The Icarus Void

by CK Burch

  ″Creatures? Captain what are you – ″ Mac's voice cut off and his breathing stopped entirely. ″Holy shit,″ the chief whispered. ″Holy fucking shit. What the fuck is that thing?″

  ″Seal the goddamn duct.″ Markov took a cautious step inside. More were climbing to the vent, and when he looked to the body the arm had stopped twitching but had begun to flex. Flex. The fingers were moving fluidly, not the throes of death, but like they were being woken.

  ″Captain, I can't fucking hear you, but I think I'm going to seal the goddamn duct here.″

  Markov ignored Mac. He stepped forward. The group of crawlers had moved away from the artifact and the battery setup in the center of the bay. But the body...whose body was it? Decker's? Whoever it was, they were clearly alive, but they didn't look like they were in pain, despite the creature laid out over their back. Then there was a hideous, retching hock and pop that made Markov stop again, and the scientist curled up for a moment. Blood flew from somewhere, maybe the mouth, Markov couldn't see. Christ, this was gruesome. Then he looked over and saw Wilcox, lying on the floor close to the hydrogen extractors. One of the creatures was gently touching his face with its tentacles, exploring, probing. A ragged hole was in the side of Wilcox's face, exposing the meat and bone beneath.

  In his peripheral vision, Markov saw the once-dead scientist stand up, the creature still on his back, and the captain froze and trained his weapon on the man. He didn't like it. He didn't trust it. Markov saw the ID badge on the left arm of the jumpsuit: it was Decker. The lump on Decker's back looked like it was using the millipede legs to clamp into Decker, puncturing through the scientist's jumpsuit. It looks like a part of him, he thought. At first glance he saw Decker leaning forward, but then he realized that the creature had draped itself over Decker's head like a hood, clinging tight. Then Decker turned around and Markov saw why.

  The front of the beast was stretched tight over Decker's face, tentacles draping just over his upper jaw, waving about and feeling at the air, exposing a bloody hole where Decker's lower jaw used to be. Now a long tentacle unrolled, pushed through the back of the man's skull, and wagged back and forth like a swollen tongue. Markov's gaze went lower and saw four thin, ropy tendrils dangling from a hole in Decker's lower abdomen; they'd gone through so violently that they'd pushed his ribcage out. But Decker was walking as if nothing was wrong, like there was no nightmare octopus covering him, clamped to him; Jesus Christ it was driving him. It had to be. Because there was no way Decker could be alive under there. The creature had slithered its way onto his body and taken over. That was the only explanation. Oh, god, and now it had turned and was staring right at him. The tentacles froze mid-wave; the chest tendrils began to animate, wriggling like tapeworms. They were too goddamn long, maybe five or six feet, outstretched and writhing about. Markov wasn't sure to back up, stay still, or just move. He wasn't sure of anything anymore; he was entirely out of his depth.

  In the background, the surface of the artifact began to pulse, expand, and then burst as Doctor Tybalt escaped from the interior of the artifact and fell forward, landing on her hands. She landed with a clatter in the middle of screaming bloody murder, and as she looked up from her place on the floor she renewed her screams, scooting back and away from Decker on her ass, back towards the artifact.

  Decker turned towards her, the tendrils flailing madly.

  Markov gave no hesitation. He stepped forward quickly and opened fire. The crawler on Decker's back popped open and some kind of pus flew out and about, too thick to be blood, but the last of the plasma in Decker's body flew out as well. They fell over in a pool of the stuff as Decker's legs kicked in jerky spasms. Meanwhile, the rest of the crawlers leapt from their positions on the floor and on the wall, and scattered like roaches in a beam of light. Some of them ran for the vent opening; a couple of them ran towards Markov. He kept walking forward, training his sights on each one in succession, cool and calm because otherwise he was going to lose it. Two more of the creatures burst into slippery piles, the rest scampered away. Markov reached Tybalt and he grabbed her by the arm. He jerked her to her feet quickly, and pushed her towards the bay door. ″Move! Move!″ he shouted. She was moving too goddamn slow, stumbling forward like she was drunk or disoriented, and the crawlers around them were no longer surprised. They were starting to regroup, reform around them. From his left he saw another crawler curve around the battery, tentacles waving in exploration; he didn't give it time to search. Tybalt stumbled again and he scooped an arm around her waist and they flew forward together into the outer corridor. Markov let go and hit the hatch holo. The doors slammed shut before any of the creatures could follow.

  He leaned against the shut doors. ″Jesus,″ he muttered. Now he felt his heart hammering, too fast for an old man, and the adrenaline in his system was wearing thin already. Hands shaky. No good. He'd gotten lucky in there.

  Doctor Tybalt tried to stand, but she fell again. Her voice was shaky, near hysterics. ″They were right behind me!″ she said. She was crying, hyperventilating. ″Oh god, they were right behind me! We have to go back in there!″

  ″Doctor,″ he said, and he knelt beside her.

  ″We have to go back in there! Straub and the others were right behind me!″

  He tried to grasp her shoulders but she shook away, fighting him. Hell, she probably didn't even know who he was, she was just fighting on instinct, trying to get away as a defense mechanism. ″Doctor!″ he shouted, and he grabbed her and shook her hard once then looked at her. ″Doctor Tybalt. It's Captain Markov. Do you recognize me?″

  She stared back, the frightened eyes of a little girl returning his gaze. He'd forgotten how young she was. Every bit of her youth was strained to the breaking point and regressing back. ″They were behind me,″ she said, her words punctuated with sniffles.

  Markov activated his helmet comm and called Lieutenant Ramsey, the second officer on the bridge. ″Ramsey, this is Captain Markov, over.″

  ″Sir.″

  ″Lieutenant, I want you to confirm that quarantine has sealed every junction in the vent system surrounding the cargo bay. Every single last junction. If not, seal it manually. We have a biological infestation in the cargo bay that needs to be contained, over.″ Calling it a biological infestation sounded like an understatement, but the only other words he could think of were ″octopus bugs″ and that just sounded crazy, almost as crazy as they had looked.

  ″Sir? An infestation?″ Ramsey sounded incredulous, dreamy, like he couldn't believe what was being said to him.

  ″Confirm that quarantine has sealed the ventilation shafts! Over!″ God, there was no time for this. The creatures – whatever they were – were fast and if the quarantine wasn't reacting to their presence fast enough, then they could be all over the ship in a matter of hours. Christ, minutes. How many had there been? He couldn't remember, only that he'd seen some piled on top of each other, moving about in squirmy masses, probing the cargo bay and everything surrounding. Then they'd scattered at the gun fire. Would they remember that? Learn to avoid the sound of pulse rifles? Did they even hear, or did they react to changes to air pressure? He knew nothing about them. Biological theory had never been his strong suit, despite the required courses. He'd never thought he'd encounter an alien biomass; no one ever did. It was always all just speculation and radical hypotheses. He just couldn't wrap his mind around it.

  ″Captain,″ Ramsey said, and his voice still sounded hazy, like he'd been woken up only moments before. Had he? Could Ramsey have been sleeping on the job? ″Sir. Quarantine reports...um...the junctions...″

  There was scuffling noise in the background and a new voice came on. It was Burke, environment specialist. Her voice was crisp, cool, and calm. ″Captain, quarantine reports show all junctions are now sealed but foreign bio signatures are moving through the ventilation ductwork at a rapid pace, the quarantine can't keep up with them.″

  ″Seal the vents around them, keep a step ahead.″

&nbs
p; ″Working."″

  There was a pause while Burke did her job. Markov looked down at Tybalt: she was curled up in a ball, her arms around her knees as she rocked back and forth slightly, crying softly to herself. What the fuck had she seen inside that thing?

  ″Dammit!″ He heard Burke slam her fist down. ″They're too fast! They're finding new routes around the sealed junctions. I can try and direct them, but they pour into the corridors and into opposing vents!″

  They're intelligent, Markov thought. ″Where are they going?″

  ″Everywhere! Engineering! Docking bay! Medical!″

  Medical. Doctor Fleur. Oh, god, Rene was in her office, and if she wasn't still asleep she was awake and probably confused as to what was going on. If the creatures got to her – no. Couldn't think that way. There was time. ″Seal off medical, make that your priority, don't let any of them get in there!″ Markov reached down and pulled Tybalt to her feet. ″We have to move Doctor, and we have to move fast. Can you do that?″ He didn't wait for her to respond. There was no time to waste coddling the goddamn woman; she was the one who'd wanted to bring this fucking artifact aboard, she was the one who had gone inside of it without any permission or authorization, and god damn it, if only Markov had been a little more willing to sacrifice. Goddammit, he knew he should have ejected the goddamn artifact into space! But no, he'd tried to give the benefit to Tybalt and decided that one life was worth the risk. Christ. He dragged Tybalt with him along the corridor towards the maintenance elevator, and as they walked he knew he had to make the choice he should have made over an hour ago. ″Burke,″ he said, ″I want you to decompress the cargo bay and blow the artifact out into space. We can't let any more of those things get onto the ship.″

  ″Roger that, sir, activating the outer doors now.″

  ″No!″ Tybalt suddenly came to life and pulled, trying to jerk herself away from his grasp. ″No! You can't do that! They're still in there! You can't do that!"″

  ″Doctor I'm sorry, we can't let any more of those things come through the artifact. We – ″

  ″NO!″ Tybalt heaved herself backward and slipped free of Markov's grip. She ran back towards the bay doors.

  ″Goddammit! Tybalt!″ He chased after her, but she was running with crazed adrenaline, already well ahead. ″Tybalt! What are you doing?″

  ″You didn't see it! You don't know what it can do!″ Christ almighty, she was trying to open the cargo bay doors. Her fingers worked the holo controls, trying to override the seal. Could she do it? Did she have that kind of clearance? No, she was trying to hack the manual override, and doing too good of a job navigating it.

  ″You'll let them out here!″ Markov reached for her, but she turned without warning and shoved him hard in the chest. Markov fell on his back, caught off guard. As he looked up Tybalt finished working the controls and the bay doors hissed as they began to open. ″Shit,″ he whispered, then got to his feet and said, ″Burke! Belay that last order! Burke!″

  Too late. The entrance to the cargo bay pulled apart slow, but the outer doors were already completely open, the vacuum sucking them towards the blackness of space outside. Markov let go of his pulse rifle and reached for Tybalt as he activated the maglock on his boots. The rifle was picked up by the suction and flew into the bay but Tybalt held on for dear life, nearly wrenching his arm out of its socket as his feet held firmly planted to the floor, the maglock the only thing keeping the two of them from being blown out of the ship. Markov looked up and watched as the pulse rifle collided with one of the hydrogen extractors; both the rifle and the extractor then tumbled end over end out into the blackness of space beyond. There was a large explosion as the extractor flew beyond the shade of the Icarus and into the proximity of the chromosphere. The HES Geiger counter went crazy; there was so much radiation pouring in that they were instantaneously in the red. But the artifact stood in place. It wasn't even sliding backwards. It remained, firmly planted, unyielding to the pull of the vacuum. He couldn't believe what he was seeing.

  Markov held on, but just barely. He couldn't keep himself upright, leaning forward at a crazy angle. His ankles were burning from the strain. Tybalt was kicking and flailing, screaming in hysterics. Her opposing hand was waving about and jerking with the same panic-crazed motions as her legs. ″Give me your other hand!″ Markov shouted, but he was losing his grip. ″Burke! Close the goddamn outer doors! Burke!″

  ″They're already closing sir!″ she shouted. ″I can't make them close any faster!″

  Markov heaved himself backwards, his fingers unable to grasp any longer. He looked up beyond the artifact and saw that the outer doors were sluggishly sliding back into place. If he could just hold on a little bit longer, both of them would be alright, but Tybalt wouldn't stop panicking and the grip he had on her right hand was timid. ″Tybalt! Goddammit, give me your other hand!″ But she ignored him and just kept kicking and screaming, kicking and screaming, and with one last great kick of her legs his grip slipped and she flew away, her lower body slamming into the edge of the outer doors and she flipped like a gymnast into space and she kept on going. Within seconds Markov saw her body burst into a fireball. Doctor Tybalt was no more. Moments later the outer doors closed and the deck began to repressurize.

  Sweet Christ, Markov thought. He felt numb. He looked at his hands and red anger pulsed upward from his belly to his face. Sweet Jesus Christ.

  ″Sir? Can you hear me?″ Burke. ″Sir!″

  ″I'm here,″ he said, his mind distant.

  ″Are you alright? I thought I lost you for a minute.″

  Markov continued to stare at his hands. What a waste. What a fucking waste. But what had she seen in there? What had made her so crazed to get the others out of the artifact? ″Are you still tracking the creatures?″ he asked Burke.

  ″Foreign signatures still moving throughout the decks, headed towards the lower levels. Sir, I think they're gravitating towards the engines, with a singular direction.″

  ″Evacuate engineering,″ he said quietly. There was no momentum in his voice, no command. He couldn't summon the leadership. In his mind's eye, it hadn't been Tybalt that he had let slip, it had been Fleur. He wasn't going to let Fleur die. Tybalt would be the last. God, the look on her face...he renewed himself. ″Sound the evac alarm down there, get them moving!″ He cut off his comm and switched over to Mac's frequency. ″Mac, can you hear me?″

  ″Yes, sir! Fucking Christ, what's going on?″

  Markov reached over and closed the entrance to the cargo bay. Between the sliding doors he watched the artifact as it still stood, a sentinel of mockery. More anger poured through him. ″We need to evacuate engineering as quickly as possible. Those things are headed your way.″ He turned back towards the lift, thoughts of Fleur on his mind, but for now he had to focus on his crew.

  ***

  Sydney Kerrick was lying on her back, staring at the ceiling. It was beginning to freak Okwudili Udeh to his core, but not nearly as much as being contained to his medbed was.

  He'd recognized the quarantine alarm. On the Prometheus, he'd once had to deal with a random outbreak of Monrovian flu picked up from the Titan Outpost, which had begun as a lesser form of a cold virus then mutated during a mission. Most of his crew would have been infected had the quarantine not picked it up just after the mutation had begun as first officer Blake sneezed it out of his system. Unfortunately, Blake's sneeze had infected the second officer, Caldwell, and also Udeh. Seventy-two hours in quarantine and disinfection procedure, along with intense radiation treatments and antibiotic injections. A fucking nightmare, after which he'd taken a lovely shower and fed his weight on steak and beer. Medical screenings and precautions had doubled after that, per captain's orders, but what he remembered the most out of that was the tingling of his claustrophobic reactions while in the medbed. The restraints over him, scanning his body for deeper infection, had caused him to breathe a little shallower, sweat a little harder, but he'd fought it and won. Because he'd known t
hat he would be able to get up and get out of the bed once the scan was done. He could tell himself that and be fine.

  Right now he wasn't so sure.

  Right now he was sweating fit to burst. He wondered if he was going to dehydrate from all the water coaxed from his body, wondered if that was even possible, and wondered where the hell Doctor Gaines was. Udeh hadn't seen that fat, lazy fuck of a doctor for well over an hour. Earlier he'd been happy that the apathetic bastard had been hiding, but now he just wanted Gaines to come over and release the bed restraints. They'd fallen into place per quarantine standards, to start scanning his body for whatever had been detected wherever, but the alarm was off now and the restraints were still in place. Across from him, Kerrick was mumbling something about home.

  ″Doctor Gaines,″ Udeh called out. Don't panic, don't panic. You're just edgy because the radiation is cutting through you. It's making you worse than normal. ″Doctor Gaines!″ he shouted, more forcefully, because no matter what the fuck he told himself, he knew exactly what he was feeling, and that was he needed to get the hell out of this medbed right the fuck now or he was going to lose it. Part of why he was in here was so that he would not lose it but here he was starting to panic. God, all of this had been so messed up. He should have known from the start, when he'd flown into the docking bay. But taking his anxiety medication had done nothing but fuck up his system. That was something that happened to him if he didn't really need to take it, swinging his body into the opposite direction it needed to go. So he wasn't having an actual physical reaction; it was all in his mind.

  Concentrate, he thought. He breathed in, breathed out, tried to relax his muscles. He closed his eyes and pictured clear blue horizons and green waves of green expanding into infinity. He missed Earth. Earth always brought him to a state of ease.