Tevun-Krus #116 - Horror SF

Alien Requiem - A Story by @RJGlynn

Alien Requiem

by RJGlynn

Reader advisory: In the spirit of this Tevun-Krus issue's horror theme, this story contains goopy gore and gruesome imagery. The author offers apologies for the ick factor (she grossed herself out with this one). 🤢🙈

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Discordant chittering; high-pitched screeches on the edge of human hearing; and deeper vibrations: a bone-penetrating hum in humid air ripe with flowers and composting vegetation.

Rana Vanko stepped out into the purple and blue jungle of Harmony Station's famous 'symphonic' research garden, heard and unheard frequencies raising every gray hair on her shorn scalp.

Alien plants grew both upward from indigo lunar soil and downward from a vast dome of what looked like solidified mucus, a structure strong enough to hold against the vacuum of space. The oozy, pearlescent substance covered nearly everything. It dripped in long strings from trumpet-shaped flowers, necessitating the transparent umbrella she held, and it budded under her jumpsuit's orange slip-on boots. Where only barren moon rock had once lain, moist patches of azure moss undulated in time with the skin-crawling, multi-frequency shrieks.

"Bleedin' angels weep." Rana curled her lip, uncaring that the spherical media drone hovering beside her captured her disgust and fed it to the VIPs in the station lounge she'd just escaped. At fifty-eight, she was old enough—and had worked in ship reclamation long enough—to have lost a decent whack of her hearing, but fifteen seconds into the alien–human PR farce she'd been dragged into, she was praying for total hearing loss. The high-collared, self-impressed scientists and dignitaries gathered for this oh-so 'significant' occasion had called the racket "a heartfelt requiem" and "a demonstration of emotionally rich sentience." Well, she called bilge shite on that. It was just noise: thermals shifting air and leaves; the vibration of moving fluids; and basic cavitation—gas bubbles collapsing within extraterrestrial plant veins.

Not that anyone gave a solitary fek what she thought. Harmony Station's PR team might've forked out thousands of credits to fly her halfway across the galaxy for this "most poignant and historic event," but no one on the research moon was there to see her.

Fisting her free hand, she eyed the alien ooze sliming her umbrella, a substance that contained all the nutrients a human needed to survive—so the experts said. The sticky goo smelled like vanilla and hazelnuts but should've stank of rotten politics. The media called the shrieking weeds a "transformative xenobotanical miracle"; she called them "vote grease."

The Spirabilis Donum, or 'Spira'; a multi-organism cooperative that could apparently think, feel, and create 'music' and, more importantly, arable biomass and breathable air. On the month-long flight from her home base-ship, she'd heard all about the miracle plants. And it didn't take no genius to figure why the Terran government had 'partnered' with the weeds on various projects, nor why the deep-pocketed suits would do anything to keep the oozy creepers happy—including dragging an old woman from her self-pitying, alcoholic stupor.

According to the boffins, the Spira could grow near anywhere and grown near anything given the right starter medium. And with ninety percent of humanity living in cramped squalor on failed, rundown, colonization ships, terraforming research got politicians votes.

They wouldn't be getting hers.

Rana sneered. Aware of the many eyes watching her through the media drone, she made a thorough production of adjusting the saggy seat of her jumpsuit—the grease-stained, orange onesie that was her scrapper's uniform. She'd refused to change into the poncey pants suit offered to her. Fek, there was no prettying her up.