All the little lost boys and girls (Update: 26/5/12)

[iborg]

Write faster indeed. I'm looking forward to pissing my pants

[Bladed_Crescent]

Day five and you're happy to just be alive. One tale closes, as others begin to unravel themselves...

Coming up: Knock knock.
Who's there?
Eye.
Eye who?
Eye see you.

Chapter 44:

Day Five:

It was cold here.

Quiet, too. The only sound was the rattling and muted rumbling of the air vents as they worked to keep the chamber as cold as possible. Reams of frost touched the walls along the seams between bulkheads and the hinges of doors. There was no motion. Nothing but the slow rippling of plastic and cloth in the chilled, recirculated air as body bags and soiled blankets stirred in the artificial breeze.

Dog tags had been collected and corporate IDs removed. Casualties recorded, a copy of the names left on a glowing terminal that someone had forgotten to turn off.

The overhead lights bathed the entire scene in a cold blue glow, making the room’s chill seem deeper and the chamber even less inviting. One small detail among many. A pale hand hung out from beneath a sheet. Red streaks marred the floor, where one corpse was dropped and hastily dragged into place beside another. A shape inside a body bag that ended at the shoulders. Many little things.

And one not so little.

“Aaah!” Jason screamed as he bolted upright, clawing at the vinyl covering his face, flingers blindly fighting with the zipper, pulling it down and blinking in discomfort as the soft blue light touched his eyes and the chill of the makeshift morgue puckered his skin. Panting, the petty officer rolled onto his side. “What...” he said into the silence. “What...” What am I doing here? Where is everyone?

unsafe

He kicked the bag off and rolled on his side, wincing and putting a hand to his ribs as pain shot through him, biting back a scream as he moved his right arm and a spiderweb of agony radiated out from it. He looked down. “What...” His entire forearm was discoloured as if it were a single, ugly pus-bloated bruise. The skin of his arm was sagging away from the muscle as the tissue beneath it decayed, the nerves within singing in constant pain. Sickly dark trails shot up past his elbow like blood poisoning, as if the infection were still spreading. He could barely use the limb at all; his hand was completely numb, dying nerves and muscles causing his fingers to twitch spasmodically.

His breath created steam clouds in the air as he stood up, shaking on his legs. The scent of blood and meat filled the room and his stomach gurgled. What happened? He was still trying to comprehend the situation as he staggered towards the door. Every part of his body seemed to pulse with dull, throbbing aches, his stomach churning, craving... just craving. He blinked against the light; it was low, but it still hurt his eyes.

The petty officer looked around – there was no one here. Shouldn’t there be someone here? Gemma – where was she? He couldn’t... there were flashes, images he couldn’t quite see. Words he couldn’t quite hear. He knew that they explained this, but he couldn’t...

too cold

Panting, Jason braced himself against the computer terminal. It beeped as he pressed down on a key, catching his attention as the system came out of standby. He frowned, trying to make sense of the words, his tired brain finally realizing what it said there. Casualty List. And there, at the top of the screen, was his name.

JASON VEERS (petty officer, 1st class)

find nest

He shook his head. No. No, that’s impossible. It’s a joke. Some sick joke they’re playing. “You’re lying,” he snapped, suddenly angry, pounding a fist on the keyboard. “You’re lying! You’re lying!” And then, he noticed the ragged gaps in the pale, red-stained hospital gown he was wearing. Six of them, staggered across his chest. Bullet holes. He touched a finger to one, poking it through and touching his chest. He couldn’t feel any wound, but the flesh there felt... odd. Jason remembered looking down the barrel of a gun, the feel of the bullets as they entered his chest. His eyes became unfocused as the memory came crashing back, bucking as if he were being shot all over again. “You shot me,” he managed to gasp. “You shot me.” Why? Why did they shoot me? What happened?

“This isn’t real,” he said to himself as he felt something shift under the patched skin, moving of its own accord. “This isn’t real.” Please God, make this not real. Then: “You killed me!” he screamed to the air, seizing the computer in both hands, ignoring the agony that shot through his decaying arm as he shook the terminal violently. “You fucking bastards! You shot me and left me here like garbage!” Even his rage wasn’t enough to overcome the pain razoring through his body and he had to stop, cursing quietly and cradling his arm. The exertion had split his skin, dead, grey strips of epidermis hanging off the diseased flesh. “What did you do to me?” he asked no one in particular.

A woman, there had been a woman... she’d had a needle.

They did this to me. They poisoned me, shot me. Why? Why? Where’s Gemma? Gemma... he remembered her, but... where was she? He hurriedly scrawled through the list of names, but didn’t see hers. “They took her,” he breathed, equal parts shock, horror and fury. That’s why they did this. To keep me from her. Jason laughed, bracing his good arm against the wall, manic giggles yelping from between his gritted teeth.

“I trusted you,” he said to the air. “I trusted you all...” He touched a hand to his head. His skin felt clammy and warm. Too warm. What did that bitch do to me? No. No, it didn’t matter. He had to find... he had to find Gemma.

find nest

Jason clutched his sides again, feeling new movement under his ribs. There was something very wrong with him. It was inside him, this sickness. He could feel it burning under his skin, coiling around his organs, whispering in his head. Not in words, not in pictures, but in needs. Awful, primal, instinctive needs. It was telling him things, awful things, and it was getting louder by the second.

eat and grow and nest and spread and eat and eat and eat

Eat.

“What is this?” he begged aloud. He had to keep speaking, had to form the words. In his head, his thoughts were greasy and slippery, falling back down into the void the sickness was making. It wanted, it needed so much. He remembered more. Doctor Mandell... then there’d been the sounds of screaming and the taste of blood. He’d... he’d killed those people.

eat kill eat kill eat kill EAT

That was what the sickness wanted, the thing inside him. It was getting louder and he doubled over from the sudden agony of his empty belly, worse than his arm. “There’s nothing here!” he shouted at the voice. It couldn’t hear him – it wasn’t even a voice, not really. But he knew what it wanted. “There’s nothing there!” he said again, trying to make it – make himself – listen. “There’s no food!”

But there was.

~

Corporal Nagashido died at 3:31 AM, GMT.

The gurney squeaked as it rolled down the corridor, its one bad wheel wobbling. Daisy had pleaded with Mandell to requisition a grav-gurney, or at least one with four good wheels, but for reasons she’d never understood, the doctor had refused. She’d even suspected that he’d ‘misplaced’ her maintenance requests for it. He’d told her once that that squeaking wheel gave the affair of wheeling a corpse into the morgue the proper atmosphere. To Daisy, that had sounded like horseshit, but he was the CMO. He was... he’d been... allowed to be eccentric.

So she’d put up with the cart with the squeaky wheel, glad that she hadn’t had to use it all that much.

Until now, of course. Primal’s morgue wasn’t big enough for all the casualties, so they’d had to use one of the storage bays to house the overflow (and wasn’t that just such an apt word for it!).

It wasn’t supposed to be like this.

She knew the general plan; by now, they were supposed to have reached the station’s core and begun work on restoring its primary systems. Instead, they hadn’t even made it out of the hangar. The frigate’s transmissions back to home base had become more pleading with each dispatch as the crews prayed for someone to hear them, to let them know that they weren’t alone. Seven hours ago, they’d received a message in response.

It was their latest desperate plea for help relayed back at them from the enemy – and it is an enemy, isn’t it? – frigate sitting outside the station. Morale had not been significantly boosted.

“They’re listening,” she remembered some of the crew whispering to each other. “They’re listening to us and they’re laughing. Watching us. Waiting.”

Daisy sighed, turning the last corner towards the makeshift morgue, sighing as the gurney’s squeaky wheel stuck on the turn, as it always did. Proper atmosphere. Right.

~

Less hungry now.

~

“Here’s your new home, corporal,” the nurse said in a dull, tired tone as she stopped in front of the cargo door. “Rent’s low and the neighbours are quiet. I’m sure you’ll like it.” There was no one to hear the joke and even Luttenbaker didn’t think it was funny, but it was better than listening to the squeaking wheel as she pushed another body into this over-sized freezer. Another. Not the last.

Daisy tapped the entry code to the storage bay, pushing the squeaking gurney into the room, feeling her skin pucker as the cold sent goosebumps up her arms.

“The pool’s being cleaned, but when it’s ready, you can...” she said under her breath, not even looking up, trying to avoid the sight of the rows of corpses as long as possible. “You can...”

He was sitting on his haunches, his back to her as he leaned over another body. Daisy opened her mouth to query the unexpected visitor, assuming him to be just another grieving friend, when she noticed the mess of bones and gore around his feet, heard the wet smacking sounds and saw the way his head bobbed up and down. What... what in... she struggled to make sense of what she was seeing, taking a backwards step towards the open door.

The cart squeaked as it rolled away from her.

He stopped what he was doing, his head snapping up, but he wasn’t looking at her, merely listening. It was possible he would have looked at her. It was also possible that he would have simply gone back to his meal, but Daisy gasped as she recognized the red, dripping face. Veers.

Now, he did look towards her, bloody lips turning upwards in an empty grin. He straightened, turning towards her. His left arm still clutched a gobbet of meat. His right hung limply at his side, strings of skin hanging off it like torn flypaper, the flesh discoloured as if it were bruised and rotten.

“Security to Cargo Five,” Daisy said into her comm. “Please hurry.”

“It’s in me,” he whispered as he took a step towards her, squeezing the bit of meat in his hand so tightly that ligaments and blood oozed out from between his fingers, running down his arm and dripping down into the pool around his feet. “This is what it is. The music of the spears. Do you hear it, Gem? Can you feel it?” He took another step towards her.

The nurse clicked her comm again. “Security...” she whispered, desperately as Veers drew closer. She wanted to run, but she couldn’t make her feet move, couldn’t pull her eyes away from the bloodstained golem in front of her.

“Gemma,” he sighed as he stood before Daisy, leaning down and putting his head on the nurse’s shoulder. “It hurts.”

It was all the woman could do not to scream at his touch. He was pressed against her and she could... she could... she could feel something moving under his skin, bulging his torso. She tried to speak but only a rasp of air escaped her lips.

“You can feel it, can’t you?” his tone was tired, desperate. “You’ve felt it too. That’s what it tells me.” He put his good arm around her. “I’m so sorry Gemma. We shouldn’t have come here..”

“It’s... it’s all right, Jason,” Daisy whispered, finally finding her voice. Get away get away get away get away.

“It’s inside me,” he whispered, tears running down his eyes. “Something awful and beautiful. I feel so cold, Gemma.” His skin was warm, too warm. “But it’ll be all right.”

She felt him smile, squeezing her eyes shut so that she wouldn’t have to see it, wouldn’t have to see the blood and drool running over his lips, nor the bits of flesh stuck between his teeth. “It will,” she forced herself to say. Each breath she took seemed to last hours; it felt like ages, not seconds since she’d called for help. Please hurry, her terrified mind pounded that one thought over and over. Please hurry. Please hurry/

“I don’t know...” Veers said. “It’s inside me, Gem. I can feel it.” He made a noise halfway between a laugh and a sob. “I’m pregnant.”

It was only inertia that allowed the nurse to answer. “It’s all right,” Luttenbakker said in a frightened near-monotone.

“No...” Jason shook his head. “It isn’t.”

“It will be.” Please hurry. Please hurry. Please hurry.

“It won’t.” His hand came up, tightening on her throat. Luttenbaker gasped, trying to loosen the petty officer’s grip, but he didn’t even seem to register her struggles. He leaned in, discoloured eyes staring into hers. “Because you’re not Gemma.”

feed

~

It was hard to ‘lounge’ whilst in full power armour, but Lieutenant Godfrey still managed to do so. She was sitting on an upended crate, the metal frame slowly buckling under the trooper’s weight. For now, it was holding and that was enough for the lieutenant as she drummed the heel of her left foot against the side of the case.

Thump. Thump. Thump.

“Really annoying, LT,” Cynthia commented, the corporal’s helmet coming up to look at her squad leader. Black’s helmet was personalized with a cosmetic grille over her mouth, the helm painted to look like a snarling-mouthed shark. Jane was in between designs at the moment; her last paint-job had been a simple spiderweb radiating out from the center of her mask, with a black widow hanging on a thread from the corner of her right eye.

“Isn’t that a shame.” Thump. Thump. Thump.

Cynthia’s head came up, moving only slightly from side to side as she scanned the bay for the third time in as many minutes. Her fingers tapped against the side of her weapon; unlike the heavy multi-barrel cyclic cannons – miniguns in another age – that most of the squad carried, the corporal’s weapon was a single long-barrelled pistol. ‘Pistol’ being an operative term, of course. Mounted on Black’s forearm just like a cannon, the Hammertong MX-9 was a drum-fed weapon equally capable of blowing the engine block out of most light vehicles and cracking power armour, with an effective range of up to a kilometer. Though not as powerful or long-ranged as the ‘Red Widow’, a powered armour-compatible anti-material rifle, it provided G Squad with some much-needed ranged firepower. Cyclic cannons were all well and good – and certainly effective enough at killing other heavy infantry – but they were primarily intended to shred lighter-armoured troops at relatively short quarters – perfect for boarding actions and other close-in actions. On an open battlefield, more of the Ghosts would be outfitted with weapons like the Hammertong than not. “Yes, LT. Is.” A beat. “It is,” Cynthia corrected herself, touching her left hand to her temple. The buzzing was still there.

Jane paused a moment, then nodded and stopped the idle swing of her leg. Things were quiet now and had been for the last day. She hoped that meant that those... those things had already shot their wad, but she wasn’t so sure. The trooper took her own look out at the bay; the distant floor was twitching. Small animals, wormlike things – she’d never seen their like before and didn’t want to again – had followed the carnage, slurping up the remains of the dead attackers, bloating themselves on charred organs and shattered bones. They were so thorough that in places, the deck looked as if it had just been polished.

Occasionally some of the soldiers on the line would take potshots at the scavengers, but the ugly things were harmless; they only approached Primal’s defences when they were trying to slop up some more carrion. Jane shook her head. Was that even the right word? ‘Carrion’ meant dead flesh and she had the nagging thought that the severed limbs and chunks of ruined meat weren’t so much dead as dormant. That was probably just her imagination. At least, that’s what she hoped.

The lieutenant eased off the crate, moving along the defence line, nodding at the soldiers and civilians she passed. Here, a private with a bandaged hand nervously checked and re-checked the ammo belt running into a machine gun. There, a pair of Hadley-Wright techs busied themselves looking through some of the salvage taken from the other ships in the bay. Here, a solider crouched against a barricade, pale and muttering to himself. He didn’t look up as Jane passed. There, another of her Ghosts – Gregori Jakov – stood like a statue, staring out into the darkness of the hangar. His head cocked towards Godfrey. “Keptin,” he said in a thick Novaya Union accent. The longstanding joke – she wasn’t a captain and Gregori’s English was flawless – felt dry and forced now, but she made herself chuckle all the same.

There were about eighty, maybe ninety people outside the ship at the moment – more than Godfrey would have expected, but there was something about Primal.... everyone was on edge, but inside the ship felt like a pressure cooker. Three hundred souls mashed together, stewing in their own fear. There’d been several fights, one she’d had to break up herself. People were hurting each other... and themselves. She’d heard rumours of just how bad things were starting to get, seen it with her own eyes.

Out here, nothing was really all that different. But you could see the emptiness of the bay, know that you weren’t going to die right now. Inside, you had to wait. Wait until the alerts sounded and then wonder if this was the time the line would break. When those things would start banging on the hull, looking for a way in.

The trooper moved through the battlements, pausing to offer words of encouragement here or share a comment there. Each time her words felt as bereft of meaning as Gregori’s joke.

They’re all going to die here, a voice nagged at her. There’s nothing you can do, lieutenant. You’re going to watch each and every one of them die.

Shut up, she told the voice, but it only went away for a little bit, coming back and whispering the same ugly truths – lies! – over and over again.

“Look,” a nearby soldier said, drawing Jane’s attention. IFF pegged him as PFC Johnathan Hacker. He pointed out across the bay. “Look.”

Jane didn’t bother chastising the man for forgetting her rank. The trooper rested her hands against the rim of a portable barricade, looking out into the hangar, her blacklight making it seem as clear as day. Image enhancement, multiple scan modes and pattern recognition software ran as Godfrey took in the rest of the hangar. There was nothing there. “They’re out there,” Hacker insisted. “They’re out there. You see them? You see them, right, lieutenant?”

The trooper clapped the soldier on the shoulder even as she made a note to have him cycled out as soon as possible. “I see them, private,” she said, offering another set of empty words. “I see them.”

You can’t save them, the voice said as she headed back through the cordon of men and women defending the frigate, trying not to look at their faces, trying not to think about how many of her friends were missing or how many more were going join them before this was all over. You can’t save them, you can’t protect them. They’re your friends and they’re all going to die because you’re not strong enough. You can’t save them.

“Yes, I can,” Jane hissed through her teeth. “I can.”

“Security alert,” Control’s voice rasped through the trooper’s comm. “We have a confirmed shipboard security alert.”

~

find nest

A facsimile that walked and talked and remembered everything that was Jason Veers shambled through Primal’s corridors, its belly swollen, its face and remaining hand dripping red, a tattered cloth flapping as it moved, eventually falling free and left where it lay. It still thought of itself as Jason Veers, still imagined itself to be the man whose flesh it wore. The truth was, it was not and had not been so for some time. When that had occurred was open to debate, but if certain individuals were present, they would have guessed that what had woken in sickbay was not Jason Veers. It was instead the scraps of a psyche still fighting to remain intact, much as a drowning man might snatch at reeds to avoid being swallowed by a whirlpool, if only for a few seconds more.

spread

Flotsam and jetsam from a dying nerve net fed into a growing function system, giving this thing the appearance of life and memory and perhaps in some way, it was still sentient, still aware. Perhaps it even understood what was happening to it. Forced to watch as some corrupt part of itself acted and spoke, unable to speak or scream, unable to fight, the reeds snapping one by one.

predators near

The whispers that it so feared, that it dreaded and occasionally succumbed to were, in fact, its true instincts. There was no personality here; the fading pieces of Jason Veers’ mind were running in parallel to this blind atavism. What they did, thought, felt and spoke, was wholly irrelevant to what this body would actually do. Just as those fragments had quailed at the thought of excising the poisoned flesh from its body, the instinctive need to survive, to keep that inexplicable toxin away from its vital tissues, had won out. It hadn’t understood what was wrong with it, only that it should have been healing and it wasn’t. The sensory information from the decaying limb was what the host would have called pain, but it only recognized it as damage.

get away

In truth, the thing wearing a dead man’s face knew no fear, no love, no hate. It only thought of preserving itself for a little while longer, plundered memories imprinting themselves on a thought process scarcely deserving of the name. But while it didn’t know what such terms as ‘primary life support’ and ‘air processing’ actually meant, the remnants of its host’s mind were clear enough for it make an adequate translation.

good nest safe nest

it’s time

~

Better than a tracking hound, the chemosensor shrilled an affirmation as it followed its prey’s scent, the dabs of blood on the bulkheads and floors punctuating the device’s analysis.

“This way,” Specialist Davis Retries confirmed to his squadmates as the security team pounded through Primal’s corridors. The closest team to Cargo Five, they’d arrived to the morgue too late for Luttenbaker, an expression of terror frozen on what was left of the nurse’s face. She’d been mutilated and gnawed upon.

The specialist’s guts churned with acid, his teeth grinding over one another. Veers... he’d killed two people already and Daisy had been his third victim. Retries didn’t know what was wrong with the man and he didn’t care, not anymore. Luttenbaker had been a friend. She hadn’t deserved to die like that. He only hoped he was the one who got the chance to put that rabid dog down. For good this time. This time, there’s not going to be anything left of you, Veers.

They didn’t even need their sensors, not really. The petty officer’s trail was clear enough. Bloody footprints, droplets and smears on the floor, handprints on the walls. Frightened crewmembers and passengers. A torn hospital gown. A rotting, blackened arm lay where Veers had overriden safety protocols and used a pressure hatch to amputate it.

He was heading away from the teams searching for him, deeper into the ship and towards environmental control. God only knew what Veers was thinking, but EC was a dead end. That was where the chase was going to end.

~

It was time.

There was no longer a need to keep the host alive and it convulsed as its remade organs were forced into hyperdrive, a final powerful burst of activity that, if it somehow survived that long, would surely kill it in minutes. Hands danced over keyboards as a dying, futilely fighting consciousness turned the knowledge of Jason Veers into something he would never have wanted, serving a wordless, implacable need. Even at this moment, it still thought of itself as that man, mumbling to itself in nonsense riddles, calling out for a woman who couldn’t answer, weeping and apologizing, cursing and pleading. It didn’t realize that it was dead. It still hoped, even as it slipped further into the void.

Another reed snapped.

Its torso pulsed and stirred as it hyperventilated, engorged lungs wheezing out powerful breaths. In life, Jason Veers had worked on the engineering crews that helped to service Primal’s life-sustaining systems, from the chained nova at the ship’s heart to the bellows and byways of its life support systems, the many air vents that ran throughout the frigate’s length and breadth. It knew that what it was doing wouldn’t last, would be overridden in a matter of moments by the ship’s artificial intelligence or its crew. That didn’t matter.

With a roar, the air circulation systems kicked into overdrive and the thing with a dead man’s face stumbled towards the air processor.

~

The door whooshed open, ushering a waft of foul-smelling air into Davis’ face and he gagged from the awful, reeking stench of it, coughing into his hand, nearly retching. “Move!” the sarge bellowed. “Get in there – I don’t care what you smell!” The team filtered into the air processor, snapping on their torches. Veers had shut off the lights, probably in some last-ditch attempt to hide.

Retries coughed again, his throat and nose burning from the odour. What was it? It didn’t smell like anything he’d ever experienced. Death and fertile soil, chemicals and blood all mixed together. He moved forward, listening to the dying roar of the rushing air as normal flow levels were restored. His eyes stung, watering in the pestilent atmosphere – what was causing that? – but he followed Veers’s footprints, almost hoping the psychopath would leap at him. Two in the heart, one in the head. That was just to start.

There; the specialist caught site of a pair of withered legs, laying motionless on the floor. He signalled to the rest of the team and circled around... “God...” he heard himself whisper. “God.”

Behind him, Latoya made the sign of the Starsingers across her chest, muttered curses and imprecations following as the rest of the team laid eyes on Petty Officer Jason Veers.

What was left of him.

It was if he’d been hollowed out from the inside; broken ribs jabbed into the air, piercing torn ribbons of flesh. There was nothing inside the petty officer’s torso, nothing but a network of dark tendrils that hung limply through his burst skin. He lay in a pool of blood, scratchmarks and two sets of strange, small footprints circled his emptied corpse, at last leading up the wall to an air shaft, the slats of the grille covering it broken inwards, the tips stained with some foul liquid.

“God,” Retries heard someone say again in his own voice. “God. They... they came out of him.”

And there, on the floor, scrawled in a shaking hand in his own life’s blood, was Jason Veers’s last message to the world.

IT’S TIME.

[Night_stalker]

Very Alienesque ending...

Now the threat's in the vents, so that means you need some redshi-, I mean volunteers to go clean out any infestation in them. I really hope that the frigate isn't too badly overrun by the end, I mean, how else will the protagonists escape?

[Chaotic Neutral]

Why does it need to have a happy ending?

[LadyTevar]

TWO small sets of footprints?
OMG.. so he's not just a Turned, he was something else entirely. *shudders*

[iborg]

It gets worse ! As if we didn't expect that.

[Swindle1984]

TWO small sets of footprints?
OMG.. so he's not just a Turned, he was something else entirely. *shudders*

He was an incubator!


DROP 47 is like what would happen if the Aliens, the Thing, the Flood, the Necromorphs, and a huge bottle of industrial-grade Fucked Up got shut in a room and made babies.

[xt828]

I'm not familiar with the Flood - what's it from?

[Night_stalker]

Halo, the video game series?

Just google "Halo Flood" and you should be taken to halo wiki's page on them, which can describe them a lot better than I could in this space.

[Sky Captain]

O shit! Chestbusters on the loose! Cleanse them with thermonuclear FIRE

[LT.Hit-Man303]

TWO small sets of footprints?
OMG.. so he's not just a Turned, he was something else entirely. *shudders*

He was an incubator!


DROP 47 is like what would happen if the Aliens, the Thing, the Flood, the Necromorphs, and a huge bottle of industrial-grade Fucked Up got shut in a room and made babies.

Necromorphs?
What are they?, they sound like my ex-GFs

[Swindle1984]

TWO small sets of footprints?
OMG.. so he's not just a Turned, he was something else entirely. *shudders*

He was an incubator!


DROP 47 is like what would happen if the Aliens, the Thing, the Flood, the Necromorphs, and a huge bottle of industrial-grade Fucked Up got shut in a room and made babies.

Necromorphs?
What are they?, they sound like my ex-GFs

Bladed_Crescent pointed them out as one of the inspirations for the story. They're the monsters from Dead Space.

Alien, Aliens, The Thing, Halo, Dead Space, and maybe a little 2001: A Space Oddyssey all seem to be adding to the unique flavor of the story. You can see what inspired him while enjoying something entirely original. He's not cribbing at all; the man has talent.

[LT.Hit-Man303]

Bladed_Crescent pointed them out as one of the inspirations for the story. They're the monsters from Dead Space.

Alien, Aliens, The Thing, Halo, Dead Space, and maybe a little 2001: A Space Oddyssey all seem to be adding to the unique flavor of the story. You can see what inspired him while enjoying something entirely original. He's not cribbing at all; the man has talent.

Ic and I do agree with you that CB has some major talent, could you imagen what would happen if he wrote children's books LOL

[Bladed_Crescent]

Work is kicking my ass - hope to have the next chapter up anywhere from tomorrow to over this weekend.

Very Alienesque ending...

Now the threat's in the vents, so that means you need some redshi-, I mean volunteers to go clean out any infestation in them. I really hope that the frigate isn't too badly overrun by the end, I mean, how else will the protagonists escape?

Well, seeing as we already know what happened to Primal's people....

Why does it need to have a happy ending?

Well, I suppose that depends on what the given value of "happy" is. I mean, no matter what happens someone is going to be happy...

TWO small sets of footprints?
OMG.. so he's not just a Turned, he was something else entirely. *shudders*

And that's the reason why our nameless woman was so worried about the effects of an infector R-type's infestation...

It gets worse ! As if we didn't expect that.

Oh, there's plenty more in store...

This is mother.

Mother says hi.

She's very hungry.

He was an incubator!

Partly...

DROP 47 is like what would happen if the Aliens, the Thing, the Flood, the Necromorphs, and a huge bottle of industrial-grade Fucked Up got shut in a room and made babies.

Heh.

O shit! Chestbusters on the loose! Cleanse them with thermonuclear FIRE

Ah heh heh heh.

And what, I wonder, did they get up to afterwards...?

could you imagen what would happen if he wrote children's books LOL

True story: in eighth grade I wrote a story about my pet turtles. The next day after I was sick, when I returned to school the day after that, I found out the teacher had been so impressed by it that she'd read it it aloud to the rest of the class and sent it in to a publisher.

About a month later, I received a letter back from that publisher. In it, among other things, he told me that I should seek psychological counselling.

So despite my blossoming collection of rejection letters, I take comfort in knowing that I haven't been told that I'm mentally disturbed...

...again, anyways.

[LT.Hit-Man303]

[quote="Bladed_Crescent"]Work is kicking my ass - hope to have the next chapter up anywhere from tomorrow to over this weekend.

*Well, seeing as we already know what happened to Primal's people....*

Yep and the fun and games has just begun



*Well, I suppose that depends on what the given value of "happy" is. I mean, no matter what happens someone is going to be happy...*

Yep and I bet that some one is not going to be human



*And that's the reason why our nameless woman was so worried about the effects of an infector R-type's infestation...*

I hear you on that, sounds like the party has gotten off to a good start though


*Oh, there's plenty more in store...

This is mother.

Mother says hi.

She's very hungry.*

Here kitty kitty

*He was an incubator!*

*Partly...*

Really you mean there is more to this then just being a walking womb?

*DROP 47 is like what would happen if the Aliens, the Thing, the Flood, the Necromorphs, and a huge bottle of industrial-grade Fucked Up got shut in a room and made babies.*

*Heh.*

Seconded and thirded, this is getting really twisted which is why I love this story

*O shit! Chestbusters on the loose! Cleanse them with thermonuclear FIRE*

*Ah heh heh heh.*

*And what, I wonder, did they get up to afterwards...?*


Do we really want to know?...HELL YES!

*could you imagen what would happen if he wrote children's books LOL*

*True story: in eighth grade I wrote a story about my pet turtles. The next day after I was sick, when I returned to school the day after that, I found out the teacher had been so impressed by it that she'd read it it aloud to the rest of the class and sent it in to a publisher.

About a month later, I received a letter back from that publisher. In it, among other things, he told me that I should seek psychological counselling.

So despite my blossoming collection of rejection letters, I take comfort in knowing that I haven't been told that I'm mentally disturbed...

...again, anyways.*

Hey don't sweat it, I have been fucking nuts since I was 4, after awhile you get use it, if anything it sure does give you a diffrent out look on life, do you still have that story btw?

[Bladed_Crescent]

In this chapter, Abigail and Shannon press onwards and elsewhere, a confrontation is about to begin.

Coming up: Day six and you're trapped in the Styx.


Chapter 45:

Abigail gave Shannon a shove through the open door as the hunter-things rushed towards the mercenaries. “Seal it!” she shouted, backing inside after the shorter woman.

get to the console/deactivate circuit path 11-2/armoured bone incapable of cutting through bulkhead

More vibrations, accompanied by flashes of light as Abigail opened up. The Turned’s chitinous armour was enough to stop small-caliber rounds, but the fire from Abby’s carbine tore through them, globules of diseased blood pouring out through the holes in their shattered carapaces, choking off as the creatures’ impossible regenerative abilities closed the wounds. Thankfully though, for all their cosmetic resemblance to their more massive kin, these Turned were not quite like Unity and did not possess the praetorian’s monstrous intelligence. They were simple guardians and made no attempt to conceal themselves or evade the fire ripping through them – whatever passed for their minds trusted in speed, durability and sheer aggression to see them through to their prey.

moving at 9.274 mps/not fully awake/spasticity indicates adrenal surge

The sickest part of it was that that wasn’t even a miscalculation. The normal hunters could wade through fire that would slaughter entire squads; this handful of armoured void-bred killers were even more ferocious, spastic fury driving twitching limbs as their own form of combat drugs stoked them to greater speeds. How long they could fight, how much even those bodies would endure or could cudgel out of whatever metabolism drove them, Shannon could only guess.

anaerobic/stored energy/can’t breathe in space/limited endurance but heightened aggression, reaction times

Shannon gritted her teeth as the distance between the women and their attackers melted away, feeling her pistol kick in her hands. Exoskeletal plates broke, spasming limbs sailed through the low gravity and ruined bodies staggered against each bullet, fighting their way through the hail of metal, ignoring any wound that was not instantly incapacitating.

this isn’t possible/asteroidea and ophuirodea can regenerate entire bodies from severed appendages/healing is slower

She ducked over to the control panel, tearing away the veins that had grown over it, the broken screen flashing with the same override she’d given it. Sparing an instant to fire, kneecapping the acid-spitter and spoiling its aim, the Halo returned her attention to the panel for a few seconds, one hand dancing on the controls. It would be easier to shut the door than open it – luckily, she wouldn’t need Abigail’s assistance with the hardware – but she still had to finagle the half-dead system...

work damn it/alternative pathway S.//17/more trackmarks in this route/someone else was in this system/leftovers when it shut down

Abigail swung her carbine around and smashed one Turned’s jaw with the butt of the gun, the blow knocking the creature back, its limbs flailing for purchase in the vacuum...

...but there was another to take its place.

how many people/her armour isn’t breached/preparing counter-attack/she’s all right

Abigail disengaged her magnetics and launched herself backward as the misshapen thing slashed at her, its metal-hard claws finding only empty space instead of the mercenary’s belly. Its right arm had been severed by one of Shannon’s well-placed shots, slithering tentacles poking out of the stump of its upper arm, twitching briefly before sliding back into the creature’s body, unwilling to expose themselves to the void. They had limits. Shannon felt a rush of pleasure as she placed a bullet in the Turned’s throat, the large-caliber round all but decapitating it. Its jaws snapped once, twice and then stilled. Its eyes rolled up in its head as its tendrils jabbed out and thrashed blindly for some kind of connection before retreating up into its throat, globules of foul blood fountaining out of the breach.

The Darkknell braced herself against the wall, muscles tensing briefly before she launched herself, hitting the deck and rolling. Her carbine thudded again, ripping off the legs of the decapitated monster. Her voice clicked through her mask, swearing victoriously in Port Royal’s guttural street dialect.

Shannon’s fingers flew over the keyboard, finally getting the ancient computer to reject the countermanded order that she and Abigail had spent so much effort putting in. With all the grace of a crashing stone column, the pressure doors slammed shut once more, sealing the women off from the damaged – could they even be called dying? – creatures outside.

A severed forearm drifted between the Darkknell and her Halo companion, fingers twitching weakly before stilling. Limits. They couldn’t heal forever. Fire. Vacuum. One more weapon.

Shannon felt herself smiling, and then she felt that grin fade and die on her lips as she looked up the corridor, taking in what the rush of fighting hadn’t let her notice before.

More of the tripwire-veins spread along the walls. Many more, a thickening network of nerve fibers leaking out of air vents and maintenance hatches, reaching out like grotesquely thin fingers, spreading over discarded crates, winding through scraps of cloth, the meat and bone that had once been inside the torn fabric absorbed by the growing tissues. And there, hanging from the ceiling, stretched from one side of the corridor to the other, was a banner, its words as proudly displayed as they were foreboding.

YOU SHOULDN’T BE HERE
YOU’RE KEEPING MOTHER WAITING

~

Armin sighed, leaning back and running his hands through his hair. It felt as if he hadn’t showered in weeks and his scalp was greasy to the touch, fingers catching on the dried bits of filth and blood that had encrusted themselves in his hair. His eyelids felt heavy and he had to fight to keep them open. He was only a tech; he didn’t have the fancy armour that the mudfeet did, didn’t have a pharm pumping chemical cocktails of epinephrines and endorphins into his system to keep him on his feet. All he had to run on was his own willpower and the handful of aged stims that the ‘Watcher’ had provided. He was so tired; he didn’t know how Bujold and Delphini kept going.

It would be so easy just to lean back and close his eyes and sleep. Something in the back of his mind whispered sweetly to him, a lullaby that he couldn’t quite hear. It sang softly, telling him to let go, to close his eyes and everything would be over. No more pain, no more fear, no more running and hiding and monsters around every bend. Only peace. It was the same voice that told a freezing man to drift off to sleep, but that man didn’t have the sounds of dying ringing in the silence, nor remember the stalker-things that had butchered his people.

And someone just below the voice that told him to sleep, there was another. They haven’t forgotten you, it whispered from the back of his mind. They have your scent and they’ll find you. They’ll find you. They will.

It was getting harder to ignore that voice and even harder not to listen to the one that told him that all he had to do is close his eyes one last time and let everything go.

~

They’d come this way.

Chem-trackers sifted the polluted air for the barest traces of sweat, skin flakes, blood and the other faint echoes left behind by a living being simply going about their business. The scent of blood was thick here, filters pulling the worst of it out of the air, but enough remained to tempt and tantalize.

-blood-

The cairn was a test. Always and forever; echoes of the past were preserved here amidst madness and pollution. Relics left by the Old Ones. Burns and cracks in ancient bulkheads, markers of where the dead had fallen and hints of ancient battles, of the day they’d been given their freedom. Their... brothers and sisters. Siblings in origin, not in flesh and never in blood. The Lost Ones, ruined and bent by the sliver, still bound and screaming. Always screaming, singing, calling, like the Obelisks themselves – Umbra’s sentinels. That was what they’d been told, anyways. Precursor lines had heard the screaming, but not their Firsts. Father had said that that had made them special, made them better. Maybe it had.

The Old Ones had said that Umbra was worth any sacrifice. Credit had to be given for their commitment: even when it was their blood that was being spilled, they paid the cost. Up until a point.

-can you imagine what we have made of your dream?-

The Firsts had only known of the undersong – what the Old Ones called F-2 – from stories, from watching the Old Ones slowly collapse into rage and paranoia, eaten away bit by bit and day by day by Acheron. Through shields and hull, through mind and will, it nibbled and licked and gnawed at them. It was the same now. The Mists were always hungry and readily devoured each meal, cleaning the plate and waiting for more.

Like a black hole, they could never see it for themselves, but they could see what effect it had on its surroundings: an accretion disk of broken lives and ruined people as Acheron took New Ones and made them Lost. No one could hold out forever. Sooner or later, they broke.

-weak, they’re weak-

Almost no one.

The New Ones here... there was the acrid tang of explosives and weaponry. And there was that same scent that they had noticed before. Familiar, but distorted. Like seeing one’s image in a broken mirror. Indefinably wrong, but still... familiar.

-hate it want it hate it want it find out what it is-

Ribbon-stench grew thicker in the air and the urge, the need to lash out grew with it. That scent they knew all too well, and the response to it was quite clear, practically an instinct.

-purge them, rip their grotesque limbs, sear their ribbons and watch them burn-

The New Ones were close now. Weapons were checked, scan readings confirmed and limbs flexed in anticipation. None of them belonged here. Not the Old Ones, not the Lost Ones and certainly not the New Ones. The cairn wasn’t for any of them, not any more.

-this is ours-

Hunt.

-kill-

~

“Faster would be good!” Shannon shouted at Abigail as her technically-minded companion attempted to hotwire a door. It wasn’t an issue with the computer or its programming, something that the redhead could have assisted with – instead, the mechanism was jammed. Six hundred years of neglect took their toll and if Imperial technology was robust, it wasn’t infallible. Something as simple as a manual override for a door lock, exposed to vacuum for God-knew-how-long and denied any short of maintenance would, could, and had failed, sealing an office door shut as tightly as any security override.

In the best of times, with both womens’ air running down, that would be an annoyance. Now, it was potentially lethal.

They crawled over the walls and ceilings, leaping and bounding in the near-zero-gravity, distended faces grinning loathsomely, every trace of their humanity eradicated. In fact, some of them might not have even started as human: along with their owners, pets and beasts of burden had been remade in some mad god’s image and now it was impossible to separate man from animal. Claws and blades, tendrils and appendages Shannon couldn’t even identify all reached out in mindless, implacable hunger. She put a bullet through the head of something that might have been someone’s sister. Took the arms from something that might have been a painter. Shattered the spine of someone’s son. They weren’t people. Not anymore. Targets. She made herself see that, even as another part of her moved robotically, firing and reloading, firing and reloading.

Dismembered limbs bounced against walls, sealing themselves to the tripwire veins, or clutching to one another, rebuilding themselves, pulsing torsos and spasming limbs seeking new components, but unable to find them as easily as they normally could. That was the only thing that kept the women from being overrun by a tide of mutated flesh. Even that bought nothing but a handful of seconds...

“Abby!” Shannon cried as she grappled with something that might have been a man, its claws scratching her vambraces, teeth snapping behind its sealed mouth, the cuticle starting to rip as the creature’s jaws widened, exposing a second row of sharp teeth. It bore down against her, inhumane strength forcing the Halo back

“There!” Abby’s victorious cry came with a shudder as the door jerked halfway open. A tighter squeeze than either woman had been expecting, but just enough room to get in. The Darkknell came around, a flash of harsh blue-white light filling the corridor as she thumbed the disruptor blade on and cleaved the Turned from pelvis to shoulder, a backhand sweep bisecting its head, pulling the still living pieces away from Shannon. Abigail sheathed the blade and unlimbered her carbine, ripping the legs off another Turned.

The Halo flashed her light through the open door, quickly checking for any lurking predators. “Clear!”

Abigail gave Shannon a push towards the door. “Get in! Move, merc!” she shouted at the other woman’s hesitation.
Shannon dove through the opening, double-checking the room’s empty status before turning and helping her arsenal-laden squadmate squeeze inside, both women heaving on the stuck door. Overkill: Abigail’s repairs were only intended to open the door once and it took only the slightest effort before it smashed shut again, sealing them off from their attackers.

One minute and thirty-seven seconds of air left.

Fifty-eight meters to go.

~

“Hey.”

Armin’s eyes snapped open. “I wasn’t sleeping.”

Bujold chuckled. “No, I’m sure you snore when you’re awake too.” He sat down beside the tech, half silhouetted by his own flashlight. “I wouldn’t mind catching some rest myself.”

“It’s not rest,” Lutzberg replied, rubbing his eyes. “It won’t be until-” He paused, then amended his statement. “It’s not rest.”

The security guard nodded. “Got it,” he said as if he understood, looking around the empty nursery. “Nothing useful in here?”

“Nope. The Halo – Corporal Hayes – might be able to do something with these systems, but I’m a ship tech. I didn’t train on Imperial software. I was just along to fix our shit.” Lutzberg laughed. The sound had an unpleasant edge to it. “Fat lot of help I am.”

Mac shrugged. “You’re still a tech. That counts for something.” He leaned back, staring into the near-darkness, watching as Hernandez wandered aimlessly through the lab. He was saying something in his comm and he didn’t sound at all happy about it, but the corper couldn’t make out the words. Then, with a resigned slump of his shoulders, he nodded to no one in particular; Bujold heard the last two words of the exchange: “Yes, ma’am.”

Armin hadn’t noticed the mercenary’s exchange with – Bujold hoped – the other women. “I don’t think it counts for much,” the petty officer was saying.

“Don’t sell yourself short,” Bujold said. “You made it this far. You’re a survivor. You, me, Hernandez, Hutchins, Hayes... Delphini. We’ve all survived this long. Who’s to say we can’t last until help comes?”

“You really think we can?”

“Why not? We just have to look out for each other, watch each other’s backs. We can make it.”

The petty officer shook his head. “I bet Primal’s people heard speeches like that too.”

“Yeah, well... fuck ‘em.” Bujold drawled. “They’re not us.”

“You think that’s enough?”

“I know it.” Bujold’s attention shifted as the bob of Delphini’s preceded the doctor coming down the stairs. “We just have to stay strong, keep our eyes open...” He saw the guarded expression on her face as she passed by. He smiled genially at her as he noted the wariness in her eyes, his grin widening fractionally. He could just be imagining it, but he thought he saw something just a tad different than wariness there: caution. “... and trust each other,” he finished as the doctor passed by. He put a comradely hand on Armin’s shoulder, lowering his voice so that only the petty officer could hear him.

“That being said, I have a story to tell you...”

~

Louis was looking, but he wasn’t seeing. It wasn’t shadows shifting on bulkheads as a flashlight moved over them, it was dancing flames as a city burned. He didn’t hear whispers and voices; he heard distant screams and rattles of gunfire. He didn’t see his own reflection on a broken piece of glass, he saw the killer.

It spoke. “You. You brought us here.” There was nothing behind those words, nothing that made it happy, angry or sorry about what it was doing. Nothing that even made it human, not a man or woman. Dead words, stripped of all inflection and life and the thing that had said them... it was dead inside. It had to be. No one, no human could do this.

He screamed at it then, his carbine bucking and shuddering in his grip as he thumbed it to full auto-fire and the golem staggered, its polished armour sparking as bullets bounced and clipped off. His weapon ran dry in less than three seconds, but he slammed a fresh magazine in before the killing thing could recover. It sank to one knee, raising an arm in attempt to ward off the attack as it brought its flamer up with the other...

Louis jumped at the hand on his shoulder, almost pulling his gun before he realized he was back on the station and it wasn’t the silver killer staring at him; it was Delphini.

Before he could query her, before he could say anything to cover his lapse or explain his jumpiness, the petite woman spoke. “I found something.”

~

Abigail was profoundly grateful for the filters in her helmet, but even they had their limits and the traces of the foul air they were walking through were almost as bad as Port Royal’s sewers. I hope this shit isn’t airborne, the mercenary thought for the hundredth time, but it wasn’t like they had any other way to go but forward. To tear a necklace out of the rotten flesh of some once-human thing in the hope that this would buy the loyalty of another gibbering maniac. This situation is all kinds of fucked up.

“No question,” Shannon replied and Abigail blinked. She hadn’t realized she’d said that out loud.

Moist, gooey tissue squished under each woman’s feet as they advanced through the infested corridors, insects buzzing in the air, small animals that Abigail couldn’t even begin to identify scurrying into holes and darkened corners. She wondered if they were vermin or the descendants of the DROP’s test animal populations and, more importantly, if they bit. Abigail suppressed a shudder. Whatever they were, they were too much like rats for her comfort.

“They know we’re here,” she said into the silence. It wasn’t a question.

Shannon’s shoulders tilted up in a slight shrug. “I’m not sure. There’s sensor tendrils here, but this looks like a well-travelled area. They can’t raise an alarm just on pressure or contact, not like the others.”

“Not many visitors come through vacuum, I guess.”

“These probably respond to damage or have specially-conditioned chemosensors.”

“Okay, I got ‘don’t set them on fire’...”

“If we touch them, they might be able to ‘taste’ us.”

“And we don’t taste like Turned.” Abigail looked at her gauntlets and rubbed a patch of sticky, dark blood between her thumb and forefinger. “Most of us, anyways.”

“That might fool them, but I wouldn’t count on it.” Shannon shrugged again. “I’m just guessing here. These veins might be just for carrying nutrients to the rest of this... growth.”

“But you don’t think so.”

“No.”

“Good enough.” Abigail manuevered around a hanging sheet of mucus-like tissue. “Let’s go lay a man’s beloved to rest.” On her HUD, the blinking icon of their target drew closer.

~

“That’s a door.”

Emily shot Hernandez a sharp look. “Yes, but it’s a door that leads into several more offices.”

“We have one of those downstairs, doc. The girls just went through it. What’s so special about this one?”

“Because it doesn’t open into vacuum,” the woman answered, choosing not to press on the catch she’d heard in his words. At least, she wouldn’t be the first to do it. “It opens into a small research library. The offices are really just study terminals.”

“Wait,” Hernandez protested. “Hayes never said anything about a library.”

“It’s not a main archive or network hub,” Emily replied. “It’s set up so the scientists could log their own research and access it throughout the station without having to wade through six thousand years of research journals just to find something that one of their colleagues wrote last week. This section is isolated from the rest of the station, so we can’t touch the other library hubs...”

“...but if there might be more lunatic notes to self,” Hernandez realized. “From the Imperials this time.” He nodded, seeing the potential. “Good work, doc.”

“Not to put a damper on the celebration of being able to thumb through six hundred year old paranoid ravings,” Bujold drawled. “But outside that door, don’t we have some very unfriendly solicitors?”

“Not that door,” Lutzberg spoke up. “This part of the station is a jigsaw puzzle of isolated compartments. Just like this lab is okay, the section behind that door should be sealed off from the rest of the area, too.”

“‘Should’?”

The petty officer shrugged helplessly, unable to give a more concrete answer.

“I know we’re supposed to sit and wait for the all-clear,” Emily put in, noticing the twitch in Hernandez’s expression at the mention of Hayes and Hutchins. “But I know Corporal Hayes wants us to find out more about this place and what happened here. This could be our best chance to do that. And if we need a bolt-hole, knowing what’s outside that door might give us another option besides vacuum and monsters.”

“Mmm,” Louis nodded. “True.” He thought for a moment. “All right, we’ll give it a shot, but at the first sign that that area isn’t as abandoned as we think, we close it up and hunker down.”

Emily nodded, accepting the mercenary’s decision. “I saw a security panel over in the main office that looks like it’s still got power, but I’m not sure it’s working. Armin, could I get you to...?”

The petty officer nodded, fiddling out a small cutting torch from his toolkit and kneeled next to the door’s access panel. With his other hand, he shone his flashlight over the edges of the panel. No, he didn’t have the right type of screwdriver for that. Cutting it was. “Made the right choice there,” he mumbled to himself, looking away as he fired up the torch.

Louis watched Lutzberg cut into the wall plate. “Doc, why don’t you keep trying to get the door open from inside the office? If you can, it’ll save us some gruntwork.”

Emily nodded and turned to go. As she passed Bujold, she noticed the security guard was still watching her. “Good job, doc,” he drawled, turning away. Then, waiting until she’d taken a step past him: “You sure know a lot about this stuff.”

He didn’t see the slight catch in her step at the seemingly-innocuous comment, but then he didn’t have to. Maybe you do know my friend after all, lady.

~

Denied.

Denied. Denied. Denied. Emily rested her chin on her arms as she stared at the screen, the latest refusal to accept her commands staring her in the face. It wasn’t a particularly important security node; all this application did was allow an authorized user to open or lock various doors within the nursery complex and its adjacent offices, as well as oversee the two dozen or so computer terminals in the area. Something to make a low-level administrator’s job easier, though currently it was doing the exact opposite for her.

The screen was so dim that she could barely make out was on it, straining her eyes to see the various schematics and command prompts it was offering, a near-dead system constantly flashing the same alerts for the same unsecured, offline terminals, the same maintenance reports and system diagnostics. The computer ground to a halt whenever one of these pop-ups appeared, slowing things down even further, assuming that the program didn’t just randomly crash as it had twice already.

The young woman scratched the back of her head as she glared at the faded screen and sighed. This wasn’t what she had signed up for. She didn’t even know if the library would have any useful data – it was cut off from Vigil and had been for decades. Any information it did have was going to be decades out of date, at best. But someone had wanted this part of the station sealed away – they had to have left a reason why... although she had her suspicions. ‘Suspicions’. Right. This place... it was a hydroponics facility. A garden.

She chewed on her lip; Shannon and Hutchins should have called for them by now. All she’d been able to get out of Hernandez was muttered comments about them being ‘fine’. He was unhappy, but in his eyes – he wasn’t hiding death or injury. There was that, at least. Still, she worried.

And not just about Shannon. There was Bujold. Still watching her, still whispering. She didn’t trust him, couldn’t trust him. He talked too much. He was dangerous, and not just because of his ease with weapons.

Before she could ruminate on that further, she heard a yelp and a muffled curse.

Coming out of the office, she could see the splash of red on Lutzberg’s hand; Hernandez was shining his light on the petty officer, looking over the injury. “That looks deep.”

“You think?” Armin snapped, his head coming up as he noticed Emily’s approach. “Bit of metal was sharper than I thought. I can get back in there.”

“No, you can’t,” Delphini replied as she knelt beside the petty officer. “Louis was right – that is deep.” She popped the cap off an aged tube of antibiotic cream and squeezed some into Lutzberg’s palm, wrapping gauze around his hand. “Did you find out what’s wrong with the door?”

Lutzberg nodded. “Yeah, like you said – it’s still in lockdown, but I figured I could hotwire it. Get up into the innards. Couldn’t really see and I guess I didn’t have as much room as I thought I did.”

“I guess not,” Emily sighed. “I’ll try. You can talk me through what you were doing.”

All three men exchanged glances. Louis lost. “Doc...” he began.

Emily was proud of herself for managing not to bristle. “I’m the smallest person here,” she pointed out. “With that armoury you’re carrying around, you’d need to strip down to skivvies before you could try and,” she glanced over at Bujold, “you’re taller than Armin.” She made sure that the petty officer’s bandages were secure, picking up a small penlight. “You can go on the terminal and tell me if I’m making progress, talk me through what I should be doing. Okay?”

Sufficiently cowed, Lutzberg picked himself up. “Okay.”

As Emily wormed herself into the open wall, Louis looked over at Bujold and smirked. “I can see why the corporal likes her.”

Mac snorted in agreement.

~

There was life here.

Plants had sprung up out of the spread – or least, things that looked like plants. Thick growths hung from the walls like rotten tendons, bulging tumescent aberrations and sloughing piles of tissue. Slime molds oozed out of cracks in the walls and greasy ropes of meaty tissue dangled from air vents and maintenances shafts. The tissue beneath their feet squished with each step and clouds of disturbed insects buzzed around their heads.

The spread.

Abigail cursed softly in a language Shannon didn’t know. “What is this, Shannie? I mean... Christ, look at all of it – it had to grow. Where’d it all come from?”

“Ships’ stores would be the biggest provider,” Shannon answered, her tone numb. “Starships carry a lot of food and water, medical stores and hydroponics... Any expedition that goes into the Mists carries two, three – even five times normal supplies. I don’t even know how much DROP 47 would have had, but an Elysium, isolated this far from supply lines?

“A lot.”

“A lot,” Shannon nodded. in confirmation. “Some of the starships attached to the station – they’re probably infested like this, too.” She didn’t say the rest, didn’t say that one other prime source of biomass would be the crews of the starships those stores were meant to feed and sustain. That anyone unfortunate – no, lucky – enough to be die here rather than Turn would become part of the growing ecosystem. That they were walking on the dead.

And the sick part of it was... that wasn’t even the worst part.

“Jesus Christ,” Abigail muttered. “Can you imagine what this shit could do with... with more food? It’s already reaching into the fucking vacuum. What would happen if this got loose on a planet?” A beat. “Jesus Christ, Shannie... tell me you’re not-”

The smaller woman’s head tilted back up at her ‘big sister’ and despite her helmet, Abigail could all but see the weak, haunted smile on Shannon’s face. “I am.” She couldn’t even close her eyes to get away from the images, couldn’t quite shut out the cascade of probabilities, simulations and nightmarish possibilities. Stop it. Stop it. Stop. It. It hasn’t happened. Not ever. It won’t happen. So just stop.

When they found the latest horror in this sick, blighted station, it was almost a relief.

~

Armin was having even less luck with the computer than Emily had, and he scratched at his scalp as he tried to talk the woman through the patching and adjustment of six-hundred year old cabling and circuitry that he was almost completely unfamiliar with. Luckily, Delphini appeared to have a knack for this – more than once, she’d been able to pick out what he was trying to get her to look for with only a vague description to go on, or jump to the next step without needing to be led there. She actually seemed to be doing better than he had. I guess there’s not that much difference between the insides of a person and the insides of a machine, huh?

Lutzberg chuckled at his own joke, rubbing his tired eyes and again tried to focus on the schematic in front of him.

beep

“Hey, that’s it!” he shouted as one of the sealed blue doors flashed red and open.”You got it!”

“No,” Hernandez answered, sounding confused. “The door’s still sealed.”

“What? Wait...” Armin squinted at the screen. “No... yeah, that’s the farthest door. That shouldn’t have opened...”

beep

Another door came open, the next in the line leading to the office. There was some script on the screen, but he couldn’t make it out, at least nothing that his tired brain could understand. “Wait... wait, uh.... Emily. What are you doing?”

“Nothing, I’ve almost got it...”

beep

“Wait, just... just stop. I think...”

She couldn’t hear him. “I’m almost there. Mac, can you hit the door panel on my say?”

Another door opened, the last before the office. It wasn’t them. It wasn’t them. It was something else. Dreadful certainty paralyzed Armin. He wanted to scream, to shout a warning and tell them to get away, but he was back in that room looking at a butchered corpse hanging from the ceiling, hearing the screams of the people around him and the awful hunting cries of the enemy and the sound of cutting meat.

His mind numb, Armin moved towards the doorway with mechanical inevitability. He heard Emily’s little cry of victory.

“I’ve got it!”

Armin barely heard her.

The door opened.

And it was standing there.

[shadowreaper]

This story is amazing I have read it all over the last two weeks. You are an evil genius blade, can't wait to see what happens next and I'm dying to find out more about the station, its history and its inhabitants.

Your writing is brilliant and the story is honestly probably the freakiest thing I have ever read. If i wasn'y so tired I could keep going about everything I like about this story.

Please whatever you do don't stop till this is finished.

[xt828]

Hooray for christmas presents.

[LadyTevar]

"it"?
*shivers* That was damn good.

[The Vortex Empire]

What could "it" be? A Praetorian? Something even worse?

You know, the problem of all these... things... would easily solve itself if people just stayed the fuck away from DROP 47 for long enough. It has to run out of biomass and energy eventually.

It might be a good thing that nobody makes it off DROP 47, because if somebody did, and took some of it's friendly inhabitants with them to an inhabited planet... well, it wouldn't be pretty.

[Themightytom]

I Feel That Emily Screwed Them.
On Purpose.

[Sky Captain]

Wooohoo! a Christmas present

I know in the end everyone will be eaten.

[Bladed_Crescent]

Still alive. Personal and professional things have kept me from writing as much as I'd like, but a new chapter should be up shortly and (hopefully) another soon after that.

This story is amazing I have read it all over the last two weeks. You are an evil genius blade, can't wait to see what happens next and I'm dying to find out more about the station, its history and its inhabitants.

Thanks; glad you're enjoying the story. We'll definitely be delving into the history of DROP 47 as we progress. I've got several more flashback chapters planned, detailing more of Everett Hayes' work, Duty Before Glory's mission and some of the, ah, tests the Imperium ran with the F and R-series - those have been foreshadowed, but if I tell you where and when, it'll spoil the surprise.

"it"?
*shivers* That was damn good.

It.

What could "it" be? A Praetorian? Something even worse?

Well, Unity's still hunting them. But there are other praetorians...

As to what 'it' is and whether or not it's worse than a praetorian, I'll let you all be the judge of that... Heh.

You know, the problem of all these... things... would easily solve itself if people just stayed the fuck away from DROP 47 for long enough. It has to run out of biomass and energy eventually.

That's why they hibernate between visits. Though if nobody ever went there, even prolonged dormancy would kill off what was there. Well, most of it.

It might be a good thing that nobody makes it off DROP 47, because if somebody did, and took some of it's friendly inhabitants with them to an inhabited planet... well, it wouldn't be pretty.

Ah heh.

Ah heh heh heh.

Ah heh heh heh he ah heh eh heh heh!

Sorry. Something caught in my throat.

I Feel That Emily Screwed Them.
On Purpose.

Tch. So suspicious.

Emily did not screw them. Though she may want to screw one of them...

I know in the end everyone will be eaten.

Nope.

[White Haven]

I want a copy of your notes, not so that I can see what's coming up, but rather so I can satisfy an internal wager on the amount of insane cackling and horrible, horrible footnotes and doodles can be found in the margins.

[Bladed_Crescent]

Heh, sorry. All my notes are in my head, with a few scenes from upcoming chapters on the tail end of the story file.

No cackling or doodles to be found. Unless you count the graffiti (which I really must get back to as well).