by Phil Maxey
“This just another job, same old shit, dead people then we find who’s responsible.” He pulled the panel off, and started turning the manual door mechanism. The door started to open, there was only darkness beyond. Once the gap was wide enough, Vargas squeezed through, followed by Holt.
The beams from their helmets illuminated the walls around them. They were in a corridor, although this one had plasma burns on the walls. They both raised their guns. Their heart rates rose too.
Holt pointed to their left, and again to the right. He slowly started moving away, while Vargas moved cautiously forward in the opposite direction.
After a short distance, she arrived at a junction with another long corridor running across the first. She swept her light beams in both directions, revealing several doors, some of which were open. “Found some open doors, down here Holt. Over.”
She looked down at the screen on her wrist. “Still no signs of life. Over.” She then looked up at a small form just visible by her helmet’s light about twenty meters away. She walked forward. As the gloom receded, the form took on humanoid shape and was holding a teddy bear.
“Holt, there’s someone down here, I think it’s—” she closed to within eight meters of the person with their back to her “—it’s a little girl. Over.”
Vargas tapped her wrist screen, switching on the external speaker. “Hey, are you okay?” She knelt a few meters behind the little girl who was holding the light brown bear in her arms. “What’s your name?”
Vargas moved closer, and reached out her arm for the girl’s shoulder. Slowly the little girl turned around. As she did a feeling of discomfort built inside Anita Vargas, slowly eclipsing her rational thought. The child's nose was missing and part of her lower jaw, while her eyes were just dark pits. For a second Vargas just stared, a feeling of revulsion overwhelming her and she fell backwards, it was then she noticed the girl’s hands had protruding nails at the ends of her fingers, making them resemble a bird’s talons.
“Holt, Holt! Something’s wrong, Holt! Come in! Over.” She scrambled backwards, the nightmarish scene receding back into darkness in front of her. She soon found herself up against the wall surrounded by blackness.
She’s injured, I should go back! No, she must be dead, but she moved!
A hand touched her shoulder. She yelped, the sound reverberating around the corridor. Turning her head, she could see it was Holt.
“What? What is it? Did you see someone?” said Holt.
“Down there! There’s a little girl, I think she’s dead, but she moved, she looked at me!”
“What? Look, calm down, I’ll check it out, just wait here and get your shit together.”
Holt faced towards where Vargas was pointing, and raised his gun. He walked slowly forward moving past an open door. He looked back at Vargas sitting near the wall, and shrugged. Vargas walked slowly forward and joined him at the spot where the little girl was standing. “She was here, I swear it.”
He looked at her with a frown. “I get it, this is some spooky shit, but there’s no ‘little girl’ here.” He waved his hand. “Anita, there’s hardly any air in here, nothing to breathe.”
Vargas looked around nervously.
Holt moved through the doorway of the closest room. “Let’s check out these rooms.”
Ten floors down Holland and Gibson stepped out into a dark, frost covered corridor.
“I’m reading temperatures of minus forty-two Celsius and—” Holland tapped his wrist screen “—dropping.”
Gibson swung his impressive large caliber plasma cannon from side to side. “Maybe there’s a breach somewhere.”
“No, this is something else.” Holland’s HUD started to glitch with the image becoming fractured and skewed. “Gibson, my HUD, there’s something wrong, you getting the same issue?” He stood looking at his fellow marine, who was hitting the side of his helmet.
Gibson’s voice came through Holland’s internal speaker. “—having, a problem with my frigging HUD.”
“Can you hear me?” replied Holland.
“Now, yeah.”
“I was having the same issue, the energy output from our fusion batteries dropped for a few seconds. For us both to be affected it must be a dampening field. Hold on I should be able to locate the source.” He tapped on his wrist device a few times. “It’s coming from the reactor room, we get to it by following this corridor.”
Both men walked down the corridor, their boots crunching on the ice below them. The walls glistened as their helmet beams glanced off them. Soon they were at the door to the reactor, it was partially open, with smears of dark-red all over it.
Holland knelt, holding his wrist close to the crimson stains. “Analysis is showing it’s blood of—” he moved his hand over the door. “—various types.” He stood up. “Captain, we have found some blood on the reactor rooms door. Over.” Silence. “Captain Shaw, come in. Over.”
“Comms are down?” said Gibson looking through the gap between the doors into the reactor room, his light only permeating a few meters from the door.
“Maybe something to do with this dampening field. We need to get inside, see what state the reactor is in.”
Gibson pushed his leg and shoulder between the doors, and pushed hard, they didn’t budge. “Nah, it’s no good, manual control again.”
Holland pulled the panel off, and started to try to turn the handle, but the ice was making it tough to move. Gibson helped and soon it was turning. After a few rotations, the gap was big enough for Holland to fit through. Moving a few steps into the reactor room, he stood for a moment trying to get his bearings. The diagram of the room on his HUD said this room was sixty meters high, and almost forty square, but the light from his helmet’s beam was only traveling half a meter from him at best.
“There seems to be a kind of fog, or something in the air that is making it hard to see.”
Gibson went to step through the gap, when he heard something behind him. “What—” Stepping back from the door, he turned and looked down the ice encrusted corridor to where they had come from, but his helmet light wasn’t allowing much of a view. “You hear that Holland?”
“Hear what?”
“I swear I heard a noise from back where we came. I’m going to check it out.”
“Don’t go far, there’s something weird going on in this room.” Holland stepped forward a few more meters, and almost walked into a console that was encapsulated in ice. He banged his rifle butt against the translucent covering, but it was solid and hardly made a scratch. He waved his arm through the air in front of him again. This time he confirmed what he thought he had imagined during his first arm movement. “Incredible,” he whispered to himself. It was almost impossible to see but as his hand moved through the space in front of him, the view distorted, almost as if he was under water.
Pushing his hands out in front of him, he went to walk forward when his HUD image started to fluctuate as did his helmet light, dimming in and out. Looking around for a structure to hold onto, he walked further forward and his lights came back to full strength. He breathed out a sigh and brought up the schematic of the room. The stations reactor which stood three stories high should be directly in front of him, and should be giving off an intense blue hue, but instead there was nothing but a darkness with an intensity he had seldom seen. His mind suddenly flashed back to when he was a kid, when he used to hide under the sheets at night with all the lights turned off, and try to see his hand in front of his face. Instinctively he lifted his hand and moved it in front of his helmet’s beam. He smiled as the light caught the pieces of ice that were forming on his glove. He moved it a few inches further away and his hand disappeared, eclipsed by a wall of shadow.
Then he saw it. A wave passed through the darkness making him step back up against something solid, which he presumed was part of the room’s structure. Not being sure of what he had just witnessed he stepped forward and raised his gun although he wasn’t sure what there was to fire a
t. A warning started to sound in his suit. ‘External temperature falling to dangerous levels,’ flashed up on his HUD, together with ‘-147 Celsius.’
Again, the shadows around him adjusted but this time a thin shaft of blue light emanated from ahead of him, quickly extinguished.
There’s something covering the reactor.
He tried blocking the warning sound that was telling him to get to somewhere warmer and walked forward towards where he had seen the light when he walked into what remained of a face. It was only in his helmet’s light for a fraction of a second, just enough time for it to turn and look at him and for him to turn and run, hitting something solid and sending him spiraling to the ground in pain.
Grabbing his side, he turned over on the ground and saw hands trying to grab at him from inside the black fog. Staggering backwards, his helmet light started to dim again.
No.
Desperately he brought up the rooms diagram on his faltering HUD, and could see the way he came in from was just a few meters behind him. As he got to his feet, he saw it again, saw the shadows move around him, like a current through an ocean. Turning, he ran forward and his helmet’s fading light lit up the door. Pushing himself through the gap, he ran forward into the corridor.
“Gibson! Where the fuck are you! There’s people or things in the reactor room.” Soon he was back near the shaft where they had climbed down to gain access to the floor. “Gibson? come in. Over!”
His helmet light now stretched further into the distance.
“Oh, there you are, did you find anything?” Gibson’s six foot two frame was standing at the end of the corridor. “Where’s your gun?”
Gibson never went anywhere on a mission without his custom-made plasma cannon. But right now, it was nowhere to be seen.
Holland walked up to him but started to slow his approach when he was six meters away. Gibson’s lights were dimming off and on, making it hard to see inside his visor.
“Wade?” Using Gibson’s first name was something he never did, but being alone with him in the iced over corridor it seemed apt. He slowly moved forward looking closer at his visor until he could see Gibson’s face, but it wasn’t the face of the man he had served with for over five years. Gibson’s eyes had rolled upwards, and blood was creeping in streams down the sides of his face.
“What?” It was all Holland could think to say, as he slowly walked around the body that stood in front of him, stopping when he was about half way around.
The back of Gibson’s helmet and skull were missing. All he could see was the bleeding, pulsing remains of Gibson’s brain.
Holland almost threw up, but that sensation was quickly overtaken by panic. He turned, ran back to the ladder in the shaft and started climbing.
CHAPTER 8
Kurt and Wheeler looked at the three ships that remained docked in the huge docking bay. Pulses from red emergency lights just making their hulls visible.
“So, we got a shuttle from who knows where, an emerald class patrol ship and what looks like some kind of hauler, although I haven’t seen that type before.”
“Syndicate?” said Wheeler.
“Could be, or just some pet project for someone with too much time and money on their hands, either way I don’t see any ID numbers on it. Let’s take a look at the shuttle first.”
They walked along the gantry towards the two-story high, largely white-gray, functional looking ship. “Vargas, Holland, you found anything, Over.” No answer, so he tried again.
“Must be something causing interference, our comms should be working fine even inside these walls.” He tried contacting the troop carrier they arrived in, but with the same result. “Let’s get this done as quick as we can, then we go looking for the others.”
As they approached the shuttle, they could see the external entrance, which was at the top of a small ramp, was already open. Beyond was only darkness.
Kurt put his boot on the bottom of the slope and slid a little. He knelt and touched the dark stain at his feet. “I’m guessing this is not crater juice,” he said, wiping his gloved hand on his suit as he looked up the ramp at the trail of blood that disappeared inside. “Be ready,” he said to Wheeler.
They walked carefully up the slope, and looked as best they could into the opening as they got near it. They soon saw the body lying on the floor of the small entrance cabin.
“What the fuck could have done that,” said Wheeler standing over it, looking anxiously around her.
Kurt looked down pensively at the remains of a man. “Don’t know. Check out the other seats and cockpit.”
Wheeler turned away, and moved through the dark of the cabin and up a small set of stairs.
Kurt knelt and looked at the body closer. Raising his wrist, he selected external sources and scanned for a biochip, within a few seconds, ‘Biochip detected’ displayed on his HUD. He selected ID data and started to look at the results, when Wheeler shouted down from the second deck.
“More bodies.”
Kurt stood and ran up the stairs to where Wheeler was standing next to two rows of seats. A body of man and a woman in just as bad state as the first were sitting slumped forward. Stepping closer to them, he tried scanning for their chips, but realized in both people the chips were gone. He tapped on his wrist to return to the first body’s data. “Daniel Colchester, age 42. Married with two children. Residing on Mars colony.” Kurt scrolled through the options and selected current location. “Business trip to Station thirty-one, earth date March twenty-first, 2217.” He pointed back to the first deck. “Nothing suspicious about the guy we found first, just an average Joe on a business trip.” He turned and started walking away. “We need to look at that hauler.”
Soon they were standing alongside the five-hundred-meter-long hauler, which towered above them. The gantry they were on, led to a small external door which this time was not open.
“This definitely looks syndicate to me, but why the station let it in, is a mystery,” said Kurt.
“Maybe they put out a distress call, and they felt sorry for them.”
“That would be against protocol. It’s too easy for the station to be fooled into letting them inside, then they kill everyone and take what they want.”
“Maybe that’s what happened here,” she said.
Kurt held up his arm towards the hauler. “I’ll scan it and see if we get any matches.” He brought his arm down and tapped on his wrist screen. His HUD changed to one of a simplified three-dimensional view of the ship in front of him, with some text alongside.
“It’s in the database, but it’s showing that it’s classified.”
“Can you at least find out where it came from?”
Kurt tapped once more. “It seems to have come from Earth.”
Wheeler went to reply, when Holland’s voice burst from their comms.
* * * * *
“This place is like a maze,” said Holt, walking into a small room, his helmet light illuminating two beds and a desk. “Hey there’s a little girl in here!”
Vargas ran up to the door and looked inside, her expression changing from fear to frustration.
Holt laughed as he held up the doll. “I’m coming for you!” He mimicked a childlike voice as he waggled the toy at her.
Vargas rolled her eyes and left the room.
He went to leave the room following her when there was a barely audible noise from behind him.
Stopping he listened without turning around. There was only silence in the darkness behind. He smiled shaking his head, and started to walk through the doorway when the noise repeated itself, although this time it continued. He immediately spun around, his gun at the ready, trying to ascertain where the sound was coming from.
From the bed.
Feeling for the wall to his right, he moved further into the room with his plasma rifle pointing towards the left bed.
What the fuck is wrong with the light.
The beam from his helmet seemed to not go far enough i
nto the blackness in front of him, he was sure its range was further before.
He swiped his hand across the light in front of his visor and his glove was correctly lit. He moved his hand further away and it immediately vanished into the dark. Quickly pulling his hand back, he pushed his rifle out in front of him and moved forward until he saw the woman’s face looking at him.
At first, he wasn’t sure what he was looking at. Her left eye was looking completely to the left, and her right was looking slightly off to his right. Her expression, fixed into a smile, showed only a few teeth remaining in her mouth.
What the fuck?
He switched his external speaker on. “Ma’am, are you hurt?” It seemed like an absurd question as his HUD was showing ‘no air.’
He felt something touching his right hand and jumped backwards from whatever it was.
He landed against a shelving unit, containing picture screens which fell on him. The little girl with a lack of nose and lower jaw was just visible at the edge of his helmet’s light. Holt fired. Light and energy lit up the entire room. The little girl and woman fell in pieces and after a few seconds he stopped and the room plunged back into darkness.
As he lay in the void, his chest rising and falling trying to make sense of what just happened, he noticed it. The oppressing dark pushing forwards towards him.
No.
He tried to get to his feet, but an intense weight had him pinned to the ground. He tried moving his head to the left or right to see what was holding him down, but his helmet wasn’t moving either. “Vargas? Anyone? Come in? I’m trapped by something—” As his words crept out he realized that the light coming from his helmet’s beam was retreating, being pushed back by something he couldn’t see, something that was almost on him.
“Holt? Stop playing games.” Vargas looked back at the corridor she had just moved into hoping to see her marine comrade behind her, but there was only the constant wall of black. She turned around and retraced her steps. “Okay fine, we can do your stupid running sim, if you think I’m that unfit!” she said, looking down the corridor containing the room she had just seen him in.