Chapter Two
“This is Benson. Everybody, listen up! They’re using the vents!
That’s how they’re getting about the ship! Stay away from—”
“Look out!”
“Get back! Get back!”
“AAAIIIIEEEE!”
--Benson and unknown
crew member; USG
Ishimura
Isaac didn’t know how much time had passed
when he regained consciousness. People were coughing, and Isaac soon realised
that he was one of them. He opened his eyes and looked around to see that
Daniels and Hammond were both back on their feet now and the blast screen was
unclamping, opening up.
“Is
everyone OK?” Hammond’s voice penetrated the fog in front of Isaac’s eyes. He
nodded his head silently, unsure if his commander was even looking his way.
“What?”
Daniels exclaimed. “What the hell
were you thinking? Were you trying to get us killed?”
“I
just saved our asses, Miss Daniels,”
Hammond replied in that manner-of-fact tone Isaac could swear was almost a
duplication of Captain Mathius. “If we’d aborted at that speed and distance,
we’d have smashed right into the side of the Ishimura. Now settle down, and let’s get to work!”
Isaac
reached for the clips of the safety harness and found that they’d been bent out
of shape. As such, he wasn’t going to be able to detach it the normal way.
He
fought down a cough, and then called out. “I could use a little help over
here.”
“Hold
on, Isaac,” Hammond said, turning away from the reddened, scowling features of
our computer specialist. He drew his Divet, flicked a setting on its power
output, and then trained it on Isaac’s chest. He fired, and the discharge
melted the safety clasp, popping it open.
Isaac
disentangled himself from the straps, and ignored the clanging of the clasp
pieces falling to the deck as he got up from his chair and rotated his
shoulders in their cuffs to loosen them up a little once more. “Thanks,” he
said to Hammond. The man nodded back with a smile as he holstered his pistol.
“Corporal,
report,” he said, turning back to the nav stations.
“I’m
not getting any readings from the port booster,” Chen replied, sounding
frustrated. “And we’ve lost comms and autopilot. It’ll take some time to fix.”
“Alright,”
Hammond said with a sigh as Daniels turned to face Isaac. “Let’s get some extra
hands from the flight deck to help out.”
Isaac
busied himself with slipping his RIG helmet into place and latching it shut. Then
he checked all of the RIG’s systems to make sure that they were functioning
correctly after the crash. After checking on Hammond’s RIG behind his back,
Daniels made her way over to Isaac and gave his systems another once over, irritating him almost to the point that he felt
like snapping at her for it. Then he reminded himself that, as a computer
specialist, she probably considered it her job.
“I’m
done,” she said over her shoulder to Hammond. “Clean bill of health for
everyone.”
“Alright,”
Hammond said with a cold nod to her. He followed it through with a less-cold
nod to Chen, who got up from his seat. “We’ve still got a job to do. We’re
moving out.”
Johnston
got up from his seat as well, and both he and Chen walked past Hammond, then
Daniels and Isaac toward the shuttle’s midsection where the hatch was. Chen
shot Isaac a cheeky smile, while Johnston merely glared at Daniels out of the
corner of his eye. She didn’t seem to notice, or else didn’t mind, as Hammond
too passed them and followed them out.
Daniels
was the last to go, and she stopped for a second to smile at Isaac before
leaving the shuttle as well. Isaac followed a few steps behind her.
He
stepped off the shuttle’s boarding ramp onto the catwalk running along the
shuttle’s port side. It was sturdy, but his boots, and those of the rest of the
team, clanked loudly against it with each step.
The
Kellion’s hull was blistered and
scorched almost entirely along the port side. Sparks flew from holes ripped
into the outer hull. Daniels, standing in place now as Isaac walked by her,
winced when she looked at it. Isaac himself could barely stop himself from
cursing aloud.
“Welcome, CEC employee, to the USG
Ishimura …” The sound of the flight
deck’s PA system took second to Isaac’s ears when Daniels started to speak up
behind him.
“You
didn’t lose power to the port booster,” she said with a rueful sigh. “You lost the port booster. Unbelievable!”
Isaac turned and looked around her to see that she wasn’t exaggerating in the
smallest iota.
Where
there should have been a port booster toward the rear of the ship was nothing
save a gaping hole. Sticking out from that hole was a mess of cables and
support struts that barely passed for what they were supposed to be.
Isaac
shook his head in disbelief. He knew now that they were going to be here longer
than the forty-eight hours Daniels had specified they’d need to fix the ship’s
comm. array. Not that he particularly had a problem with that, since it meant
more time spent with Nicole … and yet, something wasn’t quite right.
“Where’s
the flight deck crew?” he asked as he and Hammond walked side-by-side past Chen
and Johnston.
“Strange,”
Hammond murmured beside him. “There should
have been a crew out here, especially after the way we came into the bay.”
Isaac
nodded and they stopped in front of the door to the flight lounge. Isaac waited
for it to open, as it should have on automatic. It didn’t.
“I
guess the power’s down everywhere,” Hammond said with a shrug. “Kendra; get
over here and hack the door locks. We need to get in.”
Without
a word, Daniels stepped around Isaac, taking Hammond’s spot in front of the
panel beside the door after he stepped out of the way. She hit a control on her
RIG’s wrist panel and then keyed in a sequence into the door panel. When it
didn’t work, she repeated the procedure. It took her four tries to get the door
open, admitting them to the flight lounge.
Isaac
stepped through first, eyes darting back and forth as he examined every inch of
space. The flight lounge was a dichotomy of appearances. There wasn’t a single
person in sight; no flight crew, no operators or conductors. But there was
plenty of mess. Rubbish was strewn around in places, and there were luggage
cases and bags thrown onto chairs or dumped on the floor in the way.
The
rest of the group followed behind Isaac, all at a slower pace and branching out
around the lounge to look for clues to explain the absence of crew thus far.
“Seems
like everyone was trying to pack in a hurry,” Daniels said from the large door
to Isaac’s left.
“There
should be a security detail in here,” Hammond said, seemingly ignoring her.
“Yeah?”
Daniels challenged. “Well there’s not! There’s nobody here! I can’t pick up any
broadcasts.”
“Isaac,
check out the security console back there,” Hammond directed, pointing through
the glass window to the operations room.
Isaac
nodded and went through the nearest door to him. At a cautious pace, he
advanced through the hall and around the corner to the indicated security
console. He looked out through the window, watching as the rest of them
continued to check out the flight lounge.
He
hit the audio comm. on his RIG. “The console’s still live,” he said.
“Log in and see what you can find,”
Hammond replied. “Kendra, get the
elevator back online.”
“Power’s dead!” Kendra Daniels exclaimed.
“I can’t!”
“Then reroute the damned power!” Hammond
snapped testily. Isaac looked up from the security holo panel in front of him
to see that Hammond was glaring coldly at Daniels, daring her to reply
bitingly. “Look,” he said, breathing
through his nose, “if we all cooperate,
we can figure this out a lot sooner. Just get that computer display up, Isaac.”
Johnston,
facing Isaac now, rolled his eyes and rechecked the safety on his pulse rifle
before turning to his own right and taking a couple of steps in that direction.
Isaac
keyed in his CEC personal identity codes in the holo panel and waited for the
system to recognise them. When it did, the screen changed to show a layout of
the USG Ishimura. Several places on
the hologram were highlighted in red. Isaac knew that those places were
security checkpoints throughout the ship. Isaac keyed his RIG to transmit the
hologram to the others so that they could see what he was seeing.
“Huh,” Johnston started, seeing the
hologram himself from his own RIG. “That
doesn’t look good. She’s taken a lot of damage.”
“The tram system’s offline,” Hammond said.
“Getting around is going to be difficult.”
He stopped and looked up and around at the air vents around the flight lounge.
“The air seems to be flowing again;
that’s a start.”
Isaac
made to retrace his steps back to the lounge when, suddenly, the holoscreen
began to flash an angry red at him. Alarms blared, both in the checkpoint he
was in and out in the flight lounge where the others were. The main lights went
out for all of them, and orange-yellow emergency warning lights strobed in the
main lounge.
Johnston,
Chen and Hammond reacted instantly, bringing their pulse rifles to bear and
scanning their views for threats or hostiles. Since the rifles each had a
built-in flashlight, the three of them peeled away sections of the darkness
temporarily as they scanned the flight lounge. Kendra Daniels, by the other
door leading to the lift, drew a Divet from its holster and began the same
routine.
Isaac,
the only one of them that was apparently without a weapon, felt exposed,
endangered.
“What the hell is that?” Daniels asked
nervously.
“Automatic quarantine must have tripped from
the filtration system we started,” Hammond replied. Isaac noticed that,
under possible threat, he seemed a little warmer toward Daniels. “Everybody … relax!”
A
thud from overhead drew Isaac’s attention. He looked up to see nothing save
solid steel roofing. Instinctively, he backed up into the corner, and listened
as the thud sounded again, this time from a few meters away.
“What was that? Did you hear that?”
Daniels said.
“I’m not sure,” Hammond replied.
Sparks
flew as, through the window, Isaac saw a panel of the roofing in the flight
lounge break free from the rest of the ceiling and clatter to the floor. A
great, pulsing mass dropped down immediately on top of it.
“What the hell?” Johnston said, looking away from where the ceiling panel had
falling right behind him, as if oblivious to it.
“I don’t know! Something’s in the room with
us!” Daniels exclaimed.
Isaac
saw it first. The great mass that had dropped down behind Johnston was
unfurling; standing upright on two vein-covered, bloody legs. Its arms came up
on either side of its body, ending in meter-long deadly spikes that looked like
they could punch holes clean through any of their RIGs.
The
thing came up behind Johnston, and it was then that Isaac acted. “Johnston!” he
screamed into his audio transmitter. “Johnston! It’s behind you!”
But
it was too late. Johnston only started to turn in the direction of the coming
threat as it came down upon him. It drove its long spikes into Johnston’s back,
one at a time, seven times in a row. Johnston managed to scream as the spikes
drove into him a third and fourth time, drawing the attention of Hammond and
the others.
“Jesus! Open fire, open fire!” Hammond
shouted. The thing was faster, swiping both of its long spikes at Johnston’s
neck at the same time.
They
cleaved through flesh and bone alike, and Johnston’s head popped off like a
cork, and then fell to the deck with a thud. The thing went down as well,
ducking behind the lounge to avoid the incoming pulse rifle fire from both
Hammond and Chen, and the single-shot fire from Daniels.
Isaac
tried to block out the long, single-toned beep of Johnston’s RIG transmitting
his complete lack of life signs to the rest of them. Still shocked, he found
himself unable to move from the corner, unable even to blink as the thing with
the spikes took one bullet in the chest, then two, still kept moving as if it
hadn’t been touched.
“Kendra, power!” Hammond shouted
urgently. “Kendra!”
“C’mon, c’mon …” Daniels muttered to
herself over the open channel.
Finally,
Isaac blinked, and moved. He stepped up to the window and watched as another
fleshy, bloody thing stood up from where it had dropped down from the roof near
Chen. Chen hadn’t noticed it. His pulse rifle was still unloading bullet after
bullet at rapid speeds in the direction of the first thing.
“Chen!”
Isaac shouted. But too late. The second thing stabbed both of its spikes
through Chen’s upper chest plate, piercing through with no apparent difficulty
until they came out through the back of his RIG.
The
thing swung him around, and Isaac watched as the RIG’s healthy monitor stripe
declined segment by segment until there was nothing left but black.
“Got it!” Daniels shouted in triumph.
“Isaac! Get the hell out of there!”
Hammond screamed at him over the channel.
Isaac
reacted instantly. He dashed over to the nearby open door and looked through
it, almost blinded by the sudden spark of something shorting out over his head.
Then he turned and looked to the other door, only to see that the locking panel
was glowing red—the quarantine, he remembered.
“The door’s unlocked! Run!” Daniels
screamed, most likely at Hammond. Isaac ignored it.
He
dashed out through the open doorway and down the hall. Smoke almost obscured
his view, smoked from shorting systems. Sparks lit every few steps he took, as
if the systems were shorting in response to his mad dash.
An
abominable roar rent the air, and a loud clang behind him made him turn.
Another thing had dropped down through the roof right behind him, and was just
starting to stand.
Isaac’s
blood was pumping. Adrenaline coursed through his veins as he quickly turned
away from the new thing and dashed around the corner and down the sloping hall
to another corridor.
“Run, Isaac! Get the hell out of there!”
Daniels’s voice came from his RIG.
Breathing
was becoming difficult. Smoke was coming through Isaac’s RIG’s filtration
system and burning his lungs with every gulp he took. That, plus the fact that
he was running as fast as he could in full RIG gear didn’t make things easy on
him.
Another
horrid screeching came from behind, but this time, Isaac didn’t turn around to
investigate the source. He wasn’t stupid; he knew that it could only be one of
those bloody creatures, dropping through the ceiling to come at him.
He
pressed on, rushing down the corridor, pushing his muscles, pushing his lungs.
He willed himself to continue. He willed himself not to die here, like Johnston
and Chen just had.
Up
ahead! He saw it! A lift! The panel near it glowed blue to signify that it was
sitting at that level, as if waiting for Isaac to jump in.
“Thank
fuck!” he breathed, pushing himself more.
The
screaming of the fleshy, spiky things and the thuds of their chasing footsteps
was enough to keep the adrenaline pumping in Isaac. Though, if not for his
survival instinct, they might also have made his blood run cold, freezing him
to the spot.
But
he couldn’t allow that to happen. Absolutely not! He couldn’t let himself end up
like Johnston and Chen.
He
reached the lift and hammered down on the control panel with a closed fist. It
busted, and he swore loudly. But the doors opened anyway and he stumbled
forward until he crashed into the rear wall of the lift pod.
Another
rabid keening made him turn to the open door. His heart froze when he saw half
a dozen of the things racing each other down the corridor, their spikes
slashing wildly in front of them as they vied with each other for the right to
be the first to tear into Isaac’s suit and flesh.
He
pushed off the wall lightly and reached out to toggle the holo controls next to
the door on the inside.
The
doors came together with a loud clang.
“That
was too close,” Isaac breathed, leaning heavily against the back wall again.
He
tried to get his breathing under control for a moment, closing his eyes and
resting his hands on his knees for support. His lungs were still drawing great,
heaving breaths of air, and Isaac couldn’t exactly fault them after the
adrenaline rush he’d just experienced.
Suddenly,
a pair of razor-sharp spikes pierced through the gap where the doors joined
together, prying the doors slowly, but powerfully, apart.
“Fuck
me!” Isaac screamed. Panic took him and he hammered on the controls to shut the
door over and over. The doors began to fight back against the thing’s intent.
But
it wasn’t enough. It pried the door completely open, half-stepping into the
lift. Isaac saw that it almost looked human, except that it was covered from
head to foot in flesh, blood and veins. Its lower jaw was missing, and two
small arm-like protuberances were growing from below its rib cage, which was
partially exposed.
It
screamed at Isaac, its eye sockets naught but blackened pits now, devoid of
eyes entirely.
Isaac
screamed back, loudly, fearfully. He knew then that this was it for him. The
lift controls had failed him, the doors weren’t closing. He’d seen these things
stab Chen to death, and decapitate Johnston. Now, it appeared, they were going
to get him too.
He
wondered, only for a fraction of a second, what had become of Hammond and
Daniels. Had they escaped from the flight lounge, and these horrific monsters?
Or had they been skewered, their RIGs proving useless against the strong bony
spikes of these fleshy things? Had Hammond taken any of them down with his
rifle, or Daniels with her Divet?
Was
Nicole even still alive, somewhere on board this ship? The thought entered his
mind suddenly as he stared into the twin abysses of the creature’s eye sockets.
It
screeched at him again, and then took another shuffle-step forward towards him.
Suddenly,
the doors slammed shut with an almighty clang that rang throughout the lift,
the RIG’s helmet, and Isaac’s head all at once. The force of the doors clamping
shut split the creature straight down the middle. Isaac watched as the half
that was trapped inside the lift with him fell to the floor with a loud splat. Blood poured from the bisection,
congealing around the creature on the floor and creeping slowly towards Isaac’s
boots.
He reached up and unsecured the clamps on his RIG’s helmet, and then pulled it free. Then, dropping it without a care, he fell to his knees and vomited.
