Personal mission logs of various crewmembers aboard Explorer II. Collected from jettisoned data module, recovered by Ares I on 6 Oct 2066. Log entries that were successfully recovered are reproduced below.

12 January 2064, Sol 2.

Listening to quindar tones after four days on end is starting to get boring. The incessant beeeep has slowly been driving me insane. At least the flight has been going well so far. Our launch out of Kennedy went without issue, and the other FT on our flight, Hawkins, asked to be in charge of the rendezvous with the Russian station prior to our Trans-Martian Injection (TMI) burn. All the less for me to do as a secondary Flight Tech, I suppose.

Communication with Houston is steadily getting more and more drawn out as our Command Module Lewis and attached Lander Clark distance themselves away from our beautiful earth. Oh, how I’m going to miss our little blue gem. I still can’t understand why the rest of the crew seems so excited to be spending the next few months sitting on a captured asteroid. Landing on Deimos, one of Mars’s two moons, is a waste of resources in my mind. Why do the higher ups insist on sending us to this lonely rock, when there are missions to the Kuiper Belt that still have no crew or craft assigned?  Everything we needed to know about Mars has been answered for years now. I guess I’m still sore from them booting me off the Explorer I flight. I should be happy that they’re letting me fly at all, after the debacle at Washington.

Ahh, what the hell. I’m here. And with me as a secondary crew member, Hawkins is doing most of the job for me. Might as well enjoy the ride.

Flight Technician Joshua Marks

15 January 2064, Sol 5.

We’re on our way now, baby! Our TMI burn went without issue, and now Explorer II is quickly traveling to our date with destiny. Quick, relative to Earth terms anyways. Our long-way-around transfer orbit from Earth to Mars allows us to carry a hell of a lot more equipment in lieu of fuel for a faster transfer, but results in a three month transit. Luckily for us, Mission Planning has mercifully given us some of the sleep pods being built for the Kuiper missions. And it looks like some of the people on this ship could really use the extra sleep. That new FT, Marks, could deal with some rest. I mentioned the same to him, anyways. I guess I can sympathize with him, he being kicked off the first Explorer flight, but I really hope that that’s the sole reason why he’s been such a prick to the rest of the crew up to now. If he’s like this when we wake up on the flipside, I wonder about the effectiveness of the crew to complete its mission. And I feel like the rest of the crew is sharing the same sentiments.

I have to go and prep the cryo tanks. I’ll write again once in Martian orbit..

Mission Specialist Terrance Carlson.

15 January 2064, Sol 5.

Deimos. The personification of terror. How fitting.

Mission Commander Lucy Hall.

15 January 2064, Sol 5.

It is humorous to think that it has been nearly one hundred years since man first conquered the great divide of space and claimed another celestial body for his own. For decades following, he languished on the surface of the Earth, reminiscing of yesteryears triumphs. But now, here we are, riding on a new wave of technology and curious spirit, reaching further out into the stars.

Of course, rhetoric can only get you so far. Thankfully, with the American’s cooperation, my own country can now claim a stake on an alien world. And it is with great honor that I am given the opportunity to do so.

It worries me, however, the state of this crew. Something is...off about them.
Russian Cosmonaut Lev Yaroslav.

There are no more recoverable entries in any crewmember’s log for the next 87 sols. Investigators attribute this to the fact that the crew was in transfer sleep, but hardware analysis shows obfuscated data remains on the disks from within this time period.

11 April 2064, Sol 92

Well, I sure feel for the guys and gals on the Kuiper mission. No matter the mental training, no matter the physical preparation, I still woke up feeling like a giant sack of s***. Breathe, I need to breathe, was my first waking thought. Through my newborn eyes, I could vaguely make out shapes. You know, when you stand up after a long while sitting down, and you seem to lose your vision? The world in front of my eyes dissolved in and out of a fuzzy monochromatic mess, like a black and white picture coming in and out of focus. My throat, full of breathing fluid, felt like a frozen river of ice to my lungs. Deprived of any senses for the previous three months, my body shivered and shook as hands grabbed me up out of the suspension fluid, and formed my sopping mess into something resembling a sitting position. A disgusting and wholly overwhelming experience, but at least I got to share my pain with all the other members, right? Hawkins, who I had been chatting with since the TMI (Trans-Martian Injection), was the owner of the hands that helped me up, and with a wet slap to the base of my neck, helped knock the breathing fluid out of me. My body, slowly returning to its normal form, craned around and managed to make out his form looking down at me, and what was probably a smirk on his lips. “You sleep like a princess, but wake up like the frog,” he mentioned to me later. Jacka**. But he’s a good guy. He’s the closest I’m to within the crew, and he seems to be good friends with everyone else as well. Hopefully things will ease up. Maybe Carlson was right, all I needed was a good nap.

Flight Tech Joshua Marks.

13 April 2064, Sol 94

Explorer II is now in a matching orbit with Deimos around Mars. The red planet seems to hang beneath us. The crew, in much better spirits than when they had left Terra, is currently preparing Clark for separation and descent onto the surface. With their current excitement, you would have thought that they were returning home, instead of arriving at their mission site. Lewis will remain on station in a matched orbit, providing a communication link between the crew on the Deimos, the colonists on Mars, and with Houston back on Terra. Below, the Martian surface is turning to night, it’s rust red skin slowly being absorbed by the dark. A small rash of lights fight against the black, taking refuge near the white expanse of the northern pole. Terra, at this distance, appears to be no more significant than a bright star. Brennings, Carlos, Yaroslav, and myself will be going down with Clark, while Hawkins and Marks will remain on Lewis. The crew and I will be rather busy in the following days, however, so I don’t expect to be able to update this until after we’ve established a camp on Deimos.

Mission Commander Lucy Hall.

16 April 2064, Sol 97.

I’m home sweet home at last. For the meanwhile, anyways. Six months on this tiny rock. What on earth could they possibly want us to do with six months here? While our little rock in space affords us a beautiful view of Mars, there’s really not much else for us. The gray landscape undulates and unfolds around us, almost as if we were giants on Luna.

Commander Hall was brutally efficient in getting camp up. Our habitables look like little snow forts, and all around us are a miscellany of antennae, camera, and sensor. We haven’t done much exploring along the surface, although subsurface pings show some strongly disrupted returns from the area around the Swift crater, around four kilometers to our apparent northeast. No one’s really excited to go out and figure what it is though, on account of exhaustion from setting up camp. Although the surface gravity is nearly negligible, we all felt like we have been lifting enormous loads. Yaroslav mentioned his misgivings around such a strange thing occurring, but Carlson brushed it off as us simply acclimatizing to the new environment. Hall simply shrugged it off when we brought it up to her.

Hopefully Mission Control will be able to add to our objective list, because at the rate we’re going, we’ll be twiddling our thumbs for nearly two months before we’ll be in a position to transfer back to Terra.

Signing off.

Mission Specialist Minerva Brennings

24 April 2064, Sol 105

In short, the conditions here on the surface are abysmal. There is some sort of presence here on this god-forsaken rock. Its effects include physical ailments; exhaustion, nausea, and vertigo, but its mental effects are what is truly taking a toll. Hostility in the crew has seemingly skyrocketed. Following the discovery of the subterranean caverns about a week ago, Commander Hall has become incredibly reclusive, and refuses to engage in any meaningful discussion. She looks as if she has not slept in days, her unruly hair splayed out like an orange explosion in the nearly zero-g environment. Brennings has attempted to understand what is wrong with Hall, but to no avail. Carlson appears to be suffering from the beginnings of a similar mental breakdown as Hall. Brennings and I, as the remaining operational crew members, have attempted to establish communication with Lewis, but whatever goblins that seem to be possessing Hall have also come into cahoots with our communication equipment. In an emergency, it may be possible for ourselves to launch aboard the return module of the Clark, but without talking to Lewis prior, our chances of a successful recovery drops off severely. It is imperative that Brennings and I fix the equipment soon, before we all succumb to Deimos.

Russian Cosmonaut Lev Yaroslav.

25 April 2064, Sol 106.

We haven’t received any sort of communication from Clark in over a week now. Hawkins and I are at a loss. We can see them on the surface, the sunlight glinting off of their equipment strewn on the ground. But that is all we can see. There’s been no movement, as far as we can discern. More troubling news, however, is the fact that Houston-
Flight Tech Joshua Marks

25 April 2064, Sol 106.

The capsule sounded a master caution warning roughly an hour ago. All telemetry between Lewis and our repeater station on Mars has flatlined. What the hell is going on? First we lost Clark, and now we can’t talk either! This is quickly spiraling out of control, but between Hawkins and I, we’re unsure what our next moves should be. As far as any outside observer might be concerned, we have simply disappeared.

FT Joshua Marks

25 April 2064, Sol 106.

Yaroslav’s dead. Hall is missing, presumed dead. Carlson has disappeared into the return capsule of Clark and is threatening to leave without me. And I am scared s***less. There is something else on this rock, something alive, something sinister. Yesterday night, Hall finally came out of her nearly catatonic state and asked us to form a party to explore the caverns near the Swift crater immediately, saying that it was the primary mission objective. She appeared to have completely returned to normal, as if the past days have been nothing more than a bad dream. With the events of today, I can’t be sure what, if anything, is real anymore.

Yaroslav was the one to volunteer. He, of all people, knew that there was something wrong with those damn caverns. Whatever that is plaguing our comms system with Lewis is also preventing us from using the built in radios on the space suits. As Lev and Lucy bounded off away from the spacecraft, we had absolutely no way to talk to them, to monitor their vitals, or to even simply see them. Swift was roughly two hours away, and they reported to us that they planned on staying for up to four hours prior to their departure. Their on-board life support systems can provide enough resources for them to survive up to 12 hours in an emergency.

Carlson and I went to sleep a few hours after they left.

This morning, I awoke to darkness. All of the lights inside of the lander were extinguished. Only the system lights of various computers and electronic equipment were left, their neon greens and yellows and reds forming artificial constellations, their emissions reflecting off the various surfaces inside of the lander. The portholes dotting the sides of the lander all appeared to be blacked out, as if they were filled with some sort of light absorbing material. I called out Carlson’s name, trying to make sense of the strange status of the lander.

“Carlson? Carlson!”

Nothing.

I swung around the capsule, trying to find some sort of clue to the whereabouts of him. Nothing. Everything was in order, save for the lights and the portholes. I glided over to one, trying to peer through the darkness. Absolutely black. Getting desperate, I flew over to the next porthole, wishing, hoping to see Carlson, or Hall, or Yaroslav outside and waving at me. I should have wished for something else.

Near the porthole that was closest to where I had been sleeping, a sudden blast of light exploded into the lander, white hot light bouncing off the rim and diffusing into the remainder of the capsule. As my eyes adjusted to the newfound brightness, I realized that there was simply something covering the porthole. It was Yaroslav’s head. Blood had caked onto the edges of the glass, filtering the light near the edge a pink.

It’s now been four hours since I’ve woken up. Like I said before, Carlson is threatening to leave me stranded here. He believes I was the one who killed Yaroslav while he and I were asleep. I don’t know anymore. I need to get in touch with Lewis, with the Mars colony, with Houston, with anyone. I need to get away from here.

Mission Specialist Minerva Brennings

25 April 2064, Sol 106.

I can’t believe it. This entire time, we’ve been lied to, duped. Hall and Hawkins are out to kill us. To kill me. The training, the preparation, the entire damn mission, we’ve been lied to. I’ve been lied to.

This is probably the last log I’ll be typing. Last log anyone from this mission is going to be typing. Hawkins is dead. He was in on it, the charade they pulled on us. I should have known this was a set up from the beginning. The expose I published on the illegal testing by the administration embarrassed all of us, but I never intended for it to lead to this. It was supposed to make us better, dammit! We were suppose to learn from our mistakes, not cover it up with another one!

I was working on the comm panel, trying and failing once again to fix it. The lights were all turned out in Lewis, save for the lamp hovering over my shoulder, its white lights casting long shadows inside of the computer bay. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw the shape of the capsule change, and whirled around just in time to see Hawkins, arms raised above me, multitool in hand. He brought it down into my shoulder, just as I was turning to protect myself. My blood sprayed across the void between us, small red capsules flinging between our bodies. Finding its way through the plastic canyons and metal valleys of the multitool, my blood shorted its now crimson colored body. My screams must have frightened Hawkins to  the point he loosened his grip on the tool, as I saw it glide past my field of view just as my eyes slammed shut. When I next dragged my eyelids open, Hawkins and the multitool reappeared, but this time with the drill bit end embedded in his neck. Hands wrung around his throat, he floated away from me, writhing in pain. The tool had drilled a hole into his vocal chords, rendering both me and him speechless.

He’s vented the oxidiser. I’ve been left abandoned, alone, and without contact. Hall and Hawkins instilled a hellish cocktail of fear and drugs and paranoia into the crew, so that we would never suspect it was them. All to get rid of us. I should have seen it sooner. Brennings and her work with the Chinese agency. Carlson and his impending promotion to  deputy agency chief. Hell, Yaroslav, simply for being nominated to travel to another planet.

It’s a lost cause. I’m never going back to our blue gem. I can’t.

Joshua Marks