Europa (Deadverse Book 1) by Richard Flunker

commands in Fort Benning. He had watched as thousands of men and women crawled into the mechs and had them shut up around them. They were then lowered into a vat of siliconious gel and their minds were put to sleep. It was disturbing, to say the least. Like a coffin.
    He had heard stories of mercenaries outside of the military doing the same, but their mech suits were generally of a lesser quality and build. Horror stories of these guys never waking up from the deep sleep were common-place. Still, many sought solace in the deep embrace of the machine.
    The machine.
    Charles felt a shudder rise through his skin. For a moment, reality came flooding into his mind. He forgot he was on Europa, and instead, found himself back on Earth. His heart began racing as he thought of his family.
    “Charles? You OK? Your vitals are spiking,” Ben chimed in over the speakers.
    The captain took a deep breath. There was nothing he could do. Not now.
    Not ever.
    “Yeah, all good. Just exciting is all,” he replied.
    There was a pause before Ben responded. “You? Excited, huh?”
    That was all he said. Charles knew better than to say anything else.
    Soon enough he would.
    For a few minutes the drones worked on the hatch, trying to find any mechanism that could open it up. The professor was wandering around the hull, taking readings and speaking into his helmet, likely recording everything for research, or posterity. Charles walked over to the hatch and looked down, just to see if he could notice anything. The drones had far better eyesight than any human could, but he looked anyways. As they prodded with their fingers, Charles noticed it.
    “Ben, you see this?” Charles said, focusing down on the hatch.
    “What?” the commander replied.
    “Look at their hands,” he said, pointing down at the hatch.
    As the drones moved about the surface, they left no imprints. Charles looked down at his feet, and saw them slightly sunk into the hull, but when he looked at the drones, their feet stood completely on top of it. They were far heavier than he was, yet he sank, and they didn’t. Again, he looked at the hatch, and their poking and prodding were leaving no imprints on the surface of the vessel.
    “Is that..? Hold on, I’m getting Cary in on this,” Ben said over the speakers. In the background, Charles could hear him yelling her name.
    Charles ordered the drones to stop, and they stood up, erect and silent. Crouching down on his knees, the captain reached with his hands, slowly, and touched the surface. It didn’t feel any different than when he had first landed. He pushed gently on the area around the hatch, and immediately, his hand sank a bit.
    “What the hell….” He whispered.
    The hull began to ooze around his hands and he sunk them a little deeper. He pulled his hands free, and they came out clean. He turned his hands over and looked at them. There was no speck of hull matter on them. He looked back down in shock at the hull, just in time to see it smooth over where he had pressed his hands in. With renewed determination, the captain plunged his hands at the surface again, feeling the ooze give way to his force. He pushed down in right over the hatch area and felt his hands go up to their wrists.
    “Amazing….”
    “Captain Hoarry, this is Cary. Am I seeing this right?”
    “Yeah. I don’t get it. I can push in, but the drones couldn’t. Look, right here, all I have to….”
    Charles started falling in. He gasped and shouted, trying to grab on to anything, but it was a free fall. After all the time on Europa, and its fractional gravity, the full force of the gravity he felt now was almost as shocking as the sensation of falling. He was falling head first when he felt something grab him by his ankle. He tried looking up, but couldn’t see anything through the hull.
    He was in it. Stuck in it, somehow. His arms could move freely, almost as if he was in water, but with less resistance. There was something there.
    “Uh,