Escape from Hades, part 1
On the misty moon of Hades-P2-M3, a lone mech pilot battles unearthly horrors to save his family—and his soul
By Yuval Kordov
“Avi?”
Voices in the dark.
“They’re everywhere!”
Screaming at him—for him.
“Can’t get a lock!”
“Avi, where are you?”
“Nothing’s working! Oh God, oh God.”
As the beast came for them.
“Help me!”
He gasped awake. Choking down toxic atmosphere, then spitting it back up into his helmet. Eyeballs freezing solid. Skin blistering under the killing wind of Hades-P2-M3.
Dying. The way his team—his family—had died.
Wait. No.
His helmet…
His exosuit.
Avi pawed at his head and chest. His fingers were gloved, body sealed. He couldn’t see anything, but he could feel it: the bulky, hostile environment suit he always wore on mission, just in case. And he was breathing. It galed in his ears, every wheeze amplified by the close fit of his visor, but he was breathing. Too fast. Draining oxygen.
Laying back, he tried to calm his racing heart, the rush of blood in his ears. The ground jabbed at him, digging into every soft joint. If it penetrated—
He lurched back up, fumbling around until he was on his knees. Blobs of pink swam in the dark as his blood slowly followed. Not dead—not yet, but he couldn’t rest either. If he was alive, they might be too. They had to be.
The darkness billowed around him: his parachute.
Avi! the voices cried.
He had ejected. Ejected then blacked out. A surge of pain bloomed at the back of his head, clawing over his shorn scalp, crushing his temples as he tried to remember. A high pitched keening took the place of his ragged breath. Concussion, probably.
“Computer,” he croaked, then coughed for a minute straight before he could talk again. “Status.”
Green starbursts burned his retinas. Too late, he squinted as reams of monochrome text gushed from his heads up display. Blinking back tears, he tried to find the important bits.
Oxygen: 3:02 hours. Could be worse.
Suit integrity: 97%. There was the worse. Probably a micro-fracture. On this hellhole of a moon, half a percent could be the difference between life and death. He remembered that much.
External temperature: -57°C and falling.
He had to go.
Closing his eyes this time, he thumbed the head lamp switch under his chin. The world glared to life, even past shut eyelids. Slowly, he craned them open. Fractured slabs of rock flared wherever his helmet beamed, crystalline veins throbbing blue. He remembered that, too. This whole place was hungry for light. Even as P2—the gas giant it orbited—hung overhead like a false sun, its moon wanted more.
P2. Hades system. A fancy name for an untraveled system, well past the edge of civilized space.
Avi shook his head, trying to focus, then stopped as his brain ping-ponged off the sides of his skull. Nausea bubbled in his throat, but he swallowed it back.
“Focus, focus,” he muttered.
The parachute rippled and snapped under a sudden gust of wind. It had formed into a rough tent, pitched over the crooked frame of his ejection seat. He clambered forward to inspect the remains, finding the harnesses severed and a giant crack down the middle. It was cleaved nearly in two. Running his helmet light over his armor-clad body revealed deep scuffs along both arms and legs. He was lucky to be alive.
Lucky…
They’re everywhere! Energy weapons ineffective!
A hammer strike to his temples doubled him over.
Avi, what do we do?
Benjamin, Sarah, Michael. His team. His family. Their terrified faces stared from the shadows, begging. He had to find them.
Pushing himself up to a crouch, he rummaged through the frayed netting in the seatback.
The medkit was smashed, leaking fluid. It would have been useless anyway. The second he opened his suit, he would start dying for real.
A roll of thermal tape, always useful, which he tucked into a pouch.
One extra battery cell, tossed into another pouch. His suit was equipped with motor enhancement, but the drain was heavy. With a spare on hand, he could make a proper run for it—as much as half a G allowed, and assuming his head could take it.
Lastly, his sidearm, a holstered Glock 99 laser pistol, which he clipped to his utility belt.
Energy weapons ineffective!
The desperate cry echoed in his ears. He paused, trying to latch onto the memory, but it dissolved as quickly as it came.
He had to go.
Panning around, he found a flap of parachute draped like a curtain between two boulders. He hobbled over, half-crouching, half-walking, then with a deep breath, pushed through to the other side. A chaotic wasteland emerged from the black: endless cliffs and canyons gouged into the earth; titanic shards protruding at every angle like the skeletal arms of a dead giant lifted in prayer.
Lifted—to the sky. To P2. Bony fingertips glowing every shade of blue.
Avi turned on the spot, unsteady on his feet, then looked up.
The gas giant stared back.
It was impossibly huge, occupying nearly the whole of the sky, the whole of the universe. The distant sun shimmered along its edges, eclipsed into the abyss of space. Storms raged across its surface, every color, spinning in dizzying patterns. Flashing in great cascades, each burst of light emitting a hiss in his comms.
Comms that wouldn’t work—not here. Almost nothing worked, due to “interference” from its parent planet. That’s what they thought, anyway. They: his client.
The job…
A memory sizzled to the surface. Dropping through the void in the carrier, all of them glued to their battle walkers’ vid screens until those failed too. Afterimages of P2 burned into his soul. He couldn’t get over the feeling that the moon was a mirage, and that they were actually falling into the eye of a storm as the ancient ship screamed around him.
Falling. Upward.
Energy weapons ineffective!
A dam broke in his mind, and the memories flooded back. All of them.
***
“Avi?”
He had never seen such a big planet before, not in real life. It was too much. Too close. He always felt this way on moons. Humans were only supposed to see the heavens when they looked up, not the earth.
Another message came through, garbled.
Avi blinked, noting a flash on his comms panel next to Maccabee 2: Benjamin, his brother. He fiddled with the controls, trying to filter out the constant stream of static. “Say again, Benji.”
“You—paying attention—Boss?”
Still bad, but intelligible. Every syllable crackled with distortion. Every word was followed by an alien echo, worming through his earpiece into his soul. It had been that way since they disembarked, as though the world was mocking them. He tweaked the high-pass filter, but it made little difference.
Avi hated this place. It was too deep in the periphery. Nothing out here was the way it was supposed to be. Hades was a fitting name for the system, assuming that was even its real designation and not something made up by his client. How many systems, planets, and moons were named Hades? Hundreds, probably. But none of them deserved it more than this place. A realm of mist and gloom—and of canyons, endless canyons, which supposedly hid the treasure they were after.
But if this was Hades… where was Cerberus?
They had been told very little of the treasure, only that it was the presumed remains of an ancient gen-ship from the Scattering. Which likely meant automated defenses. Old, probably broken down by now. But then his client had hired them and others at great cost, so maybe not.
His brother’s voice—and the other one, the echo—warbled in his ear. “Why did Abba put you in charge, again?”
Avi grimaced, gripping his controls tighter. Bracing himself against a recalled admonishment from their father. Benjamin wasn’t wrong—they were on the clock. “Shut it,” he said.
A noisy chuckle came back. Somehow his brother was always able to find humor in the worst of situations and places. It was irritating but also grounding.
P2 receded, replaced by the whir and buzz of his cockpit. It was loud inside the cramped interior of the Emet-class battle walker, but it was his kind of cramped: cozy, familiar, as much a part of the family as his actual siblings. It had been passed down from father to son for generations, repaired hundreds of times but never modified from its original configuration. A real workhorse. All laser cannons, except for two short range rocket pods—a contingency, for close encounters.
He double-checked weapon and heatsink statuses. All green. Targeting computers were another matter, given “interference,” but hopefully he wouldn’t need them. And if he did get into a gunfight, quarters were close enough for point and shoot.
“How do things look on your side?” Avi asked.
“Operational area is a maze,” Benjamin replied. “Literally.”
Sarah’s voice cut in, faint at first until Avi punched up her channel. “—thought you were good at mazes. And coloring.”
“Don’t forget crossword puzzles,” his brother said.
Avi smiled, sparing a glance for one of the many glossy photos plastered around his cockpit: his little sister when she was actually little, wearing her mom’s pilot suit, eyes covered by the huge helmet and one of her hundred beloved stuffies in her arms. His whole family was there with him, the farm in the background, rolling green hills filled with avocado and date palms. Their homeworld, Bethel-7, was impossibly far away. He yearned for it every day, but they needed the credits.
“Okay, cut the chatter,” he said.
Turning back to his viewscreen, he zoomed into their assigned area. They were perched at the edge of a spiraling system of canyons that dropped down farther than he could see. The moon was covered with them, and each one had to be fully probed. This wasn’t a single-unit operation. There were other teams from other worlds, but he didn’t know how many or who they were. Contact was strictly forbidden, enforced by a black-suited, mirrored-helm security force aboard their starship, Arca Memoriae. It had just been him and his siblings eating away at each other’s patience for two months as they pushed deeper and deeper into the void.
“Can you map us a route?” he asked.
“I can,” Benjamin said, “but it’s ugly. We either go single file or split up and meet in the middle at… grid marker H12.2.”
Maccabee 4—Michael—piped up on the comms, but it was too choppy to make out. They weren’t even inside the canyon yet, and communication was already compromised. There would be no contact with their carrier until post-mission at the assigned time and pick up, and the starship may as well have been in another system.
He didn’t like it.
Avi craned over to inspect a low-res map on one of his screens. It was barely better than hand drawn, given that all the scout drones had failed almost immediately after launch. There would be no geo-tracking or real-time telemetry. Radar, seismic, anything beyond basic optical zoom—all useless. Extending a finger, he tracked his way from their location to the destination. Ugly indeed, and narrow. He didn’t relish the idea of bumping into each other if they needed an escape route.
“Confirmed. We should split up.”
Sarah piped up again, “Said everyone in every horror vid ever…”
A chorus of whispers followed her words.
Avi shuddered and moved to filter the comms again, but the echo cut off just as he reached the knob. Maybe silence would be a good thing. “Maccabee 2,” he said, “send everyone their starting point.”
“Aye, aye, sir.”
Avi scanned the depths as his brother allotted grid markers to the rest of their team, but it was useless. No light made it down there, meaning none of the natural—or unnatural—glow inherent to this moon. A wall of ice fog hung on the horizon, waiting. He zoomed into that instead, watching alternating flashes and shadows dancing behind the veil while fragmented messages exchanged on the comms.
Hopefully Sarah was okay. She was still a rook but had insisted on joining the mission. It was inevitable. They were all warriors deep down, from a long line. Still, he wished he could see their faces—their real faces. He tried the in-cockpit team feed, but it was black. It was jobs like this when he missed the farm the most: hard work but predictable, only having to worry about his siblings’ livelihoods rather than their lives.
“Ready over here,” Benjamin called.
Avi checked his dashboard chronometer. They had twelve hours to scout, find any signs of the wreck, and get back. It was going to be a long day. “Alright team. Move out.”
***
The wind howled through his helmet—the wind and something else.
Avi reeled himself away from the gas giant, eyes burning. Everything was skewed sideways, not a meter of flat ground in sight. He stumbled once, then again, almost tripping over his parachute as his body was pulled in every direction. Thrusting his arms out, he finally found his balance long enough to focus on his HUD: -62°C. A five degree drop since he came to. His suit could take it, but at the cost of ever more battery drain. If temperatures kept dropping at that rate, oxygen reserves wouldn’t matter.
The light beyond his faceplate shifted, dulling from blue to a dark yellowish green. He blinked his attention back to his surroundings and almost fell again. A low fog had rolled in, smothering the jagged surface, long tendrils crawling up his shins and sending his nerves alight. Something pressed against his back. Turning slowly about, he came face-to-face with a titanic wall of mist, edges churning in the wind. The same thing he had seen when they started out, less like weather and more like something alive, corralling them into the canyon’s gullet.
Sarah…
And just like then, it looked like there was something inside of it: thrashing shapes, long and slender, dancing in tandem with the gas giant’s storms. Like wraiths.
Avi gripped his laser pistol.
Energy weapons ineffective!
A desperate cry—his sister, halfway into the canyon. He had barely heard her then, her voice drowned out by echoes. What was she shooting at?
Avi retreated several steps, but the wall only grew, the fuzzy shapes within solidifying into silhouettes. It hurt to look at them. He blinked repeatedly, hoping each time that they would disappear, that they were manifestations of his concussion, but they remained. The other sound—not the wind—seemed to come from them.
Moaning.
Wailing.
He spun on his heels and ran.
The moon stabbed at him as he passed, shining spars and low stalagmites jabbing into his armored boots and gloves as he fell forward for long stretches. The servomotors in his suit whined their complaint. They weren’t working properly, sticking with the hardest jolts, then spinning freely as his body outpaced the machine, fueled by fear and adrenaline.
Avi tried to focus on the uneven horizon instead of the thing behind him, tried to spot any bit of familiar geography or signs of his team, destroyed or otherwise. He prayed it was otherwise, mouthing a silent plea, but an angry shriek interrupted him. As though the fog or whatever was inside it had read his mind, wishing to replace even his prayers with its own alien echoes.
Sarah’s voice rang in his ears: Oh God, oh God.
Maybe God wasn’t out here, this deep in space. Maybe this really was Hades.
He moved faster, pumping his legs as hard as he could. Climbing now, winding through a gravel-strewn gully toward a broken ridge. His only hope was that the canyon was on the other side. The ejection seat shouldn’t have propelled him more than a couple hundred meters, but between low gravity and the constant gale he could be anywhere. Mist sprang up on his faceplate, but from his own ragged breath. A quick glance at his HUD showed plenty of charge on the suit, for whatever it was worth in this broken place. He was out of shape, too much time spent in a cockpit and not enough PT. He should have spent more time on the farm, with his family. He should never have taken this job.
As the incline increased, he dropped to hands and knees, scrambling up as quickly as he could. The ground throbbed blue-green wherever his helmet light passed. He was almost at the summit. He could feel the fog behind him, pushing him to the edge, herding him. The last few meters raced past, his only sensation the pressure of the ground against his body, until the world fell away, replaced with a spiraling abyss.
The canyon.
The same labyrinthine walls, striped blue and gray; the landing on the other side, where they had been dropped; the pitch black void at its center. Only it looked even worse from this approach, less like bony arms raised to the heavens and more like an entire carcass, the darkness marking the moon’s gouged out heart. A thin trail of smoke snaked from one of the ribs.
Avi tapped on his helmet zoom, squinting through heavy digital noise until he could make out the rough outline of an open cockpit: his battle walker. He panned around to find the others, but the image degraded quickly, then finally blinked off altogether. An amber flash on his HUD directed his attention to suit integrity, now 96%—leaking out for sure.
He flipped on his comms, hoping elevation might grant a clearer signal. Instead, screaming distortion filled his helmet, drowning him. He lurched forward, almost tipping off the edge, clawing at the switch until the sound cut off, but the pressure remained. Pushing him down. Pinning his arms. Crushing tides of yellow fog rolled over his outstretched limbs.
He rolled slowly onto his back. The fog was right there, bearing down on him, dark shapes straining at its edge. Forcing his right hand up, he drew his laser pistol and let loose the entire charge pack. The barrel flared white-hot, steam hissing into the frozen air, then dulled back almost immediately.
Time stopped.
The shapes halted, and the wailing ceased with them. Slowly, a blue pinpoint emerged in the gray, spreading outward until the fog was transformed into a wall of swirling color. Blue refracting into purple and pink, banding into curved lines that mirrored the gas giant looming overhead.
Energy weapons ineffective!
Sarah’s desperate screams were etched into his mind, but his whole team had been on the comms when the attack hit. A chorus of shouting and hideous echoes. Underneath it all was the haunted, static-soaked murmuring of his little brother, Michael, but he didn’t understand it at the time.
They’re absorbing it…
They’re eating it.
Tendrils lashed out, pushing him over the edge, into the canyon.
***
A metallic screech echoed through the cockpit.
Avi winced, glancing out the viewscreen where a shoulder had caught on the canyon wall again. Their gear would all need new paint jobs after this mission. It had been three hours since they split up, and half that time was spent backtracking despite what the map had shown. Too many blind corners. Not enough visibility. The back of his head throbbed with tension.
Any other place than this hellhole of a moon and his client could have sent in autonomous scouts first, but even the basic pre-programed drones had failed. So they said, anyway. The pay was good enough not to question it. Plus paid travel time, which never happened. Benjamin had joked about it at the time: the drones spinning in circles like confused vacuum cleaners. But there were no jokes now, only status checks every five minutes, and straight call signs. That bothered Avi more than anything.
A clearing opened ahead, which looked just wide enough to stretch his mechanical arms. He edged through the last segment of trench, another screech marking his exit. Throttling back to stationary, he checked the map. There was no way to know exactly where any of his siblings were, and he had to restrain himself from looking up. No stars would guide him out here, only P2, ever-present. He shut his eyes against its oppressive halo, cricking his neck back and forth to try and restore some blood flow to his brain. A few seconds rest wouldn’t hurt.
He allowed himself to relax. Melting into his seat. Breathing in rhythm to the cyclical hum of the reactor.
“I—”
A panicked voice burst from his helmet speaker, saturated in noise. Avi’s eyes shot open.
“—tact—”
The basin was glowing blue.
He checked his comms panel but couldn’t tell who sent the message. Fumbling groggily at the switches he called out a reply, “Say again!”
Something rumbled in the distance. Loose gravel waterfalled all around him, obscuring his viewscreen with glimmering dust.
“This—Maccabee 3—have contact.”
Sarah.
Avi gripped his controls, uselessly rotating his upper torso back and forth. Then sidestepped until a loud clang denoted the edge of the clearing. The dust cleared, caught on a gust of wind, but it didn’t matter. His sister was on the other side of the labyrinth. Their routes had intersected a few times along the way, but he never actually saw her, didn’t know if she was ahead or behind.
Benjamin piped up, his brother’s alarmed baritone cutting through the static. “Contact? What kind of contact?”
They weren’t expecting resistance until the center of the system, where the ruin was supposedly hidden.
“Maccabe 3,” Avi started. “Sarah. Report.”
A sizzling beam of energy shot into the sky, maybe a hundred meters to his left, then several more. The basin throbbed brighter in response.
“Sarah!” he shouted.
“Energy weapons ineffective!” came her reply, then a jumble of voices as more flashes erupted to either side of him.
“They’re everywhere!”
He hunched over the map, tracing shaking lines with his index finger.
“Can’t get a lock!”
Another intersection cut in up ahead, maybe 150 meters.
“Avi, where are you?”
“Nothing’s working! Oh God, oh God.”
The echoes took over, rendering the rest into babble.
Slamming the throttle, he charged forward, gritting his teeth past the booms and scrapes of his passage. “I’m coming!” he yelled.
The canyon walls raced past at a blur. He cranked his helmet volume, even though his ears were already ringing; somewhere in the chaos was his family. He flipped up the trigger guards on both control sticks, glanced over at his weapon power gauges, then jerked to the side with a yelp as a tight corner appeared. Leg servos screeched as he pivoted away, exceeding tolerances. Turbines hollered. Metal groaned. But he made it through, accelerating again as the winding path straightened. He checked his weapons board—all green.
What did Sarah mean, “energy weapons ineffective?” That was most of their arsenal. It was their specialty: long engagements on cold worlds. Ironic given the arid climate of their homeworld. Benjamin had a million jokes about it.
The gap came up fast.
He bore down, focused on traversing the last jagged stretch without incident. More multi-colored beams erupted over the walls. They were still fighting.
Slamming his heels against his foot pedals, he skidded to a halt, pirouetting up and into the gap. Sarah was right there, and Benjamin, their battle walkers back to back. They weren’t fighting auto-turrets, or other walkers, or vehicles. The enemy was in their midst, point blank. They looked like…
Avi froze.
The walls…
They were moving, separating. Huge segments broke off into flailing tentacles, writhing as though they were flesh. Erupting from all sides, swinging at his brother’s and sister’s arms, lashing at their legs.
It was the canyon.
It was alive.
Something smashed into his side, throwing him against his harness. His elbow bumped against one of the control sticks, pitching him over sideways. He flailed at the other one, trying to counter-balance. Superheated beams of light crackled around him.
“Help me!” Sarah’s scream broke through the comms noise.
Avi struggled to right himself, pushing against the shuddering cliff to line himself up for a shot. They were everywhere, whatever they were. The tentacles never stopped moving, scales swirling in a dizzying dance. Just like the fog. Just like P2. Bile rose in his throat. His hands were miles away, triggers too far to reach.
A cluster of them wrapped around his sister, constricting her like some great serpent, lifting her off the ground as though her battle walker didn’t weigh sixty tons. Pulling her back into the canyon, toward the black abyss at its center.
His lips trembled, along with the rest of his body, but he managed to give voice to a prayer.
“Adonai li,” he whispered.
The Lord is with me.
“Lo ira.”
I will not fear.
Pins and needles prickled in his hands. Hard plastic pressed against his fingers.
“Adonai li, lo ira.”
Avi tracked their movements, pushing past the mesmerizing slither of scales to the point where they attached to the canyon walls, then fired everything he had. Pure light erupted from his arms. A swell of hot air rushed into the cockpit, temporarily overwhelming his suit’s climate controls. The things screeched, shuddered, dropping Sarah’s battered war machine back to the earth. Avi found the largest of them and kept firing, despite the blaring alarms from his heat management systems. Firing and moving. The beast juddered in place, its scales glowing so bright that they turned crystalline. But instead of breaking apart, it swelled.
The world crashed down around him.
Sparks erupted inside the cockpit, then fire. Somewhere off to the side of his shattered viewscreen, he saw an arm cartwheel away. Every panel was flashing red.
“EJECT!” his suit computer shrilled. “EJECT!”
He was spinning around, as though caught in a whirlpool. Straining for the emergency latch under his seat, he sucked in a deep breath.
And pulled.
***
“WARNING! WARNING!”
Avi squinted against the flashing lights on his HUD, next to the suit status lines. Integrity was down to 95%—another micro-fracture. Must have been a bad one, since estimated oxygen reserves had dropped to 30 minutes. Time was running out.
He pushed himself onto hands and knees, biting down the pain of bruised ribs and contusions all along his limbs. His suit made sure he wouldn’t freeze to death—for now—but it couldn’t do much against falls. If not for the moon’s low gravity, he would have been pulverized. Far above him, the fog hung at the edge of the canyon wall, waiting.
Loping forward, he made for the smoke trail, barely visible on the other end of the canyon. Every step sent a bolt of lightning up his spine, but he couldn’t stop. Whenever a bout of dizziness hit, he bent over, breathing through it instead of reaching for something to grab onto. Otherwise, whatever was in the walls might come out again.
He started to shake his head—a habit whenever something confused him, which Benjamin mocked to no end—but his neck locked up.
Minimize movement. Push on.
But as hard as he tried, his mind kept wandering.
Whatever was in the walls.
An insane thought. Maybe his concussion was worse than he thought. There were no aliens, malevolent or otherwise. Nothing found in the centuries since casting off from Earth. Those few planets that sustained life without the need for domes, underground warrens, or otherwise artificial accommodations only spawned whatever their settlers brought in their seed banks, whether biological or animal. Bethel-7 was such a world—precious. The void was aptly named.
No. No aliens. No ancient, buried civilizations. Humans were God’s only children.
Afterimages of the beast floated across his vision, flashing blue every time he blinked.
So, what did that make them?
Whose children were they?
The oxygen meter dropped faster than it should have as he delved deeper into the canyon. At 25 minutes, the first scorch mark appeared, blistering up and over a wall. At 20, the first debris: granular bits and pieces of their former war machines, rendered nearly to dust. His HUD was angrily flashing 15 minutes by the time he found his battle walker slouched and smoldering in a pile of loose shale, both arms lopped off, a gaping hole in its dorsal plating.
The sight stopped him in his tracks.
There was no repairing this.
Tears welled in his eyes, but he blinked them back and hobbled forward. Benjamin’s and Sarah’s battle walkers weren’t there.
He could feel his father’s hands on his shoulders, the weight of a responsibility he wasn’t ready for, didn’t want. Expectant eyes unblinking. Giving the same command he always gave, until the end: “You have to take care of your family, Avi.”
Yes, Abba.
Clambering onto one of its giant hawklike legs, he pulled himself up one access rung at a time, dodging ragged shards of armor plate, past still-closed missile doors to the cockpit surround. Taking a deep breath, then holding it as his oxygen meter blinked down, he peered over the edge. The interior was still partly intact, blackened beneath a layer of sparkling frost but half of the control boards were in one piece. He could feel the latent vibration of the reactor, still churning. With a grunt and teeth gritted against the stabbing in his back, he rolled inside.
First, he scoured the jagged crater where his seat and personal gear had been. It was mostly slag, but welded beneath was a single intact oxygen module. Gingerly pulling back strips of blackened metal, he found the emergency nozzle. A blessing. He pulled it free and guided it to the inlet below his helmet, then tripped the release latch. A sharp hiss marked positive contact, followed by a steady gurgle as internal regulators took over. His HUD flickered: 13… 14… 15 minutes. Impatience took the place of relief, but he stayed with it, watching the numbers crawl upward, finally disconnecting at 30 minutes—enough for now.
Flattening himself to the floor, he shimmied under the main panel, batting away clumps of ice to get at the auxiliary ports. His primary control interface was gone, but if there was still power, he might be able to work the machine’s systems, specifically its comms array, via the computer in his suit. The last layer of ice fell away, and the panel cover fell with it, ejecting a bundle of frayed cable onto the floor. Sparks danced along his hands, singing his gloves.
“Dammit,” he cursed, smacking at them, but they had already gone out. A howl whistled through the cockpit, bringing with it a fresh frost squall.
His HUD blinked: -70°C.
Fumbling at his cargo pouch, he drew out the roll of tape and started tearing off strips at the perforation lines. One by one, he rethreaded and wrapped the wires, thankful for his gloves even as they slowed his fingers. Better than being electrocuted. Satisfied with the patch job, he crammed the wires back up into the panel and flipped open the data port cover. The interface looked clear, no bent contacts. Opening up his own wrist terminal, he retracted his data jack and plugged it into the port.
Nothing happened.
He stared at his HUD, waiting for a connection indicator, but it remained blank. He tried popping and replacing the jack, but still nothing. Only then did he notice the battery warning on his suit: 22%. It had gotten lost under the much more pressing issue of suffocation. Luckily, the suit was smart enough not to try anything that would have drained it completely, likely taking command of an entire battle walker.
He rummaged in his pouch again, gingerly grasping the battery cell. Every HE suit had an internal power reserve that maintained minimal function while swapping in a fresh cell, but there was no way of knowing if it would work when damaged. He had no choice. Before the fear could fully set in, he unlatched his chest compartment, turned the battery release switch, and yanked out the old unit.
His HUD fizzled, going dark. The sweat on the back of his neck chilled. Gravity seemed to double as the passive motor assist that handled the suit’s weight went offline. He strained to hear any indication of circulating atmosphere, but the inside of the suit was silent, as though he had torn out his own heart. Using both hands, he pushed in the new cell, groaning as it barely snapped into place. He shut the compartment and waited, trying not to think about the prickle of cold on his extremities, or the spreading fog on his faceplate.
“C’mon, c’mon,” he muttered, each word accompanied by an icy cloud.
A cursor blinked on in the corner, flashing, thinking. He willed the processor to move faster.
With a whir and clunk, the suit’s life support machinery came alive. The inner body sleeve ballooned, hugging his limbs—too tight, as though it were one giant blood pressure cuff—then released. The battery meter came back to life: 64%. Good enough.
He tried plugging his data jack in again, and this time was rewarded with a message on his HUD:
NEW CONNECTION FOUND. ENTER MANUAL OVERRIDE CODE.
He tapped the voice control button on his terminal and dictated the passphrase, “Sarah sells seashells by the seashore. Exclamation mark.”
CONNECTION ESTABLISHED.
A new icon popped up on his HUD, shaped like a cartoonish robot head. He tapped it, and was presented with a new menu, long and unformatted, legible words mixed with machine code. He scrolled through the noise until primary communications popped up. Bouncing from one partially scrambled header to the next, he finally found team comms. A channel crackled open in his helmet.
“This is Maccabee 1. Anyone, respond.”
Nothing.
“This is Avi. Sarah, Benji, Michael. Can any of you hear me?”
Just static on the line, then a burbling hiss.
An echo.
Avi clamped his mouth shut, edging slowly backward until he could peek over the panel to the canyon beyond. It looked the same as when he got here, as far as he could tell. Violet streaks slipped along the ground, not from the moon’s own clouds but P2’s ever-churning tempest.
Navigating back to his HUD, he found the communication channel to HQ. It would be a one-way transmission and there was no way of knowing if it got through, until either a carrier appeared on the horizon, or he ran out of air.
“This is Avi Abramson, Maccabee Company commander. Request emergency evac. Contact made with hostile force. Status of other units”—he swallowed past the lump in his throat—“unknown…”
“Unknown…” something whispered back, sending his stomach into his throat.
It—the echoes on the comms.
The walls.
A loose sheet of rock slid down one of the cliffs up ahead. Then another, unleashing a waterfall of gravel all around him. The rhythmic hum of the reactor was replaced with a deep rumble, like a budding earthquake or a distant stampede. The same sound he had heard before the attack.
“No, no, no,” he moaned, looking up to the heavens in hopes that a rescue ship would appear, and instead being caught up in the multitudinous eyes of the gas giant. He half-stood, data jack pulling taut as he assessed his options. The lasers were all gone, severed along with the battle walker’s arms and useless anyway. But there were still the rocket pods, sealed behind their doors. He wouldn’t be able to aim, but if the enemy got close enough—
Something slipped away from the wall farther down the trench, something larger than a rockfall.
Avi crouched back down, hands racing over his wrist terminal as he tried to locate weapon control. Header after header brought him to a dead end, the war machine’s computer still trying to connect to amputated systems. Finally, he found the ballistics registry. After slamming his way through a sequence of confirmations, he was rewarded with the electric whir of missile doors opening. Hopefully both, but he couldn’t tell.
A great crack echoed down the trench, followed by a grinding sound like stone being crushed. He backed out of the menu to the adjacent fire control, pressed himself as low into the floor as he could, and waited, index finger hovering over the OK button.
It was coming.
Every inch of his skin bristled. Prayers tumbled in his throat, held back by a mind that was desperate to live, to slow time so that each second lasted longer. To take care of his family. He searched for one of his precious photos, but they had all blown out when he ejected. Only memories were left.
The walker shifted, sliding sideways on its burial mound. A blue glow crept up the canyon walls.
His father’s face emerged again, from the shadows. Eyes intent, but calm this time instead of commanding; clear, as he lay on his deathbed. His lips were moving, reciting the Vidui—his final confession—but Avi couldn’t make out the words past his grief and the terror of looming responsibility.
And failure.
“May my—” he began, choking on the words. “May my death… be an atonement for my sins.”
The beast rose above him, its great maw hungry for light.
Avi pressed the button.
All was thunder and fire, then boulders falling from the sky.
***
Avi!
Where are you?
Avi gasped awake, but he couldn’t move.
The canyon walls had collapsed on top of him along with the beast, its stone skin peeling away one layer at a time under the onslaught. Its death screams were like nothing he had ever heard before: pure hatred.
Collapsed—on top of him.
His arms were stuck. His legs.
He was buried alive. Trapped in Hades. Sheol.
A scream rose in his own throat, then faded out.
Why was it so bright?
Blobs of color sizzled overhead. Linear shapes.
Ceiling lights.
“Easy, easy,” a muffled voice said.
A voice?
He wasn’t wearing his helmet, or his suit. A figure materialized beside him, fuzzy at first, then slowly forming into the shape of a medic in full PPE: yellow suit, full-face oxygen mask, gloves.
“What…” It was the only word he had.
“You’re safe now,” she said.
She: not Sarah. One of the starship’s medical personnel. He didn’t know her.
Avi swung his head around. He was lying on a gurney, clothed in a blue-and-white striped gown. No—just blue. The white stripes were restraints, pulled tight against his arms, chest, and legs. Panic bubbled up in his throat again.
“Don’t worry,” the medic said, leaning over him. She began undoing the straps. “We had no choice. You were really thrashing around.”
Avi found his hands and clenched them, fighting his impatience as the straps came off one at a time.
“There we go.”
He leaned up—and immediately regretted it. Everything started to spin. Blood pounded in his ears. He fell back onto the bed.
“You have a concussion,” she said. “And internal bleeding. We’ve patched you up, but you need to rest.”
Avi!
He couldn’t rest.
“My family. My team,” he blurted.
“We have them too,” she said, a smile breaking through the glare of her face mask. “They’re in quarantine—”
“You have them…” He didn’t want to ask, but he had to. “Alive?”
“Yes.”
“All of them?”
“Yes.”
Relief flooded him, cool then hot then cool again. The fog of Hades dissipated, replaced by the sterile atmosphere of the medical bay—and a deep ache all through his body. But he didn’t care about the pain. They were alive.
Thank you, God. Thank you.
The medic stepped away, busying herself at one of the metal counters lining the room.
Avi let his eyes shut for a moment. He wanted to know everything, but whenever he delved back in time, his temples throbbed. “What about our battle walkers?” he asked.
“There’s a salvage team down there now.”
Her voice seemed so far away.
“Did you—” His voice caught in his throat. He cleared it and tried again. “Did you find what you were looking for?”
Something bit into his shoulder.
His eyes shot open. He craned around, blinking away the wet. The medic had a syringe in her hand.
“Something to help you sleep,” she said.
“No, wait,” he croaked, gripping the sides of the gurney, trying to pull himself up again, but it was worse than last time. Fireworks sputtered in his peripheral vision. Up became down. “I just… woke up.”
“I’ll come check on you in a few hours,” she said, moving out of focus.
He tried to track her movements, but she juddered around the room. His tongue felt twice as thick as normal. She had said something earlier, something he missed. “What do you…”
The med bay door slid open, impossibly far away. Two figures hovered outside: all black, armored. The ceiling lights dimmed into a simmering blue as she stepped outside.
“Wait!” He took a deep breath and tried again, but she was too far away. His last words spilled into the void. “What do you… mean… quar…an…tine…”
***
The light pressing against his eyelids had shifted, from blue to red—strobing. And there was a pattering sound, like rain. Like the hailstorms that sometimes hit back home, when the air was so thick with heat and humidity that it encroached upon the heavens and was rebuffed. Slashing at their crop. Testing their resolve.
Avi opened his eyes.
An emergency light was flashing overhead. The only sound was the deep thrum of the massive spacecraft’s engines. The room was empty.
His tongue was fuzzy, as though he had been sucking on cotton balls, but he did feel marginally better. His arms held as he pushed himself up to sitting. His legs wobbled but stayed put as he swung them over the gurney and onto the cold metal floor. An electric tingle buzzed against his bare feet. He sat there for a minute, waiting for his blood to recirculate.
Bang!
The tinny sound burst from somewhere above him. Avi squinted past the glaring light to a vent on the ceiling. A few seconds later, three more bangs rang out in rapid succession. Not hail—gunfire, conveyed from somewhere else on the ship.
Did you find what you were looking for?
The medic hadn’t answered.
A gust of icy air blew against his face, whistling like the perpetual wind of the moon below. Painful goosebumps prickled along his skin. The medical bay was small, but its corners stretched in the half-light, blind spots looming behind every locker and table. The beast’s silhouette lingered in every shadow.
No, that was impossible.
A mutiny, maybe, or a dispute over shares. It wouldn’t be the first time. Deep space brought out the worst in people. Deep space brought out the worst in everything…
He pushed off with a groan and navigated to the lockers, yanking them open one by one until he found a set of crew coveralls and mag boots. Shrugging off his gown, he tried not to linger on the bruises covering his battered body. He dressed quickly, listening for more signs of chaos, but the gunfire had stopped. Maybe good, maybe bad—he had to find his family in either case. The medic had said they were in quarantine, which could mean anything, but the first place to check would be their quarters.
Clomping toward the door, he braced for an encounter with the guards, then paused, hand hovering over the control pad as he realized he had no idea how to get there from here. His crew had been relegated to the ship’s aft-most habitat ring, cordoned off into their own tiny allotment of sleeping and recreational quarters. No one had so much as a cold on the trip, so they never left their section except for escorted jaunts back and forth to the carrier. There was gravity here, albeit skewed, which meant the med bay was also in a habitat ring, but there were three of those circling the ship.
Scanning the room, he found a terminal on a table behind his bed. He hurried over, tapped the screen, and was prompted with a password request. Below it was a guest access option. He tapped that instead and was rewarded with a general menu, including a map. Centering on his current location, he breathed a sigh of relief when he saw it was on the same ring as their quarters, but the opposite end. Their quarters were in Section 343 and this was Section 310. He wished for his suit—to get there faster and for a layer of armor on his back—but even if it was hidden away somewhere in the bay, donning it in his condition would take too long.
Just as he was about to head out, a blinking hazard icon caught his eye from the corner of the screen. The sweat on the back of his neck froze. He tapped through, and a warning message appeared.
SECURITY INCIDENT IN STORAGE BAY B.
ALL PERSONNEL REMAIN IN QUARTERS UNTIL FURTHER NOTICE.
The middle of the ship, close to the docking bays.
There was no option for more info. Shrugging the tension from his shoulders, he made for the door, braced again, and hit the pad.
No guards.
He peeked out. The corridor was empty save for the flashing emergency lights. Still no gunfire or signs of life—or death. The distance would be the same whichever way he went, but anti-spinward would be faster, if a bit wobbly.
Sparing a final glance for the med bay, in case a weapon magically appeared, he moved out. His run started as an awkward lope, pulled sideways by Coriolis force and his own injuries, but he eventually picked up speed. The only sound was the clang of his boots along the steel mesh floor. A numbered door blurred past every twenty meters, leading from the access lane to other sections. They were all shut, as per the alert instructions. Still, he would have expected someone to be out here milling about—another company worried enough about their own carrier to break regs.
His surprise increased, and his worry deepened, as he approached the first access shaft to the main body of the ship. It was unguarded, the elevator beyond sitting idle. He stopped, gripping a handhold as he caught his breath. A pass would be required to operate the lift, but the emergency ladder was unobstructed. A tiny pinprick of blue light glowed from the other side, and there was a sound. Something other than the constant thrum of the ship: a murmuring, incoherent voices echoing down the tube, rising and falling like the tide.
Avi backed away, reflexively clutching for his absent sidearm. The sound followed, as though trapped in his ears. He turned and ran, pumping his legs faster until his huffing breath drowned out everything else. The next access shaft was also unguarded. This one he steered well clear of, pressing tight to the opposite wall, but he never stopped.
By the time he made it to Door 343A, his lungs were raw, a metallic tang at the back of his throat. He slammed the control pad and the door slid open. Emergency lights were flashing inside as well. Beyond, a narrow hallway connected two more closed doors and a small meeting room at the end.
“Sarah!” he called, gasping. “Michael!”
He opened the first door, to his younger siblings’ quarters. It was empty, bunks tidy, the same as when they had left.
“Benji!”
The other room, the one he shared with his older brother, was empty as well. Avi dashed down to the meeting room, just in case—nothing.
Backing out, he crossed the access corridor to Door 343B and stormed inside. Their rec room, head, tiny mess hall—all empty.
“Dammit!”
They had shared breakfast right here, before the mission.
Assuming it was even the same day.
Avi grabbed the back of a bench, trying to concentrate, but the constant strobing of the emergency light dislodged his thoughts. Scattering his shadow across the room. Pulling him apart.
You have to take care of your family, Avi.
He gripped tighter, gritting his teeth until the wave of nausea passed.
Yes, Abba.
He pushed off and headed back to his sleeping quarters, steadying himself on handholds along the way. The echoes from the access shaft still lapped at his ears. Whirling tentacles flashed in his memory, slavering for light, for his soul. Whatever they had found on Hades, it was here with them somehow. He could feel it.
He replayed his final moments in the open cockpit, one brief moment of exultation as his missiles shattered the beast. Pure, propulsive force.
Avi crouched over his storage crate and pressed his thumb against the lock. The familiar scent of home wafted into his nostrils, bound up in the small bundle of belongings he had carried across the stars: a wool blanket, his leather-bound siddur and tasseled tallit. The memory of morning prayers beat back the alien echoes; sunlight drifting through the open windows of his village shul. He reached underneath the pile and retrieved a small wooden box, carefully placing it on his bunk.
His hands shook as he opened the brass latch. This heirloom was older even than his family’s battle walkers. A different smell emanated from inside: the dry musk of olive wood harvested from the hills of eternal Jerusalem, plus hints of solvent and oil. A white cloth was gathered within, embroidered with his family name in silver thread. Avi traced the stitches before unfolding it. Nestled inside, immaculate despite the centuries, lay a weapon carried by his ancestors from Earth. “Desert Eagle,” it had been called. Its stainless steel frame gleamed beneath the red light of the cabin. Two full magazines of .44 Magnum lay beside it.
Pure, propulsive force.
Avi lifted the gun, pausing to appreciate its weight, then slammed in a magazine and drew back the slide, chambering a round with a heavy, metallic clack. The action cycled cleanly, smooth as the day it was built. The spare magazine he tucked into one of his coverall pockets. As he replaced the empty box to his crate, his hand brushed against the siddur. He gently set the gun on the floor, took up the holy book, and flipped its yellowed pages until he found the passage he was looking for. It was hard to see, but he knew the verse by heart—he knew all of them.
“Barukh Adonai tzuri, ha-melamed yadai la-krav, etzba’otai la-milchamah.”
Blessed be the Lord, my Rock, who trains my hands for battle and my fingers for war.
He touched the book to his lips, then sealed it back up in the crate. Grabbing the gun from the floor, he pushed himself to standing and stared at the wall. Uncertainty held him there, as though his mag boots were turned to max. The ship was huge, the enemy unknown. Sarah, Michael, Benji—they were all counting on him. His father was counting on him.
Avi gripped his weapon in both hands and flipped off the safety.
He had to go.
He had to take care of his family.
Yuval Kordov is a chronically creative nerd, tech professional, husband, and father to two amazing girls. Over the course of his random life, he has been a radio show DJ, produced experimental electronic music, created the world of Dark Legacies®, and built custom mechs with LEGO® bricks.
Copyright © 2025 Yuval Kordov & Incensepunk Magazine
All rights reserved
No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, organizations, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.