Cold Lantern: Chapter II
Operation Katabasis has hardly begun, and the crew are already facing unexpected challenges. Chapter II is available now, with an early edition of Chapter III for paid subscribers.
Chapter II - The Tumor on the Line
T+06:44 — CONTAINMENT POSTURE: OX-4 AUTHORIZED
AO: EUROPA / THERA-POINT / SURFACE ZONE
ASSET: SSTV PEREGRINE (Surface Support / Transfer Vehicle), callsign “NEST”The return trip was supposed to be the calm part.
You go down, you do the work, you come back. That’s how the human brain kept itself from chewing through its own wiring. It built little ceremonies out of procedure – checklists, callouts, “green” statuses – because if you did the ritual right, you got to believe the universe responded in kind.
Mace Kieran floated up toward the Peregrine’s belly like a bead of mercury on a wire, tether singing faintly in the suit’s tension sensor.
Above him, the Peregrine hung under the Constitution on a short docking spine – an ugly, utilitarian thing built to do one job: take people and gear from vacuum into a controlled volume without contaminating the flagship.
It looked like a pillbug: armored shell, stubby thruster pods, a single airlock blister at the bottom. The blister was called the nest, because the engineers had a sense of humor they kept carefully locked away from commanders.
“EVA team, stack on the nest,” Al-Khatib ordered. “No cross-talk. Buddy checks only.”
“Copy,” Vonn said, already moving. She was good – quick without being messy, a soldier who could make speed look like patience.
Tsu came up slower, the instrument pack hugged tight like it contained his organs.
Mace kept his view off the ice below and on their own gear now. He didn’t want to look back at the bore collar. He didn’t want to watch the chalk line look for its next target now that it had flattened the warm infrared beacon like it had found a throat.
Behind them, the Melt Lance still steamed.
Ahead of them, the nest waited with its iris shut.
“Peregrine, this is Constitution,” Col. Havel came over the net. “Confirm readiness for external decon cycle.”
A different voice answered – older, nasal, a woman who sounded like she kept her anger balled up and unleashed it on subordinates who annoyed her. “Peregrine confirms. Nest’s cold. Pressure differential stable. Decon sprayers are hot.”
“Proceed,” Havel said. “No internal cycle until I authorize.”
Mace’s HUD blinked a new instruction set:
=> OX-4 SURFACE RETURN PROTOCOL: EXTERNAL DECON, FULL TELEMETRY REVIEW. NO DIRECT BOARDING.
He hadn’t seen a boarding hold since training, when the instructors made you wait in the vacuum of space, just to make you sweat.
These rules were crystal clear; You don’t touch the flagship. You don’t breathe her air. You treat her like the last clean thing in the entire solar system, if not the galaxy.
Vonn reached the nest first and slapped her magnetic boots to the hull plate beside the airlock. “Stacked.”
Tsu arrived and anchored on the opposite side, careful to keep his pack from bumping the hatch.
Mace came in last and locked his boots. The three of them hung there like ornaments on a christmas tree.
The nest iris stayed shut.
A nozzle array around the airlock blister rotated into place with a soft mechanical squeal that traveled through the hull and into Mace’s bones. He hated that sound. It wasn’t fear of machinery. It was the fact that the sound meant we are about to wash you.
“External decon in three,” the Peregrine’s ops tech said. “Two. One.”
The sprayers hit.
The fine gelatinous mist of heated solvent exploded across their suits on impact. Tiny impacts like rain that had finally been let free from their jelly prison before the microgravity pulled it away. Along the coldest edges of their suit the chemical mix froze into translucent film.
Mace’s visor fogged for half a second as the suit compensated.
His humidity ticked up again.
HUMIDITY: +0.8%
He kept his breathing slow and forced his eyes down to his wrist seals.
There it was.
Not on the hull. Not on Europa.
On him.
A chalk dusting at the edge of the neck ring! Just a hint of pale residue where the solvent had beaded and then dried into frost. It wasn’t thick. It could’ve been nothing. It could’ve been suit grime, manufacturing dust, a smear of ice.
Except it was arranged.
A little curve. A tiny arc.
Parenthesis, delicate as punctuation.
Mace stared like his eyes could burn it away. The arc didn’t move.
Fear gripped at his heart as he fumbled with the external diagnostic toggle. It took a second that lasted to eternity and finally his suit beeped softly.
PRESSURE MICRO-LEAK: NONE
SEAL INTEGRITY: NOMINAL
PARTICULATE COUNT: RISING
“EVA One,” Al-Khatib said. “Status.”
Mace swallowed. “Decon complete. No visible breach. Minor residue at neck ring.”
“Define residue,” Al-Khatib said carefully.
Mace knew the rules about words and he knew if he chose them poorly, there would be consequences.
“Chalk film. Consistent with what we saw on the surface.”
A beat.
Havel interrupted, answering for Al-Khatib, “Copy. Hold position. Peregrine will take you into the nest one at a time. No manual override. No shortcuts.”
“Copy,” Vonn said.
Tsu didn’t speak. His breathing was the loudest thing in the channel, and the nest iris finally dilated.
It didn’t open like a door. It unfolded, petals retracting into the hull and exposing a dark throat with faint indicator lights. The airlock cavity looked too small to hold a human, but it always did until you were inside it and the walls were an inch from your elbows.
“EVA Two, in first,” Al-Khatib ordered.
Vonn pushed off, controlled, and drifted into the nest. The iris petals rotated behind her and sealed with a wet metallic click. The tight enclosed space would pressure wash her clean in what little microgravity it could generate.
Mace waited, still anchored to the hull. He watched the frost film on his visor edge shimmer as the Peregrine’s heat bled through the nest frame.
The tapping returned.
Not loud. Not even definite. A faint, rhythmic interruption under the comms carrier, like someone brushing a wire with a fingernail at steady intervals.
Mace stared at his comms icon.
COMMS: DEGRADED flashed and cleared again.
“EVA One,” he started.
Then his channel filled with Vonn.
But Vonn’s voice was wrong. Not her cadence. Not her breath. Not her little habit of biting off consonants like she was chewing glass. This was a cleaner version, too clean, like a recording cut from better days.
“-- open the hatch.”
Al-Khatib snapped, “EVA Two, say again.”
Silence.
Then Vonn’s regular voice, a little strained. “I didn’t say anything.”
Mace’s stomach tightened. In microgravity, the body had fewer ways to express fear. It went straight to the gut anyway.
“Peregrine ops,” Havel cut in. “Confirm internal audio.”
The ops tech sounded shaken. “I’m not seeing a mic transmitted from EVA Two. No vox. No keyed channel. That phrase –” She stopped herself. “That phrase didn’t originate from her suit.”
“Source?” Havel asked.
“Unknown, ma’am.”
“Geeez –” Tsu whispered, “-us.”
“Watch your language,” Al-Khatib said automatically, but there was no bite in it.
“EVA Two, status in the nest,” Al-Khatib demanded.
Vonn answered after a breath. “I’m… in. The Nest is cold. Sprayers cycling internally. I see—”
Her voice cut.
Not static. Not drop.
Muted.
Mace’s comms icon flashed once: CARRIER COUPLING DETECTED and then cleared like it hadn’t happened.
Vonn returned, voice lower. “I see residue in here. Same chalk film on the inner ring. It’s on the metal.”
Havel’s voice stayed calm, but there was a new weight to it. “Do not touch it.”
“I’m not,” Vonn said. “But it’s – it’s not just dust. It’s… set. Like scale.”
“EVA Two, hold,” Al-Khatib ordered. “No suit doff. No pressure equalization to cabin. You stay in the decon tube until told otherwise.”
“Copy,” Vonn said, and her professionalism held for a second.
Then she said, quieter, “It’s on the drains.”
Mace’s eyes flicked to the nest seam around the iris. The spot where solvent runoff would collect. The place where warm moisture met cold metal and turned into ice.
Al-Khatib’s voice shook Mace back to the moment. “Vonn, evac the tube, we need to get out of the vacuum.”
He could still see the chalk line on Europa. How it had kissed the consumed the beacon.
How it had thickened.
“EVA One, you’re next,” Al-Khatib said.
Mace released his boots and drifted forward.
The throat of the nest looked darker now. Like it was watching.
He told himself that was stupid. There was no watching. There were no eyes. There was only chemistry and procedure and the physics of heat exchange.
He slipped inside.
The iris closed behind him with a gentle, final sound.
The walls were closer than he liked. The nest lights painted his suit in dull amber. A nozzle array rotated and began the internal spray cycle, warmer this time. The solvent mist struck his visor and ran in slow beads, sliding down the curve like tears.
His suit beeped.
HUMIDITY: +1.2%
His particulate counter climbed.
His lamp caught the inner ring of the nest hatch.
Chalk film, exactly where Vonn said it would be. A dusting at first glance.
Then he saw the edges.
Those little arcs.
Parentheses marching around the ring like a warning written in a language that wasn’t language – just repetition, boundary-seeking discipline.
And threaded between two of the arcs, almost invisible until his light hit it.
A filament.
Not hair. Not fiber. Too straight.
A thin, glassy strand anchored to the metal and stretching toward the nest drain grate. It trembled faintly when the sprayers hit, not from water pressure but as if it had tension like a wire.
Mace’s throat made a sound. Not words. His mic picked it up anyway.
Al-Khatib’s voice hammered in. “EVA One, report.”
Mace forced his voice into the permitted lane. “Non-random deposits on inner ring. Possible filamentous structure present. Anchored to hatch metal.”
The ops tech on the Peregrine whispered, “Oh god.”
Havel didn’t whisper. “All stations, confirm: CBRN defense intact.”
“CBRN intact,” Engineering said. “Negative pressure stable. Pass-through sealed.”
“Good,” Havel said. “Do not bring that nest atmosphere into Constitution.”
Mace stared at the filament.
He wanted to touch it, but he knew better. In his bones, he knew not to touch it.
But the sprayers kept washing.
Warm solvent ran toward the drain.
The filament brightened slightly, caught the light like wet thread, and then, impossibly, seemed to tighten, drawing itself closer to the drain edge as if it preferred the path water wanted to take.
Not alive.
Active hazard.
Growth vector.
Systems coupling.
Words you used when you were trying not to say the other words.
Mace’s comms ticked.
A faint tapping under the carrier.
And then, right in his ear, that too-clean voice again; almost friendly now, like it was learning how to fit itself into their bandwidth.
“-- open the hatch.”
Mace froze, every muscle locked inside the suit’s servo assistance. His heart slammed against the chest strap sensor. His CO₂ scrubber spooled up like it could outrun fear.
He didn’t answer the voice.
He answered his commander.
“Captain,” he said, and his voice tried to crack but didn’t, “we have a comms artifact repeating instructions to break CBRN. It’s not coming from us.”
Silence.
Then Al-Khatib, clipped and cold. “Copy. Nobody opens anything. Nobody overrides anything.”
He paused, and Mace could hear the captain thinking in real time. Calculating what she had to do, what she was allowed to do, what she might be forced to do.
“Havel,” Al-Khatib said, voice lower now. “We need to cut the Peregrine loose.”
The words landed like a gunshot.
The Peregrine was their only warm pocket between Europa and the flagship. Their only nest.
But nests, Mace thought, were also where parasites started.
Col. Havel didn’t answer immediately.
A commander’s silence was never empty. It was a room full of dying options.
Finally she said, “Not yet.”
“Ma’am—”
“Not yet,” Havel repeated, harder. “We do this by protocol, not panic. We still have three people in that airlock chain and four more outside. We cut loose too early and we turn a contamination event into a crew loss event.”
Mace swallowed. The filament trembled again; subtle, patient, mapping the drain flow.
Somewhere outside, Europa waited under ice, and under that, the filament field still arranged itself around the ROV like a plant turning toward a lamp.
The filament didn’t care about protocol.
Just humans do.
“EVA One,” Havel said, “hold. You are not coming aboard. You are not cycling into cabin atmosphere. You remain in the decon until I give a direct order.”
Mace stared at the chalk arcs around the ring.
Around a door.
Around a boundary.
“Copy,” he said.
His suit beeped again.
HUMIDITY: +1.5%
And from somewhere in the Peregrine’s internal ducting – so faint it could’ve been imagination – came a sound like a distant electrical crackle.
Like something waking up and learning what it could do.
Chapter III - Filtering
Chapter III - Filter
T+07:02 — INCIDENT DECLARATION PENDING
ASSET: SSTV PEREGRINE (“NEST”) — DOCKED TO USSF CONSTITUTION
CONTAINMENT POSTURE: OX-4 (ACTIVE HAZARD)Mace floated in the amber-lit throat of the airlock, boots braced on a pad meant to keep you from pinballing into the walls. The solvent mist had stopped. Now the air was still, cold and faintly metallic, like he had an old coin in his mouth.
The thought of a dirty warm coin on his tongue kicked in his gag reflex.
