Dread

"There better be a damned good reason for this call Captain, do you have any idea how early it is earth side?"

"Yes sir, I apologize. The major insisted we got this to you right away. It's communications from Mars."

"We get hundreds of communications from Mars everyday Captain...."

"Yes sir we do, but they claimed to have found something sir."

"So log it and we'll send a transport to--"

"No sir, not minerals, they said it was... a machine."

"Hmmm, well that surface is littered with old rovers and landers so that's not surprising that they dug up something."

"Mars HQ is reporting that it's not anything on their records and we've confirmed it on our end as well. It's not man made...."

"Well, now that is interesting isn't it. What's their course of action? We'll need to get a team up there immediately to run some tests."

"Mars HQ stated they were going to reroute power from one of the substations to the machine to try and power it. See what it does."

"...and?"

"We lost all communications with Mars about twelve hours ago."

"What!? Why wasn't I alerted?"

"Well sir, we uh, received an encrypted message from Mars HQ right before they went dark. We wanted to decrypt it before you alerted you."

"And what did it say??"

"They are coming."