Never Dead- Silent Screams

by Ofelia Negra

  By now, there was nothing left of Matthews that was recognizable. The transformation ripped through the PDT as though it were nothing. It rolled sideways, falling off the bed and bracing itself against the floor with its bony scythes and its feet. Its neck, longer than Matthew’s had been, craned until black orb eyes stared straight at Marcus, measuring, hungry.

  It howled at him; an angry sound, it drilled straight through the suit and froze Marcus in place.

  With its blades, it shoved against the bloodstained tiles and righted itself. It howled again, and then lunged forward.

  “No fuckin’ way!” Marcus breathed in disbelief. The creature’s blades drilled straight through the glass. Its body followed through with a powerful shove, and the glass gave, shattering outwards. Shards bounced against the tiles, and off Marcus’s PDT.

  He swung his arm up, bringing the plasma torch to bear on the mutant’s head. But he wasn’t fast enough to pull back on the trigger before one of those powerful scythes slammed flat-sided against his wrist, knocking the cutter away from the firing zone. It jumped on him, pinning him painfully beneath its weight and an overturned gurney. His PDT absorbed most of the impact, but not all of it, and he hissed in pain.

  Hamilton was screaming in his ear over the comm now, but Marcus ignored it. He couldn’t waste time to switch off the audio, but neither could he afford to be distracted. This thing was faster than others he’d come across so far. And stronger.

  The mutant-Matthews was snapping at him now, jaws coming together repeatedly only centimeters from the faceplate of Marcus’s PDT. When Marcus couldn’t bring the torch back around to get off a shot, he worked with his legs instead. He wedged them up, planting his feet against whatever he could, and then pumped his legs with as much strength as he could.

  It howled as it sailed through the air and slammed, full-bodied, into one of the support braces for the glass wall. But Marcus was marginally quicker. He swung his arm back around, plasma torch in hand, and aimed a full blast at the thing’s chest. It recoiled, howled, and came at him again. He blasted again and again, to no effect. It just kept coming at him.

  When it reached him, Marcus planted his feet against it again, grabbed one of its scythes with his free hand. He pushed off with his feet while pulling with his arm, and used the mutant’s weight and momentum against it. It sailed over his head and landed somewhere behind him with a deafening crash and a wail of pain.

  Quickly, Marcus pushed up to his feet and dashed over to where the glass had shattered. He spun around to see that the mutant-Matthew’s limbs were tangled up among the frames of two toppled gurneys. It screeched and wailed, flailing as it tried to pull itself free. Something shifted to Marcus’s left and he swung around and blasted the limbs off another of the things. It wasn’t as fast as the mutant-Matthews, and its limbs came away easily. It fell to the deck and didn’t move again.

  Then he remembered the flying creature.

  It was there… across the morgue, across even from the mutant-Matthews. Its wings were wrapped around another exposed corpse on the floor, its hook-hands grasping at shoulders. The proboscis extended from within its body.

  Determined, Marcus took aim with the cutter and blasted once. The plasma sizzled through the vulnerable appendage and it came free. The winged thing fell to the ground, thrashing and screaming in pain.

  Marcus turned back to where the mutant-Matthews was and barely acknowledged the dark, looming figure in front of him before a blow to the chest sent him flying across the autopsy bay and crashing into the wall. Again, his PDT absorbed most of the impact but not all. His teeth came together to stymie a pained hiss. Pain shot up his spine from the small of his back and nestled somewhere between his shoulders.

  He shook his head to dislodge the sensation and looked up to see the mutant-Matthews charging him again.

  He looked around frantically; his plasma torch wasn’t in hand anymore. He spotted it a couple of meters away, and knew he wasn’t going to reach it in time. He tried anyway, lurching across with arm outstretched to grasp it. His fingers brushed against the grip for less than a second before the scythe of the creature pinned him against the wall again. The blade was turned inwards, so that it was the blunted edge pressing against Marcus’s chest plate. The other blade lashed out with such speed, Marcus could barely follow it. He thought he was done for, until he heard a wrenching sound as the blade punched through the wall just over his shoulder. He looked at it, and then up into the horrible face that had once been a great leader. It stared back at him. He couldn’t tell if it was from interest or hunger. He didn’t particularly want to find out.

  Acting on instinct, he brought his arm up in a blurring movement. It connected with the elbow join of the wicked scythe that had pierced the wall. There was a loud crack, and a horrid screech of pain from deep in the mutant’s throaty area. The blade pinning him to the wall lost its pressure, and Marcus shoved it away and rolled to the side.

  He reached the plasma torch before the mutant recovered. Then he was back on his feet, aiming for its good arm. He blasted it off with a precise shot just above the shoulder join. It clattered to the ground. As the creature wailed in pain, Marcus blasted off its other arm and one of its legs.

  But it was still moving when it hit the deck. Though it had only the one leg and no other limbs with which to propel itself forward, it thrashed around, trying to get to him.

  “Sorry, Captain,” Marcus said softly before he squeezed the trigger again and again and unloaded the rest of the plasma charge pack into the mutant’s head and chest. Its anguished wails were silenced, and it lay motionless on the deck in front of him.

  He stood there for a few minutes, absorbing the enormity of the situation. It pressed down on him like a set of weights, threatening to overwhelm him. But it was his resolve that saved him from succumbing and crashing to his knees on the deck. But still, he just stood there.

  He didn’t know how much time had passed before he finally heard Hamilton’s voice again, concerned, worried. “Marcus? Fuck this, I’m coming down there!”

  That tore him from his anguish, and he blinked, clearing his mind. “No,” he said. “I’m fine. It’s just… he was my Captain once. He might have already been dead when that thing changed him, but it doesn’t change the fact that I just cut him to ribbons.”

  “You said it, Marcus. It wasn’t Matthews anymore. That thing you saw putting something in to his head did that.” There was a pause. Hamilton was giving him time to absorb that. “It was self defense, Marcus. You or him. You chose.”

  “I guess.”

  “Is the Captain’s PDT still intact?”

  “More or less. The mutation all but shredded it. Give me a second.”

  Reluctantly, he crossed the short distance between himself and the corpse. He nudged it once, twice with his foot to make sure it was dead… from what he’d seen so far, these things reacted, rather than used intellect. If it was still alive, it would have done something. When he was sure, he knelt down beside it, laid the plasma cutter on the floor by his leg, and pulled his helmet free.

  The smell assaulted Marcus instantly; rotting flesh and blood and something else that he couldn’t identify. He put his left hand over his mouth and nose to filter most of the smell while running his free hand over the body. The flesh was tough, unyielding beneath his fingers. Wounds from blasts of the plasma torch oozed thick, dark blood onto the tiled floor. It was starting to pool around Marcus’s knees. He fought the urge to get up and just walk away.

  His hand came away gripping to the tattered remains of the Captain’s left sleeve. The PDT’s controls were still attached just above the rank stripes.

  “I’ve got Captain Matthew’s PDT,” Marcus said into his comm He heard Hamilton breathe a sigh of relief over the line. “I’m transmitting the codes to you now.”

  He found a catch on the panel and hooked it up to his own PDT. Then he initiated a data transfer straight to Hamilton, wherever he was, and hoped that the righ
t information was being sent. He didn’t have time to waste trying to find it himself. He got back to his feet, picking up the plasma torch and his helmet, and walked out of the autopsy bay.

  The door he’d come through was locked now, but the one near the door into the autopsy bay… which was still locked… was now unlocked. He shook his head. It was starting to seem like a maze to him.

  “Codes received,” Hamilton said. There was a pause has he checked something, and when he spoke again, his mood sounded a little better. “And they look good; thank God. I’ll start accessing the Captain’s records right now.”

  “What about Nikki?” Marcus went through the door into a lift and hit the ascent control on the holo without waiting for the door behind him to close.

  “I intend to keep my word, Marcus,” Hamilton promised. He sounded a little put out that Marcus would even have hinted that he’d had no intention of doing so. “But I need to find out what the hell happened to this ship. I’ll check personnel records later and see if I can find out what happened to Nikki. Head to the tram station, and I’ll contact you there with an update.”

  “Right.” He shut off the comm and waited as the lift carriage shot up through the decks.

  It stopped, and the doors opened to admit Marcus back to the clinic. But now, he was directly opposite of the anteroom leading back to the security station. Nothing much had changed since he’d passed through on his way to the morgue. Some of the pooled blood on the floor seemed to have expanded; the bodies from which they originated still drip, drip, dripping.

  He passed through the anteroom without incident and through the winding halls back to the security station. It hadn’t changed at all in his time away. At least that offered some sign that the mutants hadn’t progressed here and lay in wait somewhere. After passing through the ruined barricade he’d burned through earlier, Marcus turned almost immediately to his right and keyed the door release.

  Marcus’s comm trilled to indicate an incoming transmission, and he keyed the visual as he proceeded down the hall to the tram station. “Marcus!” Hamilton was panting, almost out of breath. It made Marcus’s hair stand on end and he gripped the rim of his helmet tighter.

  “What’s wrong Hamilton?” he asked at once.

  “Somehow… one of them found a way down to the captain’s nest!” Shit, Marcus thought. That’s where Hamilton must have retreated to when he and Davis had been attacked on the Bridge. “I managed to contain it in a damaged escape pod. Lifting the executive lockdown.”

  There was a pause. “I found the deck logs. Whatever is happening around here, it came from the planet when they mined it open. It spread to the colony, and reached the ship! Marcus…” Hamilton was shaking his head now, his brow creased. “This isn’t an infection. It’s some form of alien life.”

  “It can’t be. Not with what I saw in the morgue. I saw one of those things change Captain Matthews into a monster.”

  “It could be both. I don’t know. I’m still looking into it. But if you saw that, then it could be part of the alien cycle. I don’t know. I just don’t.”

  “That’s pretty fucked,” Marcus said irately. He stepped out through the second door and was once more on the tram platform. It took him no time to cross the deck and step into the tram. He was just about to key in the Bridge as his next destination when Hamilton’s expletive stopped him.

  “Shit!” he swore. “We’ve got bigger problems. The ship’s engines are offline and our orbit is decaying.”

  “Why?”

  “I don’t know, for fuck sake!” Hamilton snapped. “Sorry. Get over to the engineering deck ASAP, while I stay here and figure out what the problem is.”

  “On it.”

  So instead, Marcus keyed in engineering and sat down on one of the seats as the door clamped shut and the tram took off.

  ***

  11

  XI

  Hamilton contacted him the second he was out of the tram. It was a little distracting to have to stop and deal with that nearly every few minutes. But there was necessity behind it. They were in hostile territory with an unknown number of mutant alien creatures running around hunting them. And with what Marcus had to do now… fix the engines… it would be advantageous to have as much information about the problem as possible.

  “We’ve got two problems,” Hamilton started, his face morphing back and forth between irritation, concern, and relief, “and we’re working on borrowed time, here.”

  “Give me the heads up,” Marcus said. If there was one thing the course of this mission had taught him thus far, it was how to multitask effectively. He kept an eye on the holo that had popped up with the comm. linkage, but at the same time he loaded a new charge pack into the plasma torch and proceeded slowly across the deck to the hallway exit.

  “First; there’s no fuel in the engines. Second; the gravity centrifuge is offline… which means that there’s a couple of trillion tonnes of rock pulling us down.”

  “Great,” Marcus muttered, “nothing too difficult, then.”

  “I need you to get that centrifuge operational… that probably goes without saying for someone of your knowledge base, though… refuel the main engine, and then fire it up so I can stabilize the ship’s orbit.”

  “No problem. Let me know when other developments arise.” Hamilton nodded, and then disappeared as he cut the link.

  When the door opened, he stepped through it, finding himself in another corridor that veered off to the right at its end. He followed it through at an even pace, his eyes darting left and right, checking for threats. But there were none.

  The hallway opened up into the main control room, and Marcus stopped in main chamber to look around. The control room was directly opposite of the corridor he’d come out from. Several control panels were busted, non-functional. One of the holo-panels was on, but a quick check found that its systems were inaccessible. There was a body in the chair… human, but so mutilated and bloodied that whoever it had been had clearly suffered. Lockers were open and empty, diagnostic units were non-functional as well. To the left of the corridor as he’d left it was a small inlet with a lift that led to Centrifuge Control. There was a large, round blast door a few meters from the inlet which led to the engine bay proper, and the door on the right of the corridor went to the machine shop. Marcus knew all this without having to check the LEDs. As an engineer, these areas of the ship had been where he’d performed most of his duties during his assignment to the crew.

  He decided to go to the machine shop first, and opened the door once he reached it without delay. The chamber he came into was dark, but not entirely without lighting. He made his way down the ramp without an issue. Weaving through the heavy machinery into an open space at the other end of the floor, he saw an unlocked door to the left. A repair bench was opposite him, and he went straight to it… he didn’t know how much damage the confrontation with mutant-Matthews had caused his PDT.

  The bench was already powered, and it went to work on him quickly. As it turned out, there had been a couple of ruptures in the outer shell of the PDT, and some smaller, less important systems had taken a bit of damage. The bench supplied him with a new magnetic unit, as the one he’d had had been destroyed entirely by the earlier confrontation. Med gel was inserted into the autoloader slot. When the arms retracted, Marcus stepped away and made for the door.

  The floor beyond it was grilled, and not knowing what to expect of its stability, Marcus tread carefully down the short corridor to the split at the end. Loud scrabbling sounds drew his attention downwards, and he saw what looked like one of the tailed mutants climbing around underneath him quickly, using the grills as holding points as it swung like an ape.

  To the right was a safety rail running along the catwalk, and a large chasm clouded in steam and fog. Marcus went left instead, down the slanted walk and then up another one at the other end. He was met with more grills and darkness.

  But a shuffling seemed alive in that darkness… more than just t
he shadow of something that shifted under the breeze of a vent, or a cloud of smoke or steam curling up from the floor. It shifted with the ungainly squishiness of the creatures that were an infestation on the ship. Marcus reacted instinctively, bringing his plasma torch to bear and firing off three quick bursts. The hunk of mutated, exposed soft tissue and liquefied internal organs screeched a denial and fell backwards over the railing, disappearing down below in the roiling condensation of the cooled engines. Only after a minute did he hear the soft thud as the mass hit the lowest part of the great chamber.