by T. S. Smith
/declassified
/operation/action/event_horizon
/interrogations
end
Interviewer: We need you to be completely honest with us, Susan. We know that you must have heard something from him.
2nd Officer S. Roberts: I’m not a liar, I’m telling you what I know.
11
Susan stood at the CCD aboard the Poseidon and looked out the full-height window towards the Athena II. The communication had expectedly been patchy between her and the crew and she questioned what was happening on the silent ship. During their last conversation, Jax had told her that there was something foreign on the craft that appeared to have killed the crew of researchers and that he and Boyer were going to need to stop it. That thought had terrorized her mind. How could she just sit at the station and wait for another communication? Was she to do nothing while her friends faced something like that? That wasn’t her. She turned away from the ComSat station and went to the emergency supply cabinet where she knew there would be a 9mm gun. Projectile weapons were forbidden on ships as any misfiring, or intentional firing, could damage the seals and depressurize any number of compartments aboard the Poseidon. Under the shelves of equipment was an extra suit which she could wear if she decided to take one of the transport vehicles to the Athena alone and provide backup if needed. She opened the door of the cabinet and looked inside. It was all there, waiting for her.
Susan looked back at the CCD, the computer system was still quiet.
She thought about Holland and what he had said to the team before they departed, that each one of them had a responsibility that they needed to see completed. Her responsibility was to sit at the CCD and wait for communication between the Poseidon and the Athena II, whether it was from her own search team or the crew of scientists. Jax and Boyer had been assigned to protect the crew from hostile life forms. What could she seriously do? The two men had flamethrowers for this very reason. She closed the door of the cabinet and left the ninth snakeskin and the gun inside. Susan walked back to the CCD where she sat down, picked up the headset, and returned her attention to the computer system. The data spread across the glass in long lines of code, one row after another. This was her job to do. It was only natural to be worried about them in her position.
***
I walk this empty ship and all I can think of is how they’ve murdered the others, I know it, I can feel it. Their hands are bloody and their nails are black like mine. Are we not all the same? Is it not in our very nature to propagate violence? The infection courses through their blood just as it does mine where it defiles their hearts and the disease has taken hold of their being. They are dangerous, I can hear it in their words and see it in the soot that grips to their bloody faces. Of course they are, but I won’t bring forth this accusation, no, no, no, no they’d kill me too, just another body for them to carve up. Haven’t I murdered? Am I not just like them, responsible? You are, you let them die just like you let me die, Mears whispers into my ear. But he doesn’t know what we’re going through out here, he’s not here with us. Shut up! I yell back and I hope that no one hears but he needs to be checked from time to time as his words are hurtful. Mears is dangerous and that’s all I need to know, I’ll keep him locked away and I can’t show these people the truth, they’d never understand, I can’t let them see Mears.
12
There lay Dettman and Romavich. The two bodies were crumpled together in a bloody mess laying on the floor side by side. Boyer and Jax stood over the bodies, their nails were black and it was the same with Holland and Suk.
“You did this, didn’t you?” Boyer said to Jax.
“No, something killed these guys, took ‘em out just like it took out Michaels,” Jax said. “I’ve been saying it all along, something is on this thing, we’re flies out here, fucking flies! You and me need to go, Boyer. I’ve heard the thing, it’s here, it’s crawling around. It’s got claws and bloody wings that rise out of its back and it smells like rotten eggs. Its scent disgusts me. We need to keep our flamethrowers nearby and kill the thing when it comes at us.” He turned to Holland and continued, “We can still save the rest of the crew and get out of here, except for Holland. I’ve tried to tell you but you won’t listen. You’re already lost.”
“There’s nothing on the ship except for us, Jax.”
“If there’s nothing out here, then where the fuck is the rest of the crew of the Athena? Did they just disappear? Maybe they jumped off this boat into that hole? And what about us? Don’t you care about us? Look at us,” Jax said as he pointed to Dettman and Romavich. Boyer could see the sweat beneath the man’s mask where it pooled towards the bottom of the mouthpiece. His breath fogged the lower third of the shield. He was tired.
Holland stood in front of the man, he could see through him, and what he saw was a murderer. “There’s nothing else here, you’re right, look at them. Look at the way they’re laying there. Hands and chests are bloodied,” Holland said. And for a short second, he thought of telling the remaining members of the group about the man’s journal, of the infection, but he couldn’t. If he did, they would try to take the Poseidon back to Earth and he couldn’t allow that to happen. Mears knew it too.
“That’s bullshit. No person can do that with their bare hands, you know that, it doesn’t make sense,” Jax said, still pointing at the two crew members on the steel grating. “Those are fucking claw marks, Holland.”
“But what if they did? We found a record in their CCD room,” Yola said. Holland shot Yola a look, what was she doing? Jax was the last of the crew that should know about it.
“A record?” Jax asked and looked at Holland.
Holland looked to Yola and then to the two bodies on the floor.
“What do you mean a record?”
“It was a journal, closer to an instruction,” she said.
Holland looked to Yola, then back to Jax and said, “It was nothing.” Jax couldn’t be allowed to know, he would kill them all. “Listen, nothing is on this ship and it’s time we start discussing our options here.”
“Discuss our options? Okay, let’s discuss our options, we’re going to die out here, Roy. What do you think about that? The last eight years is all for nothing. The training, the preparation, the Confederacy, their money. Look at your crew, three of us are fucking dead, you fool, you ain’t got nothing left. Do you want us to all fall in line to end up like these guys? Anything for Captain Holland, right? Golden boy of the Confederacy. Bullshit. I for one am not going to get torn up by some alien piece of shit and I’m not going to sit here and let you command me around like I’m some little kid that needs mommy. I don’t trust you, Holland, something’s wrong this time. You don’t have Mears here to guide you straight. You don’t even have your crew and all you do is walk around this damn ship acting like our world is coming apart. Grow some fucking balls, it’s time to leave.”
“We’re going to be fine, just calm down and we’ll all be fine,” Holland said trying to maintain himself. “We’re just getting caught up in all of this, let’s slow down and think. The isolation out here is getting to you.”
“The isolation is getting to me? Is that right, Holland? Just like it got to your boy Michaels? What about Dettman and Romavich here? Did the isolation get to them too? Are you kidding me? The isolation has their guts plastered all over this hellhole of a ship. Now, you listen to me Holland, nothing gives you the right to tell me what to do out here, not some title that you wear on your suit, not some bullshit pre-established Confederacy hierarchy, and certainly not your over-inflated ego. You mean nothing to me. I’m not getting my ass carved up by some clawed freak roaming around on this ship, me and Boyer are getting out of here. We got the flame, man, and you got nothing. They sent us out here to take care of this thing, the Confederacy knew about it!”
“Why wouldn’t they tell us about it then? That doesn’t make sense.”
“Why? Just imagine what would happen to the population if they knew somet
hing like this existed out here? That their praised scientific vessel and crew were chopped up by an alien? Terror, that’s what. People would be terrified.”
“There is no alien species aboard this ship, it’s only us, it’s in your head. We’re sticking together and we’re all leaving this ship in one piece and as one team.”
“What was on the instruction, Yola? What didn’t you and Roy tell us about? That was no normal record was it? I know it, I can feel it in both of you. Hell, I can feel it in me. So what’d it say? What’d they say?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about. We need to get back with Roberts, the mission is over,” Holland said. “Look at what we’re doing.”
Boyer spoke up, “Yeah, easy for you to say, bangin’ good old Roberts back on the Poseidon? A hot squeeze like that is a real convenient thing to have out in deep space, isn’t it, Holland boy? Calms you down some, doesn’t it? I wouldn’t mind going back and getting a chance to slide it in her a few times too, maybe we could pal up.”
“You son of a bitch,” Holland said feeling it inside.
Don’t let him talk about her, Roy, Mears said.
“Oh, that’s alright, we all get a little lonely every now and again. Roberts ain’t bad lookin’ either. With a nice female piece of tail like that, mmm mmm mmm. Better lookin’ than the old wife you used to have anyway. Roberts is a true beauty.”
Asshole! Mears yelled.
Holland ran and speared Boyer in the chest plate of his suit down to the metal floor grating, the O2 tank hit hard. “You bastard, I’ll kill you,” he yelled as he smashed the man’s face shield with his fists. Without thinking, he wrapped his dirtied hands round Boyer’s neck and pressed his thumb deep into the man’s windpipe beneath the snakeskin. As Boyer struggled for breath, the broken crew jumped on Holland and pulled him up. He smelled the eggs, the rotten eggs just like Jax had mentioned.
The team broke with Suk, Yola, and Holland to one side, Jax and Boyer to the other. And as Holland glanced from person to person, he saw that they were all afflicted with the same ailment as he was. It was paranoia, it was evil, and it had spread. Their trust in one another had been shattered and their assignment compromised. They were cornered animals, staring at each other, ready to strike. There would be no bringing the group back, the pull at their beings was too great, throwing them closer and closer to the horizon. They were infected and it would need to be settled.
Jax centered himself between the remaining members, “Now you guys can listen to this big asshole if you want, but quite frankly I’m sick of it and I’m sick of him. He broke protocol and brought us on this damn ship and three of us are dead. This is his fault.” Jax pointed at Holland, his chest heaving from the struggle. “He has no one to blame but himself, you all can see it, you all know it just like I do, this guy isn’t going to get us out of here, he’s going to get us killed! I’m not doing it anymore man, I’m not doing it.”
“Yeah, so what are you doing then?” Holland asked.
Holding up the nozzle of the flame canister, Jax said, “I’m going to burn these mother fuckers out. I’m gunna burn all those white-ass bodies spread out on this piece of shit, every one of these rotten infested carcasses, and none of you,” now pointing at Holland, Yola, and Suk, “none of you are going to come anywhere near me when I do it. You hear me? Then me and Boyer here are leaving this ship and going back home, to the Poseidon, ALIVE. Then you can live with your isolation, Roy. Get me?”
Holland glared with hatred at Jax as the man divided the team, divided everything that he had worked so hard to achieve in his life. Boyer and Jax stood on one side while Holland, Yola, and Suk stood on the other, the line was set. The red emergency lighting system spun round and round between them, casting shadows all encompassing. And as the shadows twirled and danced they disclosed faces stricken with grief, anger and confusion under the shields of the five remaining snakeskins. The group stood together for the last time outside of the room where Romavich and Dettman’s bodies lay, no longer a team but murderous strangers caught up in the game of death. Boyer lifted his fingers to his neck, adjusted the locking mechanism, and lowered the golden hued mask back down over his face. The silver oxygen prongs of his mask lifted back into place showing him to be the serpent that he was. Jax left his mask up with his face exposed.
The two stepped back toward the threshold of the hallway where they would cross the point of no return, holding defiant murderous intent, a transgression against their once cohesive group and against Holland as a man. All of them had crossed the line with treacherous mutiny, even Holland, who had always been loyal to his calling above all else. And while the two dissenters abandoned rationale and made for the shredded bodies which they would burn, the inner workings of the group crumbled away leaving behind only heavy hearts and blackened nails.
***
He needs to be dealt with, Mears tells me. I tell him I know but he doesn’t listen to me, he’s just the same as he’s always been, defiant, a lunatic. It’s just like before when he said he’d be okay but he wasn’t, he needed me. You let me die, he says, and you let her die too, he says. I’ve tried to convince him that I tried to help, that I tried, but he doesn’t care what I tried to do, he still blames me for their deaths. I ask if he could just forgive me and let me off this ship and out of this hell, but he doesn’t care. And he even watches me in my sleep, yes, they watch me in my sleep too, all of them. When was the last time I slept? I don’t know anymore, I think three days. All I see in my dreams now are the dim corridors of the deathly beast where I walk alone and the sirens sing and the wretched aroma of burning flesh and rotten eggs fills my nostrils. These are my only dreams now. They’ll kill you, he whispers in my ears. I know that, he doesn’t need to tell me that, I know. You need to kill them first just like you killed us. What? I ask, I didn’t kill you, I say. Mears tells me they’re infected and it’s obvious and wonders why I hadn’t seen it before. He asks me if I’ve seen their nails, I say yes, and he says that everyone’s nails go black eventually. He tells me that I’ve been alone for too long, that I’ve been out here for too long, just running, running from this damn infection of my thoughts and of my spirit.
13
After Jax and Boyer left from the group, Suk suggested that they all needed to stick together. He had only two ideas, either something was attacking the group and picking them off one by one, or someone. And who was that someone? Suk thought he knew: Jax. He was the one that had been alone when Michaels had gone missing and was eventually found dead. He was the only one, if not him, then who? It was reasonable enough and he was sure that Holland felt the same way.
The corridors seemed to stretch into longer tunnels than they had been before. Their lengths were elongated and their halls were filled with a deep red that reminded Suk of a fiery hell. He wasn’t a religious man and had always believed himself to be extremely practical. He only believed in what he saw and he only thought possible what he understood to be real. If anything was beyond his reasoning, it was only a matter of time before it would be understood by someone and written about in a textbook somewhere. But this place was different, the Athena II was possessed. It was as if evil itself lurked within its very walls.
Suk peered out a port-side window at the event horizon of V616 Mon, a grand emptiness that called to him from the space beyond. It floated there, dark, a sphere of nothing and he imagined that was what death felt like. Black relief. What was on the other side? What had come of the research that the Athena II had set out to achieve for the Earth Confederacy? The hole stared back at him revealing no light or physical object for his eyes to focus on. It was lost in the black canopy behind the ship but it was beautiful though, it certainly was.
Feed me, it said. I need your strength. Suk tried to ignore the call of V616 but it continued. Let me eat and I’ll let you go. I’ll let you take me back to the Poseidon.
He ignored the call.
Suk turned and saw that the Poseidon seemed closer to the Athe
na II now than it actually was. The light sparkled off of her hull but it still wasn’t quite visible. He looked back down the corridor which glowed red and then he looked back out at the angelic Poseidon. It was like a strange version of heaven and hell, and he was in the latter. The crew members were killing each other. He felt their betrayal and he understood it. All of them were evil and they all needed to be silenced. What better silence was there than space?
The Transport Vehicle! he thought. He just needed to make it back to the small ship and he could pilot it to the Poseidon alone where he would join up with Roberts. The rest of the crew would be stranded out in the deep of space where they belonged, never to return again. He saw what they were doing to each other. He could report it all back to Roberts and to the Confederacy, the crew of the Poseidon and Athena II had been lost to an infectious deadly disease. Luckily, he and Roberts would survive to tell the tale. The two of them would pilot the Poseidon back to Earth where they could live out the rest of their lives in peace.
He saw that the nails on his hands were black and shut his eyes and stood there in silence. It was in him too but he didn’t care. The will to survive overwhelmed him. Suk needed to go on, even if he had to do it alone.
Feed me, the voice said.
The doctor pulled his hand from above the port-side window and brought it back down to the shielded visor of his helmet. The transport vehicle was just a little further down the corridor, beyond the cargo room with the large storage containers and mechanical claw where it was docked against the UDS in the loading station. It wouldn’t take long, he could make it back in a short amount of time. He didn’t even have to kill the rest of them, just silence them by leaving them in the deep of space and letting the Athena II go critical. He could activate the engines and set the Athena II on a disastrous course for V616 and then pilot the transport himself back to the Poseidon. He could make it. It was true, he could feed the voice and make it back.