The Cardinal Directive: Mission Log #3
Something lurks in the labyrinth...
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>> WARNING! This log contains depictions of VIOLENCE, GORE, and DEATH
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>> Input confirmed. Now Playing Mission Log #3. . .The camera turns on to a blurry close-up of Alison’s face, catching bits and pieces of her muttering before she pulls back and the image clears.
It’s still dark out, and no brighter inside the tent. Her breath fogs up her helmet even as she gives a sigh of relief.
“Okay… I think that’s on? Yeah. Yeah, that’s on.”
Alison set the camera up on top of her radio, her hands shaking from the cold. “Welcome to mission log three, I guess. It’s… ah. Almost morning.” She checks her watch, nodding to herself. “Almost morning. Um. I woke up early to get a head start on everything, but it looks like running the heaters last night ran the rest of the battery down. Plus I forgot about the camera. Just lucky I had some spare batteries in my emergency kit.”
Silence fell as she shivered, staring into the cold, unfeeling eye of the camera.
Alison crossed her arms, trying to retain as much heat as possible as her gaze drifted in the direction of the canyon.
“I watched the last recording a few times — the one from yesterday, down in the canyon. Kept trying to get a better look at… everything I saw out there. Figured if I saw it after a few hours of sleep maybe it’d look less like it did the first time, but…”
She gave up on finishing that sentence. Nothing to do but worry and freeze until the sun came up.
“I noticed I left the camera recording. I’ve been thinking of looking through that footage, but it looked like it’s just hours of –"
A loud huff sounded just outside her tent, one large eye with horizontal pupils watching her through the gap in the fabric.
“…Hi, Moose.”
Moose continued to stare at her for several seconds before her whole head came through the front of the tent. Alison quickly tried to dissuade her and push her back out, but a dragon is not an easy creature to move around if they don’t want to be.
She was far too big to fit in the tent, but managed to get most of her upper body through, all in the effort of laying her head down heavily on Alison’s lap.
Alison sighed, but was forced to accept the intrusion. “At least you’re warm. That makes one of us.”
Moose gave a little grunt, closing her eyes and settling in. Alison ran her hand along Moose’s scales and the out-of-place fluff of her ears, trying to keep her mind on anything other than the canyon. The other hand reached back for her bag, opening it up and rooting inside. She kept a climbing pick in her gear for safety and utility, but honestly, it got the most use just being a dragon back scratcher.
She took it out, carefully scritching Moose’s scales.
It wasn’t long before Oreo’s head stuck through the remaining tent door space at the top, the feathers on his cheeks fluffing up as he unsuccessfully attempted to wriggle his way past Moose to get in.
“Please guys, you’re gonna ruin my tent —” She set the pick aside and reached up quickly, patting Oreo’s head in an effort to keep him calm. Tents were too bulky to carry more than one on a sled, and she didn’t fancy sleeping on the ground any time soon.
Though clearly still upset, Oreo plopped his head down and allowed her to pet him. His eyes, big and blue, watched her quietly, and she could hear his big feathery tail slap the ground any time she looked at him.
The twins’ heads both suddenly popped through a gap in the right corner of the tent, and Alison called out a “No — NO! Dozer!” as he slowly rolled against the left half of the tent.
“I’ll be FINE, alright? It’s just a little chill. I don’t — I don’t have enough hands for all of you, okay? You’ll have to take turns.”
A resounding series of upset noises chorused around her, but they’d just have to deal with it. She began alternating who got her attention every few seconds, all the while trying to carefully keep everyone’s horns away from her tent walls.
They didn’t use to check on her in the morning, not like this anyway. Moose had been the first to discover she could invade the tent, and the others were happy to retain this knowledge and use it at their discretion. It was, affectionately, the bane of Alison’s existence.
The good news was, now that the tent was partially filled with no less than four dragons (and being laid on by a fifth), the cold wasn’t so bad anymore. Not great by any means, but better than it had been.
As uncertain as the day ahead was, she would not be alone facing whatever was waiting for her in the labyrinth. It was a small but much-appreciated comfort.
Blessed sunlight eventually crested the horizon and began charging up her sled and warming the surrounding desert. By the time the heaters turned back on, she didn’t need them anymore and was able to shoo the crew away enough that she could start breaking down her camp.
Alison was just about done putting her tent away when she spotted Basset, sitting at the edge of the plateau and staring down towards the labyrinth. She was silent. She was rarely silent.
Still holding the last tent stake, Alison got up and checked on her, following her gaze.
The fog was dense this morning, spilling out of the labyrinth like the hot breath of some ancient beast. It rolled along the ground below them, roiling in small circles with the morning breeze. She reached up, patting Basset’s side. “Hey, girl. You missed the squash-Alison pile this morning. Everything okay?”
Basset whined softly, but didn’t move. Her claws tip-tapped against the rock and her nostrils flared, shaking her head. Restless, perhaps? But… that wasn’t quite it.
Realization hit Alison like a train. Her eyes shot open. “You’ve got their scent, don’t you?”
There wasn’t time to waste. Alison threw the rest of her supplies haphazardly into the back of the lochsled, quickly grabbing her crew’s harnesses and clipping everyone in.
“We’re running four positions today, okay guys?! Basset, you’re going in first position. You’re gonna lead us right to Solena and Garret, okay? Port and Starboard, you’re taking second — sorry Oreo, you’ll be alone in third for now. Dozer and Moose in fourth. Everyone got it?”
She swung up onto the lochsled and turned it on, the thrum reverberating beneath her with familiar fervor. They took off from the plateau and into the waiting fog below, vanishing in its embrace.
In the low visibility conditions, Alison could do little more than trust that Basset knew where she was going as they plunged down the slope and back into the labyrinth.
Only some five minutes into the misty twists and turns, Alison was nearly thrown over the front of her sled as Dozer and Moose skidded to a stop, halting the rest of the crew with them. Basset was still pulling towards the direction of the scent — apparently to the right — but that’s not where they were looking. They were looking behind her.
She turned quickly, listening.
Sound was severely dampened here from all the fog, but she could still hear… something. Movement.
“Solena?!”
The first figure that cut itself from the fog was not human at all, but a large dragon with pitch-black scales, wings, and a cobra-like neck and head. It hissed as she came into view, showing prominent fangs and a tail adorned with far too many sharp spikes for comfort. Saddled atop the dragon’s back, there was an older man in a dirty black spacesuit. He had a scruffy beard and unkempt hair, but that was all she could make of his features in the fog.
“I’m afraid not.” His voice was low and gruff, grating like sand. “You must be Alison Kheely.”
“…Who are you?”
A chuckle rumbled out from him like distant thunder. “Ain’t got a name. Lost it in a poker game years ago.”
Alison’s eyes rolled, shaking her head. She didn’t have time for this. Basset had begun whining, digging her claws in the dirt and going nowhere. “Are you here to help or not? I’m not here for a leisurely stroll.”
“A mutual friend in Copernar sent me.”
He pulled up beside her sled, close enough that she could make out the badge on his belt. And, more importantly, his gun.
He was a harrier alright, but not the supply division.
She locked eyes with him, unamused.
“You’re a bounty hunter with ‘no name’ who works alone, sent by Vance Creed or the interests he represents in Copernar to intimidate me into taking his deal, probably under threat of my friends’ lives or safety.” She gestured to the gun at his side. “You were a few minutes away from informing me that your sidearm is powered by pressurized atmospheric CO₂, capable of sending a nail-like projectile straight through any suit’s helmet — mine included. You’d add that they also come with a non-lethal version that’s implanted in a material designed to seal the breach, but also a small explosive that can be remotely detonated from a switch on your gun. That’s the version you have loaded right now because I’m too valuable to kill. Am I missing anything?”
A small smile tugged at the side of his mouth for a moment. “Done this more than once, huh?”
“You’d be surprised.”
“I’m sure I would. You did get one thing wrong though.”
“And what’s that?”
“I don’t work alone.”
Alison tensed, ears sharp and waiting for an indication for which direction the other hunter would come from, but none came. After a few seconds, she glanced back at him. “…if we’re waiting for a dramatic entrance, I think your buddy missed their cue.”
The man looked up, chewing. “You know… in hindsight I see that maybe that sounded a bit more ominous than I meant it to be.”
“Wasting my time…” Alison mumbled, calling out to her crew. “Get going! Back on the scent, Basset — before we lose it.”
The sled jolted forward, but the lone rider kept pace easily enough. "I wasn’t pulling your leg about not working alone. My buddy Doug’s flying over. His dragon’s got a set of heat-seekin’ eyes. Infrared. Real high-tech stuff.”
“Are you going to keep droning on or are you going to help?”
“Thing is, we spotted their sleds back where you entered the labyrinth initially. All broken an’ whatnot. You couldn’t have missed them, so…”
“I lied to Tower. Yeah.”
“Figures. Now, we are gonna have to go back there and deal with the matter of intimidating you and all that. But if you want to look around for your friends’ bodies for a while, I’ll allow it.”
“They’re not dead,” Alison snapped.
“Kid… They’re separated from their sleds and their dragons. They’ve been missin’ over a day now. Odds are—”
Alison didn’t dignify this with a response, calling for Basset to pick up the speed.
The morning dragged on with nothing to show for it as they weaved through the canyon.
The man — in lieu of a real name, she’d elected in her mind to start calling him Snakebite Jones — trailed just behind her. He spoke up, raising his voice for the first time in a while. “Sorry to say, but you’ve got another thirty minutes before I’m calling it, Miss Kheely. They couldn’t have gotten this far on their own. Not on foot.”
“Basset has a scent. We’re following where it leads.”
“I’m just sayin’, Miss Kheely, this seems like a waste of time. Let’s just get those hovercores a—”
“— I’m NOT touching those cores. Not for Vance. Not for anyone. ESPECIALLY if my friends are…” The words died in her throat, unwilling to be spoken. She breathed out slowly, steadying herself. “My answer is no. No amount of threats or money will change that.”
Jones made a small grunt, eyeing her. “So that’s what happened to you, hm? You became one of those folks.”
“I don’t know what you mean. And I don’t know how being any kind of ‘folk’ is relevant to my answer.”
“Look, Miss Kheely, I don’t know what it is with you supply runners and the "Thrum", but it sounds like a cult to me and I ain’t a part of it. Those cores ain’t doing nobody any good sittin’ in a bunch a’sleds that won’t even fly anymore. You saw them! One’s crushed to pieces and the other can’t charge. Hovercores are dangerous, but useful —”
“— They’re sacred. Rare. We can’t MAKE them. There’s only so many in existence. And dressed up, ego-inflated, two-bit, feral con men with money and power but not even two brain cells to rub together think they can trick or strongarm people like me into ripping them out and handing them over so THEY can have that tech for themselves.”
Her hands gripped onto the handle of the sled, knuckle-white beneath her gloves.
Several seconds passed without a word between them.
Finally, he acquiesced. “…I ain’t saying you’re wrong. You’re not. But that’s just life sometimes, Miss Kheely. I don’t have a say in changing it any more than you do.”
The silence stretched and grew long, nothing left to say between the two of them.
It lasted until finally, Basset stopped, staring straight ahead with a curious noise. Her head tilted, sniffing the air.
The fog roiled gently in front of them, a breeze sifting through the canyon and revealing… someone standing there. A spindly-limbed man in a faded green spacesuit. Black fluffy hair that obscured his eyes. She couldn’t make out the nametag at this distance, but she recognized him all the same.
“Garret!”
For several seconds, he didn’t move, didn’t speak. There was no acknowledgment of her. He didn’t look up as he turned, vanishing deeper into the fog.
Alison blinked, stepping down from her sled and approaching on foot. Oreo chirped curiously at her, but she waved him off, gesturing for the sled to wait there. “…Garret? It’s Alison! We’re here to rescue you. Is… is Solena here too?”
Still, no answer.
Jones called out from behind her. “We’ve got blankets! O₂! Come on out, boy — we’ll get you settled.”
Nothing. She cursed under her breath, marching off after him.
Garrett seemed to be matching her pace. Every step she took, he took. When she sped up, so did he. He was there, a silhouette in the fog, always several feet ahead but never any further or closer.
“This isn’t funny, Garrett! Whatever’s going on, just tell me!”
He vanished once more, but a larger silhouette grew in her vision instead. The canyon narrowed to a very tight crevasse ahead, with a few tunnels leading off to the left and right. That wasn’t all though.
Blocking the way forward was a carcass. Fresh, massive, and scaled. Draconic. Two large wings were broken and bent at impossible angles at its side, apparently forced into this space where it did not fit.
It was tangled up in a net, the kind harriers sometimes put over their supplies to make sure nothing would fall out of the sled. A chill ran down her spine.
Alison’s voice shook as she called out. “Garrett! Solena! Where are you!?”
She turned in a wild circle, trying to figure out where Garrett had gone. He had just been there, hadn’t he?
Before she could react, she was suddenly yanked backward into one of the off-shooting tunnels in the rock. She cried out in surprise, but a hand had already wrapped around to the front of the helmet and clicked a small button on the neck to effectively mute her. She could still scream alright, but no one outside the immediate vicinity would be able to hear it.
Alison wrenched herself sideways, taking her smaller attacker to the ground and flipping over to confront them only to see —
…Solena?
Alison’s eyes blinked wide, at a loss for words. She was there, alive — a bit gaunt and sweat and tear-stained, not to mention a little purple from the cold — but alive. Relief flooded over her, but not for long. She reached up to her helmet to unmute, but Solena grabbed her hand, shaking her head feverishly.
Outside, a noise rang out into the air. Clear. Unnatural.
Jones came running up, unmounted. “Miss Kheely? Hey! Who’s out there?! What’ve you done to Doug’s dragon?!”
There was a distinctive click and pull — the sound of CO₂ pressurizing in Jones’s gun and loading a projectile. Alison didn’t know what was going on, but all she knew was that safety was on the sled, not in this tunnel.
In the same instant that Alison began to pull Solena outside, there was a loud slam and three quick cracks of sound. Alison turned just in time to see something had landed on Jones before it registered that something had also gone flying past her.
There was a muffled noise of surprise as Solena stumbled back, and they both stared in horror at the pointed rod that had punctured straight through her helmet.
The sealant had expanded as it was meant to, covering the initial breach, but it wouldn’t hold forever.
In that instant, they were on a timer.
They looked back to see Jones and Garrett wrestling on the ground. Alison pulled Solena with her out into the canyon, letting go of her hand halfway to tackle Garrett off of Jones. “Garrett! Stop! What are you doing?!”
Her words were muffled through the helmet, hardly noticeable between the rest of the scuffle going on. His hands grabbed wildly at her helmet, scraping against its surface with single-minded intent. Alison frantically swatted his hands away from the dual clasps that would disengage the helmet from her suit, trying to understand what the hell was going on in his mind but not seeing anything behind his eyes.
She didn’t understand, but there were no two ways about it. He was trying to kill her.
Solena yanked him from behind, wrenching him away from her. Without hesitation, Jones aimed and fired, sending a rod into Garrett’s helmet and triggering it to explode.
The detonation was small but deadly. Solena grabbed Alison, dragging her up to her feet and pulling her in line with Jones. Together, they stared.
There was a massive hole in Garrett’s helmet.
A chunk of his skull and brain matter now lay splattered across the canyon floor.
For a second, the whole world seemed to stand still. There was nothing but their shaking breath, the fog, and Garrett’s body lying a few feet in front of them.
…then… something else. Garrett’s body shook, trembled, and a sound came from him that could’ve been laughter if it didn’t sound so raspy. He pushed himself up from the ground slowly, laboriously, scraping the suit and helmet off like a snake shedding its skin.
He was in just a pair of pants and a white shirt now, stained with dried blood from a days-old wound. No shoes. No gloves. He should have been boiling alive from the Martian atmospheric pressure. He should be dead from the hole in his head.
But he wasn’t.
And as the fog roiled around them, they realized he wasn’t alone either.
Several more bodies emerged from the fog, crawling down the cliff face and up through the tunnels. None of them had helmets. None of them had suits. And yet none of them were dead.
“Run! Run!” It was never clear whose voice called it out. In hindsight, it didn’t really matter.
They all turned to run back for their dragons, but more figures emerged from the fog, cutting off their exit and closing in from all sides. Alison’s heart sank as she sucked in each shallow breath knowing it might be her last.
She was sure it was the end… until a growing, thunderous sound approached from the way they’d come. With a bellowing bugle and roar, Moose and Dozer burst from the fog, trampling a lane of safe passage back to the sled and knocking the figures away. The twins swept in just behind them, releasing spouts of fire to burn off the fog and frighten the encroaching strangers.
The closest few rushed Alison and the other harriers, clearly fatal wounds marking their flesh and yet undeterred nevertheless. They grabbed at their helmets, dug their nails into the fabric of the suits, trying anything to rip and claw a breach into existence.
It was Basset that took down the one holding Alison, while the black cobra dragon leaped over everyone to snap its fangs down on the man fighting Jones. Its wings battered away several at once, but immediately incurred their wrath.
Moose’s jaw unhinged, fitting the entire upper body of the one attacking Solena in her mouth and seeming intent on swallowing them whole. Garrett was getting closer, waiting for his moment.
Oreo shrieked out for them from the sled, standing amidst everyone else’s disconnected harness pins and waiting anxiously to pull them to safety.
Time.
The crew was buying them time.
It was all they could do.
Alison kicked Garrett away, grabbing Solena’s hand and making a mad dash for the sled. Jones wasn’t far behind, shouting something Alison couldn’t make out past the sound of blood pounding in her ears. Everyone piled on, but their troubles were far from over.
It was too narrow to turn the sled here. There wasn’t time to flip it by hand. Even if they did, she had no idea how to get out from here. In the heat of the moment, there was only one thing she could think to do.
She braced herself. This was going to hurt.
“Everybody hold on!”
Alison vaulted out of the cargo carriers and into the driver’s post. She wrenched open a compartment in the dashboard, taking a deep breath and sticking her arm in all the way up to the shoulder.
There was no time to be careful.
No time to do this the right way.
Her gloved hand wrapped around the hovercore, crying out as searing pain shot through her arm and all the way up to her spine, but managing to dislodge the stabilizer and yank it up.
The sled suddenly shot into the air, breaching the top of the canyon and crashing down just outside of it. They were all thrown in different directions, skidding to their resting places several feet away from each other. Supplies scattered across the open terrain.
The maneuver had been successful, but it had cost them. Alison pushed herself up quickly, pain still shooting through her arm. Solena looked alright, but the impact had caused the original breach to spread into a long crack across the front face of her helmet. Oxygen hissed out through it, slowly but surely leaking. Jones only barely stirred, his eyes unfocused from some apparent head trauma.
The cobra dragon clawed its way up from the canyon after them, dragging one wing behind it as it pulled Oreo up to the ledge and spit a gout of green fire back down into the crevasse. It slammed its tail down at the rockface, doing everything it could to stall their pursuers.
Oreo grabbed the harness line in his teeth, squawking in distress at them as Solena and Alison pulled Jones’s body back on and hopped in themselves. Alison jumped back down to grab a spare canister of oxygen, but a man with no jaw had made it past the cobra dragon, slamming into the sled and grabbing at Solena’s ankles.
In a moment of dual fury and fear, Alison abandoned the canister and instead picked up her fallen climbing pick, rushing back and bringing the pick straight down into the creature’s head. It slumped over, but she didn’t trust that to be the last they’d see of it.
The pick was too stuck to be pulled out so she abandoned it, climbing into the cargo area with Solena and Jones and calling for Oreo to go. As soon as they started moving though, the sled lurched violently to the side. The stabilizer was shot now. She’d have to do it herself.
She climbed in front and reached back down into the sled, gritting her teeth as her hand made contact with the hovercore once more. “Go, go! I’ve got it!”
Oreo didn’t need much more encouragement than that, taking off once again.
Alison looked back again to see Solena had retrieved the emergency kit and was frantically patching up the rest of the crack in her helmet. It looked like she had covered most of it, but the light on her O₂ canister was blinking red now.
“Sol! Sol!” Alison pulled the O₂ line from Solena’s suit, taking a deep breath and holding it as she disconnected her own line and plugged it into Solena’s suit.
Solena caught on quickly, wheezing and trying to catch her breath. “You focus on the core. I’ll take care of this!” She climbed into the front with Alison — it wasn’t designed to hold two people upfront, but they’d have to make do. It wasn’t practical stretching an O₂ line that far. Solena wrapped an arm around her waist to keep steady, taking in a deep breath and passing the line back to Alison.
They had to continue this way all the way back to the nearest town several minutes away, taking turns breathing. A throbbing headache had begun to split Alison’s skull, but they couldn’t stop no matter how much her vision blurred. Her arm had lost feeling entirely, but as long as she had her hand wrapped around the core it would stay steady.
She could see the blue glow of the biodome on the horizon, but it never seemed to get any closer. Her eyes closed, concentrating on holding on and breathing only when the line was connected.
They were only thirty feet or so from the town when the combination of oxygen deprivation and pain finally caught up with her, her fingers slipping off the core and sending the sled careening sideways.
Her vision blacked out before she hit the ground, resuming an unknown amount of time later as Solena pulled her helmet off and her lungs filled once again with air.
She sat up, heaving, locking eyes with an equally dazed Solena as she pulled her own helmet off and breathed in the fresh air. Solena shook before her, whether from cold or excess adrenaline. Alison realized she was shaking too.
They’d made it to the decontamination chamber.
The sled lay at the end of the room, thrumming an off-beat rhythm. She could just make out Jones next to it.
The shock of everything that had just happened hadn’t quite worn off yet. She still couldn’t feel anything in her right arm.
In lieu of anything else that made sense, they grabbed each other in a tight hug. Solena’s head tucked against her neck, her skin cold as ice. Alison held on even as a set of teeth found the back of her suit, Oreo dragging the pair of them over to the other end of the chamber and frantically pressing a big red button labeled MEDICAL ALERT with his snout.
Alison held on even as Solena lost consciousness in her arms.
Her shaking voice rose, pulling Solena tighter as she shrieked, “HELP! ANYONE, PLEASE HELP!”
Several hours pass before the camera and sled are retrieved, slid into place at a small LAHC loading dock. Alison picks up the camera, sitting down heavily and setting the camera on something.
She’s doffed her blood-spattered spacesuit in favor of normal clothes — a tank top and a pair of cargo pants.
Alison rubs her face, her hand lingering over her mouth for several seconds before she finds the words. The other arm, the one that grabbed the hovercore earlier, is heavily bandaged and immobilized in a tight sling. Her voice barely makes it above a whisper.
“I don’t… know what to make of today. At all.”
Her eyes flit away from the camera, out to the great wild world beyond the biodome. She sighs.
“Solena is going to be okay. They’re still warming her up right now, and she’s regained consciousness.”
A weak smile cracks at her lips. “Started arguing with me right when she did, you know. Said she wasn’t sure what all this fuss was about her. That she wasn’t even that cold. I told her ‘Newsflash, Sunshine, you’re BLUE’, and—” She chuckles softly. “—and she looks me dead in the eyes for a long time without saying anything, and the first words out of her mouth are ‘Me? Blue? No, I’m not sad at all.’” Alison shakes her head. “She’s such a dweeb. And not half as funny as she thinks she is.”
She laughs, but it dies out quickly, returning to a troubled and drawn expression. “…she’s… she’s out of it. I don’t think she remembers it all yet.”
Her breath shakes momentarily, tears welling in her eyes. She swallows hard. “I’m… I’m going to end this here. Check on her again. Make sure Oreo is okay. He — They let us keep him right outside the infirmary. He keeps trying to poke his head in through the window to see if we’re alright. I made him promise to stay with her while I did this. Jones said Oreo is the one that pulled us all to safety. We’d be dead without him.”
Tears begin to roll down her cheeks and she shakes her head, catching them in the sleeves of her shirt. “Okay. Okay, I’m — I’m going to end it now. Really this time. I just… I’m…”
Her mouth opens and closes, so much more to say and yet unable to find the words for any of it.
Finally, she just clicks the camera off.
>> End of Mission Log #3
What? No I don't tear up at animals being brave, what are you talking about