The Cardinal Directive: Mission Log #1
The story begins...
>> THE CARDINAL DIRECTIVE// MISSION LOG #1
>> INFORMATION CLASSIFIED. RETINAL SCAN REQUIRED
>> ...
>> ERROR: RETINAL SCAN FAILURE
>> RETINAL SCAN OR PASSWORD REQUIRED TO ACCESS THESE FILES
>> ...
>> ERROR: PASSWORD INCORRECT. FAILURE TO PROVIDE PASSWORD WILL RESULT IN SYSTEM LOCKDOWN
>> ...
>> ...
>> PASSWORD ACCEPTED
>> WELCOME, SUPERVISOR
>> ACCESSING MISSION LOG #1... A video begins to play, focusing on a dirt path as someone’s boots move in and out of view. The camera bobs in time with the person’s stride, the audio obscured for the first few moments by the sound of someone moving their fingers or clothes across the mic.
“...uh... no, that just turned it on. I think.”
“Woops. Well, no time like the present, I guess. We’ll find the night vision setting later. Do you want to start?”
“Might as well. It’s already recording – should I stop it first? Restart?”
“Nah. Not like anyone is gonna be critiquing this for cinematography.”
“Fair, fair. Okay.” After a moment, the camera straightens out, now pointing at a young woman wearing a faded green spacesuit. It might have been brighter green at one point, but the sun and a coat of red dust easily stripped its luster long ago. Her hair is golden brown in the light of the morning sun, cut short but still long enough to be tied back into a small ponytail. Her eyes appear green, but it’s hard to tell as she squints against dawn’s glow, sunlight glaring off her helmet. She clears her throat.
“Mission Log #1. Start time,” she pauses, checking her watch, “is 7:03 AM. My name is Alison. Alison Kheely, and I work as a Harrier on Mars.”
Strange to say, but for as small as the camera was in Alison’s gloved hands, it still felt impossibly clunky. It was denser than she imagined it would be, and small enough that pushing some of the buttons was hard to do accurately in her suit. Held in her outstretched hand, she wasn’t quite sure if it was even capturing her.
Alison glanced at Solena. “What do you think? Too formal?”
Solena shrugged. “Great for offworlders, I guess? Not like this is gonna be news for any Martian.”
“True… Do we even know who’ll be looking at this?”
Solena shrugged. “He didn’t say.”
Reciprocating the shrug with her mouth, Alison turned back to the camera, opening her mouth to speak, but didn’t get a word out before Solena had turned back to the camera and interjected.
“—People call her Alleycat.”
Alison rolled her eyes, dropping her arm to move herself out of frame. “People don’t call me Alleycat. You call me Alleycat.”
Solena put a hand delicately on her chest, feigning hurt. “I’m people. Besides, it’s a perfectly fine callsign for a radio.”
“My callsign’s always been Alisol.”
“Ali-sol, Sol-eena…” She shook her head. “I dunno…”
“Hence why your callsign is Sunshine, remember?”
Alison turned the camera on the woman walking in front of her, closing one eye to get a better look through the viewfinder. Solena was smaller than her, with dark beige skin and wavy black hair pulled into a braid that fell at a slightly odd angle with the way she was turning over her shoulder to look at Alison. Their suits were identical, both in the make as well as their faded nature, with the singular difference being that her nametag read REYES instead of KHEELY. She carried her backpack in one hand, the other perched idly on the radio on her belt.
The camera caught very little of this. She was all but silhouetted on the video, the sun rising slowly behind her and obscuring her features.
“I mean, I am pretty radiant.” Solena turned back, shading her eyes with her hand as they neared last night’s camp. The final member of their group, Garrett, was hard at work breaking down his tent, apparently having trouble getting it to fit back into its bag. “Hey! Emerson! Got a present for you —”
Garrett didn’t have time to respond before Solena had hucked something his way. He managed to catch it, fumbling it in his fingers for a second or two before it settled. The pile of tent stakes and other supplies creaked under his knee as though it had half a mind to erupt out of the bag and make him start over again. “Have I mentioned I hate that you do that?”
“Not even once, no. I’m sure I would’ve remembered something like that. ANYHOW,” Solena turned back to the camera but didn’t even get a word out.
“A camera?” Garrett asked, examining the device in his hands before noticing the one Alison was carrying. “Two cameras?”
“Au contraire —” Solena dug into her pack, fishing out yet another camera. “There’s actually three.”
“Another harrier down from Matsby Junction spotted us scouting from the ridge,” Alison explained. “Said he’d been given orders from one of the Towers to pass them out to anyone else he saw out here.”
Garrett squinted through the viewfinder, bringing it as close to his face as he could with the helmet in the way. He had fluffy black hair that kept falling into his eyes, forcing him to shake his head every now and then to clear it. “...Did he say why?”
“Something new making its way down the chain of command, sounds like.” Alison offered with a shrug, setting the camera down on the ground and breaking down her tent. “Maybe something happened.”
Solena had already gotten her tent packed, turning her attention to the set of black panels underneath. She pressed the button in the center, the platform folding up into a much smaller square so she could load it up too. “Or, hear me out, they’re making a documentary.”
“About what? Sand?” Garrett tucked the camera away, turning his attention back to the duffle bag his tent was supposed to fit in. He grabbed the two sides of the zipper, pulling them as close as he could to make it easier on himself.
Alison squinted out into the wide desert around them, the Red, eying its various formations and flat stretches.
“It’s either that or rocks, take your pick.”
Solena chuckled, rolling her eyes. "I meant a documentary about harriers, but apparently I overestimated how interesting everyone else thinks we are. Travelers of the desert? Lifeblood of Mars?”
“Definitely not more interesting than rocks. Humble opinion.”
They shared a round of chuckles, finishing breaking down camp and carrying their things over to their respective sleds.
“Alright... lochsleds charged?” Alison brushed a bit of red dust off her hovercraft’s solar panels, moving the camera to a perch where it’d be able to see the road ahead.
“Should be. Been charging since dawn and I don’t think we lost all our charge running the heaters last night anyway. The crews should be ready too – they’ve been sunbathing on a rock over there.” Garrett gestured vaguely off to the right, making a face. “There has been... a change of plans though.”
Alison’s eyebrow rose. “Everything’s still good with the supply run to Copernar, right?”
“Yeah, yeah that’s fine. But word’s gotten down the grapevine that Copernar Tower is asking at least one of us to make a stop along the way to check out some reports they’ve been getting. Apparently, we’re the only group passing anywhere near that area today.”
“Keep talking around it and you’ll tie your tongue in a knot, Emerson. What’s going on?” Solena’s face had drawn, more than aware that whatever it was couldn’t be good.
“Right. Well... They want someone to go – probably more than one person – to go check out a report about some movement in... the labyrinth.” They each shared a glance before he continued. “They think it might be the remnants of a crew — want us to bring them back if we can.”
Their train of thought was broken as the air was suddenly filled with excited barks and trills. The three harriers were nearly run over as their crews returned from sunbathing and were apparently very excited to see them up and about.
The word “dragon” was not the official term for what they were. Technically, they were bioengineered to survive the Martian desert and had some fancy scientific name, but most people called them dragons anyway. Honestly, there really wasn’t a reason not to. Each of them was roughly horse-sized, with striking scale colors and gem-tinted eyes. Many of them had horns of various shapes and sizes, along with small wings and a variety of other features. Some of them had different looking back or front legs, but all of them sported a massive set of claws that were dulled by travel. Not quite dragons, but certainly the closest thing to them.
Oreo was at the head of the pack, a blur of black scales and dusty white feathers running down his back and all along his tail. He skidded to a stop in front of Alison, trilling and circling her. She reached up and ruffled his feathers, immediately getting nuzzled and pushed around by the rest of her crew as they vied for her attention. Dozer and Moose got to her last, trundling along behind the others.
Solena and Garrett were in similar situations with their crews, a bright green dragon named Atlas attempting to delicately pat Solena’s head without scratching her helmet while Garrett did his best to fend off two of his blue dragons from his sled’s contents. There was a loud pop as one of them unzipped the tent bag, a tent stake flying out with surprising speed and landing in the dirt.
A few dragons half-trampled each other getting to it, a purple one with big horns named Prince coming back victorious and placing the tent stake in Solena’s hands.
She hopped up on her lochsled — lovingly known as The Crone — and waved the stake in a circle in the air, getting everyone’s attention. “Aaalright folks, enough’s enough! We’re losing daylight!” She pointed the stake at Alison. “Alleycat, your supplies are perishable, so your crew will head straight to Copernar. Watch for sand traps and check that crater before you go through it. The right side of the ridge is stable if you need to use it.” She swung the stake around to point at Garrett. “You an' me are checking out the labyrinth. Everybody hitch up!”
Alison wrangled her team into position as Garrett and Solena did the same with theirs. The twins – two wine red dragons named Port and Starboard – took the lead, with Oreo and Basset just behind. Dozer and Moose took up the rear, closest to the lochsled. Within a few minutes, everyone was harnessed in and ready to go.
The harriers all took position, giving one last nod before powering up the lochsleds and calling for the dragons to start moving. Alison kept on course for Copernar, watching silently as Garrett and Solena veered off and vanished into the distance.
It was still early in the morning by the time Alison and her crew hit the crater, stopping at one end to give it a preliminary examination. There were a few paths between the cliff drops that would allow for a safe descent, as well as a way to get back up at the other end. The ground in the center was dune-like, but nothing her dragons hadn’t handled before. There was one problem though — a collection of metal still caught in the shade of the crater’s rim.
Alison called for Starboard to cut right, leading the crew along the ridge. A low thrum permeated the air as the night’s shadows pulled further towards the walls of the crater, illuminating the masses of shapeless metal and stirring them from their sleep. Slowly but surely, about a dozen lochsleds rose into the air, their solar panels reflecting the early morning rays.
The sleds faced vertically, as though standing on their heads, and hovered at staggered heights much higher than any sled normally could. The highest had reached some fifteen feet in the air already.
The damage to their exteriors was unmistakable, even at this distance.
Some had gashes all along the side of their hull — places where rocks had pierced the metal and ripped all the way across. Others had their noses scrunched to less than a quarter of the original size from head-on collisions. There was no way to tell whether this damage was what originally did them in, or if it was just a symptom of the abandoned sleds’ daily rise and fall.
Some had sustained enough damage that the tubes and wires within were exposed – and were the only thing holding the front half of the machine to the back.
There was a haunting sense of reverence that came with that thrumming. Something about the way they resonated not only with each other, but also her own lochsled. An inexplicable heartbeat — synchronized, perhaps, across all harriers.
It was no secret that the majority of Mars’s vast desert was yet untamed, but it was hard to get any kind of scope of what that meant from inside the biodomes.
There were things on this planet that defied explanation, things only the harriers had seen. Things you had to experience yourself to truly understand.
Places like this existed all over the world. Knowledge of their existence spread through whispered rumors passed from harrier to harrier.
Places lochsleds gravitated to after crashing, like this one.
Places where navigational equipment went haywire for no discernible reason.
Places where harriers and their crews went missing, only for their lochsleds to turn up in graveyards like this one — though mysteriously undamaged.
Places where you’d pick up indecipherable radio chatter but be out of range of any towers for miles.
Humans had colonized Mars, yes, but only so far as anyone could sit on a rock and call themselves kings.
Port gave a draconic bark, drawing her attention down to the center of the crater. Sunlight gleamed off something there, half-buried in the dirt. Alison eyed the horizons towards Copernar, but couldn’t bring herself to leave just yet.
Carefully, she and the crew found a place to descend into the sandy basin, passing in the shadows of the floating lochsleds. Some fifteen feet away, she halted the sled and stepped off, trudging up towards the object. A pin dropped into the sand behind her, and she looked back to see Oreo had disconnected his harness and begun following her.
They walked together to the grounded lochsled, inspecting it without touching it. Its entire nose piece was gone, wires spilling out of it like it had been disemboweled. There were tamper marks all over the top of the hull too, as though someone had been trying to loot it, but a mixture of black marks, red stains, and a faint orange glow from within told her that they’d been unsuccessful. This damage was not what had grounded it. Instead, she zeroed in on the solar panels. They were covered in a film of finely powdered red dust, likely kicked up by a storm at some point.
Faded paint on one side dubbed it The Challenger.
“Mind helping our friend here, Oreo?”
Oreo made a soft chirp, fluffing up the row of feathers running along his back and down his tail. With extreme care, he dusted the panels off, sending a small cloud of red sand into the air that settled once more to the desert floor.
They stepped back, watching as this sled too thrummed to life. The Challenger ascended, joining its brethren as Alison strapped Oreo back to the lochsled and returned to their route.
Eventually, the floating relics blurred together, disappearing over the horizon.
Alison and her crew made it to Copernar just after sundown, the vibrant blue glow of the biodome a welcome sight against the violet hue still hanging on the horizon from all the red dust in the air.
They passed through decontamination without issue, and she was finally able to take off her suit after a long day of travel. People unloaded her cargo, paid her, and soon enough she was able to bring the crew in for the night, setting them loose in an empty paddock and storing the sled in the Low Altitude Hover Craft (LAHC) loading dock.
A drizzle started up just as she did, rain plinking off the metal roof above her.
Alison had half-forgotten the camera by then – only seeing it still attached to the sled reminded her that it was still recording. There was no use draining the battery overnight recording milling workers and rain-on-metal sounds, so she instead plucked it off the rail and turned it on herself.
“Well, we’ve made it to Copernar without any major issues, which is nice.” She looked towards the decontamination chamber, and the desert beyond. No sign of anyone coming. She sighed, rubbing her eyes. “I’m... honestly tired. But the detour to the labyrinth couldn't have added more than an hour or two to Garrett and Solena’s trip, so I’m gonna try to stay up for a bit and wait for them. Get some food and take a shower probably.”
Food sounded amazing. There was usually some provided at the harrier’s quarters. She’d have to go check if there was anything left this late in the day.
“I guess I’ll update this when they get here. But if they take more than two hours, I’m going to bed. We can catch up with them in the morning. Mission log, end.”
And with little more than that, Alison turned the camera off.
>> SUPPLEMENTARY FILE LOCATED.
>> ...
>> ERROR: VIDEO CORRUPTED. Play audio?
> Now Playing AUDIO#1: “... don’t know if turning that on’ll be of any use here. Fog’s too dense to see anything.” Solena’s voice is quiet, audibly dampened by the weather conditions they’ve apparently found themselves in.
“I know. I just... thought it would make me feel better.”
“Is it working...?”
For several seconds, the only sound the mic picks up is that of the dragons walking. Their harnesses clink and rattle against their scales and each other, but the land returns only a ghost of an echo in response.
It’s Garrett who breaks the silence. “I’ve always hated this place, you know. Grew up with lots of horror stories about these canyons.”
“Yeah... me too.”
“My mom used to tell me this one about a man that came to smaller towns near here to play music? But when everyone went to bed, he played a tune that brainwashed all the town’s children – led them straight out of the domes and into the fog. Never to be seen again... Said you can sometimes hear the tune coming from the labyrinth, but you’d go missing too if you tried to find its source.”
“The Marled Man. I know that one. Always makes my skin crawl. Do we really need to talk about it right now?”
“Just — Just the way she’d always describe the music, you know? The way it’d weave around the adults and sail in under the kid’s bedroom doors? How it’d stretch and compress like some kind of awful insect worming its way in through the children’s ears?” Audible disgust and fear shake his voice.
Solena’s tone sharpens. “Look, cut it out, alright? It’s bad enough that we’re here, don’t make it worse with all your—”
She is interrupted by a noise, soft but all too sudden in its onset. It lilts across a breeze, clear as a bell. The rustle of dragons moving stops, replaced by a nervous shifting of harnesses.
The note is long, holding an unnatural timbre as it grows in volume.
And as suddenly as it began, it stops.
Silence seeps into the air once more, fragile as a glass bubble.
“There’s... something there...”
In a stillness so thick a knife couldn’t cut it, Garrett’s hushed and quaking voice is almost deafening.
The slow swish of shifting clothes lasts a grueling three seconds. Neither seems to breathe. “There,” he says. “R-Right where I’m pointing. It’s... oh God, that's not a—”
— A loud crash swallows his words before he can get them out.
The audio distorts as the camera smacks hard against something. It tumbles to a new resting place as cacophony and chaos break out in an instant.
Something metal snaps and draconic screeches fill the air, melding with a pained cry.
The harriers call out in fear and panic, but their words are garbled and lost.
The sound of thundering footsteps grows to a raucous score, approaching faster FASTER FASTER and then —
Silence.
> END OF AUDIO#1
>> END OF MISSION LOG #1
>> CONTINUE?
If anything happens to Oreo, I riot ✊
This is so amazing! It plays out like a movie while reading! I can't wait for the next one!