The Grey Pall

"Anomaly detected. Altitude decreasing. Warning: collision imminent. Pull up. Pull up. Pull up."

- - -

A thundering echo in the distance caused Elyse to awake with a sudden gasp as her body jolted against her intact safety harness. The ship, a small short range reconnaissance fighter, Eclipse-class, was silent now, but its alarms still echoed in her ears. She patted herself down, checking for injuries, wincing as her hand pressed to her side. Looking at her reflection in the now shattered safety glass of the cockpit, she could see some minor facial lacerations, but nothing that required immediate attention and nothing that a bit of medical sealant wouldn’t fix. A few broken ribs and some cuts but she was happy to be alive and breathing. With the breached glass of the cockpit, wherever she was had to have a breathable atmosphere too, especially lucky since it seemed her flight helmet was missing.

She reached forward and flicked a few switches. There was minimal response but her hopes were confirmed. It was negligible but the ship still had access to its emergency power. "Where am I?" She managed to whisper coarsely to the ship's computer.

"Planetary body: Unknown" the ship sparked back.

"Okay, what are my last known coordinates?" 

"NULL. Data corrupted, please contact technical..."

Elyse waved her hand in frustration at the screen. "Best have a look around then" she thought to herself. Activating the release mechanism, her harness unlocked and the cockpit roof slowly opened, allowing her to climb out. Wincing at the pain in her side as she did, she lifted herself up and out of the ship, remembering to grab her side arm at the last moment before sliding clumsily off the side.

Elyse landed with a jarring, sinking into the thick, chill mud that immediately clung to her boots as she straightened. Around her, the air was damp, heavy and bitterly cold. A forest of twisted, ancient trees loomed in every direction, their contorted branches clawing at the thick fog that blanketed everything in an unnatural stillness. The fog was unlike anything she had seen: dense and viscous, almost oily, with a faint iridescent sheen that shifted whenever she tried to focus on it.

The fog wrapped around her, dampening sound, blurring shapes. She found that it stung as it touched the scratches and cuts on her face. It seemed to absorb light rather than reflect it, muting everything to a dull haze that smothered any sense of distance. She looked up at a sky buried under a thick layer of grey clouds, oppressive and unmoving, blocking any sign of the planet’s star. There was no warmth, no direction - only a cold that seeped deep beneath her flight suit, pressing against her skin as if it were leeching the heat straight from her bones.

In the distance, the silhouette of a spire rose against the murky backdrop, jagged and unmistakably artificial. The structure loomed over the forest, dark and foreboding. She watched in awe as a surge of energy pulsed up the spire and into the clouds, sending an echoing shockwave thundering out over the landscape. As the shockwave hit the clouds, she could see what looked like rain falling in the immediate area where it had hit.

In the time between the pulses from the spire, Elyse was stuck with how profoundly silent her surroundings were. It was a deathly stillness that enveloped her like a suffocating shroud. There were no distant calls of primordial wildlife, no rustling in the undergrowth -  just an oppressive quiet that pressed against her ears. A feeling of unease started to stir within Elyse, a feeling that she tried hard to suppress.

If she had any chance of getting rescued, however, she would have to break the silence so to speak. With resolve, she knelt beside the wrecked ship, extracting the emergency transponder from beneath the fractured wing. She had rehearsed this scenario countless times in the flight academy’s simulations: ration your supplies, seek higher ground, set up an emergency beacon and sit tight. 

She patted the hull of the ship, feeling the cold metal beneath her fingertips, her eyes lingering on the painted Eclipse icon and callsign. “Thanks for taking care of me, girl. I’ll be back once I’ve called for help.”

With a small supply of emergency rations crammed into her flight suit, along with the transponder and sidearm, she steeled herself for the journey ahead. The survival manual often cautioned against leaving the site of a crash unless deemed absolutely necessary, but in this desolate place, she realized that if she didn’t know where she was, it was unlikely anyone else did either.

Determined, she set off in the direction the ship's nose was pointed, towards the dark silhouette of the structure that still loomed in the distance. Rescue was her primary goal, but if this enigmatic structure held any signs of life, it was a chance worth taking. She might even be able to use the structure's power to boost her transponder’s range. As she walked, the fog and the silence followed. The grey pall closed in and she found as she walked she had to bat off and part thick ribbons of it.

Elyse found herself trudging through the mire for what felt like hours. The fog hadn’t lifted and the visibility was minimal. The only reassuring occurrence was the rhythmic thunderous pulses from the structure in the distance that let her know she was still heading in the right direction. 

As she pushed through the fog and slick decaying undergrowth, something on the ground caught her eye - a shape, glinting faintly as it reflected the dim light. Cautiously, she approached and knelt to inspect it. In her hands, she lifted the remains of a helmet, its design seemed foreign yet familiar. The glass visor was cracked, and the padding was soaked with dew, causing it to feel heavy in her hands. Any identifying marks or symbols had long since worn away, leaving no sign of who it might have belonged to. 

As she turned the helmet over in her hands, she noticed something peculiar. A thin sliver of white phosphorescent light was working its way slowly but rhythmically across its surface, as if minute lasers were attempting to burn or burrow through the helmet's layers. She found herself throwing the helmet back into the mud as she watched the thin lights dance.

As she stood up, a sense of unease washed over her. She glanced around hoping to find more discarded remnants like the helmet, evidence of others who might have passed through. In that moment she realized she was standing directly in front of the structure she had been so diligently approaching. Confusion gripped her; she had been stationary moments ago, and she could have sworn the structure was still an hour or so away. She watched as the next arc of energy made its way up the structure and she fought to dismiss her unease in her sudden shift of perspective. She could deal with this, whether it was the shock from the crash or concussion, once the beacon was set up.

Closer now, she realized that before her lay a crumbling purpose, a desolate remnant of at least some civilization. The central spire looked like it could even be an ancient communication tower of sorts. The other buildings, overtaken by nature, stood like skeletal husks, their windows long shattered, and a stale odour of mildew hung heavily in the air. Elyse felt the pang of curiosity rising inside her as she headed towards the closest building.

Elyse stepped cautiously into one of the small cabins adjacent to the spire, the air was heavy with the scent of mildew and decay, but there was also a more synthetic smell that she hadn’t noticed until now and couldn’t quite place. The space felt as though it had once been a mess hall or kitchen, now reduced to a shadow of its former self. Curiosity continued to stir within her, prompting her to check the cupboards and drawers, but they yielded only emptiness, save for a few scattered, rusted containers.

As she rummaged through the debris, a sudden jarring crash erupted from somewhere at the other end of the cabin, slicing through the quiet. Elyse’s heart raced, and instinctively she spun around, drawing her sidearm with a swift motion, the cold metal grounding her in the moment.

The cause of the noise revealed itself - a few containers had tumbled from a nearby shelf, clattering to the ground as if mocking her unease. A chill crept up her spine, tightening around her thoughts. Something felt off, lurking just beyond her perception. The longer she remained on this planet, the worse it got. She cocked the sidearm, her grip steady despite the growing feeling swelling in the back of her mind.

With measured steps, she advanced to the far end of the cabin, each creak of the synthetic tile amplifying the stillness that once again enveloped her. The shadows seemed to deepen as she moved, her breath catching in her throat. As she was almost content that there was nothing there, something on the ground caught her eye again. It stood out bright against the muted background of decay. She spotted a single wrapper for an emergency ration, the same that she had just packed from the ship. It was crisp and pristine, as if it had only been opened an hour or so ago.

No, she was letting the atmosphere of this place get to her. She exhaled slowly and tried to reassure herself against the empty surroundings. Climb the spire, set up the transponder. No more distractions.

The spire stretched nearly 200 meters into the mist, its walls clad in a mottled black cladding that gave off a sickly green hue under the damp, hazy light.. Inside, the spire was almost entirely hollow, the empty space spiralling upwards, distorting the faint light coming from the top. A narrow, rusted staircase and gantry clung to the inner wall, winding all the way to the top where a crude platform of the same dark material waited. 

As Elyse ascended, each creak of the metal seemed to reverberate through the vast chamber. But with every step, a strange feeling began to press in on her -  a vague Deja vu, an uncanny familiarity, as though her subconscious recognised these stairs. She shook it off, focusing on the rhythmic clang of her boots against the metal, but the sensation only grew stronger. As she climbed she braced herself for the thunderous pulses that had broken the silence previously but it never came. The spire seemed strangely innate, compared to its previous self.

When she neared the apex, Elyse noticed scratches and markings etched into the panels, some faded, others more recent, forming an erratic tapestry of words and symbols.

“Graffiti,” she murmured dismissively. Yet as she drew closer, a cluster of words caught her eye. This section of the wall was covered in messages scrawled in dark paint, the handwriting uniform and precise, but clearly rushed.

“We… I… You were already here.”

Her hand brushed over the paint, which was still tacky, as if written only hours before. She leaned in to read more: 

“Stay out of the mist”

“Do not turn off the power.”

“You need to stay at the tower”.

“Stop forgetting.”

A chill set over her; she could feel the words as if they were meant for her - urgent, desperate echoes from someone who had been here before. But she shook herself, tearing her gaze away from the cryptic messages and pressed on up the last few meters to the top. 

At last she reached the roof. The platform spread out, still engulfed in the mist. Elyse took a breath, steadying herself before reaching into her flight suit and removing the emergency beacon. 

But as she unpacked it, a glint of metal caught her eye - a beacon, identical to the one she had taken from her ship, was already anchored to the platform. 

A chill rippled through her. She blinked, staring at it, convinced it had to be some optical illusion or a remnant of an old mission. She looked down to check the device she held in her hand. It was old, rusted, a design that hadn’t been used by the academy in decades. 

“No,” she whispered, her own voice oddly distant. She walked over and ran a hand over the familiar device. It was clearly damaged, as if something had been eating away at it but it was unmistakable as the one she had removed from the Eclipse just a few hours ago. It was just a few hours ago. Wasn’t it?

The cold wind whipped around her as she tried to process what she was seeing. She quickly checked the supplies she had taken from the ship. Only half remained. 

An eerie sensation crept up her spine, her thoughts slipping back to the messages scrawled on along the staircase wall. Had she really written that? Was something here causing her lapses in memory? Elyse’s mind whirled, grasping at fragments of distant recollections that seemed just out of reach. Has she really set up the beacon already? She looked down at her hands and saw they were soaked in a dark pigment, the same as the writing in the staircase.

The chill of dread tightened around her throat as she took a step back from the beacon, her heart racing. “No,” she repeated, the word barely a whisper against the wind. The familiar design of the beacon was undeniable, yet it felt like a cruel joke. Her mind raced as she tried to piece together the fragments, trying to form a timeline from when she left the ship.

Suddenly, a faint rustle echoed through the mist, and she froze, instinctively gripping her sidearm tiger. The pall thickened, swirling slowly, sleepily around her, a sinister dance that obscured her vision more. As she squinted into the murk, the air grew colder and she could swear the mist began to move with purpose.

And then she saw it. Tendrils of fog coalescing, stretching towards her slowly reaching from the abyss. The fog itself began to quicken and excited, causing it to look almost like static from a screen, revealing a fleeting glimpse of a grotesque amalgamation of shapes -  a swarm of microscopic machines acting as a single entity, each one reflecting a glimmer of light as the undulated randomly in the mist.

Elyse stumbled back, the realization crashing over her like a wave. This was not a mist or fog; it was a vast swarm of dormant nanomachines, remnants of some long-forgotten experiment or disaster. Each tendril pulsed with a faint glow, the soft whizz of tiny machinery was deafening as it reverberated through the air. She watched in awe as each of the tendrils began to eat and gnaw, slowly and deliberately deleting the structure she was on top of like an insatiable hive of termites.

As the structure began to buckle under its own weight, Elyse snapped to her senses in a moment of realization of what she had released and began sprinting down the staircase as fast as she could. She reached the base of the spire as she heard its top half rend in the tendrils. She continued sprinting through in the direction of her ship. Running through the fog, she found she had to cover her face, with each dense patch now cutting at her face like shards of glass. 

Her ship loomed in the distance, its silhouette shrouded in the fog. The familiar outline brought a flicker of hope, but the chilling reality of the situation pressed heavy on her chest. As she drew closer, the automated alarms blared, a cacophony of warning sounds echoing throughout the surrounding area. 

“Internal systems compromised. Class Theta Anomaly detected.”

With urgency fuelling her movements, Elyse leaped into the cockpit and pulled the hood shut with a desperate grunt .Adrenaline surged through her veins as she scrambled to flip switches and press buttons, her hands trembling with panic. She had to get even the faintest message off of this doomed rock.

“Eclipse, record an audio message and send a wide-band transmission off-planet!”

The ship responded with a minor yet surprising surge of power, lights flickering to life as the communication systems struggled against the probing swarm, already beginning to work its way through the ship.

“This is scout Elyse of the 3rd reconnaissance division, at the origin of this message is a Class Theta Anomaly - some form of autonomous Nano swarm. Recommend immediate destruction of all bodies in the system. It cannot be allowed to escape this planet.” After a brief moment the ship confirmed the message. It would take years for anyone to receive, but with the sinking realization that gripped her, Elyse knew it was the all she could do.

Just as she finished the message, the ship lurched violently, a cold sensation creeping through the cockpit. Elyse glanced out of the viewport to see the thickening tendrils of the swarm weaving around the ship's structure. The alarm shrieked a new warning as the ship's hull creaked under the pressure of the swarm. “Critical failure imminent.”

The now thick and vibrant swarm was beginning to seep into the cockpit and she could feel it eating into her, recycling her molecules with needle-like precision. She glanced at the ship's control panel, where the self-destruct sequence could be activated. This was her final option - a desperate measure but the resulting blast was sure to slow the swarm at least somewhat.

As she pushed the button there was silence, as a flash of light came blindingly from the ship's reactor erupting beneath her, illuminating the fog in a radioactive glow, incinerating the tendrils and tending debris and shockwaves into the stratosphere. All that remained was an empty crater where the ship had been, as the mist began to creep back in.