by Eric Nixon
Card thought, First thing’s first. I’d like to feel a little more secure. He walked quickly down a short hallway and entered the weapon storage room. He picked up a blaster pistol and smiled. Now I feel better. His smile slipped away as he thought, wait, didn’t this thing take out dozens of security personnel? He grabbed a disruptor rifle and was about to smile when another thought came to him, and it disabled BarnardBots. Damnit. Those things are unstoppable...and corrected himself, were unstoppable.
His attention was diverted. What’s this? He set the disrupter rifle aside and picked up a sleek rifle with a thick barrel. A screen popped up and introduced itself as a chill cannon whose sole function was to freeze things solid with a blast of cold that approached absolute zero. He familiarized himself with the controls and noticed it had settings for narrow or wide shots, the latter of which could freeze an entire room. Nice.
He opened a nearby locker with the word Armor written on it. He took a force field vest, and was about to close the locker when he spotted the box at the bottom. He pulled out a portable energy absorber that was designed to attach to the force field vest. This could be useful. He thought for a second and affixed another dozen energy absorbers to the vest. I’m not taking any chances. He caught sight of himself in a mirror, looking like some kind of crazed kook with a vest covered in energy absorbers and thought, well, at least there’s no one here to see me.
This last thought got Card thinking and he wondered, if the system’s right, and everyone’s dead, then where are the bodies?
He pushed this thought aside and knew he needed to contact the Solar Union. He had to let them know what happened here, but more importantly, he wanted to be rescued. He returned to the outer room of the security office, sat down in front of the screens, opened an emergency message and hit record.
“This message is for the Solar Union Navy...or anyone who happens to get this. My name is Card Mitauk, a maintenance specialist here at Treadway Station, orbiting DeMog 14. An unknown energy force made its way on board the station from the crippled Hennepin liner and had killed everyone. I survived because, at the time, I was on a space walk to fix the energy absorbers. As far as I know, I’m the only survivor. If I do not send another message, consider Treadway Station to be to be...” to be what? He thought. Infected? Possessed? “...I don’t know…extremely dangerous. Anyone who docks with the station will probably die. This thing even disabled BarnardBots. I’m going to attempt to leave and make my way to the nearest station. I think that’s um…I’m just pulling up a map, there it is. Arm’s Edge Five. Wish me luck.” He pressed send.
Nothing happened.
It’ll send when the computer’s back up and connected to the rest of the civilization. Yeah. If it comes back up. Now I need to get to a ship and get out of here. He walked to the hallway door, closed his eyes, breathed deeply, gripped his blaster tight, and stepped through.
****
Card knew his way around Treadway Station quite well from having lived there for the past three years. He turned right and walked fast down the hallway, turned at the next intersection, and turned again. He didn’t see a soul. Nothing and no one. As he hurried, the sheer emptiness of the station caused his fear to grow like a ghost he knew was there, hiding where his eyes didn’t go, in a place he would never see. He gripped the rifle tighter and walked faster.
Almost every hallway terminated at the core of the station; a several-kilometer-tall atrium lobby with projected views to give the impression that one could see through the walls to the outside. Despite the simulated effect, it never failed to impress. As Card approached the gigantic central area, he knew something was wrong.
It was dark. Not completely dark, but dark enough to cast more shadows than light. He slowed down and looked up. On a normal day one could look hundreds of stories straight up to the top of the station. Instead, it was almost completely dark with some hint of a light source at the top, but it was being blotted out by an immense churning mass of…something. He squinted his eyes, but he couldn’t make out any part of it.
He walked fast, with his eyes and his gun pointed upwards, scanning the writhing darkness for anything that could pose a threat. Halfway across, he stopped as his curiosity got the better of him. He assumed it wasn’t the energy thing as he assumed it would have just killed him outright. Then again, he thought, what do I know? Something’s moving up there and what if it’s the thing that killed everyone?
Card thumbed open a screen, held it up to his eyes, and it zoomed in and focused on a small portion of the churning mass. The haunting recorded sound of the screaming deaths he heard in the security office now had an equally terrifying image burned into his mind, which was impossibly worse than the torn-off fingers stuck in the cafe window.
Bodies, parts of bodies, and blood belonging to thousands and thousands of people were held suspended, and churning, two hundred stories up, like a sickly psychotic zero-gravity stew. Brutalized bodies, limbs, organs, and the garland of intestines drifted lazily about, bumping and squishing into one another due to the sheer numbers.
Card screamed.
He recoiled and tripped over a small table, fell backwards, and landed where he was faced with the whole horror of 25,000 mutilated corpses swirling overhead. He averted his eyes immediately to one side, to look at anything but the carnage above. Outside the gigantic “window,” that ran the height of the atrium, he saw the dominating disk of the gas giant.
Outside. I’ve got to get off this station.
Trying not to look up, he rolled, pushed up, and his feet scooted to a blur, desperately trying to get some purchase on the smooth floor. Get up! he yelled at himself. He finally got to his feet and was turning, when the increasing sound of something flapping above caught his attention.
The body slammed into the floor behind him. Card’s ears were assaulted by the dual sounds of bones crunching and the splushing wetness of an egg-like object cracking and vomiting out a bloody, pulpy interior. He looked back just enough to see that it had landed about thirty meters away.
Another falling noise fluttering above caused him to run. He winced as the second body hit somewhere behind him, this time much closer.
Running faster, he didn’t hear the third one until it was too late. A fist-sized object hit Card on the head; the blinding pain caused him to topple forward and fall onto the floor where he slid to a stop.
He rubbed his head, looked over and saw a severed hand. He realized that his energy absorbers and personal force field weren’t on. He thumbed open a screen, stabbed at two buttons, and a faint glow briefly encircled him before fading clear. Good, now GET GOING!
He scrambled with all his might, got up, and ran. Bodies, whole and in part, rained from the ceiling like a downpour in hell. Corpses were falling with such force that they burst upon impact, sending blood, organs, and innards spraying out in all directions. The energy absorbers he wore tracked all projectiles that were on a collision course, and sucked the kinetic energy out of them, slowing their falls enough so they would bounce harmlessly off the protective force field that projected out a meter around from Card.
His legs pumped fast, carrying him away from this gravitationally challenged mass grave, when his feet stepped on something squishy. He slipped on the thick pools of blood that coated the floor, and he lost his footing, his balance, and his mind. He fell at an angle and landed on top of the new uneven carpet of smashed and broken bodies. He screamed and struggled as he shoved hard to get away from the exploded head that once belonged to a pretty girl he had seen around the local café. Her face now resembled a flat, deflated, rubber mask, stuck in a look of permanent torture, still wearing a pink ribbon in the blonde ponytail streaked with blood.
The bodies kept coming and the energy absorber continued to slow them down as they hit him and rolled off to one side or the other, but he was quickly being buried alive in corpses. He screamed as he flailed about trying to shove them off of and away from him.
His hand pressed against some
thing metal and cylindrical attached to a body’s belt. A silencing jarring of hope ran through him when he realized it felt familiar. Those who had been trained and cleared for space walks knew it well by touch, as it was the one piece of equipment they hoped they would never have to use.
The lineshot was created as a piece of last-ditch safety equipment for emergencies in space. If a spacewalker were to get knocked off a ship, and had no means of propulsion they would just float away. By aiming the lineshot at the ship, space station, or other nearby object, it shot out a tiny, super long yet super strong, nanocord that would attach itself to the target and pull the wayward astronaut back to safety.
Card gripped the lineshot. Thank you.
He ripped it off the body’s belt, pointed it across the floor to the hallway beyond, and fired.
A nearly invisible cord zipped across the lobby, latched onto the far wall down the nearest hallway and, with a powerful yank, dislodged him from the stack of bodies. It pulled him bumping and bouncing over the uneven terrain of corpses, to the edge of the lobby, where they thinned out, and to the safety of the hallway beyond.
He skidded across the smooth hallway floor and looked up to see the wall the lineshot was attached to approaching much too fast. He braced for impact.
The energy absorbers covering his body sensed his impending splatter against the wall, and absorbed the energy of his momentum, which slowed him considerably. By the time he reached the wall he had come to a complete stop.
Card breathed a sigh of relief and relaxed for a moment until his brain yelled at him, Get up! Get to a ship, and get out of here! To accentuate the immediate need to leave, a sharp crackling noise sounded behind him at the entrance to the hallway. Looking over his shoulder, he saw a strange, gritty-gray mist funnel in from the lobby. He was back on his feet in a flash and running down the next hallway that led to the shiplot.
The shiplot entrance grew closer as he ran. A little more...almost there...
He smiled as he ran through the entryway to the shiplot. Yes! A quick look around and he spied a shiny, expensive-looking ship. Wow, a Brookline. Those are nice, and it’s this year’s model. Wait, those are the types of ships that can survive anything. I bet its computer works. He ran towards the ship’s open hatchway and felt like this nightmare was finally coming to an end.
The tingling started first. It was faint and hardly noticeable but it increased quickly until he became aware something was wrong a fraction of a second before the bolt of lightning hit him.
The energy absorbers took the blast, and managed to dampen down the sound of the thunderclap, but he was double-whammed by the wave of sound and the bursting explosion of an energy absorber on his side as it overloaded. Luckily, the other absorbers mostly protected him, but it still burned and knocked him to the floor.
He ignored the pain and the realization that his hearing was partially gone, Card grabbed his chill cannon, rolled, and fired before he even saw what he was shooting at.
The air in the room iced over instantly as the gun sprayed a substance that was as black as the darkest corner of space, and considerably colder. The darkness from the gun enveloped a room-sized sparking, gray, gelatinous mist that had been diving towards him. He could just barely discern partially digested human body parts suspended within it and pulled harder on the trigger out of fear and revulsion. The blast of cold seemed to work as the thing screeched in pain and the parts that hadn’t been hit by the gun’s ray rapidly squirmed to avoid it.
Yes!
His hand gripped the handle and trigger so hard it started to bleed. He hoped the pain that not only he felt, but also that of everyone who died because of this thing, could somehow be focused though the beam so it could feel the suffering it caused to all those people as it died. The screeching increased as the jelly cloud-thing moved wildly, thrashing about. The parts that had gotten hit by the blast had frozen solid and fell, shattering on the floor. Yes! I’m killing it!
Something blurred on the periphery of his vision. A second gray mass slipped into the room and slammed into him. A gray tendril-like appendage coalesced and aimed for the gun. The energy absorbers tried to keep up, but couldn’t. Card’s body shook and twisted as four more of his absorbers overloaded and exploded. He thought he heard the second gray thing screech in agony. The chill cannon’s beam stopped as it was knocked free from his hand, and across the room, coming to a clattering rest on the floor. The second energy creature recoiled immediately from the hungry touch of the remaining energy absorbers, and coalesced with what was left of the first mist.
Card shook off the pain, managed to stand, and wobbled. The joined things slid towards him.
He pulled the blaster from his holster. “Oh no, you’re not getting me.” He raised the gun and fired several blasts at the floating jelly-mist. Each shot connected and burned a narrow hole, only to close up a moment later. They reared up and pounced at him.
He swung the blaster’s barrel down to the floor and pulled the trigger repeatedly. Blast after blast missed his target until finally, one connected with the chill cannon underneath the diving beasts.
The explosion caused an unbelievable burst of cold and dark as everything froze immediately. Card couldn’t see beyond the one-meter edge of his personal force field; it was encased with ice and edged with frost. He got up, blaster at the ready, despite its uselessness against them, and slipped slightly on the ice. He noticed that the backside of his force field was free of ice as it was facing the ground when the chill gun exploded. He rotated his force field and saw the floor covered in frozen chunks of the gelatinous mist.
Card began to move for the Brookline but movement caught his eye as he saw a mist creature fly to a far corner of the giant shiplot. It paused and he felt it looking at him. Uncertain he could make the final thirty meters to the ship, he turned and ran through the shiplot door, back to the hallway.
He reached the main lobby and tried to shield his eyes to the horror that lay stacked in heaps covering the floor of the kilometer-wide lobby. He walked around the edge of the room where there were fewer bodies. When he got to the other hallway that led to the maintenance office he slowed down and thought, Wait, where am I going? Shuck! I wanted to get on a ship and get out of here. If I try and go back, they might be waiting for me. What am I going to do? I need to get out…that’s it! Formulating the plan, he hustled back towards the maintenance office.
****
A few minutes later, Card was in his spacesuit, in a large cargo airlock. He was crouched over, working on something, when the chirp of his suit’s proximity alarm alerted to movement behind him. He spun in time to see one of the semi-solid gloppy gray mist things gliding into the airlock, twenty meters away. Wow, that was quick. Let’s hope this works.
It flew straight at him. Just as it was close enough to cause him to panic, a group of his helper bots flew out of the shadows and moved towards the monster from every angle. Attached to each was an energy absorber. He hit the button to close the inner airlock door, and as it swung shut behind the creature, he saw the other waiting in the hallway, almost as if it sensed it was a trap. When the door was firmly closed, the second one gathered by the window. Is it watching? Does it even have eyes?
The screeching of the first mist-thing turned his attention back to events inside the airlock as the front part of it was sucked into two of the bot’s absorbers. It backed up and screeched again as it discovered it was boxed in and trapped. Card smiled and told the bots, “Move in and finish it.”
The robots glided towards each other, forcing the mist to condense into a smaller space. When it reached it’s smallest size, the absorbers dissolved the mist’s energy, causing it to screech. Card thought, yes, it’s working!
Then, something bad happened.
The alien thing focused all of its energy into a single large bolt and drove itself at one robot, causing the absorber to overload and explode, sending the twisted metal of the remains of the bot crashing into the wall.
The creature turned and focused its energy on the next robot and repeated itself. Card watched helplessly as it also exploded. After having created a window of opportunity, the mist re-condensed itself and slipped through the hole in the line of approaching helperbots and resumed flying at Card.
He spun and punched a large red button on a screen floating by the wall and lunged at a handle on the wall.
As the monster was about to envelop Card, the outer airlock door swung open. The room instantly depressurized with a terrible roar, and flushed everything, including the flailing mist, outside. Card held on for a moment, but lost his grip on the handle and was sucked out helplessly into the silent blackness of space.
****
Card’s view of the airlock door shrank as he spun away from the station. He thumbed open a screen and fired the jets on his suit. He was slowed and straightened before the suit pushed him back towards the station. As he traveled, he used the open screen to search for the gelatinous mist thing and found it, several kilometers distant, speeding away from the inertia of being vented from the airlock. It was frozen and, hopefully, dead.
Well, that’s one down. He said, “Come on, bots, let’s get out of here.” He hit a few buttons on the screen and several pinpoints of light blossomed behind him as the still functioning robots fired their jets and flew to join him. When they approached the station they curved their trajectory upwards, toward the tombstone-shaped monolith of the Hennepin jutting out above.
****
The lone mist creature silently floated down a hallway. Each time it came to a doorway on either side, it spread out tendrils of its gelatinous mist into the rooms, and searched for the last human life form…the one that killed its companion. Having found nothing, it continued down the hallway and repeated the process.
****
Inside, Card took off his helmet, sat down at a console, and opened a screen. “Emergency message for the Solar Union Navy. This is Card Mitauk again, giving an update of the situation at Treadway Station. There were two alien creatures responsible for the deaths of everyone on the station. I managed to kill one, but the other is still alive and loose. See the attached footage, which gives a good look at the thing. I’m going to try and escape while I can in the Hennepin. Once I get the computers back online, I’ll send you a third message when I’m safely away and heading to Arm’s Edge Five. I hope to see you…or anyone, for that matter, soon.”