Chimera's Breath: Prologue

“Ice, Sir?”
She asked politely, and waited by the stainless steel dispenser.
He declined her motion with a quiet murmur and removed the flimsy plastic cup from her hand. Purposefully he let his fingers slide across the supple texture of her skin, and met the accusing stab of her gaze before she slid out of view. He turned and noted how well the purple jumpsuit highlighted the pleasant contours of her body. In another instant, the aide had drifted silently from the room.

The Antares base command centre was little more than a kit-assembled jumble of plastic and steel, cluttered with chunky instrument monitors and with power cables flung carelessly across the floor. He didn’t care much for the base; it was too impersonal for a civilian facility. There were no photographs of relatives to divide the surfaces of gunmetal grey, no ornamental plants, and no personal mementos from their outside lives. There was nothing to connect them to an existence somewhere away from this miserable planet.

Now forty-four, Chief of Operations Harvey had spent the better part of his life in exactly this kind of facility, on dozens of planets throughout the sector. He recalled the electric thrill he had felt the first time he stepped onto the surface of an alien planet. The danger, the excitement of being a pioneer on the forefront of human exploration, had been his motivation. But now that thrill was gone, and all that remained was a hollow feeling that gnawed at the pit of his stomach. He just wished something would happen, any minor distraction to take his mind away from the constant tedium. Harvey turned to the big plate-glass window and sipped distractedly at his bourbon. Outside he saw half a dozen grey box-shaped utility buildings, similar to the one he currently occupied. Their ghostly profiles were obscured by the raging white squall, which was becoming increasingly fierce as the outside light receded to a dim amber glow. It was always this way on Chimera Minor. It would be dead calm during the day, but by late afternoon the winds would come in near-cyclone force, and howl around the ice plain like some lost soul mourning the passing of the sun.
Harvey finished his drink and set the cup down on an unoccupied section of bench. He sighed and cracked his knuckles. This was little more than a baby-sitting job for him; his only real duty was to supervise the researchers and make sure they didn’t break any of the equipment. In fact, Harvey didn’t fully understand what their objectives really were. He had listened to some scientist drivel about ancient artifacts and such, but it was all meaningless. All he could comprehend was that some sort of drilling operation was taking place, and that they were using an electronic imaging device to map the interior of the planet.

Harvey glanced across at a large monitor on the opposite bench top. It produced a steady electronic humm, and displayed the results of the interior scan in shades of neon blue and green. He tried to guess what he was looking at. The image was made up of grainy patches of colour, divided by a network of intersecting lines. It vaguely reminded him of the ant-farm he had kept as a child. He glanced back toward the main window. Two-hundred metres or so away, he could make out the angular outline of the main drilling structure. A series of pale running lamps peeked back at him through the fog and gloom.
Harvey frowned. The drill team should be finishing up by now, especially with the rapidly diminishing visibility. Working outside on Chimera after dark was a good way to get yourself killed. Even with the base camp’s running lights, it was very easy to get lost out there in a storm.
Some of the staff had even reported seeing strange moving lights out on the ice field near dusk, but Harvey discarded these accounts as idle superstition.
He tried to recall the name of the man in charge of drill operations. Erickson? Edwards? Egan. That was it.

Harvey reached for the communications console, and found the switch that would open a channel to the drill control booth. He was mildly shocked when the speaker next to his ear awoke in a crackle of static. The interference quickly passed, and a man’s voice came through: “This is Drill technician Egan, please copy.”
Harvey took a moment to clear his throat. “Yes Drill Tech. I was just going to call you. You’ve exceeded you’re time window for today. Pack it up and come inside.”
There was a slight pause on the other end. “Ah, sir, I have an… unforeseen situation over here.”
Harvey closed his eyes and groaned inwardly. Something had happened to the drill. An equipment failure down here was his worst nightmare. Egan had probably over-revved the drill, or descended into the ground too quickly. He kept telling these damn researchers to go easy on the equipment, but it didn’t seem to matter.
“State the nature of the malfunction,” Harvey sighed.
“Uh, there is no malfunction, sir. The drill is fine, and in the fully ascended position. That’s not what I meant.”
“Then what is it?” Harvey did his best to keep his tone civilized.
“I think it’s best if you come out here sir.”
Harvey looked back toward the window, and the shrieking coils of snow and ice. He was not about to make an unnecessary expedition out there. “Just tell me. I’ll decide what’s best.”
But Egan was not to be intimidated. “I’d rather not discuss this over the airwaves sir. The situation has a… delicate nature.”
“I’m on my way.” Harvey slammed his palm angrily into the console and terminated the channel.
‘The situation has a delicate nature.’ What the hell did that mean?

He moved to the door. The motion sensor gave an irritatingly cheerful beep, and the door vanished into its frame. He threw a look at the aide, who was standing dutifully by her station. “Bring my hazard suit,” he commanded. “I have to make an external.”
The woman nodded and then vanished down one of the bland grey corridors.
Well whatever this delicate situation was, it had granted Harvey his wish: Something had happened.

“Hell.”
The Chief of Operations peered carefully over the edge of the shaft with his hands planted firmly on his knees for support. “What in the world is that.”
He turned to his companion, who offered no other reply than a grunt of acknowledgement. The two men stood precariously on the lip of hard pack-ice, staring down into the dark shaft before them. The well was centered in the middle of a steep funnel-shaped depression, fifteen metres below the windswept plain of snow and ice, so that it was partially sheltered from the blizzard. Hanging ominously above the shaft was the massive silent corkscrew-shaped drill head, encrusted with a thin layer of glossy ice. The wind howled woefully across the plain above, kicking up vast ribbon-like drifts of white powder in its wake. And situated in a semicircle around the shaft, hunched against the savage force of an endless gale, was the collection of rough prefabricated structures which made up the Antares base camp facility.

“Does anyone else know about this?” CO Harvey questioned routinely.
“No. The rest of the team has gone in already. Think we should report it?”
Harvey looked across at his companion, Egan. His frame was obscured by the bulky yellow hazard suit he wore. His beak-like nose and permanent scowl were shielded from the severe cold by a thin plastic faceplate. “Not yet,” said Harvey. “I’d like to find out just what I’m reporting first.”
Egan eyed the other man silently. To him Harvey was just another power-hungry bureaucrat, who had showed little interest in the Chimera project right from the start. Now they were faced with an unexpected development and the man was suddenly treating it like his own personal crusade. “You want to go down there?” He asked.
Harvey nodded enthusiastically.
Egan knew better than to argue. “Alright,” he said. “I’ll rig up a harness and safety rope.”

While Egan clambered back up the slope to get the rope, Harvey looked back down into the well. The object, or rather, objects, lay at the bottom of the shaft, fifty metres down.
If he looked directly at them, the shapes seemed to vanish. But by shifting his point of focus to the side, he was able to pick out an oily glimmer that indicated something large and smooth. There seemed to be hundreds of them, tiny black spheres, clustered together like the eggs of some monstrous amphibian.
Despite the well-regulated temperature in his suit, he shivered.

Egan shouldered the steel maintenance locker closed, and hugged the tangle of ropes and harness straps to his chest. He looked up at the slate grey sky as he plodded back around the side of the low utility building, watching the wisps of snow dance around outside his helmet. He trudged through the knee-high drifts of snow, breathing heavily. It was tough going. The suit computer sensed his discomfort and adjusted his oxygen supply accordingly. A warm golden glow emitted from the drill control booth’s window, illuminating several metres of grey pack-ice. He heard the reassuring thrumm of the power generators as he moved on.

The earpiece in Egan’s suit buzzed with static, and then he heard Harvey’s voice. “Egan, how are those ropes coming? Over.”
Egan reached up to press the speak button on the side of his helmet. “I’m coming back around the drill now. Over.”
“Alright. Hook me up to one of the lateral support struts. Over.”
“Got it. Might be a little tricky getting the…”
“Getting the what?”
Egan’s brow wrinkled. He could hear something. He stopped dead. Maybe it was just a trick of the wind, but he thought he could-
There it was. He could hear it clearly now. It was a deep bass rumble, like a distant thunderclap. The sound was growing steadily louder. Closer.

He looked back to the drill control booth, where the window panes began to rattle noisily. “Are you hearing this, sir?”
“No, but I’m feeling it.”
Before he could reply, the ice below Egan’s feet jolted violently. It threw him to the ground with such force that his faceplate cracked open. A blast of super-chilled air flooded into his helmet. He watched in horrid fascination as his faceplate turned a frosty white from the inside. He began to hyperventilate, and with each desperate gasp a thousand fiery pins stabbed into his lungs. The ground thrashed and groaned in a chaotic fit beneath him.
Scraps of Harvey’s frantic voice came in over the damaged radio. “Egan? ....there?...at the hell is… on?” The transmission was severed abruptly. Egan looked to his right. The control booth’s windows all exploded at once, peppering him with shards. All of the base camp’s alarms kicked in simultaneously, but the dismal wail was drowned out by the now deafening roar from below. The spinning alarm beacons drenched the landscape in a devilish red glow. Somehow over the top of it all, his battered sense of hearing picked out a human scream.

Egan bolted across the smooth rim of ice around the top of the crater. He couldn’t see Harvey anywhere. Then he remembered; Harvey had been standing at the edge of the shaft. Which meant he had probably fallen down-
“Help!”
Egan turned, and saw the pair of yellow gloves protruding above the rim of the well. Then the ground jolted again and he lost his footing, and fell face down into the crater.
He hit the ice hard, blacked out.

It must have been for no more than a few seconds, because when he came to he was sliding down the smooth crater wall on his stomach, his arms stretched out before him. If he didn’t slow down he was going to collide with Harvey and knock them both into the shaft! Egan scrabbled for a handhold, still gasping for breath. His lungs and throat burned. The suit pumped more oxygen into his shattered helmet, but the gas just hissed out into the frozen atmosphere. Harvey was screaming, “Egan, stop!”
He stopped. His head was no more than a foot away from the rim of the crater, and Harvey’s terrified face. He looked back. His boot had somehow managed to hook around a jutting shard of black rock, stopping his descent. “Grab my hand!” he yelled.
Harvey reached up and grabbed Egan’s wrist. He started to look over his shoulder.
“Give me your other hand. Don’t look down!” Too late.
“Oh my God!”
“Your other hand!”
Another jolt caused a great chunk of ice to dislodge itself from the top of the crater, and it rumbled down into the well. A miniature avalanche of white debris followed in its wake. Harvey looked up, finally noticing Egan’s shattered faceplate.
“Not supposed to breathe the air,” he panted. “It’ll kill you!”
“Not if this fifty metre drop kills me first. Now give me your bloody hand!”
Harvey shifted his weight to reach Egan’s outstretched arm. He heard a noise behind him.
Egan turned around. He saw the rock his foot was hooked around start to tear away from the slope. Their combined weight was too much. Egan’s chest felt like it was about to explode. A sudden wave of nausea swept over him, and it was all he could do to stop himself from blacking out again. The rock gave way slightly, and they slid down further. Now Egan’s torso was over the shaft, and nearly half of his body was suspended over the black void. The situation was grim. Either Egan was going to be killed by the toxic atmosphere, or the rock would give way, or-
Another tremor shook the ice. There came a horrendous shriek of tearing metal from above. Without warning the massive drill head lurched downward, and jarred to a halt barely half a metre above Egan’s neck. He saw the metal framework begin to deform under the immense stress. A hail of rivets exploded from their housings and whizzed by his head. “Hell,” he coughed. “Can anything else possibly go wrong?” The response came immediately, in the form of yet another jarring shudder. He felt the rock behind him slowly start to wrench itself free of the ground. Think fast. He had to find another foothold. But there was nothing but tightly packed snow. Nothing to grab hold of.

All of a sudden, the rock decided to give out completely. They dropped fast, down into the gaping hole. Egan watched the slick grey ice flash by for a second, then he acted out of pure reflex. They wrenched to a halt.

He’d just managed to twist his body around enough to grab hold of the outer lip of the shaft, but he’d had to let go of Harvey’s arm. Now Egan dangled over the well, his fingers curled into the ice. Harvey’s full weight was suspended on his other arm. Fiery tendrils of pain shot through his chest and shoulder. He felt himself weakening, losing strength. The noxious air was slowly seeping into his system, and drawing him with each passing second closer to an endless slumber. Tiny white flecks of snow flittered down past his face, into the darkness. And down in the deepest shadows, in the depths of the pit, he saw something move.
“Oh, my God,” Harvey said again. “This is it. We’re gonna die.”
Egan wasn’t listening. His fingers began to lose their perilous grip, slipped closer to the edge.
“What’s that?” Harvey shrieked. He was staring with wild eyes at the bottom of the pit.
Metal shrieked again. The whole, massive drilling structure collapsed with a final groan, and the drill head plunged down toward Egan’s head. He let go.
Egan was unconscious long before they hit the bottom.
Harvey was awake, and screaming.

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Tags:

adventure, alien and horror