by I G Hulme
Sprays of blood ran up the walls, glinting in the stark light, turned to ice in the vacuum.
But spread out across the floor of the corridor was a trail of dark shapes, scorched fragments of bodies. Here lay a twisted torso, and beside it a severed hand, and a little way off, more grisly body parts, harder to identify. Each piece was covered in a thick layer of frost that sparkled with an unsettling beauty.
“There must be five or six people here,” breathed Ryann in disbelief, unable to tear his gaze away. He heard Angelique slump against the wall behind him.
“I think I’m going to throw up,” he heard her whimper, and he turned, catching her as she slid shaking to the floor.
“Just breathe slowly, try to stay calm,” said Ryann, his hands holding her helmet so that she couldn’t turn away from him. He could see her eyes wild and staring through the grimy glass of her visor.
“Oh god Ryann! What the hell is this — look at them! Oh god!”
“Hey! Look at me!” urged Ryann, his face up close to hers. He held her tightly as she tried to turn back to the macabre scene. “Look at me Angelique. Just stay calm. Breathe, breathe.”
“I can’t breathe in this damn helmet! I can’t!” She writhed and kicked out, lost in her fear as she tried to tug at the locking catch on her collar.
“Angelique! It’s okay, it’s okay!” called out Ryann, and he held her tightly to his chest.
Eventually he felt her go limp, her sobs ebbing away to brief shudders.
“It’s okay,” he soothed, rocking her gently in his arms.
“Who the hell could have done that to them?” he heard her whisper at last, and he sat back, staring into her eyes.
She must have caught the field-dressing on the inside of her helmet, because a thin trail of blood ran down her forehead. She looked pale and gaunt in the haze of his flashlight.
“I don’t know,” he replied absently, looking back over the trail of body parts.
“We should get back to the Raven,” stuttered Angelique through clenched teeth. She kept her head pointing away from the scene as though refusing to acknowledge it.
“We can’t. We need this ship. We’ll get to the bridge and see if we can get a clue as to what happened.”
“What happened? Isn’t it obvious? Some psycho is running through the ship chopping everyone into little bits!” Angelique’s voice descended back into sobs.
“Here, look there are some guns,” said Ryann brightly, reaching over and pulling a rifle from beneath one of the bodies. He brushed the ice from it, checking the ammunition levels. “There, things are looking better already,” he said with a grin.
“Are you serious?” exclaimed Angelique. “Look!” She held up her flashlight, letting it play over the walls and ceiling; Ryann could see the beam of light shaking.
It took him a moment, but then he began to make out the signs of blast marks and bullet holes amongst the pipes and cables.
“They loosed off all these shots and hit nothing!” croaked Angelique.
“Maybe exo-armour, mil-spec or something?” muttered Ryann to himself, examining the bullet holes. “Maybe whoever they were fighting took the bodies of their dead? I don’t know.”
“Ryann, I want to go back to the Raven.”
“The Raven’s dead!” spat Ryann in frustration making Angelique jump. “Get it into your head dammit! We go on or we die!”
Angelique stared at him aghast, shocked by his outburst. After a moment’s impasse she seemed to visibly deflate, her shoulders slumping.
“I’m sorry,” he mumbled. “Just, you said yourself — the Raven’s not going anywhere, and —”
“It’s okay,” she cut in, pulling herself to her feet. “You’re right — I just lost it a bit there.” She stood in the shadows, her back to the trail of corpses.
“No, it was my fault, I didn’t mean it to come out like that,” said Ryann awkwardly.
“No, it’s okay,” she said softly, taking a deep breath and turning around. “You know, I’ve seen plenty of dead bodies before — who hasn’t with this war against the Lumina? But —” Her voice faltered as she held back her tears. “But I’ve never seen anything like this. Nothing. This, this inhuman. What do you think they used to cut them like this?”
She took a step towards the scene, forcing herself to examine the bodies more closely.
“You don’t need to —”
“I’m okay,” she muttered distantly, her composure gradually returning. “It was more the shock I think — I’m okay now.” She peered down at the nearest bodies, swallowing hard as she examined them. “Looks like the wounds have been cauterised — a clean cut — an arc laser?”
“Probably the same thing that they cut the hatches with — here, take this.” Ryann stooped down and prised another rifle from the frozen hands of one of the corpses.
“But why chop them up like this?” she breathed, her voice still shaking.
“Here,” repeated Ryann, holding out the rifle; she took it with a sigh, checking it over. “For what it’s worth,” he said with a grim smile.
“For what it’s worth,” she echoed, and they stepped carefully between the body parts, heading off into the shadows.
CHAPTER TEN
LIFE-SIGNS
By the time they reached the silent bridge of the Ibis, Ryann and Angelique had come across the bodies of five more crew-members.
Each of them had been terribly mutilated like the others — a gruesome scattering of body parts frozen in the dark.
It was obvious that most of them had been cut down whilst trying to run, caught out in the open corridors. But a couple of the bodies were more distressing: curled-up cadavers lodged in makeshift hiding places, unable in the end to evade their mystery attacker.
“Who the hell could have done this?” croaked Angelique as they surveyed their latest macabre find. They were staring in horror through the open hatch into the bridge of the Ibis.
One crew member lay sprawled out in the doorway, a rifle and several empty magazines littering the floor around her mutilated corpse. The other body sat upright in the captain’s chair, his lifeless hands still resting upon the controls, as though he had been trying to get the ship’s systems back online right up until the very end. A scorched trail cut through the back of his chair and out of the other side, cleaving the victim’s body in two.
“Whoever it was that did this, they’re not here now, thankfully,” muttered Ryann, inspecting the figure in the captain’s chair.
“We don’t know that,” whispered Angelique, staring out through the panoramic glass that took up the entirety of the forward wall of the bridge. The shifting mass of the Halion Belt glowed green and blue beyond, flashes of lightning briefly illuminating its depths. The nebula seemed tantalisingly close, and yet at the same time desperately out of reach; the promise of safety in New Eden seemed a long way away from the claustrophobic corridors of this silent and brooding ship.
She looked away and out into the darkness where the distant shapes of the hulks from the wreck-field glinted dully.
“Hey, I don’t see any sign of that Luminal battleship,” she said at last.
“Well, that’s one piece of good news at least,” replied Ryann, still examining the remains of the pilot. He brushed away the frost from the name-tag on his flight-suit.
“Look, it’s Xavier Shaw!” he said in surprise.
“Commander of New Eden?” asked Angelique, walking over to the captain’s station. “What’s he doing out here, piloting a miner’s colony ship?”
“I thought I recognised some of the flight-suits on those bodies we’ve come across,” sighed Ryann. “I think they were some of the people in charge of the administration of New Eden.”
“So, if they’re all here, who’s running New Eden now?”
Ryann didn’t reply, he just stared out of the window towards the Halion Belt.
“Have a look around, see if you can get any of the Ibis’ systems back online — just the
basics, we don’t want to attract another Luminal ship.” He turned back to the captain’s station as though he had come to a decision and pulled the corpse roughly out of the seat. It slid to the floor, the two pieces landing heavily.
“Ryann!” exclaimed Angelique, glancing around in panic, but he was already seating himself at the console, flicking through the blank controls.
“Engineering station is over there,” he muttered, pointing behind him without looking round. “Let’s see if we can at least restore the atmosphere.”
Angelique went to protest, glancing back to the grisly remains just inside the doorway. She gave a long sigh, and then turned, making her way towards the rear of the bridge, treading cautiously between the high banks of equipment. The green glow of the Halion Belt only gave a faint illumination, and it was much darker away from the window; the shadows seemed ominous and impenetrable.
Emergency flight helmets were positioned at the back of each crewman’s station, giving the impression of silent sentinels, staring out through their blank visors. Two more hatchways at the rear of the bridge were just black rectangles, and she skirted fearfully past them, her heart in her mouth.
As she reached the First Engineer’s station she noticed a couple of lights blinking upon a panel in the ghostly stillness.
“That’s odd,” she muttered to herself, sitting down in the flight chair and scrutinising the readouts.
“What have you got?” she heard Ryann’s voice in her earpiece.
“Everything’s offline, but there is emergency power available,” muttered Angelique, flicking through the systems. A bank of monitor screens sprang into life, casting her face in an eerie red glow. “But everything except one power distributor is off, and that’s running on practically zero — it’s barely registering.”
“So, what’s the problem?”
“Well, it looks like someone’s routed an auxiliary line from the emergency array down into the cargo hold — if I had to hazard a guess, I’d say it was for a life-support feed.”
She heard Ryann approaching through the shadows.
“What makes you say that?” he asked when he reached her, peering over her shoulder at the display.
“Well look,” she replied, flicking through the screens. “This is the manifest for the cargo hold, mostly mining equipment: drilling-rigs, ore trucks. But here, there’s this.”
“Prospector Hazardous Environment Vehicle,” read Ryann.
“Mining exploration vehicle — pressurised, self-contained. Run an extra power feed into it and you could survive for months if you had a few food supplies.”
“A survivor?” asked Ryann.
Angelique turned and looked up at him in concern, her face gaunt in the stark light.
“Or our killer,” she said gravely.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
CONFRONTING A KILLER
“There it is, over by that ore-hopper,” whispered Angelique, pointing off into the depths of the cargo hold. Even though they had power to the ship now, the meagre spotlights on the walls only served to deepen the shadows.
They had managed to restore emergency power to nearly all levels, and with that a breathable atmosphere. Where all had been deathly silent in the vacuum, now the ship creaked and groaned. The sound of the air blowing mournfully through the ventilation ducts set their nerves on edge.
Now that they were down in the engineering levels, the environment was much more cramped and difficult to navigate. The corridors were low and claustrophobic, a densely-packed maze of pipes and machinery. And although the cargo hold was a large space, it was crammed so tightly with vehicles and equipment it still felt oppressive and foreboding.
There were perhaps twenty vehicles, from large dumper-trucks to mobile drilling platforms, their rigs folded up for transport. And in-between was a chaotic sprawl of machinery, everything covered in a thick layer of rock dust.
The Prospector that Angelique pointed to was a large tracked vehicle, reminiscent of an armoured troop transport. Ryann studied it, deep in thought, peering out from behind the cover of an old asteroid-lander. The Prospector’s heat-shields were down, the steel shutters blocking his view through the windows of the cab. Everything was ominous and silent.
“So, what do we do now?” hissed Angelique as Ryann ducked back behind the lander. “If it’s the psycho that diced up the rest of the crew, then we can’t very well just go up and knock on the door!”
“Why not? we’ll just go over and talk to them,” said Ryann with a grin, pulling his rifle up to his chest. “I can be polite.” With a wink, he ducked around the corner, slipping silently through the shadows.
Angelique cursed quietly to herself and followed, crawling through the narrow gap between two imposing dumper-trucks.
They made their way slowly through the maze of machinery, getting closer and closer to the Prospector. Ryann risked another glance — he could make out the rear airlock-doors now, sealed shut with no signs of life.
“There, that’s where they’re getting the power-feed from the Ibis,” whispered Angelique at his side, pointing up to the ceiling. A thick bundle of cables and air-lines ran down from out of the shadows, leading into the auxiliary-feed panel at the rear of the vehicle.
“Maybe we could shut down the feed — draw them out?” she whispered, but Ryann was already moving forwards once more.
They reached the foot of the loading ramp and still there were no signs of movement. After a moment or two, Ryann gave a sigh and stood up, walking cautiously forward, his rifle held up, pointing straight towards the airlock door.
Angelique shook her head in disbelief, then quickly raised her own rifle, taking aim on the airlock-door as she found cover behind the massive wheel of an ore-loader.
She held her breath as Ryann inched closer and closer, expecting at any moment to hear the deafening retort of a gun punctuate the strained silence.
Ryann stepped up onto the loading ramp, walking gingerly right up to the airlock-door.
Still there was nothing.
He wiped the dust from the door panel, pressing the release button, but the controls were dead.
With a sudden noise that made Angelique jump, Ryann banged three times upon the metal hatch with his fist.
“Hello?” he called out, and his voice echoed off into the distant depths of the cargo hold.
As the echoes died away they seemed to be replaced by an even deeper silence that built in pressure, as though the moment were rising towards some tremendous release.
“Hello? Is there anybody in there?” called out Ryann again. “We aren’t going to harm you — we just need some help.”
Still, nothing but silence. It burned in Angelique’s ears, threatening to drive her mad.
She heard Ryann mutter something angrily under his breath, and he shouldered his rifle, looking around the vehicle. He jumped down from the loading ramp and disappeared off into the shadows for a moment, and Angelique took nervous aim as she a loud clang of metal.
But then Ryann returned, holding a steel bar around a metre in length. With another angry murmur, he stabbed the bar roughly into the door hinges and begin to pry them apart.
“Ryann!” hissed Angelique in concern, but he was lost in his frustration now, hammering at the door with all his strength.
“We just want to talk!” he cursed, and with a final heave the hinge buckled and the door sprang open, sending Ryann staggering.
At the exact moment that he stumbled backwards, a deafening blast of gunfire split the air, the bright muzzle-flash bursting out from the open doorway.
Ryann dived off the loading ramp, as without even thinking, Angelique opened up on the doorway. Her shots lit up the vehicle with sparks and flashes.
Another burst of gunfire issued from out of the shadows of the Prospector, but to Angelique’s relief, she saw Ryann scrambling off to safety, ducking behind a stack of oil drums.
And then, in an instant, the cargo hall was plunged back into silence, and Angelique w
aited, her gun trained upon the dark hatch. She tried to steady her breathing, the sound of her heart pounding in her ears.
Ryann looked out cautiously from his place of cover. His ears were still ringing from the proximity of the gunfire. It had been so close, he swore he had felt the heat of the shot as it had passed by his face. His hands shook uncontrollably as the realisation of what had just happened began to kick in.
“Come on out!” he called, but his voice was cracked and hoarse, and for a moment he wished he hadn’t disturbed the oppressive silence.
And then, he began to make out a sound coming from inside the vehicle. It sounded like a woman’s voice, a quiet sobbing interspersed with laughter, that deeply unnerved him. He had a sudden vision of the trails of bodies he and Angelique had witnessed earlier in those dark, airless corridors, and he gripped his rifle fearfully, pointing it back towards the open doorway.
“I said come on out! We won’t hurt you,” he stuttered again. Something about the sound of that laughter deeply affected him; it was a sound full of madness.
“You won’t hurt me?”
Ryann heard the faint, cracked voice of a woman as she spoke.
“You’ve already killed me.”
And then she appeared, slowly stepping out of the hatch, blinking in the dim light. The woman was perhaps in her sixties, her ragged white hair plastered over her sweat-covered brow. Her face was covered in grime, washed away in places by the trails of her tears. She wore a torn and stained flight-suit, and her gun hung limp in her fingers.
“Just take it easy,” said Ryann, cautiously lowering his rifle as he stepped out from cover. “We just want to talk.”
“Talk?” she spat, laughing manically through her tears. “What’s there to talk about? I’m already dead! You’re murderers!”
Ryann gave Angelique a questioning glance, but she merely shrugged, not knowing what to say.
The woman slumped down to her knees in despair.
“Hey, that wasn’t us,” said Ryann. “We found them like —”
“Murderers!” screamed the woman in abject desolation. “You killed me! You killed us all!” The woman swung her rifle up from her side, and Ryann only just managed to dive back into cover before another burst of gunfire exploded all around him as she screamed and screamed.
