Part 1 is available here

The Further We Soar Into Madness [Cosmic Horror/Sci-Fi] Part 2

“What is it?” Engineer Lansig asked.

“Why, it’s the entire reason I created Dynam Industries to begin with." Jamison smiled at the crew as if expecting them to understand what he meant. He looked wired and when the team remained silent and staring, the slick-haired benefactor chuckled. “Allow me to explain. The Kaliopi was launched in 2019. After eight months, it reached the orbit of Jupiter and began along its trajectory, collecting information via sonar, radio and telescopic sensors. With this new piece of technology in place, astronomers used it to prove Europa’s ‘thin-ice’ model incorrect. The truth of what it showed was that the ice crust was between 10 and 30 kilometers thick in most places around the moon.”

“Most places,” repeated Eilah.

“Yes,” Jamison said. “Most places, save for one specific area, that bit in the picture, the orange amongst a sea of purple. The ice is only ten meters thick underneath our anomaly, maybe even less. Some pictures and information have been released to the press detailing the composition of the ice around the entire moon, lots of pictures to appease the curious masses, et cetera. However, the public has not been made aware of quite a few things. Sonar readings from the initial scans picked up something underneath the surface during a particular pass-over. There were half-a-kilometer long swaths radiating in the deep oceans. The engineers and scientists at NASA hypothesized that it was either a mineral deposit or a type of waterborne gas. My research, however, denotes it to be something much more. I believe it is an artifact or a structure of some kind, suspended somehow in the cold depths. Not only will we have the opportunity to investigate the anomaly, but at this shallow point in the ice, we will be the first humans to have access to water samples from the subsurface oceans of any celestial body outside of Earth. If water is the key to life, we may be able to discover something wondrous on this journey.”

Phi imagined what could lay under the kilometers of ice, the black oceans that had never seen the light of day, that no human eye had ever laid upon. He shook his head and stood from his chair, then moved towards the man, his thoughts clouded by the irritation grating at him. "Jamison. You mean to tell me that you gave us false mission information?"

Jamison's expression sank into a scowl. "And what do you care? You're still getting paid upon arrival back to Earth. I'll even throw in an extra twenty percent to each of your salaries if you return to your station and do the job you were hired to do without bothering me further. Fly the damned ship."

"What?!" The captain's blood boiled with fury. Adrenaline raced through his limbs, snowballing into his anger. "The job we were hired to do was to escort an ice-core sample mission. Now you're telling us we're here to find out what this anomaly is? How ambiguous of a mission statement is that? How are we prepared for this? You've put all of our lives at risk, Jamison, by not including all of these details when we were back at Earth because, you know what? If you would've told me that you wanted me to join you on some nebulous amateur's mission, a goose hunt for something we know almost nothing about, I would've told you to shove that contract up your ass."

Jamison laughed. "Is that so? Why, you'd still be looking for rent money in a sea of government and military employers that wouldn't give you, with your alcoholism, a second glance. I have a deep file on you, Captain Washington. How long had you been out of good work before I graced you with employment, hm?"

Phi remained silent, staring down into the man's face.

"You may have done things a certain way in the Navy but, out here, this is my operation." Jamison stared right back. "Don't forget who is writing the checks here."

La Felios interrupted. “We need to prepare for landing.”

Behind the specialist, the viewport was filled with an iced landscape. Huge swaths of rust were slashed across the surface they descended toward.

The trajectory was turbulent as the ship moved into the thin atmosphere of the frozen moon. Each of the crewmembers were harnessed into their chairs. Jamison was in one of the extra seats behind the Captain’s station. When Phi turned back, the man was strapped in but flipping through yellowed pages of an old tome, running his fingers along the texts. His mouth moved silently as he read. Phi looked closely at the cover and saw that it was made of thick black leather. Emblazoned in a gold filigree on the front was a symbol Phi had never seen before, one displaying three parallel lines with another crossing diagonally through them.

Ms. Sovikov was locked into the seat next to Jamison, staring down at her own hands.

Miles upon miles of ice lay below them on their descent toward the landing zone. Jupiter lay massive and foreboding above with its eye hovering just over the horizon line. Phi could feel its weight in his bones and his imagination ran off again, picturing their ship losing its trajectory and being slingshot straight beyond Europa and toward the gaseous titan. Its gravity would pull them in and they'd breach the tempestuous storms, their ship hurling into an iron surface they’d never see coming.

A loud whirring sound filled the cabin as they sunk closer to the frigid crust. The turbulence was stronger now, shaking and rattling buckles and hanging straps around the ship interior.

"Landing thrusters initiating," La Felios called out.

The ship lurched with a sudden speed decrease and Phi leaned forward with the momentum. There was a thud on the grated floor to his right and, when he peeked over his shoulder, he saw the black book sliding across the floor.

“Damnit,” Jamison cursed.

Moments later, the ship had slowed its forward propulsion and was now descending vertically to the ice below.

“Thirty feet,” La Felios reported. "Landing gear out."

The ship groaned and Phi laid his head back to close his eyes. The descent caused his insides to roil like a cement truck filled with napalm. Even with his eyes shut, he was hit with the sudden feeling in his gut. He always hated this part.

“Ten feet.”

The ship vibrated heavily as the thrusters burned and the ice rose to meet them. There was a long slow crunch underneath the ship as the landing gear sunk into the stuff. La Felios clicked over a group of switches in front of his seat and the expulsion of the landing thrusters slowly diminished into a quiet purr.

“What the fuck?” Engineer Winthrope had already unbuckled himself and stood, gazing out the starboard viewport.

Phi unstrapped the harness attached to his seat and rose. He moved to stand next to Winthrope and peered outside.

“Is that another ship?”

I remember when I received the recordings from Brenton’s helmet camera. Base had lost contact with the Acolyte and, I will admit, a part of me was worried for my only brother. I was sitting in my office, reading through a specific text we had acquired from a seller in Argentina, when Ms. Sovikov informed me of the data acquisition. A ship diagnostic and a forced camera feed copy had been initiated by my command three days earlier. The process took half a week to retrieve the information from the ship's records.
The initial diagnostics had come back clean. The Acolyte was in excellent condition, was equipped with more than enough fuel to re-enter orbit and slingshot back to Earth with some to spare, and the condition of the hull was well within the realm of expectations. Much like the Artorius, the ship I will be using to reach Europa, the individual camera feeds from the H.E.T.E. suit helmets recorded into the ship’s black box mechanism, allowing for later retrieval.
When I received these recordings, I was ill-prepared for what I would see.
In the lockbox that contained this letter, you should also find an SD card. I’ve included the recording from my brother’s helmet camera for you to view. The other feed recordings were destroyed with my discretion. There are just some things that shouldn’t be seen unless one has the mind to face true oblivion and we both know how the rest of them, the cattle that surround us, frighten easily.

Edward set the pages down onto the oak desk next to the small stone effigy. He slid the datapad off the desk and into his lap and turned the SD card over in his hand. "Dynam Industries" was printed in small text with a serial code. He slid it into the port on the left side of the datapad. Cool blue light emitted from the screen and he tapped into the device manager UI. The SD card held fifty terabytes yet there was only a single file:

09122045-130448ETS_JAMISON_B_CAM04.sub2

The video codex opened up and Edward double-tapped the device to make the video fullscreen. He dragged his finger along the base of the display to max the volume out.

Zzzt.

“—at the size of it. Jesus Christ,” a voice cut in as the video started.

A louder voice from within the helmet that the camera was in said, “Ladies and gentlemen... I give you Jupiter, the King of the Gods.”

The footage was grainy and, in the top left corner of the screen, there was an overlay of text that said JAMISON, B CAM04 - REC. It had been almost three years since Edward had seen his uncle Brenton, but there was no mistaking the voice. It always reminded him of his father’s except without the higher tone of constant cynicism.

His uncle panned the view over toward the ship, to the iced ground beneath them, then shifted the camera up toward the massive planet. Up in the darkness, it clung to the black ectoplasm of the universe, filling a good half of the feed. The planet’s great eye was half shadowed and half lit by the sun, staring off into the dark unknown. The great storms roared across the surface in rippled streams.

Zzzt.

The recording cut to a point further in time. Labored breathing could be heard from inside the helmet. His uncle appeared to be walking, stepping over ice chunks, making his way around a pressure ridge. Spikes of ice, twenty feet high, rose up to create walls that they navigated around or through, a natural maze made by the shifting of ice plates or something similar. Occasionally, his uncle would look behind as they walked. Four other crew members followed him. Their helmets had small lights on either side of the faceplates, near the top, and oxygen tubes ran from underneath to packs that were strapped onto the backs of their suits. Two of them carried a long silvery container between them, a tool or machine of some kind.

A minute of radio silence went by and along the same pressure ridge they'd been following, they came upon a break in the wall where it crisscrossed with another of the taller pyres of ice.

“We should be able to get through here,” the muffled camera voice said.

A female voice responded through the in-helmet comms. “Be careful, Brenton. Can we even get over that, or...?”

“Oh yea, we should be fine.” And, with a grunt, Edward's uncle reached ahead and gripped the ice on either side of the break, hoisting himself up. The camera jerked as he about lost his footing but his stance retained and he slid down the other side of the ridge smoothly.

A few minutes passed while Brenton helped the rest of the crew over the slope, at one point grabbing a hold onto a handle of the trunk the team carried.

"Jesus Christ," one of the other crew members complained. "You'd think for three million dollars, they'd make this fucking thing a little lighter."

Brenton chuckled inside the helmet. "Tell me about it."

The crew assembled at the base of the small slope. Brenton's camera turned toward a stand of ice spikes, at least a dozen feet high, protruding only a few paces from them. In its shadow, they stood and checked their gear before he led them out into the sunlight.

The horizon on all sides was littered with countless ridges and individual pressure spikes, crystalline blue and three times the height of any crew member. They were the jagged borders to the alien view of Jupiter, still waiting for them beyond the horizon. Its storms were indifferent yet sinister. Directly in front of them was a flat expanse of ice, some kind of pasture of frost, cleared of any pressure ridges and layered in flat ice, chunks here and there no larger than a football.

Roughly fifty yards ahead of them, almost directly under the ominous planet's eye, something was sticking out from the ice. The recording was grainy but Edward could see the black spike, smaller than any of the ice forms they’d shown so far.

“There it is."

“Oh my god. I can’t believe we made it. I can't believe I'm here.”

A woman’s laugh came over the comms.

Edward's uncle said, “McKinley, start unpacking the drill, if you wouldn’t mind."

“Will do, Mr. Jamison," she said.

“I’m going to go see it.”

The camera bobbed as it turned back out toward the black spike and began moving. Brenton was breathing heavily once more. The space between each breath was filled with moments of immense silence from the planet above and the hulking darkness of the vacuum. The condensation flared on the inner glass of the faceplate only to be removed by the in-helmet fans before the next gulp of air.

The ice crunched under Brenton's feet as he walked, hardly audible beyond the enclosed helmet. The feed was directed toward the black thing sticking out of the ice when he slowed to a stop, thirty feet from it, and looked down to the ice below. It was bluer here, as the water appeared to be much closer to the surface. Edward could see it through the video and wasn't surprised when his uncle took softer steps upon continuing his way toward the unknown monolith. Walking slowly and carefully, it took roughly two minutes for Brenton to reach the thing. As he closed in, the composition and color of it became clearer through the recording. It was not a black spike as it had initially appeared but was a porous dark green stone pillar, about four feet tall. It was crowned by a slanted plate on the top, angled toward the camera. In the plate was a diamond shaped relief. Brenton reached out and traced a gloved finger along the indentations.

Edward’s eyes inspected the amulet on the table, the Eye of War, as his father had called it. It was of a similar size.

A massive crack erupted from the video. A woman’s scream shrieked over the comms, interrupting Edward’s attention. His eyes returned to the datapad just as his uncle's camera looked back toward the other crew.

One of them was only about twenty feet behind Brenton on the ice. Their H.E.T.E. suit reflected brightly in the light of the distant sun. Three of the other crew members stood a few meters beyond that with the long boxed tools. Somewhere between them, sticking out of the ice and dancing twenty feet into the air, was a black serpentine mass. It writhed itself into coils and extended back and forth, gyrating and wriggling. Before Edward could understand what he was seeing, the thing came down in a whipping motion as fast as a bullet, smashing two of the crew and the drill box that sat between them. The woman’s screams were instantly silenced.

Another roaring crack came through the feed. Out of the ice, a second serpent broke through just feet away from the camera, pushing up to tower over Brenton and the crew member nearest him. It had skin like slick rubber and there were things that looked like sores or gashes littered all over it.

“Oh, my g—” The mass whipped down and shattered the faceplate that the camera was behind.

Zzzt.

The video ended. The REPLAY and CLOSE buttons on the datapad illuminated brightly in the dim office. Edward's eyes simply stared at the paused screen, reflecting and brooding on the very unique feeling he was experiencing.

He watched the last thirty seconds once more and then tapped the screen closed and set the datapad down onto the oak desk. He picked his father's letter back up.

Upon watching the video, you will see my brother, your uncle, dying. You will also see the artifact and my destination. Brenton did not approach this the way that I have, with reverence and piety. He thought it more of an exploration, an adventure, and let his own pride lead him to his doom.
Even if I had shared the amulet with him, he would’ve found a way to muck it up. He lacked the necessary faith. I have read the true texts of Othuum. My brother had just as much a chance to read them as I did. One must be willing to throw away everything, loved ones and even life itself, to toss one’s soul into the eternal unknown in order to gain the true glory of the Old Ones. It is the amulet, the Eye of Blood that I carry, that will protect me from the leviathans of that bizarre abyss. I seek that which man has been evolutionarily bred to fear, the darkness of alien oceans and the black behind the veils of reality.
True power lies there, as you have now witnessed.
It waits for he who is worthy.

Phi stared at Harold Jamison, who hurriedly strapped on the rest of his equipment and secured the H.E.T.E. suit he wore. The suitcase and the book were never far from him during this process. He held them squished between his ankles while he put on his gloves, even bending over to check multiple times that the case was securely shut while he did so. His eyes had looked strained since the ship landed on the packed ice, like some furious impatience had arisen within him. His attention appeared to be focused on getting out onto the surface quickly. The crew had already asked their questions regarding the other ship. They were waiting for a response from the man now.

Tension heightened over a few long moments and then he spoke.

“My company sent a ship prior to this one.” It was simple and concise. His gaze remained at his boots while he strapped the base of the suit legs in with them.

Phi stood from his chair. “You know, I am gettin' real fucking tired of you withholding information from us about this mission, Jamison. Do you understand how far we are from home? If we're supposed to be successful at doing whatever the fuck it is we are doing here, we need to know the details of the situation, goddamnit!”

Jamison did not respond. He finished the last clasp on the inner padding of the helmet before slipping it under his arm. His assistant, Sovikov, was finishing the preparations of her own suit and pack right next to him, twisting and buckling just as quickly as her employer.

Phi felt the tendons twitch in his forearms and he closed his fist.

“The captain is right, Mr. Jamison,” said La Felios. “You are definitely paying us quite well to be here, there's no doubt about that, and there aren’t many people who get to take this trip, to see what we are about to see. But shouldn't the safety of the crew be our top priority?”

Jamison stopped and turned to La Felios. His eyes were strange and narrow. When his expression then changed as if by command, he finally said, “You’re right... I apologize.” He turned toward Phi. “The truth is that I’ve never done anything like this before. I have my reasons for keeping some things private but this is the first time I’ve been to Europa, as well.” He walked toward the starboard viewport and looked out of it. “The Acolyte was the first ship my company sent. I was obviously not on board her but had allowed a different team to lead the first mission. It was a lack of confidence on my part... to allow someone other than myself to head the first trip. They landed and then we lost contact with them. We haven’t heard from them since.”

Engineer Lansig, who had hardly spoken a word since waking from cryosleep, looked up from his own suit adjustments. “Who was on that ship?”

Jamison appeared surprised to hear the man's voice, glancing toward Lansig before returning his stare to the viewport and the frigid horizon without. “A captain, a small trained drilling crew... and my brother.”

“Brother?” Dr. Winthrope asked.

“Yes. So now you know why I am here. My brother is missing. I'm here to find him or any of the other crew from the Acolyte and, if time allows it, examine the anomaly.”

Sovikov approached the airlock behind Jamison and began punching commands into the door console.

Phi took a step forward. “One last question, Jamison. What’s in the case?” Phi pointed down at the briefcase the man was holding. He'd held it on his person like a fetish or crucifix would be held by a holy man.

Jamison stared into Phi’s eyes. “Now that... is something I will not tell you. It is of no danger or concern to any of you."

The inner door of the main airlock hissed open. Sovikov had already stepped through and Jamison followed quickly after.

“Hold on, let me put on this—” Engineer Lansig began to say, stepping toward them and pulling his second glove on, but the beeps of the airlock control pad UI were followed immediately by the hiss of the door closing. Jamison had begun the depressurization process for himself and his assistant. The doors could not be opened until it was finished.

The rest of the crew stared through the glass at the two.

“What a prick,” La Felios snarled.

Lansig affirmed. “No shit.”

With the process of pressurization and then depressurization, Phi knew that he and the rest of the team wouldn’t be properly outside for another ten minutes. Jamison and Sovikov would be out on the ice before them with plenty of time to begin executing their unknown plans.

By the time Phi set foot on the ice, twenty minutes had passed. The slick icescape was covered in the sheen of the distant sun. Ramparts of frost, packed from enormous displays of natural pressure and shifting, sprouted all over the scene. Jamison and his assistant were nowhere in sight, though Phi could see footprints in the crusted snow below leading off in the direction ahead.

A voice scratched over the intercom. “Testing, testing. This is Jeffrey Winthrope. Testing.”

“Yeah, we got you, dear,” Eilah’s voice came in.

Phi adjusted the comm levels in his helmet using the HUD screen on his left forearm. Lansig and La Felios carried tools down from the open airlock. The things were held in silvery metallic cases, all of which had the same appearance in assorted sizes. When the two had retrieved the collection from the airlock, La Felios punched some keys on the external control panel and the outer door hissed shut.

“Alright, people,” said Phi. “Let’s get a comms check. La Felios.”

“Check.”

“Lansig.”

“Check,” Lansig’s voice cracked through the helmet speakers.

“Jamison.”

There was no response.

Phi repeated himself. “Jamison.”

Nothing.

“Goddamnit,” he cursed. “J. Winthrope?”

“Check. Come on, Jamison. What the fuck?”

“E. Winthrope."

“Check."

“I don’t even think there’s a point but N. Sovikov?”

More radio silence.

“Alright, people,” Phi said. “I don’t know about you but I have no idea what this guy's planning. Truth be told, I don’t want to stick around to find out but I don’t know if I could live with myself after leaving someone, even someone like him, stranded on a moon hundreds of millions of miles from home.”

“Yeah." Lansig stood from the crates. “We have drilling equipment and the sampling tools already unloaded. He may have lied to us, or at least omitted quite a bit of information, but I'd personally still like to see this anomaly. If we still want to grab the ice core samples, I'll need a few hours. It's up to you, Captain."

“Agreed,” Engineer Winthrope said.

“Alright.” Phi turned back ahead, toward the closest of the ice ridges. “You three go find them. Stay on comm channel two and track your locations with the surface maps on your datapads. La Felios and I will be on channel three. Just click over if you need us.”

La Felios was looking up at Jupiter when Phi turned toward him. He didn't move, only stared. The immensity of the planet in the sky above seemed to sink down onto Phi when he looked as well, settling itself into his flesh through the suit. He hadn't experienced the feeling when he'd first exited the Artorius. He felt it now, though. The sheer size of the planet was more than intimidating. It was oppressive. It was otherworldly and incomprehensibly alien and what bothered him most was the deep red eye stuck to the planet's gaseous mass, cocked to the side from where they stood.

“La Felios,” Phi said, his gaze still up to the king. “Help me look in the other ship for signs of survivors.”

A moment passed, and then La Felios’ gaze lowered and he turned toward the captain.

“Yeah... Yeah, sure.”

The Acolyte was almost an exact copy of the Artorius. Its airlock doors were closed when they approached and Phi stepped up the staircase to the control panel to right of the outer door. Each step was hardened over with a coarse layer of sharp ice. To the panel, he entered the same access code he used on the Artorius. The outer door hissed and then it opened, exposing the empty interior of the airlock. Phi stepped inside, La Felios followed and, after the pressurization process was initiated, the outer door closed and they stood waiting.

“Leave your helmet on when we get in until I check the O2 levels in the ship’s ATMUS," Phi said. That was, of course, assuming that the reactive software put into the Artorius was also put into this ship. ATMUS handled the atmosphere for the Artorius, maintained carbon and oxygen levels at their most accurate representations of a clean Earth filtration, and also served as a diagnostic repair software for the ship's various stabilization systems. "It's been neglected for over a year. The state of the interior is hard to guess until we get in there. Who knows what will still be operational."

“Aye, Captain.”

Five minutes passed and the background humming from the pressurization systems came to a quiet. Phi was surprised to find himself bracing for some sort of encounter and his breath grew shallow as he waited for the inner airlock door of the Acolyte to open. Heavy moments crawled by. Neither of the men spoke over the comms. Another hiss sounded and the airlock slid open.

The bridge of the Acolyte was dark, save for Jupiter's eerie glow through the frosted viewport. Phi tapped a few keys in his suit's HUD screen and turned his helmet lamps on. Two small bulbs lit like headlights on either side of his perspective and illuminated the rest of the derelict cabin ahead. A moment later, La Felios' own headlamps came to life.

Hoarfrost covered most everything. The stuff glinted like stars in the ebbing shadows, coming to life only by the light of their lamps. The structure of the interior walls and control panels were branded with the angles of human engineering but the sharp frost gave the place an almost ghoulish organic look, as if this place was the lair of some creature that dwelt within the frigidness.

Estimating from the layout of the Artorius that he knew, Phi turned toward the walkway leading to the rear of the ship. There was a panel on the wall just to the left of the threshold between the bridge and this corridor. Ice crystals cracked off the plastic cover of the panel when he opened it. He pressed the ACCEPT key and the small LED display embedded in the panel lit up, though the screen was partially obscured by frozen condensation. Lines of digital code glowed blurrily behind the layer of frost, signaling the booting process of the ATMUS.

La Felios passed by and moved down the walkway toward the stern. “I’m gonna check the rest of the ship."

Phi nodded. "Roger. Be careful, D."

"Always am."

As he stood waiting for the ship's systems to fully boot, he watched La Felios disappear into the bowels of the craft. The silence in Phi's helmet seemed to thicken and gain viscosity as the seconds ticked on. His eyes closed. His heartbeat thumped through his veins and, in the darkness of his mind, he saw his mother's face again. It wasn't flashed imagery like last time. This time, she slowly came into view from the void behind his eyes. It materialized from the black, a phantasmal manifestation, and he asked it Why do I keep seeing you out here, momma? In response, her face warped and shifted and broke open from its form to spread out over his imagination in waves of undulating tatters. They were wriggling and writhing, the pieces animate of their own accord, like the maggots of some unknown grime from another dimension. Waves of brief but potent nausea unfurled throughout his body, rolling under this skin of his stomach and pelvis.

The bright light of the monitor stole Phi's attention back, and he realized then that he'd opened his eyes again at some point. There was something here, something just on the verge of tangibility, teetering on the razor edge of substance and nothingness in a deeply confounding way. It was here because he could feel it, through his suit, in the air or in this space. It wasn't the cold. It was something else, an essence that he sensed. Whatever it was had entered him during his sleep, slithered around and left a trail of slime over his soul upon its departure. It was what he'd encountered on the Artorius in his bunk, in the storage cabinet, on the way here. It was what he'd seen in his nightmares, in the cryotubes that never let him leave. The thought of never having actually awoken from the long nap, that all of this had been some sort of romp through the misery and stresses of his subconscious, sent chills down his back.

Phi shook his head, breathing deeply, and scraped the rest of the frost from the small screen. The bootup sequence had completed and the program sat at a login window. Phi's intuition about ATMUS being the software on this ship had served him properly. It was the same as on the Artorius and so he input his company credentials then hit the ACCEPT key once more.

“Holy fuck!” La Felios cursed over the comms.

Phi shifted to look down the walkway from the panel. “D. What the hell?”

“Captain, you need to come see this. I found one of their crew."

Phi glanced back toward the screen. The red letters of ACCESS DENIED blinked under the username and password boxes.

The walkway was grated steel and Phi’s heavy steps echoed in the darkness as he made his way down the tunnel toward the rear of the ship. When he reached the opening into the mess hall, he saw the light from the other headlamps.

La Felios stood next to a body. It was slumped into the corner of some cupboards. As Phi approached, he saw that the man wore a H.E.T.E. suit with no helmet or gloves. There was a pool of dried brown blood coming out from underneath him, hardened to the metal floor plates through time and under the same frost that covered everything else. The man's greyish-bruised skin was cut at the wrists. A small cooking knife lay encrusted in the left hand. The flesh of his face and neck were grotesquely hued and deeply sunken, exposing the shapes of tendons still taut just under the skin. On the floor, stuck to it by the dried blood, was a datapad. Its screen was dark.

La Felios leaned over the corpse. “Thank god we can’t smell this.” His hand unruffled the front layer of the dead one's H.E.T.E. suit and flattened out the embroidered name on the left side of the chest. “R. Blake,” he read aloud.

Phi moved to the other side of the body and crouched down. The datapad was crusted with the old blood, but it came up off the floor easily enough. It left a square relief of hardened coagulate on the metal below. He pushed the power button on side of the device and was expecting to see the one or two second dead-battery symbol appear. Instead, the screen lit up and began its standard boot sequence.

Phi smirked. “Good man, Mr. Blake. Looks like our friend turned it off before he... did that to himself. Maybe we can find something on here, something that can tell us what happened."

"Should we tell the others?"

The captain shook his head. "Not yet. I don't want to cause a panic until we have more information. Let's wait to hear from them about Jamison. We'll mention it then or fill them in when we rendezvous." Phi looked down toward the body while the datapad booted. The man’s hair was frozen to the flesh of his forehead, which had lost much of its opacity, appearing almost gelatinous. Defunct veins snaked thin and lifeless under the skin.

The datapad’s operating system came to its login screen. The username and password fields were already filled in. Phi tapped the screen to finish the login process and the interface transitioned into the Dynam Industries employee module. The hazy grey-blue background accentuated the teal interface text. In the top corner of the screen, the folder hierarchy was displayed:

INBOX
OUTBOX [1]
DRAFTS
TRASH

La Felios stood and came around to Phi’s side. “Get anything with that yet?”

“Yeah. There’s one outgoing message.”

Phi held the datapad angled to the side so that La Felios could see and they both read the note in silence.

We came all this way in the name of exploration, in the name of human discovery. We talk of our ancestors proudly, claiming them true adventurers. They knew nothing of what lay beyond our world. There are horrors out here. It's one thing to speculate about the stars from the comfort of our own world. It's another to actually be here. We were not meant to be this far from home. I have seen darkness in its truest form out here.
I don't know how to fly the ship off this fucking ice cube. I'm not a pilot. I was just along for the ride to impress Mr. Jamison for my internship in Dynam's Medical R&D. None of that matters now. I won't let this place, those things, swallow me while I still breathe. I think it’s better to end this myself, but I’m scared. I'm scared it will hurt.
Hell exists and it's out here. It’s under the ice and it waits for my corpse. It took them and it’ll come for me soon. I don’t want it to have my body when I am gone but I don’t think I have a choice. This place is a grave.

“Jesus. That's some cryptic shit,” La Felios murmured.

Phi finished and agreed. “Yep.” He skimmed through the letter one more time, then handed it to La Felios.

"What do you think it means?,” La Felios asked. “What things was he talking about?"

Phi exhaled deeply, trying to will more sense into the situation he now found himself in. “I'll be honest, I don't know. I do know, however, that we need to get back to the rest of the crew. My credentials aren't working on this ship's ATMUS login. If we can’t get this ship back online, we’ll need to return to the Acolyte and send the base report ourselves. We've got a body. Who knows how many others there are. Either way, hop over to channel two and let them know we’ll be on our way to get them in just a few minutes. I’m shutting this operation down. We're going home.”

“Aye, Captain,” La Felios nodded. “Also, let me give the ATMUS login a try. I was an employee before the Artorius launched last year. My login may still work.”

“Go for it. I’m going to grab the black box. The information on it might help piece some more of this together.”

"What'll we do about Jamison? You know he's gonna say something."

The captain said, "Fuck him," over his shoulder as he exited the mess hall.

Ice granules crunched under each of Phi's step down the walkway. La Felios followed until breaking off to the control panel once they both re-entered the cabin. Phi moved to the navigation screens in between the pilot’s chair and the main navigation displays, the bulbous screens of which were dead and sheened with hoarfrost. Underneath the displays was a panel. He unlatched and opened it to reveal a bed of identical slick black hard drives. One of these was labeled DIAG-SYS-REC PRIMARY. The mechanism released it from the bay, ejecting it partially when Phi pushed the drive in. He grabbed it and stood, glancing out the viewport once more.

The darkness above—

The distant waning sun—

Jupiter...

“Got it,” La Felios said.

The lights in the cabin flickered above, strobing for a brief moment before illuminating fully, snapping Phi from his gaze. There was a chorus of booting noises for all of the systems in the ship, a collective emission from the air vents in the walls in a mechanical crescendo. The Acolyte breathed once more. Buttons lit up on the control panels along the front of the cabin and the overhead display staticked for a moment before resting at a black screen with small text in the bottom corner that said NULL.

“Excellent." Phi turned back toward La Felios. "I’ve got the safety drive with me but I’m going to check for the original files in the ship's computer system now that it's up and running.”

The central navigation screen entered into another startup sequence. Streams of code ran by in the black backdrop before transitioning into a directory menu. Phi entered a few lines of commands into the keyboard under the main status console and found the original copies of the diagnostic recordings for not only the ship’s onboard systems, but the H.E.T.E. suit recorded camera feeds of the Acolyte's crew.

“Switching to channel two,” said La Felios.

“Roger.”

Phi could hear La Felios’ mic cut out of the channel. His increasingly feverish thoughts were left to themselves while he searched for logs in the ship’s shared computer drives and listened to his own breathing. His mind kept returning to the planet hanging in the black beyond the cold horizon. His eyes flicked up to the great celestial body and the dead man’s note came back into his thoughts.

Hell exists and it's out here. It’s under the ice and it waits for my corpse.

Phi navigated to the video recordings folder and scrolled through the files separated by crew member name:

JAMISON, B. [1]
CARLIN, D. [1]
PORTER, M.
GILL, H. [1]
COLEMAN, C.
BLAKE, R.

He tapped the keys to enter the JAMISON, B. folder. Inside there was a file titled NULL. He hit the ENTER key to select it but was met with a prompt stating FILE CORRUPTED. DO YOU WANT TO DELETE? Y N. He tapped the N key then returned to the file directory.

The captain glanced back. La Felios’ mouth moved noiselessly, communicating to the others on a different channel. Through the two helmets they wore, it was impossible for Phi to make out what the pilot was saying.

Inside the CARLIN, D. folder was another file titled NULL. Phi was met with the same error message as before, so he backed out and returned to the previous directory. GILL, H. was the only one left with a file. Phi selected it, expecting to see another corrupt video message.

“Captain!” La Felios had switched back over to channel three. “Captain, something’s fucking happening!”

“What? What’s wrong?”

“Swap to channel two, now!”

La Felios appeared to already be switching back a channel as Phi tapped the screen of his own HUD and followed suit. The temporal silence over the comms was thick and the anticipation was just as heavy in his nerves.

The radio clicked over to channel two.

They were all screaming.

It’s in our blood, my son... the yearning for power beyond that which we’ve experienced. This eldritch “anomaly” on the fringe of our solar system will be my lantern in the dark. It is a beacon meant for those who possess the necessary knowledge, artifacts and will to obtain transcendence.
I know not what awaits me, yet I do not fear. The rituals of Old run in our veins and I possess the faith needed, the will to reach beyond. I believe you have that will, too, Edward. All you need is the faith.
I own the Pratt & Rochester building you are undoubtedly reading this from. In the library, at the bottom floor of that building, is all of my work, all of my research, every note I’ve taken and every book I’ve had to search for, every item I've killed for. In the lockbox I’ve left you, you should find a keycard that will let you in. I am leaving all of it to you, to continue my work until I return. No one on the face of the earth has access to that floor now except you. You now also have access to all of my monetary assets and bank accounts and you've been given the rank of Chairman of the Board for the company, so that you may oversee any of the major changes my snaking colleagues will undoubtedly attempt whilst I am gone.
Have faith, my son. Learn faith from all that I have gathered and all that I have pieced together. I am giving you and only you the opportunity to meet the apocalypse with preparation. Should you choose to squander or derail the path I have set before you, that is your choice to make. Just know that my arrival will not be a quiet one and those who are seen lacking will grind under the cosmic wheels of irrevocable change.
Prepare for my second coming, my second birth, and make no mistake, Edward;
I will return.
H. R. Jamison

Edward reread the last few lines of the letter. After he'd finished it once more, he set it back onto the oak table and sat back in the chair, staring out of the large office windows. The sky was still grim and the rain still poured in sheets. It clattered against the glass, made liquid shapes among the grey, and he once again felt himself settling into his vision. His mind came to a slow rhythmic grace as it reflected on the words he'd just read, the words of his father. He allowed only a fractional moment to separate himself from the path that now lay ahead of him, a brief but crucial stasis in which he simply sat and absorbed the dreary light from outside. Then he stood.

He slipped the keycard into the inner pocket of his suit jacket, then took the letter and the small stone effigy and placed them on top of the datapad before grabbing the whole stack and moving toward the door of the office.

As soon as he stepped out into the hallway, the woman from before was at his side.

“Ah, Mr. Jamison. Is there anything I could—”

Edward moved around her.

When he reached the elevators, he hit the down arrow on the panel and, luckily, one of the three was already there. A ding signaled the far left one and he moved toward it and into the elevator. He slid the keycard from his pocket and tapped it against the reader on the panel, then hit the bottom button, LIBRARY - C12 ACCESS ONLY, and pushed the CLOSE DOOR button twice.

The waiting woman stood a few feet outside the elevator with an appalled look on her face. The thick metal doors slid closed.

The airlock was two minutes into its depressurization process. La Felios assembled his mining pick from the pack he wore, linking the segments of the tool together with a quickness. It was cold oiled steel and reflected the airlock’s overhead lights when it was held up. Phi watched and listened to the comm feed of channel two.

The screaming had lasted about thirty seconds. When Phi had first swapped over to the channel, Eilah Winthrope had been hysterical, crying out her husband’s name (Jeffrey! No, no, no, Jeff! Please!). He heard nothing from Engineer Lansig or Jeffrey Winthrope. Eilah’s crying became intense, interrupted only for the intermittent heaving breath of horror, and she'd managed to scream Oh God, What is that? before her voice had cut out.

"Eilah!" Phi called into his mic.

There was no response. The airwaves sounded of emptiness, void of any signs of life or consciousness. The moments of silence permeated a type of indescribable weight.

And then there was a quiet sobbing over the channel. Phi thought it was Eilah's voice at first but, behind the cries, the voice started chanting. It was Russian. Her muttering was almost silent, a background noise to the feed, and Phi recognized that it was Sovikov.

“What is that?” La Felios asked. “It sounds like she's saying the same thing over and over.”

The eyes of the two men met. Phi said, “I don’t speak Russian but it sounds like a prayer to me.”

Though his hands moved willfully, prepping his suit and checking the life support stats on the HUD embedded into his forearm, the desperate muttering had sent Phi's mind rolling through old memories of when he was a child back in church, when he was with his mother and two aunts. He watched the choir sing, watched their richly colored robes sway as they moved with the music. Phi was dressed in his Sunday best outfit, singing along with the hymns. His family stood all around him and he remembered being happy, feeling grateful for where he was, who he was with. Then his attention shifted. Hanging against the wall above the pulpit was the bleeding statue of Christ crucified on the wooden cross. Phi had stared up at the bloodied man many times as a kid, burning the image into his thoughts.

The light next to the door changed from red to green and the outer airlock opened. Phi beheld Jupiter sitting on the horizon and stepped down the six retractable steps and out onto the packed ice. He lost sight of the planet in the shadow of the pressure ridge that separated their landing zone from the anomaly and the rest of the crew.

Christ still bled in the space of his imagination.

“Sovikov," Phi said. "What’s the situation where you guys are? What happened to the rest of the crew?”

Sovikov still murmured incomprehensibly but, behind that, someone else was breathing heavily over the comm. Phi hadn’t noticed until this moment.

“Lansig, is that you? What the hell is happening?”

Sovikov's prayers quieted. Phi could now only occasionally hear the sharpness of her whispers, intermittently halted by sobbing.

“Eilah? Jeffrey?”

The unknown breather behind it all inhaled harder now, large breaths sucking in and out. And then, in a raspy choked voice, it spoke:

“Jamison...” It was a last curdled word, an accusation of some kind riding on the tail end of a death rattle.

Phi moved away from the ship, jogging parallel to the ice wall. Below his feet, footprints from previous suited boots riddled the snow and marked a trail ahead of him along the base of the ridge.

A slow laugh flowed through the little speaker of the headset in the helmet. It chuckled lightly at first, then built into a hearty sound. “This is it!" Jamison yelled over the comms. "They obey! Ha ha ha! They obey!”

Phi glanced back and saw La Felios jogging in tow, still wielding the ice pick assembled inside the airlock. The shadow of the pressure ridge on their left was over them and Phi picked up his pace. The gravity was much lighter on this ice-crusted satellite but he had trained for this and adjusted quickly.

Jamison’s voice came again over the whispers. This time he spoke almost musically in some language Phi could not understand. “Ehak tlukovik etna sel chikvolis,” the man chanted. “Atnek sartivin ehak tlukovik...”

There was a break in the ridge coming up and the footprints led over the lowered portion of the ice wall and to the other side. Phi made no pause before stepping up and through the gap. He slid down to the ice a few feet below and La Felios skidded right behind him. They stood in the shadow of a natural wall of ice spikes. Footsteps led around the base of the formation and Phi led he and his pilot to the other side.

When he stepped out into the sunlight, Phi was once again humbled by the sight of Jupiter in the darkness above. Its immensity commanded his attention, nagging at some deep core of his mammalian mind, something buried in his genes that drove him to stand in awe for the briefest of moments among its presence.

Something nudged Phi’s shoulder. His focus returned. La Felios was pointing ahead.

“There he is.”

[End Part 2]

Part 3