Last Call (Stranded in the Stars Book 1)

by Naomi Lucas

  The man I was suppose to mate with brutalized my best friend.

  Each girl that day had similar, horrifying stories, and it was then that they decided as a group to escape before the claimings. Ophelia said she had a plan and that she had made a deal to ensure that they would escape successfully to the port and that a pilot would smuggle them off of the planet.

  Allie never got the chance to ask her friend how she managed that feat... but her friend got their group into space and for a short time they were free.

  She stared at the phantom, her friend, as it stared right back at her. The only break between them, the noise of the reactor powering up the ship. The red light in the hallway flickered as the dark figure turned away and moved into a room and out of her sight.

  She knew this was why she had come back, why she has ended up back here. It was her unfinished business with her friend. The girl who had picked her up and dragged her out of the commune. The girl who had saved her life only to end it here; on this rotten planet.

  The two of them had been inseparable for years, ever since Ophelia was delivered to the commune after her testing. They had bonded instantly. Allie, the Earthian bastard and Ophelia, the crazy half-breed girl who talked to herself. They had both been different, both struggling, and they had found each other.

  Tears fell down her cheeks. She couldn’t let her go, Allie knew she needed to see this to the end or she would only be a husk of the person she truly could be.

  Ophelia has been here all this time.

  She looked back at where Jack was working, saying a silent goodbye and a sad, desperate thank you in case she was unable to return. Her gaze lingered in his direction, her heart screaming at her to stay with him, to go to his side but her guilt urged her to move away.

  Her choice was solidified when the ship jerked around her, the ground shaking abruptly then stopping as if to nudge her on. The lights around her quivering.

  Without needing another sign, she started down the passage where her friend had just been, making her way carefully over the sharp edges of debris scattered over the ground. She kept her light facing forward to keep her path in sight. The thought of the drifting ghost appearing in front of her scared her out of her mind.

  But the thought that the ghost was her friend kept her moving onward and that it was her turn to come through for her.

  It didn’t take long to reach the end of the passageway where she had seen the wraith. Allie didn’t know what to expect but standing where it had been minutes before made her spine tingle with fear. She was dealing with forces that she couldn’t understand.

  Moving the light to the room to her side where it had disappeared, she illuminated the space, searching for the entity. The red lights only extended to the passageways, leaving the rooms split off still dark. The space was large; it looked like it had been a meeting place at one point. At one end, she observed, what looked like a table shattered against the wall.

  It must have slammed into the wall on impact. The only other entrance to the space was in the opposite corner from her.

  “Hello?” She whispered to the ship again, receiving only silence in return, she walked into the room.

  Allie steadily moved deeper into the ship. Nothing else called out to her and the only sounds that accompanied her were the groans of the ship. The way forward was unusually clear and straightforward. There was only one way to move forward as the other pathways were blocked by rubble.

  She knew that the entity would keep her on the right path, Allie had a sinking, bottomless feeling in her gut.

  The ship violently shook around her, the floor lifting up and then crashing back down. She lost her footing from the heave and dropped to her knees. Something sharp sliced into them.

  She yelped as she tried to stand up, reaching down with a wince, finding small glass shards lodged into her skin. She pulled out several of the pieces, her fingers coming away with blood. It seeped down her bare legs and smeared over her hands.

  The ship shook again soon after but she was prepared for it, balancing her feet apart. She could hear large crashes behind her as if the interior was falling apart. Scared, she turned around to investigate and discovered that the way back partially blocked, the ceiling caved in. Large pipes had dropped down to block her exit.

  Allie felt trapped and for a moment wanted to dig her way out and back to Jack.

  Did I make the right choice? She reached out to manhandle the metal cylinders out of the way.

  “Please help,” a sad moan punctuated the space. She turned away from the make-shift jail bars that severed her path to Jack.

  “Ophelia?” She flashed the light around, the sound had been right behind her. Hardening herself upon seeing nothing, she moved further into the ship, leaving the pipes behind.

  The temperature was dropping with each step she took further into the ship. The sounds of the reactor now a faint, faraway whisper. She shivered, holding her arms around her frame. Allie could see her breath frosted in the air and she was grateful for the cloak draped around her. The blood on her knees cracked with her every movement, already chilled and dried to her skin.

  She was as cold on the outside as she was numb with fear on the inside, fighting herself with every step to not turn back and run to Jack; but every time her doubts began to win over, her friend’s voice filled her mind, beckoning her on.

  Allie was on a part of the ship that she had never been before. She periodically came across human remains the deeper she traveled, bones of the bodies she could not get too long ago.

  The spaces around her looked less like operating rooms and more like storage units, small odd closets and rooms dotted along the exteriors of the large rooms she moved through. In one room, she peeked in, and saw a dilapidated bed and rusty bedspring.

  Maybe this was where the crew was housed.

  She felt a breeze brush past her arm, she jerked it away and stumbled back in trepidation, searching the area for her friend.

  She backed up against the wall and trembled, faint from adrenaline and confusion. She stayed like that for a short time before she found the willpower to scan the area with her light again, her hand shaking from the effort. “Ophelia,” she breathed. “Where are you?” All she could see around her were the series of doors that led into the smaller living spaces.

  Her call was answered.

  Her heart stopped.

  Straight across from her, the wraith descended down from the shadows above. It’s hair falling forward as if dripping with black ooze and shade, the face distorted behind it.

  “Allie.” The entity groaned. It dropped down with a thunk, materializing before her eyes, pooling into an unnatural shape on the ground. “We want you.” The thing wailed, it’s voice overlayed by dozens of other voices. The ghost wasn’t her friend but a mass of lost souls.

  Allie stood there in terror, drowning in the stench of musty soil and death. Her mouth and lungs filled with the putrid scent, the taste adhered to her tongue. She pressed her back into the wall as if she could become one with it.

  “Ophelia, are you there?” She said so softly, she couldn’t hear the sound leave her lips.

  The wraith vibrated with otherworldly laughter, the cacophony hurting her ears. She watched as the evil faded in and out, there one moment and gone the next, flickering like the lights strewn along the walls outside the armored core. Every time it reappeared with each quiver, it was closer to her.

  The sludge-like hair was branching out around her, pulling from the darkness and yet still clinging to the ghost. Pale, long skeletal arms appeared before it from the muck, clawing at the ground.

  She couldn’t move as the thing moved its way closer. She frantically searched its ever shifting form for an image of her friend. It was an unearthly malformation of bodies and it reeked of hatred.

  It wanted her, it had always wanted her. Searching the planet with its darkness every night for years to haunt her.

  Alli
e’s arm felt like lead but she lifted it anyway to beam the light directly at it. Any resemblance of her friend vanished as the faces shifted into the other girls who had been on the ship with them that died. Their voices sounded as one, the groans leaking out of its mouth were abominable, the jaw stretched down, revealing an endless black void. It crept closer to her.

  She focused on the horror of what was before her, realizing that she should have been a part of the mass of lost souls coming closer; but she had miraculously survived, escaped the fate of an undying trauma. The pain of having hope firmly in your grasp then having it forcefully taken away.

  The souls of the girls before her were not the same ones she had grown up with but a macabre mass of angry, painful emotions that had settled and rotted in a place that there was no escape from. They were tied to the ship.

  Where could souls go when they were so far out in the fringes of space? They had been left here like discards to suffer alone.

  Allie didn’t want the same fate. She pushed her back along the chilled wall, putting more space between her and the suffering mass. It was moving slowly, the decayed arms dragging its heavy, wet body over the floor; weighted down by its physical form.

  She felt the darkness creep its way around to caress her skin.

  She didn’t dare blink, her eyes dried out from the watching the oncoming mass move closer. When she felt her back hit the corner of the large central room, she pushed her way up, feeling the pain in her knees, the little pieces of glass still lodged in her skin, making each movement a cringing effort. The shards chafed her skin tissue.

  The groans of the mass filling the room made her ears bleed, a sharp pain formed behind her eyes.

  She slid her back around the outer edges, keeping her light directed at the thing slowly making its way towards her as she made her way back to the exit. When she was just several agonizing steps away from her destination, the wails vanished, the darkness swirling around her loosened up. The oppressive thickness around her moved away.

  The mass of souls had stopped, suspended in space, the physical form vibrating. It was no longer moving, the only movement now was her erratic pulse.

  Allie stood there, slightly hunched over in pain, her body propped up at an angle against the cold metal wall, facing the fate she had escaped when a familiar faint scratch sounded the air above her.

  It was so quiet now that anyone else had to concentrate to hear it but for her, it was as loud as thunder in her ears.

  Once again she couldn’t bring herself to move, the fear she had felt morphing to despair and morphing again into terror because Allie knew that scratching, she knew what caused it and it wasn’t the grudge crawling before her. It was something from the abyss, an evil that had no right to be in her plane of existence.

  The scratching stopped, her heart skipped a beat as something wet and warm dripped onto her face. The strange sensation pulled her back to the reality of the situation around her. She reached up to wipe the drip off her face when another one fell, smearing down her cheek.

  She looked up slowly and gazed into the face of her nightmares.

  Her eyes were filled with a twisted wide grin engorged with sharp, discolored teeth. The mouth around it blackened out before it melded into a pasty, pale inhuman face. The eyes glaring down at her were dead hollows and gaping.

  The creature was on the ceiling, leering at her, so close that she could smell the stale death on its breath. Its breath tickled loose strands of her hair as her mouth fell open into a scream that she never released.

  The next moment she was slammed into the ground by the large force. Long jagged nails clawed at her body as she felt slimy, loose skin slide over her legs when a sharp pain stunned her as something sliced the skin on her upper arm.

  She felt faint from the burst of pain but her adrenaline went into overdrive and kept her from fainting.

  The beast was snapping at her, aiming for her throat while simultaneously trying to pin her down. She knocked her flashlight hard into the side of its head, losing her grip on her first defense; her hand coming away with strands of grimy hair.

  Allie heard her flashlight fall and roll away from her. She kicked her legs out, pressing her glass ravaged knees into the creature's body. When she made contact, the thing howled out a shriek and slammed its clawed fist into her stomach.

  She felt the abrupt loss of air as she wheezed, the shock of her sudden loss of breath, paralyzing her for an agonizing moment. A painful yank snapped her head as it grabbed her hair, pulling it up with enough force to expose her throat.

  Allie pushed with every muscle in her body, her lost scream from earlier filling the room as she bore her entire body to the side, feeling the thing above her shift and slide to the side. Its probing nails slicing her skin into little, jagged nicks.

  The ship heaved heavily, lifting upward, lodging the room at a sharp angle. The beast lost its hold on her hair and flew across the room with a monstrous scream. A loud, high pitched wail from their observer joined in the symphony.

  Allie struggled on the floor, grabbing at anything that would stop her slide down the room towards the thing now clawing its way back to her on the other end. She saw the exit begin to pass her by as she threw her leg out to catch the side, halting her slide.

  With her free hand she seized the door panel and hauled herself through. The ship trembled around her, slamming back down. She could feel a sucking sensation around her as the ship dipped further into the ground.

  On heavy legs she stood up, using the wall as support, her hand streaking blood as it moved. Every fiber of her being screamed at her to stop and collapse and give up but she refused to listen.

  I would lose everything if I died on this ship. She could hear the scratches start up behind her.

  Without another thought she started running. The ship was so dark she found herself tripping over debris, hitting her body into the dark metal walls, while hearing the ever familiar scratches behind her. Far in the background barely lost over the thing pursuing her, she heard the loud pitiful cries of the souls left behind.

  Her eyes welled up for their pain. I pray they find peace. The cries came to a stop as if they heard her thoughts.

  Her foot caught on a loose plating, twisting her ankle. She fell forward from the shock when her head was thrown violently back again. The beast had caught up to her.

  In the distance before her she could see a pulsing red light indicating the passageways leading back to the reactor. I’m so close. She felt the familiar claws sink into her twisted foot as she stared at the lights.

  Jack was right there.

  Furious, her agony flooded out of her body as she saw her chance at freedom being denied again, she kicked her leg out with all her might, thrusting the thing sideways. She turned around to face it.

  Allie clenched her hand, remembering the dagger that she still held, having forgotten it with her fixation on the flashlight.

  She propelled forward at the monster that was now trying to bite down on her calf and brought the dagger down, feeling it slide into wet flesh. The thing screeched and tried to slither back into the shadows beyond but she wouldn’t let it, bringing the dagger down again, stopping its movements.

  Her mind was overwhelmed with bloodlust, stabbing at the abomination over and over, the blood and carnage splattering away.

  “He told me to stab until it’s dead.” She shrieked, knowing the ghoul beneath her had perished some time ago. She was unable to stop.

  Chapter Thirteen:

  ---

  Jack carefully pulled the last of the wires out, keeping one hand firmly in place to retain his connection to the reactor. He was temporarily playing as a conduit for the large machine. The electrical pulses were his only lead to the working circuitry.

  He was part of the ship at that moment, feeling the energy flow through him and release, simultaneously powering up the core while it charged up his robotics.

  He felt
invigorated.

  The ship groaned beneath him, the floor heaving sideways as if something had thrown its into the the side of the ship. Jack lost his connection to the core as his body was thrown to the side. His hand reactively went to the circuits he had already harvested, that were now strapped to his thigh, ensuring that they were intact and undamaged.

  The reactor convulsed, he watched as it rapidly lost power now that he was no longer maintaining his connection to it. It was going to die, the pulsing lights had longer intervals between them as the piece of deteriorating metal depleted its remaining power.

  He called out, “Allie, are you okay?” Jack stood up while he scanned the area for her presence. The ship shook again, the movements progressively becoming more violent. His internal alert systems came back alive, overwhelming him with screams of danger.

  Fuck, where is she? He picked up the pace.

  His hand shot out to the barrier, keeping his feet steady as the ship jerked downward, a feeling of vertigo encompassed him.

  Jack sensed several wurms just outside the battle cruiser, ramming their bodies into it. Fuck. He screamed several curses to himself. How did they get through the rocky mountainous crust? The magnetic field and the electrical pulses must be drawing them like a moth to the flame. They’re trying to destroy the ship.

  He ducked under the barrier, calling out “Allie, we need to go! Now.” He shouted, realizing it fell on deaf ears. She wasn’t there.

  Giant metal panels dislodged and crashed around him, the interior crumbling to pieces with each impact. He searched for the girl as he ran to his half-buried pack and pulled it free, slinging it on, quickly scanning the ship’s rapidly changing interior. In the distance, coming from outside of the ship, he heard a loud monstrous roar as a wurm broke through the surface; the ground quaked when its giant body hit the dirt.

  The potent, magnetic field was screwing with his processing, his concentration. He could sense life-forms but he had a hard time pinpointing their location. “Allie!” He yelled louder into the space, deciding to track her the primitive way, picking up the direction her scent was the freshest, he followed it down a decrepit pathway that was now partially destroyed by the barrage of violence.