-green burns on his cheek wrinkling and sparkling. “You were going to leave me behind.”

“I didn’t think I had a choice. I didn’t know where you were.” Catherine put her hands up, still scanning the room. Her heart was beating so hard she was queasy; she swallowed hard against the nausea crawling up her throat. Stay focused. There was the Habitat wreckage. Sticking right out of the top was a big piece of rebar. If she could get her hands on that…

“Yeah, I saw how hard you looked for me.”

“You attacked me!” That was too sharp. She needed to keep her calm, to just breathe. To get them both through this alive.

“So you said. I don’t believe you. Who was abandoning who, here? You tried to kill me!”

She took a breath to steady her voice. “You’re the one holding a gun.”

Tom gestured with it. “Move to your left.”

As she did, he stepped right. They kept circling the cabin facing each other, and she realized he was herding her back to the cockpit. As he did, though, she was getting closer and closer to the rebar. She did her best not to look at it as it came close to being in reach. “I don’t understand,” she said. “If you were safely hidden, why come out now? Why not wait until after we launched?”

Tom gave her a sickly smile. “I said there were places to hide. I didn’t say they were good places. Especially not to withstand the g-forces of a takeoff.”

“And the gun? How did you get it?”

“Let’s just say I was motivated. And now I’m going to make sure you don’t get cute and leave me behind.” He pulled several sets of plastic restraints from his pocket. “If you’ll go back to your seat, we can make sure you get us off this hellhole.”

“What are you going to do, tie me to the pilot’s seat?”

“Yep,” he said. “Go on. Go sit down.”

“I won’t leave you behind, but Tom, at least let me quarantine you in the med bay.” Catherine tried to keep her voice reasonable, calm. A quick side glance showed her she was almost within reach of the rebar. “Whatever’s infecting you—if it’s not responding to the initial antibiotic dosage, we can’t risk taking that back with us to Earth.”

“You’ve already been exposed. It’s a two-and-a-half-year trip home, and they can scrub the ship before they let us off.” He scowled. “You’re stalling.”

“Be reasonable. You can’t… you can’t strap me in. You’re sick. If something happens to you, we could both die.”

“Then you better take off fast. Once we’re in space, I’ll let you go.”

The rebar was in reach. He won’t shoot you. He needs a pilot. She wanted to believe that, but she couldn’t be certain he was thinking about his own best interest right now.

It was as though he’d read her mind. “I will shoot you if I have to.” He smiled thinly. “I don’t have to shoot to kill.”

The infection. If she hadn’t already been exposed, an open wound would do the trick. “I’ll fly us out of here,” she bargained. “You don’t have to tie me up.”

“Catherine, you hit me, and you planned to leave me behind. I’m not inclined to trust you.” He stopped, coughing hard enough to double over. Catherine seized her opportunity, grabbing the rebar. She swung forcefully, aiming for the gun in Tom’s hand. At the last second, he shifted, and the rebar cracked into his shoulder instead.

“I knew you wanted me dead.” Tom’s eyes were empty, despite the angry expression on his face. He raised the gun and pointed it straight at her.

“I don’t, but Tom… I don’t want to die either!” Catherine held the rebar like a baseball bat. They kept circling each other, and she kept looking for an opening to aim for the gun. “Neither of us has to die. You’re here, I’m here. Let’s just go home.”

“Drop the bar first.” Tom’s hand wasn’t shaking anymore, and it wasn’t wavering away from her head. She could see his finger tensing on the trigger.

Fear took over and she swung. Her aim was true; the gun went flying from his hand, landing at the hatch to the cockpit. Before she could react, Tom was on her. He knocked her to the ground, trying to wrest the rebar from her. Catherine jammed her knees into his belly, desperate to create distance between them.

Tom tried to grab her arms, but she got a foot against his hip and shoved him away, wriggling from beneath him. She scrabbled for the gun. Tom grabbed her ankle, pulling her back. She kicked frantically, swinging the rebar, but Tom’s grip was strong, steady. He had her.

“You’re not leaving without me,” Tom growled. He hauled her across the floor on her belly, got a knee in her back, and wrapped his hands around her throat.

With his weight on her back, she had no leverage. Dark spots started popping at the edge of her vision as he cut off her air. Tightening her fingers on the rebar, she swung back wildly. She connected, heard the dull thunk of metal on bone. Tom’s grip weakened and she escaped again, gasping wildly for breath. Tom’s eyes were wide, blood streaming from his temple. He looked at her in surprise and betrayal, and then crumpled, dropping to the deck with a hard thud.

For a moment Catherine just lay there, taking greedy gulps of air. Then she pushed herself up to kneel beside Tom. His eyes were vacant. “Shit. Shit.”

Tom wasn’t breathing.

“No no no no,” Catherine muttered, fumbling to see if he had a pulse. “Please God, no.”

But Tom wasn’t breathing and he had no pulse.

He was dead.

She sat back on her heels, stunned. Suddenly she had to scramble for the toilet, where she became violently ill. She knelt there, shakily wiping her mouth with the back of her hand.

Catherine had killed before, flying planes in service to her country, but this was different. This was personal and bloody and not at all what she’d intended.

And she had to get him (his body) off the ship.

Somewhere down the road, if anyone were to ask her what the worst part of this entire catastrophic mission was, she’d say that it was burying Tom Wetherbee. Assuming she got home to talk about it. By the time she was finished, she was utterly exhausted—mentally, emotionally, and physically.

It had taken six hours to dig Tom’s grave. Half-hysterically, she thought, Claire was our geologist. She should have seen it. She would have been fascinated. All those layers of soil, all those newly exposed rocks…

Now Catherine sat outside the infirmary, the metal of the deck cold beneath her. The cooling systems were working a little too well. She’d need to recalibrate them. Instead of moving to do that, she stared at the red dirt on her hands before wiping them on her pants. Her pants were already filthy anyway, and the dirt on her face had turned to mud thanks to the sweat.

Catherine lowered her head to her upraised knees and took several deep breaths. It was time to go home. She had no way to calculate a launch window, so she’d just have to take her chances. She’d done everything she could do here. The ship was stocked. She was alone.

Once she had washed all the grave dirt off her and put on fresh clothes, she settled into the pilot’s seat and started going through the launch checklist.

The comm panel dinged.

She jumped out of her skin. That was impossible. Tom was dead. She’d just buried him. With a hand that was just starting to shake, she turned on the monitor.

The screen flashed. SURRENDER, CATHERINE WELLS. YOU DESTROYED OUR AGENT. YOU ARE OURS.

Ice went through Catherine’s veins, a fear so profound she felt detached from her body, unable to feel or do anything at first. Instinct told her to run. To take off right now. But logic said if they were calling her their prisoner, taking off might not be an option.

Besides, you’re the first person to talk to an extraterrestrial life-form. She thought about Tom. Maybe second. Her mouth dry as a desert, she flipped on the mic and leaned into it. “Wh-Who are you? Why should I surrender to you?”

SURRENDER OR YOU WILL DIE. YOUR DAUGHTER WILL HAVE NO MOTHER.

Catherine sat back in her chair. Nothing in their training for potential first contact prepared her for anything like this.

“You didn’t answer me,” she said, aiming for calm and reasonable, and not sure she was coming anywhere near it. “Who are you? How are you sending this?”

WE ARE. THERE IS NO WHO.

“Ohh-kay.” That wasn’t helpful at all. “Then where are you?”

EVERYWHERE.

“I’m not surrendering to anyone unless I can see you.”

LOOK BEHIND YOU.

For a single terrified moment, Catherine’s heart stopped. The skin on her neck and back was crawling as she stood and turned around, pulse pounding in her temples, not sure what she was about to see.

There was nothing there. “What…”

The air in front of her shimmered and resolved into a vaguely humanoid shape, humanoid the way a child would sculpt the shape of a body out of Play-Doh: two limb-like extensions reaching the ground, two more coming out on either side, a roundish shape at the top. There was nothing Catherine could call a face. Only blank emptiness where a face should be. Its “head” brushed against the ceiling of the cabin, making it at least eight feet tall, towering over her.

The body didn’t look like flesh, exactly. There was something intensely familiar about the shimmering gray-blue-green of its body, shining like an oil slick without looking wet. With one “arm,” it gestured toward the comms display. She looked and saw another message.

LOWER THE LIGHTS. THEY ARE PAINFUL.

The cabin lights were already fairly low to match the twilight outside, but Catherine dimmed them a little more, and her visitor became more… there. More visible. “How are you using our comms? For that matter, how do you know English?”

WE OBSERVE. WE KNEW YOU MIGHT COME, SO WE OBSERVED YOU. OUR THOUGHTS ARE OUR MESSAGES.

It took Catherine a moment to parse that. Some sort of telepathy? Learning her language through observation? She had too many other pressing questions to linger on this. “Why couldn’t I see you at first?”

OUR MATURE FORMS REQUIRE PROTECTION FROM THE BRIGHT LIGHT OF THE DAY SIDE. WE SHIELD OURSELVES.

“And you… took the shield off, just now?”

TO YOUR LIMITED UNDERSTANDING, YES.

“Why do you plan to hold me prisoner?”

NOT PRISONER. YOU AND YOUR KIND HAVE HARMED OUR PEOPLE. YOU WILL ACT ON OUR BEHALF.

It didn’t move as it “spoke,” but stood as still as a statue. Catherine remembered the strange heat signature she’d seen in the Habitat with Richie not long before the explosion. It was one of them.

“We came to this planet in peace.” Catherine fell back on some of her training. “We meant no—”

PEACE? YOU STOLE OUR CHILDREN FROM THEIR CRADLE COLONIES. CHILDREN WHO WANTED ONLY TO GROW IN THE LIGHT. WE FELT THEIR PAIN AS YOUR KIND DESTROYED THEM.

“We didn’t… we didn’t realize there were advanced life-forms here, I swear we didn’t. We will try to make restitution. Our governments can work together, reach some sort of agreement—”

The comms buzzed loudly as if in negation. NO AGREEMENT. NO GOVERNMENTS.

“But I’m not empowered to make any sort of restitution on my own, I’m sorry.”

YOU KILLED OUR AGENT. YOU ARE OUR AGENT NOW.

Catherine closed her eyes and held on to the pilot’s chair. What she was about to say might cost her her life, and Aimee might well wind up with no mother, but she had no other choice. “I will not. If the choice is to be your agent or die, then I’m afraid you will have to kill me.” She opened her eyes and looked at the alien.

It made a sound, a grinding, rattling sound. Was it… was it laughing at her?

YOU HAVE MISUNDERSTOOD. THE DECISION IS NOT FOR YOUR MIND TO MAKE, BUT YOUR BODY.

“What does that mean?” She stood a little taller, anger starting to filter in in place of the fear.

YOU ALREADY CARRY US INSIDE YOU. YOUR PHYSICAL SYSTEM WILL SURRENDER TO US OR IT WILL DIE.

Catherine stumbled back, landing on the console as her legs started to shake. “What do you mean I carry you inside me?”

WE ARE EVERYWHERE. WE TRAVEL IN THE ATMOSPHERE, IN THE VACUUM, IN THE AIR. WE HAVE ENTERED YOUR SYSTEM AND LIVE THERE.

She shook her head. “I don’t understand…” But then she looked at the creature again. The stone pillars. The ones clustered around the terminator line. It was the same mottled gray-blue pattern. That rock was all over, and in the brighter areas was covered with the lichen they’d been collecting, the lichen that grew thinner the darker the land became. All those pillars. Oh my God…

YOU WILL GO HOME. YOU WILL ACT AS OUR AGENT. YOU WILL NEVER RETURN.

Catherine leaned heavily against the console. Tom saying he didn’t remember long periods of time. Tom sabotaging the oxygenator, the rover. Tom trying to kill her more than once. It was because of the creature standing in front of her.

“Please, I don’t understand. What’s going to happen to me?”

WE ARE ONE MIND. ONE WILL. WHEN WE ARE ASCENDANT WITHIN YOU, YOU WILL SHARE OUR MIND. DO OUR WILL.

“Mind control?” Panic was rising in Catherine’s breast. “Is that it? You can’t. We’re a harmless people, please.”

WE ARE ALREADY WITHIN YOU. IT HAS STARTED.

“No, please!” It was too much; all of it was just too much. But the figure was already leaving the cockpit, shimmering out of sight. The only sign she had that it was gone was the sound of the air lock to the outside opening and closing.

Catherine’s vision grayed out around the edges, and no matter how hard she tried to cling to consciousness, she felt herself sink to her knees and fall to the cold floor beneath her, everything fading away.