Kazi Depot Storage Facility

At the westernmost side of the Kazi Depot compound was the giant warehouse known as the Kazi Depot Storage Facility. At more than 300 acres, it functioned as the staging ground for every good shipped to the planet.

At the front of the attached building, the side that connected to Kazi Depot, was the food staging area. Giant stacks of bags mostly composed of dehydrated potatoes, mushrooms, and freeze-dried meat substitute were wrapped in cellophane and stacked nearly to the high ceilings on the warehouse shelving.

Fresh food had to be locally grown in indoor farms that were primarily located at the Communications Station. Freeze-dried meats and vegetables were often shipped from Osara Prime and hydrated in the kitchens, but it just wasn’t worth it to any supplier on Osara Prime to freeze and ship tons of real fresh meats and vegetables, so those were a rare treat for most on the station. Because they had limited growing space, fruits and vegetables were expensive and often reserved for anniversaries and birthdays.

Security team members were spread throughout the warehouse, taking inventory with the help of small drones that scanned the shelving units. A constant hum from the drones that were loading the puddlejumpers and readying supplies for the solar supply and transportation trains that ran between the stations at Kazi Depot. They needed to make sure that the Research Facility had the supplies that they needed.

Occasionally you’d see someone run by, searching the stacks of three-story storage shelving that ran throughout the facility for something in particular, flipping through checklists on their coms device.

In that moment, it occurred to Johns how big of a pain in the ass it would be if another one of those squids came crashing down into the planet again. If it hit too close everyone in the building would die as the giant stacks lost their footing and supplies as heavy as all-terrain vehicles came crashing down onto them. It was a miracle they hadn’t come down the first time. There had been a few areas of the storage warehouse that had required cleanup but it had mostly fared well.

“We’re gonna be short,” Rick said as he moved a toothpick from side to side in his mouth.

“I know,” Johns replied.

“Without the Communications Station crops, we are not in the best position. They had a crop that was due for harvest in about a week. The count is still ongoing, but we are looking at a month and a half, tops — of stockpiled fresh foods, anyway — at current rations,” Rick said. “Plenty of meat substitute and dehydrated foods though.”

“And the protein meal?,” Johns asked.

“We’ve got at least a few months of that piled away. But two weeks of eating that slop and people will riot,” Rick said.

“Well...looks like we’re going to have to claim the harvests from the growers.”

“Like...take them from them?” Rick asked, his ears perking up.

“Do you have a better idea?” Johns said.

“Nope,” Rick said through a big shit-eating grin. “They’re going to hate that.”

***

A few hours later, Johns entered the meeting room at the back of the warehouse, where Alan Greenway, the Head of Logistics, delivered a report on their supply stock. He was older, with red hair that had become peppered with blotches of white in seemingly random positions on his head. Fat around the middle, his uniform clung tightly to his gut and his shoulders were too large for its sleeves.

“Things are looking tight, but manageable,” he said as he pushed his glasses farther up onto the brim of his nose. “Our food supplies are short. With our previous shipment delayed and the collapse of the Com Station farming system, which would have provided us quite a bit of runway on the next harvest, we have just about two months of stockpiled food ready to go. The other stations will still be able to operate their own farming systems, and with each designed to sustain their own population, we should be alright.

However, this is still too close for comfort. We are going to distribute our remaining food supplies between Kazi Depot and the Research Facility to give them a bit of wiggle room. I’m still waiting to hear back from their inventory over there, but we know they will have a fraction of what we do.

Regarding other supplies, it looks like we should be fine. The damage at the other remaining stations was minimal. Medical supplies will be distributed between the different stations to make sure everyone has enough. The good news is that our engineering team has already put together more than 50 flamethrowers, and we should have no problem dealing with the rest of the crash sites.

Sites two and three are scheduled to have teams visit them in two days, after the cargo ships return from their supply runs. We’ll need every puddlejumper we can to transport enough people to each site. In the meantime, the drones will continue loading the planes, which are scheduled to depart tomorrow morning.

As for us, there isn’t a whole lot that we can do until we transport to the next crash site. We have our flying drones out there surveying the sites today, looking for a good drop point. The sites have grown so large that we may need to make camp for a couple of days to finish the job, even with the extra flamethrowers.”

“Alright, so we won’t starve. That’s a win in my book,” Rich said, elbowing Johns in the ribcage as he did.

“Is it really going to take two days to distribute the supplies? We can’t get out there sooner than two days? The longer we let this shit grow the harder it’s going to be.”

“Well, maybe we could shrink it down to a day-and-a-half. But there were quite a few injuries over there. I think our priority should be taking care of our people.”

“I might argue that getting rid of this crap is taking care of our people.

“Well….we could drop the teams off there and then return the puddlejumpers to handle the supplies?”

“So we wouldn’t have any on hand to evac people if anything happened?” Johns asked.

“If What happens? A burn victim? It’s goop, Nicholas,” Alan said.

“Maybe. We don’t know what it is and what it isn’t yet. And I’m not going to gamble on hubris.”

“Fair enough,” Alan replied, looking over the schedule he had laid out on his coms unit. I guess there is no harm in giving you the ships while you need them. Just let us get the critical supplies — medical, some food items, repair items — over there first. Then you can go out there and burn it all down. I can have them ready for you by noon tomorrow. No promises on the timing. Just sometime around then. .”

“Alright.”

Johns and Rick walked out of the office and walked toward the warehouse exit. They were met at the far side by the security team, who had been mulling around waiting for new orders.

“The next burn is tomorrow. Probably around noonish, all four puddlejumpers will be loaded with people and flown out to the impact sites. You guys need to be here at eleven-hundred.”

“So...does that mean we are off duty for the night?” Rick asked with a big shit-eating grin.

“I suppose it does,” Johns said knowingly.

“Then we can drink?”

Johns rolled his eyes. He looked toward the group, who looked back eagerly.

“Fine,” Johns said and was immediately met with fist pumps and hand slaps. “Okay, okay, okay. Calm down, people. Calm down. You can drink tonight. Celebrate the last burn. But only a couple. That’s it. I need you fresh and ready to go for the next burn job. No one hungover, you fucking hear me? Be on point. But tonight do as you please. Dismissed.”

The group dispersed, but as the last of the guys made their way through the door, Johns saw Sara jogging toward him from the warehouse entrance.

“I need to talk to you,” she said, waiting for the group to disperse before speaking.

“Okay,” Johns replied and stared, waiting for her to speak.

“Privately,” she said in a hushed whisper.

Johns looked around from side to side.

“Noones here. Just me and Alan,” Johns said, motioning toward the office on the far end of the building.

“It’s extremely sensitive,” she said with an urgency that made the hair on the back of Johns’ neck stand up.

“Sara, it’s fine. Out with it—”

“Their fucking eggs,” she said hurriedly.

“Excuse me?”

“Their eggs, Mr. Johns, the mounds of blue goo that we discovered at the Communications Station are eggs.”

Johns felt his heart jump off a cliff and land in his feet. He furrowed his brow and beaded his eyes as her, the realization of what she was saying washed over him.

“Eggs of what?” he asked, his eyes wide.

“Like...what do they contain? Is that what you're asking?”

“Yes. What is in the eggs?”

“Well...creatures. We aren’t certain. We dissected the samples that we brought back this morning and underneath a lot of layers of the goo... in different states of solidity, we found a...creature. It was in the early stages, we think. But still, an animal. It didn’t survive more than a few minutes outside of the egg.”

“Jesus christ. What kind of animal? How big?”

“Well, it was small. Lizard-like. Four legs. I’m certain that we broke it out of its shell far too early, because it didn’t last long in the environment tank. It’s hard to say what it will be like when it's fully incubated.”

“One second,” Johns said before taking off in a run toward Alan Greenway’s office.

“Alan!” he said, bursting through the door, starting him.

“Yes?”

“Change of plans. We need the puddlejumpers at first light.”

“I can’t—”

“Yes, you can. We just learned something. I’ll tell you what in a bit. But believe me, the most important thing that we can do right now is burn those sites down.”

“What—”

“Later!” Johns yelled as he slammed the door. He turned to Sara, who had made her way over near Alan’s office. “Take me to it.”

Sara nodded and they left in a jog. Johns felt like he should be sprinting to see whatever this creature was, he didn’t want to draw too much attention and cause alarm.

They made their way out of the warehouse and down the metallic corridors that spiderwebbed their way across all of Kazi Depot. A few minutes later, they arrived at the research hall, panting. Sara entered her credentials and let the system scan her eye. The doors whooshed open and exposed a tighter metallic corridor, but this corridor was lined with windows.

“This way,” Sara said.

Inside of the triple-pane windowed hallway they turned into the third door on the right, into a room that already had two scientists in it, huddled over their petri dishes. Johns didn’t think that he had ever been in this room before. He didn’t have much that needed to be done in this wing.

Johns followed Sara as she huddled over the clear enclosure with the gloved inserts in the middle of the room. In the middle of the table were the remains of the egg, split open and pulled apart into four separate quarters from the top. It was...wet. There, in the center of the split open egg, covered in a thin, familiar luminescent blue mucus, was what appeared to be a small bird-like animal.

Johns leaned in, taking a closer look. The animal’s skin had a blue-purple hue. It looked like it had four legs, but several places on the body featured hook and claw-like appendages. Eight in total spread around the torso. Its skin was smooth, like an amphibians. Its mouth was beak-like, protruding from its face and coming to a point. It laid in the center of the table emaciated.

“We washed some of the goo off to get a better look.”

“Do it again,” Johns said.

“Do what?” Sara replied.

“Hatch another one. We have more eggs, right? I want to see what it looks like when it’s alive.”

“Right now?” Sara said, pulling back a step from Johns.

“Yes, right now.”

Sara looked at her shoes, then nodded at two researchers who were working close by. They dropped what they were doing and went toward the back room. A few minutes later, they were rolling out another table covered in the poly-plastic covering with a full egg inside. They placed it at the center of the room. A scalpel had been placed on the table next to the egg under the covering.

She reached her hands into gloved inserts on the side, carefully picked up the scalpel, and then slowly inserted it into the very top of the egg. She cut lengthwise in one direction, about 75 percent of the way down the egg. A familiar luminous blue fluid oozed from the new opening. Sara took the scalpel out, re-inserted it into the crown of the egg, and began cutting in the opposite direction down the side. Once she had cut down all four sides, she set the scalpel down and began to peel back each side of the egg one by one. With each peel of each quarter of the egg, the egg suctioned away and mucous strings pulled away with the shell of the egg, exposing what appeared to be a thin membrane below.

Once all four quarters of the egg had been peeled back and rested on the table on either side, Sara picked up the scalpel that lay on the inside of the containment bubble. Then, carefully, pushed the scalpel into the membrane. As soon as it touched, a thick blue liquid began pouring out, coating the surface of the table in the liquid. She cut and pulled at the membrane to make the opening larger.

There, in the center of the egg was the creature that looked just like the one from the first egg that had opened. It writhed its legs around, kicking and clawing at the air. It’s head whipped around from side to side, struggling. He tried desperately to pull air into its mouth. Johns watched with awe as the alien creature that couldn’t be more than three inches long clung to life. Within a minute, the writhing became less determined, until finally, the creature stopped and laid still.

Johns, Sara, and the techs that had brought the table over made eye contact, each waiting for the other to speak.

“We need to get to those other impact sites fast,” Johns said he turned and walked for the door.