T-Plus 16

Oliver cursed the two scientists taking it easy as he approached the darkened section again. He attempted pairing every unsavory word with “lab coat” to come up with interesting curses he could throw at them when he returned scathed with burns and scrapes, something that he was expecting at this point in dealing with aliens. His favorite so far was “shitty, slimy zombie lab coat,” which might not be the most effective insult, but the exercise was funny enough to be a distraction as he reached the edges of the dark section.

Despite his initial concerns, there were no aliens awaiting his arrival once he got to the dark section. Not a single rock was sent his way once he climbed over the first set of rubble. So far, so good. Accompanied by the only thing he could trust at this point, he pointed his light toward the area where he first found the egg-like structure. From this distance, there didn’t seem like any alien activity happening, but they’d all learned the hard way that looks could be deceiving.

Still nothing happened when he climbed down his current pile of rubble to the next one. With all that he’s done in this time of great duress, Oliver already had the vague ambition of climbing Mount Olympus on Mars when they were finally out of the Station and back with proper civilization. It would be a nice relaxing stress reliever after all of these panic inducing endeavors, which his bosses would probably just amount to “all part of the job.”

Rolling his eyes at the thought of already hearing their ignorant opinions, Oliver paused atop his current rubble conquest, pointing his light down on his target. He was still a rubble pile over from where he found the alien batch, but he could already see the bulging veins congregating toward the location from here. Remember Emerson’s suggestion of picking them off one at a time, he could already tell he’d be here for longer than he really wanted. Even when they were at their thinnest, there were a dozen of them beneath the ground. Oliver sighed looking at them, wondering if his bosses’ bosses would also consider this type of dangerous field work “part of the job.”

Keeping his steps light while clipping his trusty partner to his shoulder, Oliver approached the first fully visible tendril drilling out of the ground. It wasn’t wrapped around any of the others like the ones further up were doing, so it looked like an easy target. Doing as he had done earlier, he stomped on it before jumping back with his backpack in front of him and a large piece of the Station’s wall in his hands, something he’d picked up on his climb over here. Seeing how heat was useless against rocks, this was the next best option.

As expected, an alien emerged from where he stomped the ground. Sliding out of the floor tendrils first, he could already see the alien prepare to spit rocks at him once it was completely out of the ground. The advantage goes to those who act first, so Oliver did as the saying said to do. He slammed the piece of the wall he had down onto the alien before it fully came out of the floor. He then proceeded to jump up and down on it as if making completely sure whatever cockroach that had invaded his living quarters was snuffed out for good.

The only problem of dealing with them like a bug was once he was too tired to squash them with his weight, he was too afraid to get off to check if he had finished it off or not. He stood there, shifting his feet around to see if he could feel any remnants beneath the wall portion. He could feel a slight bulge when he stepped around the center, but he couldn’t feel it move, so he assumed it was okay. Probably.

He surveyed the area around him, ignoring the chills that creeped up on his arms. There was another sizable piece of rubble just outside of arm’s reach that he could use for defense. This one looked like it was a piece of the ceiling, which Oliver knew was a lot flimsier than the materials used to make the floor. It would have to make do at the moment, unfortunately.

Oliver glanced at his feet, hopping off and rushing for the piece of ceiling he had already scouted out. He grabbed it, holding it between him and the site of the alien squishing, counting up to ten before peeking out from behind his makeshift wall. No movements. He scooted closer, ducking behind his barrier again before checking. Still nothing. He got close enough to kick his original tool a bit before retreating back to his previous distance. Even with the floor plating kicked off, there were still no movements. He then presumed the alien dead.

Getting just close enough to kick off the rest of the flooring, Oliver peered out from behind his thin shield. The splattered form of an alien remained where he had stepped on it multiple times. Rather than the complete rocky surface he was expecting from this alien, it seemed this one was only half-evolved with more of its normal pink slime appearance than rock. Evidently, his stomping it out like a bug was a bit overkill.

“Better overkill than underkill,” he murmured to himself as he approached it.

He squatted beside the dead alien. Other than the other times where they were running away from these bad neighbors of theirs, this was the first time he had the chance of observing one this close up. He kicked it over again, realizing he had killed it before it even had the chance of completely digging out of the ground. The bottom quarter of it was still hidden in the floor, and from what he could see that section was actually made out of stone. He poked at it with a finger, nodding at the familiar sensation of dusty rock. He was correct. That was rock all right.

Oliver wasn’t the smartest of their current trio, but even he figured what the half normal, half rock parts of the alien probably meant. It was an alien halfway through its evolution. He stood, patting off the dust from his pants, frowning as he thought. He’d have to provoke a few more aliens on the way to the egg statue until he was more certain of his buddying hypothesis.

The technician sighed, scouting for his next experimental victim. The next set was similar to his first specimen. None of them had quite connected to the congo line leading up to the egg statue and were easy to deal with one by one through a series of stomping, hopping in place, and once by a body slam. Each one took a toll on Oliver, and he found himself having to take a break away from the experimentation zone as he clutched his side. He chose to do a body slam to ease the strain on his legs, but this last alien was more rock than before, and he could swear he had a bruise on his side now.

Like the first one, the next few he dealt with all had different ratios of slime and rock. The closer he got to the egg statue in the center of all those tendrils, the more rocky bits the aliens had. At this point, he had reached where most of the veins were bunched up close enough where several overlapped each other. He’d either have to deal with several at once or somehow aggravate only one at time, which he’d find difficult with his wide feet.

“Wonder if poking them with my hands work,” he muttered, pointing his light at the next section of experimental subjects.

He deigned to find out the consequences the hard way and decided to head back to the other two first and hear out his current results. Keeping his eyes on the veins as he backed away, he took his time on the way back to the two scientists who had basically forced him over here. Once he couldn’t see the tendrils or the corpses he had smashed anymore, he climbed over the last few piles of rubble keeping him from the other two.

“So? What happened?” Emerson asked when she saw him approach.

The two lab coats had found a place to rest a good distance away from the dark area. Close enough to see him approach, but far enough to where they probably wouldn’t get caught in the crossfire if he ended up messing up somewhere. Showed how much they trusted him.

“I think I figured out why there were so many around those eggs,” Oliver said, plopping down on the free spot beside Toast.

“Was it because that’s their spawn point?” Toast asked, his eyes almost sparkling in anticipation.

Oliver pushed the overzealous scientist out of his face, scooting closer to where Emerson was before continuing on with his report.

“You’ve played too many games,” Oliver said, rolling his eyes. “No, it wasn’t their spawn point. It seems to be something like an evolution point?”

“So you’re saying they gather together when they’re about to evolve into a different type?” Emerson said, clarifying his thoughts. She scrunched her brows in thought for a moment, looking up to ask her next question. “Could you tell if they were gathering to all evolve, or if they were all coming together to evolve into one higher being?”

“I’m not sure. I came out here to tell you what I figured out before I accidentally set off the whole swarm again.”

He proceeded to describe the details of how he arrived at his current hypothesis, foregoing any mention of his squeamishness around the aliens. Hearing the full details of his work, the two lab coats went silent as they delved into their own thoughts. He stood, already knowing what was going to happen after they parsed through the multiple possibilities they had going. He checked the remaining battery life on his flashlight, tucked a new set of batteries into his pocket where it was easy to reach, and made sure the positions of his blowtorches were secure in his backpack’s side pockets. They were useless against the rocky kind of aliens, but they were still handy in other situations.

And as he expected, when he looked over, he could see the two scientists hunched over whispering their hypotheses to each other, discussing in jargon too advanced for him to understand in just whispers. And once again, as he expected, their final consensus was for him to go back in and try things he hadn’t already. What he hadn’t expected was for Toast to stand up and pat his chest.

“I’ll come with you this time!”

Maybe he should’ve expected that, knowing how the scientist operated on a daily basis even when they weren’t in this situation.

“You said you can’t keep doing what you’re doing by yourself, right? Obviously, that means you were requesting for my help!”

“I... don’t see how that was an ‘obvious’ plea for help...” Oliver said, blanching at the scientist’s leap in logic despite having a PhD in various fields.

He turned to Emerson, who seemed to have given up on convincing Toast. At his glance, Emerson only shook her head.

“I’ll stay out here. Don’t forget about me when you guys mess things up,” she added. “Granted, I’m sure I’ll hear it before you two manage to come back.”

“I can’t believe you don’t believe in us!” Toast complained as he shouldered his discarded backpack.

Toast slung it over his shoulder, copying Oliver’s current style of keeping it in front of him. He threw a grin at him, adjusting his straps to fit properly. The technician could only sigh, choosing to ignore the scientist as he headed back to his temporary experimentation area.