Margin of Error

The trees that made up the forest had thin trunks of deep black, towering high above, the tops a single, fanning leaf.

Avery tilted his head up. They looked like umbrellas.

Hazy red light broke through the smallest holes in the canopy—painting above as a sky of deep purple with pricks of red. The beams of light were enough to see by; barely. Vaguely it reminded him of their ship, the light during takeoff red from the Exit sign above the door.

All along the trunks grew capped fungi, emitting a soft pink-hued luminosity.

He coughed, lungs wheezing on an inhale.

Avery cracked his neck; sighed.

The forest around him stretched for kilometers—he should know, he’d been walking them for days. The black trunks were spaced about five meters apart. He tried not to look that far into the distance; the dimness speckled with dots of luminous fungi like a bubblegum perversion of the cosmos he’d flown in from.

His skin felt hot. Avery gritted his teeth against the rising anger in his chest.

“That looks bad.”

Avery turned to face Phil slowly, blinked at him twice before he followed his gaze.

Phil was pointing at the tattered gash in the right sleeve of his flightsuit, the edges of it dark. The skin underneath pulsed in time with the steady beat of his heart, but Avery didn’t want to look further than that. He pulled the two sides together as best he could, placing a gloved hand over it.

Avery took a breath, cleared his dry throat. “At least we know it means the air isn’t toxic.”

“Yeah,” Phil laughed, and the sound startled Avery. “At least we know it’s not the air. Shall we?” Phil gestured at the space before them.

Checking the display on his wrist, Avery nodded.

His steps were muted as he walked. There was no underbrush to speak of, save for little clusters of fuchsia where more fungi were growing. Instead it was soft—pillowy. Less like walking over snow and more like fine ash. The hems of his orange flight suit were dark with it, as was the left side of his body from where he’d laid down to sleep.

“I think Steph might have the hots for you,” Phil said with a smile that was irritating.

Avery grunted; noncommittal.

He chewed his lip, thought of Steph and her rich brown eyes. She had this bumping way of laughing that sounded like a fit of hiccups; a slow, easy smile.

Phil was wrong—it was the other way around.

He’d told her once; recently. His heart kicked at the thought of it. He’d waited up all night, praying to the forgotten gods she’d knock on his door.

Then, she had.

“I should ask her to prom when we get out of here,” he said, dryly.

He checked his display again. It flickered—reoriented. Avery scowled at the thing.

“Relax,” Phil said.

“The canopy cover is too dense,” Avery growled; coughed hard into the silence. His tongue was tacky in his mouth, he desperately wanted water. “I’m only half sure we’re headed in the right direction. I can’t get a signal to send a message out, either.”

“It’s fine.” Phil sipped from his flask. “I bet we’re almost there, we couldn’t have gone that far.”

Avery rubbed his chest.

He’d been thinking around a headache for long miles, trying to figure out how he’d gotten so turned around. The forest wasn’t thick, but it was vast. It covered seventy-two percent of the planet, the other twenty-eight percent of that being water. It was amazing they’d found a place to land at all.

His display beeped.

A fuzzy, green dot blinked sleepily on the screen. It faded out, only to fade back in a slightly different location. Avery swore.

“What?” Phil asked, peering at the screen. Then he swore as he read it, too.

Signal interference: High

Margin of error: 1-4km

Avery looked around. “Who do I have to kill for a trail blaze?” he asked, tone as dry as his throat.

Phil choked on a laugh. “Situationally dark, my friend.”

Avery shot Phil a tired, exasperated look, and Phil just shrugged.

The day only got warmer as the star continued its trek through the sky. Avery ached to see it. Even with limited knowledge of the planet, he wanted some tangible thing to orient himself in time. They’d talked about it before landing, surely, but there was no expected variance for the length of this day when walled under thick canopy.

The forest was so still, so silent. He strained for anything.

Just as he was about to scream to hear something other than the wheeze of his own breathing, there was something.

A crack in the distance; reinforced glass colliding with something hard and breaking. The sound stopped with a sound like a body hitting the ground. Then, closer, like plastic being dragged over the floor.

The hairs along his neck stood up, a feeling like being watched sifting over him. His arm throbbed, skin feeling tight.

Suddenly, a puff of smoke, thick and rose-colored, rolled between the trees ahead of him. It crackled with a sound like the spark of electricity—glittered like it, too. Halting, he turned on his heel; began to backtrack.

Behind him something cracked, then fell. He didn’t look.

“Remember that one summer we took the train to Sinautum and went to that music festival?” Phil asked, rubbing the stubble on his chin with an ungloved hand. He laughed, “Sin City! Do you remember?”

“Yeah,” Avery said slowly, peering at him from the corner of his eye.

“They had those smoke machines.” Phil pointed with a thumb over his shoulder. “And they’d dyed it that horrible color.”

Avery laughed despite his mood, and the throbbing pain in his arm. It had radiated upwards, a strange pressure at his shoulder. “They wouldn’t let any of us retake our class pictures that year.”

All six of them had gone: him, Steph, Phil, Ryne, Quill, and Ian. It was their second year, one more before they got their wings.

He’d never spent money on a yearbook before. There had never been a point, but they really bonded over that trip, and the subsequent days scrubbing themselves raw in the shower. The photographic evidence of that festival was still his favorite. He avoided the halfhearted H.A.G.S. signatures in favor of just five—all written in pink gel pen around their pink faces. The thought made him smile, then made his heart ache.

Avery’s hand twitched at his side, causing his arm to throb.

The yearbook was onboard, tucked carefully in his trunk. He wished he had it now.

“We’ll get to them,” Phil said, voice soft. “I know it.”

The planet’s air was warm on his face. Helmetless for the first time on a planet that wasn’t his own, he marveled at it. The air was thick, humid. There was no breeze, but he thought that through the earthy, slightly nutty scent of the planet, he caught hints of ammonia.

He shivered.

Something was going sour in the forest. He wished for his helmet—for the relief of filtered air.

He just… couldn’t remember where he’d lost it.

Avery looked to the tear in his flight suit.

Phil, Avery had said, Phil’s name bumping over three syllables on a laugh. You’re the worst climber out of all of us, get down. Ian can get his own samples.

He couldn’t see his face, but he’d put money on Phil’s tongue sticking out of the corner of his mouth in concentration.

He pushed up another meter. Against the narrow trunk, Phil looked huge.

Ryne and Quill had their heads bent together, and Avery caught the look of unbridled joy on Ryne’s face. Steph next to him. Ian stood under the tree, hands on his hips looking expectant. He had the sample case open on the ground next to him.

A flash of neon pink in a collection jar caught Avery’s attention.

Wrong case. It wasn’t climate controlled—samples ruined. Contaminated. No data. No tests. Could be dangerous. Could be—could be…

Avery shook his head, blinked dazedly at the forest looming before him. Pricks of fuchsia in his vision. He couldn’t remember what he’d said to Ian, just remembered how angry he’d been.

No fighting. Phil’s voice.

They’d come back from that planet covered in rose-colored dust—a film of it clinging to their visors. Their ship’s sensors had scanned their suits in the airlock, coming back with a high toxin level threat. They’d been hosed, gassed, and all stripped right there, throwing their suits into the incinerator. Fully nude, the smell of burning plastic had lived on his skin for days.

Steph had been piloting that day.

Her skin hadn’t smelled like plastic.

Close by, something cracked; fell. A hiss, like oxygen rushing from a broken seal; broken glass.

Avery heaved, spit bile into the ashen ground.

“You’ve gone very pallid,” Phil said, looking down at him from where he stood. He looked up, squinted into the trees. “We’ve got to be close. Something’s got to give. You look like you’re about to be poker buddies with the crypt keeper.”

Avery spit; wiped his mouth. “I think we need to have a conversation about your bedside manner.” His spine popped as he straightened, a pressure digging in hard under his shoulder blade, his skin tore around it.

He walked in silence. Phil whistled a tune.

“How are you so joyful?” Avery asked bitterly.

Phil shrugged. “I have nothing to worry about anymore.”

Avery stopped in his tracks; looked at Phil.

His smile was soft, knowing. Phil tilted his head, indicating a spot ahead with his chin.

Avery looked; blinked twice.

A shock of curling, pale yellow hair against dark, ashen ground. So close. It looked so bright there, so out of place.

Choking on a sob, he looked to his right where Phil had been walking next to him.

He half expected him to make a dumb joke about looking in a mirror, or insist on recreating Weekend at Bernie’s. Only, he found nothing but the pulsing light of mushrooms beyond.

Shutting his eyes hard, he pressed a gloved hand over his mouth. He didn’t want to look—didn’t want to see it again. Once he did, he knew the illusion would be over. He would be alone.

It’s fine, he heard Phil say.

An uneven inhale rattled his lungs, and, reluctantly, he looked.

At least we know it’s not the air.

Lying on his back was Phil. Ever-the-comedian, Phil.

Avery stifled another cry, crouched to put a gloved hand over Phil’s sightless eyes, still wide with terror.

A cluster of fungi had grown from his mouth, spilling over his cheek to the forest floor below. They surrounded him now, his body backlit like some depraved art display. They’d ripped through the orange fabric of his flight suit, their light pulsing over his prone, lifeless body hungrily.

Avery shut his eyes to the gore, the scent of it was enough. Days old blood, decay.

Next to Phil’s head was his broken helmet, now a terrarium for the parasitic fungi.

The wound in Avery’s arm pulsed and he winced; stood. The pain radiated to his chest now, his ribcage feeling too tight—close to snapping. His legs were shaking.

The case Ian had been carrying was cracked open where it had been tipped over—landed on—completely covered in fungi. Beneath it, broken glass from sample bottles glittered in the dim light. The spores left a chalky, mauve residue on the dark ground. They’d grown huge, fat button tops as far across as his wingspan. The wrong case, the wrong case… wrong case.

He’d grabbed the wrong fucking case, he thought bitterly; uselessly. Then, This planet’s demise is all our fault.

His gaze drifted from the case back to his friend.

Closing his eyes, Avery saw him fall again. Watched pink smoke rise from the case—slip through the cracks. He’d tried to stop it, but there was nothing.

Guilt sat like a lead ball in his stomach. Somewhere nearby, a crack like thunder echoed through the forest, followed by the fall of something large. As the silence returned slowly, he couldn’t help but look around at the lightening forest. It wasn’t silence, really. It was broken with the sound of wood splitting apart. The trees were falling as all the life was leeched from—

Avery gasped; sputtered a cough.

As fast as his shaking legs could carry him, he moved in the direction of the light. It was hard to breathe, every inhale sending a sharp pain down his spine. He clutched his chest, gritting his teeth.

The smell hit him as he half-ran, half-stumbled.

Along the path, remnants of the planet’s strange fauna. He couldn’t remember if they’d been there before, and he’d chosen to look away. He looked now.

Some had fan-like collars that mimicked the trees, some with long snouts—even longer tongues laying still and shriveled on the forest floor. One, humanoid. All dead, their limbs stretched before them as if they’d tried to run from the doom brought to their planet. Their bloated bodies cast in a warm pink glow, carcasses mottled with fungi.

A darting pain cut across his thigh, accompanied by a tearing sound. It sent him sprawling to the ground.

The ash-like dirt tasted the way a freshly mowed lawn smelled—fresh and green.

He spat it from his mouth.

Rolling to his back, he looked down at the new hole in his flight suit. Clutching it, his hands came away bloody, crimson cut through with glittering rivers of pink.

He coughed; gasped at the pain.

With shaking, sticky fingers he picked at the fungi growing there. The pain was white behind his eyes, vision going blurry with it. His ears rang, the soft thud of the fungi hitting the ground a meter away somehow too loud. It was followed by another, then another.

He tore his undershirt to shreds with his teeth, used it to wrap the wound.

For a long moment he stared at the tear in the sleeve of his flight suit—thought of how he’d beaten the tree with Phil’s helmet just to hear something other than the silence that followed his last, gasping breath. He’d tried to help. He hadn’t even registered the cut.

With careful fingers, he peeled back the tear, pulled to make it larger.

A cluster of button-topped fungi peered up at him, like the eyes of some blushing spider. The taste of bile coated his tongue.

None of his crew would meet his eyes after that.

He didn’t remember falling asleep, just that they’d been there, and he’d been lulled by the din of their voices—so familiar, so like home. Hours later, when he’d wiped the crust from his eyes, they’d been gone, his pack of supplies with them.

Avery staggered to his feet. Braced himself on a tree. The bark crumbled, rotten, under his palm.

Ahead, a large break in the canopy revealed a blue sky, the yellow haze of the planet’s sun painting the edges of the visible canopy in gold. It reminded him of his home planet.

In his mind he turned his face to the sun, smelled salt. It was always the strongest when he returned from a long trip, the extended time breathing filtered air like a reset to his senses.

His heart ached with the loss of it.

A streak of green against pale blue and a quiet hum caught his attention.

His heart lurched. He knew that hum. Geastrum V. His ship—his home.

They got away.

Six of them brought the apocalypse to a planet teeming with life, and four of them would get away.

With cold fingers, Avery tapped his display.

Sure enough, the green dot in the sensor held strong, moving at a slow, steady pace across the sky.

Avery closed his eyes.

For a moment he let himself give in to hope, let himself remember how free he felt in zero-g, weightless and untroubled, the family he’d found floating alongside him. Then, something darker wedged its way under his skin, tore him open.

Behind him, a crackling like electricity. He didn’t turn—knew what he’d find.

On a slow exhale, he opened his eyes; typed a message.

From: Avery Cotte

To: TPV-Gaestrum V

After everything, you left me to die without waking me to say goodbye?

The cursor blinked at him, thumbs hovering over the keys. He thought of Phil—his only family left on the same solid ground. His last words had been ‘No fighting.’ If their fates had been swapped, and Phil was the one watching them leave, would he say the same thing?

The crackle was on his heels now, a tug at the frayed hem.

Avery took off his gloves, rubbed his face with his good hand. It was cold, despite the warm air.

The thought of the yearbook, of six pink faces in cadet uniforms.

He deleted it.

From: Avery Cotte

To: TPV-Gaestrum V

I hope you all know how meaningless my life would have been without you in it. I know why you had to go.

His fingers hovered, shaking, above the display. Tears leaked down his face. He meant it, he did, but the memory of their eyes flitting away behind their thick face shields was so clear. And Steph—he didn’t remember her eyes landing on him once.

Avery looked back to the sky, at the silver ship marring the atmosphere with a thick contrail. He let his heart break, let himself lie, if only for them.

I forgive you, I love you.

Take care of each other for me.

AC

Avery hit send just as thick smoke filled his lungs, vision going pink. For one short moment, the ash tasted like grass on his tongue.