"Faster, Kane! We will miss the spaghettis and meatballs! Come on!"

Kane looked at his friends rushing toward the shaft at the end of the gallery. There had been a movement in his peripheral vision he wanted to examine. All-day he had felt eyes on him, a creepy feeling of being stalked.

"Go on first! I will just go back check a thing with the machinery. I saw something... You go on first and I'll take the next lift. Secure a plate for me!" He left the other men to return to the equipment den.

It did take less than a minute for Kane to reach the large space in the gallery where all the machinery and equipment were. He stayed a moment immobile, making no sound. A weird chirping noise, barely noticeable, was coming from the back of the gallery. With the noise, Kane could see a shadow moving, similar to a flag undulating under a soft breeze.

Slowly, as silent as possible, he progressed toward the source of the disturbance. There, along the ice rock wall, near the ion incandescent lamp, a colony of silicate plankton was desperately crowding the remnant of a stalagmite icicle. The low life form had probably been attracted by the humidity, the water starting to drip from the iced formation and providing some watery home for the errant plankton.

With a shrug, Kane started back toward the shaft and his lift to the surface. A nagging sensation remained, though. The sound he heard earlier today had been different than the one produced by the plankton attached to the ice drip. In any case, he thought, tomorrow would be early enough to investigate the source of this bad feeling, and the promise of a good spaghetti and meatball replaced his concerns of a ghost stalker.

Kane pressed the button to call the lift at the bottom of the shaft and waited, humming a silly song. The familiar ding resonated and the door opened. Soon, the meatballs from Heaven would be his. As he entered the cab, he felt a wind on his neck; with the air moving, deep breathing. His fear petrified him. Turning the head took him just a couple of seconds, though it struggled to look around.

Kane saw only a blurred image of a monster before darkness enveloped him.

On the surface, two of Kane friends had remained and waited for him, asking the other to keep their seats warms and plate full. Spaghetti and meatball days were a rare treat from the kitchen.

"Ah! Here he comes..."

The ding announcing the arrival of the cab rang in the somewhat noisy hour of the midday. The doors opened and one of the two men started to call for Kane. "Come on man! Speed the move..."

The words broke in a deafening silence. The two, puzzled, at first, then frightened, observed the emptiness of the lift in the shaft. There was no Kane in view. In his place, a lonely shoe and too much blood to entertain any hope to find him alive back there in the gallery.

*~*

"Yes, Captain! I understand well. This is a tricky case..."

Inspector Clousos, the pride of the Investigative Police on the Hildas Asteroid Bel space station—also known as a the Hildas Helm Observatory, called sometimes the Observatory, but usually referred as H2O―was still pondering the instructions he received.

"... I do think there is a simple case, though. Probably some smugglers. Either the one who disappeared have found a new career or they have been killed to muddy the traces."

Clousos had often certitudes about his investigations. This case was one of them. Chances were nothing fancy was at play in this case. The issue, though, was to work around the strict and closed policies for outsiders in the mining community. He hoped the management would not hinder his snooping around the galleries.

To his astonishment, the clearance paperwork had taken no time to prepare. Clousos was on his way to the HOME, the Hildas Organisation Mining Estate, only à few hours after receiving his marching orders. Looking through the glass panel on the main deck of the mining company bus shuttle, he wondered at the many small rocks hovering in a strangely organised chaos, set on collision courses that never reached their destination. It helped, Clousos thought, that the technology had facilitated the exploration of those D-type asteroids by the introduction of the gravitational field on a large scale. It rendered effectively the work for the miners easier, through the creation of a microgravity environment—better than no gravity at all.

The Hildas asteroid belt was the poor relation of the mining fields in the Solar System. Here, only water could be found, and in more strenuous conditions than in Europa or anywhere else around Jupiter. Compared to those fancy moons or even the rest of the asteroids in their vicinity, to be based on H2O was deemed a relegation to the bottom of National League. Clousos was well aware that his career as a detective was on standby until he would find an affectation elsewhere. He still pondered about his boss and the fact that he seemed not to be a fan of him. With time, the inspector thought, the man should have forgiven him for the small indiscretion that led him to backwater quadrant. Who said big bosses were lenient?

As he pondered about his past mistakes and bleak future, Clousos observed the approach to the main Asteroid on the Hildas belt, D-1. The name was not short for something else. In this quadrant, all inhabitable and exploitable rocks were named from D-1—not the biggest asteroid but the one with the most stable gravity field—to D-65—the most luminous of them, for some reason.

The formalities took less than two hours before Clousos was able to start his investigation. All things considered, this was not as bad as it could have been, seeing as last time he had to go to backwater quadrant he ended up losing more than a day in paperwork with a zealous bureaucrat. They tended to overdo things in this part of the System; they had so few visitors and occasion to show their administrative skills...

"Welcome to our HOME," a tall, lean man took the inspector's hand, shaking it with a lot of enthusiasm. "It's quite a mess at the moment, what with everyone talking about man-eating monsters. Well... our people are reluctant to go down in the galleries. We're on the brink of a general strike." The man continued explaining the situation, drowning Clousos with the thick flow of hi incessant babble. "... pictures of it. Sure, everyone knows it's B.S. but the talk of the monster's still there, in the air. There is something down there, for sure, and we already lost few guys because of it..."

"Max!" A second man, as tall as the first one, was scolding him, "stop talking, and introduce yourself properly!"

"Sorry. I am Max, head of security here. I'll be showing you around. And there is G, our site manager," Max, the chatterbox, added sheepishly. "No one knows was the G stands for, but we call him Groucho, seeing as he is never smiling..."

A madhouse, Clousos thought, looking sceptically at the two men. Welcome to Hell...

*~*

Was everyone a giant in here? Clousos was dwarfed by all the men standing in a semi-circle at the entrance of the main gallery. The day before, after he arrived on D-1, he had spent his time in paperwork and snooping around, on the surface of the rock. He had not found much except for silly stories about bones eating monsters. How could sensible adult men relay this kind of stories? How could they believe them? It was a wonder to the investigator. The thought of the isolation being too much for those miners came to his mind, though, usually, it occurred within isolated and under-evolved communities.

"Let me clarify this," Clousos tried to make sense in what he had learnt in the morning. Max had woken him up shouting to him they had a new situation. The word, 'situation', was tamed compared to the attitude of the head of security. Max had looked defeated. And scared. Almost petrified...

"So... You say the miner who disappeared has been found. But it is not this Kane guy. It is another one that has been found?"

"Yes!" Max was frantic.

"If it's not Kane, who is he?"

"You're supposed to be the detective here..." Max did not intend for Clousos to hear his remark. The investigator, however, heard it clearly and shrugged at the words. He had his work cut out for him, here, it seemed, the snickered comments behind him were not really a promising sign for cooperation from those giant men.

Down the small corridor, the light was sparse; shadows loomed over the group of men in menacing stance. Fear crawling under his skin. Clousos dreaded walking further away. At the end of the light, the unknown was waiting, terrifying. What would he found? What had sprung so much distress in Max?

"My God!" Even with the soft glow of the bulbs, the gallery received enough illumination to take the picture in all its horror. What the detective saw was no less than a carnage. The walls painted in red, red blobs littering the floor, what seemed to be small remnants of body parts were lying there, giving a new definition of 'savage'.

"Get this guy out of the way!" The retching behind him took Clousos out the trance the ghastly sight had taken him into.

"Where's the medic?" In this small community of miners, he would have to do with the regular medical support, probably a field surgeon, to act as a proper medical examiner and forensic team. Hopefully, Clousos thought, there would be no much issue identifying the remains scattered. The question, however, would be how many bodies those pertained to.

When the medic arrived, he barred the place to everyone, except for the detective and the head security. Some of the men who had accompanied them earlier that day could not keep their breakfast in, spoiling some of the bloody blobs on the ground.

Everyone was quite depressed. And frightened. They dared not think about the possibility of a monster on a rampage, though all directed to it.

Luckily, the man they had discovered when the early shift opened the gallery was now in a stable condition, though still in a coma. He had been savagely attacked, his members almost sectioned and his face smashed, reduced to puree, or so it seemed. Max was still trying to identify him, as no miner had been scheduled into this section of the mine in the recent past days.

As the medic worked in an effective silence, Clousos started to get a better picture of the crime scene. He did not like it at all. They really had a serious case on their hands. Not only the body that appeared from almost nowhere had been mutilated to a point he was almost unrecognisable, but they also bagged bits and pieces of bodies that were obviously from other persons—plural—as the quick DNA check had isolated at least half a dozen of different combinations.

"And what is that about other disappearances you did not even know about?" Clousos sounded upset as he cornered Max.

"Look... No disappearance has been mentioned under my watch." Max was trying to clear the fog in his head. He was still not in full control of his emotions, not to talk about the situation. "Although, there had been words about a missing crew before I took the position here at HOME. Though the rumours were that they had hijacked an ice shipment and absconded with it to make some profit on Mercury or somewhere else alike. My predecessor never really looked for them. The shipment that disappeared wasn't too important, and the resources are scarce enough here to spend on futile hunting."

"Well... We still have quite a situation here..." Clousos was already calculating the odds. This was the work of a real monster. The question was whether the monster was mythical or of the human species...

*~*

"This is quite a mess," the medic explained to Clousos, "a crazy mess. And not the type that makes you laugh either. So, we have seven DNA samples, all different, all pertaining to seven different men."

"Any clue about where those... men... came from?"

"Nothing specific. Except we found traces of cartilage. This would mean the pieces had been attached to bones, somehow. Real bones, I mean. This is getting rare, nowadays and in this quadrant to find people with their original bone structure."

As the medical officer was detailing the few findings, the detective started to think, to analyse the meagre data collected so far. Firstly, this Kane disappeared in the gallery, a puddle of blood—a big one at that—was found where he was last seen. Only one shoe remained to hint that all this blood used to be Kane's. What happened to him? So far, no trace of the man in the galleries.

Secondly, a body turned up in the tunnels, not far from where Kane had disappeared. Mutilated as he was, the man was unrecognisable. However, it was still clear it was not Kane. Who was he? No one knew. At the moment, the man was almost their only chance to shed some light on the carnage mystery, if only he would wake up from his coma. Although he was in a stable state, his prognostic was bleak.

Thirdly, besides the improbable survivor, they found gruesome bloody blobs, remnants of seven men no one ever heard about. The only thing the medic could say about those remains was that they have been attached to bones. Real bones...

"What do you mean, it is rare to find people with real bones nowadays?" Could there be something there, Clousos thought.

"As I said, a normal, original body has a few chances to remain functional in this area. What with the low gravity and radiations? Living in the Hildas Belt is not like taking a stroll in Heaven. Usually, the bone structure starts to crumble after a few years. That's why all our miners have a replacement on arrival if they did not go through it before."

"What kind of replacement are you talking about?"

"Endoskeleton. Basically, we either replace the bone structure or infuse it with reinforcement technology. Injection of nanos that change the composition of the bones and make them more resistant for the local living conditions."

"What about the guy in ICU? Bones or nano?"

"We have an ID on our sleeping beauty," Max shouted, entering the room as the medic was about to answer Clousos. "He is a trainee freshly arrived who was not supposed to enter the galleries for another week."

"What was he doing down?"

"His bunkmates said he wanted to investigate the monster in the tunnel," Max explained how the young man had rambled about this story his family used to tell. It seemed that in the Hildas asteroid, a special type of beast, some said monsters, inhabited the centre of the rocks. Those were feeding on a calcium-based diet. There used to be a plethora of this, in the rocks itself, as the component of most of the asteroids in this area was compatible, though since the extractions had started, the source had lessened.

Clousos was still a bit doubtful about the Bone Eating Monster story, though he had to confirm or deny this theory. Could it be as simple as that? He thought... "Max, do you have access to H2O library here? I want to find more about those rock monsters."

"Let me show you the way to the record room."

*~*

"So... this is real." The detective had been reading reports on the mining fields, the exploration of the asteroid belts and other astrobiological studies. The theory of the monster eating people for their bones could be true. He just needed to find the trace of this beast in the galleries, find its nesting place, and then eliminate it. He needed reinforcement for the hunt.

"Max," Clousos looked at the head security with a deep frown of concentration, "do you have trained men for a hunting party?"

"I am sorry I don't have this kind of resource. It's just miners down there, usually young men with not much of a future. The work is not easy but does not require more than good stamina. And I don't think stamina alone will be enough for the kind of party you're planning..."

"Okay then, call in a team from the station. If they ask why or make any difficulties, tell them it's a code13."

Max hoped this would work for them. Code13 was usually used when there was a terrorist threat. He doubted they would believe him, nothing really pointed to interest for a terrorist in this quadrant, but who knew, he thought, it could work.

"Where are you going, Clousos?"

The detective was already living the record room. "I'm going to take a look down before reinforcement comes in."

"I don't think you shall go down...," Clousos had already let the room, "... alone."

Down in the mine, the light was dim, shadows plastered on the walls moved in a mesmerizing dance. Clousos was careful as he advanced in the gallery, taking note of any sign, any trace, any sound that seemed out of place. Here and there, pieces of equipment were lying, a hard hat, a pickaxe, a shoe, a canteen, a...

A shoe? Clousos doubled back and observed the piece of clothing. Why would this shoe be left here? Putting on his gloves and getting out a bag from his back pocket, he delicately plucked it from the ground. No foot inside, the detective felt relieved. He dreaded finding more red blobs, pieces of bloody tissues.

The detective lifted his head at a strange sound. It came from his left, a small draft of air with low whining noise. There, in the shadow, was the beginning of a gallery he did not see earlier. The tunnel was narrower, felt different. It looked more like a natural opening than a man-made corridor in the rock.

Looking carefully where he set his feet, he advanced slowly, trying to contact Max at the same time. After a turn in the gallery, the light was getting brighter. Could it be the end of the tunnel? Clousos approached carefully the opening, cautious not to make any noise.

On the other side, he could see a large cave; in the middle, scintillating water. The setting was lovely, not something one would expect of a horror story. A large red spot on one side of the calm water tainted, however, the idyllic picture.

He had found the nest. Clousos quietly retreated and started back the way he came from. He needed to get a hold of Max. They would have to set a watch on the tunnel entrance, get sure no one would get lost this way. They needed to secure the area while waiting for the reinforcement to come in.

The detective was exiting the small gallery when his phone rang. With haste, as to not disturb the quasi silence of the place, he answered the call.

"Max. I found it! I'm heading back to the main entrance. Bring in people for a lookout, please, be fast. I'll show you the way." Clousos hoped this would not take much time. The place was looming on him, leaving a bad taste of fear in his mouth.

He was almost at the entrance of the main gallery when he heard a sound behind him; a low shuffling noise. Stopping, surprised, Clousos turned to get a look. Why he did not bring any weapon down in the mine with him, he wondered. A mistake that he would not make any more in this creepy case. Before he could finish his turn to look back, a whack on the back of his head sent him to oblivion.

*~*

On the Hildas Helm Observatory, the space station overseeing the activity in this forsaken part of the Solar system, a tall man was talking on a small communication device. The room was dark; he did not need much light to give his instructions. On the other side, his men were awaiting orders about their last shipment.

"... the threat terminated?"

"Not yet, sir. We are relocating now, and wrapping up the last extraction. We probably will need to move to another rock to continue with extraction. The supply is getting less; they are all modified on arrival now."

The man closed his eyes a moment, thinking about the possibilities. "Close shop for now and send the shipment. Then come back to base. We will debrief and reassess the situation."

Turning off the call with a long sigh, he took some time to calm his thoughts. Now, he would need to call his backers. The calcium-based supply was getting scarce in this system, and they could not compete with the official channel that exploited the endoskeleton replacement program. They would have to go on colonies farther away from where people remained unchanged...