by Amanda Rose
All ships were doing their final checks before departing. Once they were on course the crew would all enter into cryogenic sleep. One crew member would remain awake for 30 days, to maintain systems, and ensure the crew remained safe. After 30 days they’d wake the next crewman on the rotation schedule and get into their own cryo pod. This safety precaution was also beneficial to the crew members to get their bodies moving. With 30-day rotations each crew member would only be woken up every few years during their several centuries journey across dead space.
Like everyone else, Vex was waiting for the command to head to the cryo room. The time dragged on and the crew was becoming restless. Staring out into the void was discomforting to say the least. The only thing to break up the unending blackness of dead space were the couple of ships visible through the window that lay before them.
Vex was trying to meditate, but the underlying murmuring and tension in the room made it hard for him to concentrate. He looked at Zev who had fallen asleep in his chair. Lucky, Vex thought as he looked at Zev, wishing that he could fall asleep so easily.
Another hour passed by and Vex was beginning to feel that something was off. Not long after that the ships within the view of the observation deck turned around and flew out of sight behind them. What the hell is going on? Vex wondered.
It was then that Cain came on over the intercom, “We’re ready, time to get in the cryo pods everyone.” No one else seemed disturbed by the other ships leaving. The crew, cranky from waiting, simply unbuckled from their seats, turned on their mag boots, and made their way down the hall.
Zev had slept through the announcement, so Vex shook him gently until he woke up. Zev yawned and rubbed his eyes, “Time for cryo now, kid?” he asked as he stretched.
“Yeah, but…” Vex wasn’t sure what to say.
“What?” Zev asked.
“It’s been hours, and the other ships just left,” Vex told him.
Zev looked at the clock, “We should’ve made way by now… but these things happen, sometimes checks take a while. Don’t worry kid, captain says we’re good, I trust ‘em.”
Vex nodded, feeling reassured, “Right.”
They made their way down the hall and into the cryo room. The majority of the crew were already in their pods. Vex walked over to his assigned pod and looked at the control panel attached to it and was trying to remember how to set the sequence.
Zev noticed the perplexed look on Vex’s face and walked over to him, “Need a refresher?”
“Please,” Vex said.
Zev showed him exactly how to input all of the data to set up the pod and Vex was incredibly grateful. He wasn’t sure how he was so lucky to have made friends with Zev so easily. He’d always had a hard time talking to new people.
Vex climbed into his pod, and then the door closed. After a few seconds, when the door connected to the pod, all that he could hear was the hiss as the air tight seal made perfect suction. It was incredibly tight quarters within the pod and Vex had to choke down his claustrophobia. Zev tapped on the plexiglass, “Sweet dreams,” his distorted voice echoed oddly hollow inside the pod.
“Thanks,” Vex said and watched Zev walk away.
A moment later the pod activated, and the chamber became cold. Pure oxygen filtered in, which at first felt incredibly stimulating. It didn’t take long for Vex to feel the effects and to fall into a deep dreamless sleep.
Time after time Vex was woken up to do his 30-day rotational shift to maintain the ship. The 30 days were a blessing and a curse. He had always reveled in solitude, but no contact of any kind except for the day he was woken up by another crewman, and the final day where he’d wake up his replacement before going back into cryo sleep, was a bit more than he could bear.
After his 6th cycle he’d read through all of the books he’d brought and started to pilfer through his crewmates bags to find more entertainment. There was very little to do while waking; while they were called maintenance workers, the ship was essentially self-sufficient. A waking sentient being was merely a precaution in the event of an emergency or power failure.
Vex was in the midst of his 21st cycle when the proximity alarm went off. He had been napping and the high-pitched frequency had snapped him awake abruptly. He headed for the cockpit in a sprint while covering his ears against the noise.
When Vex arrived he quickly turned off the alarm and breathed a sigh of relief. He scanned the void with his eyes, but as always, there was nothing to see but never-ending darkness. He cut the engines to be safe and plopped himself down at the helm to go over the sensor scans.
The motion sensors did detect some movement, however the readouts varied greatly. Multiple detections from one, a single object from the other, he was beginning to think the sensors were malfunctioning. I’ll have to leave a note for Zev to fix them next time he’s up, he told himself. He ran an infrared sweep of the area ahead of them just to be safe, but it came back showing nothing was there.
Vex reengaged the engines, resuming their course, and wrote out the note for Zev about the sensors. He stood up and stretched, looking out upon the void. “There’s nothing here but us,” he said, feeling the finality and isolation of it.
He turned around and walked out of the cockpit, eager to resume his nap. He walked through the hall unenthusiastically. The depression had set in strong. They had been warned before they left on the voyage about the mental effects of extended cryogenic usage, but the reality of it was a lot harder to deal with than he’d expected. His past few cycles he couldn’t wait for his 30-day rotations to be over, so he could get back into his pod. How many more cycles before we get there? I don’t even want to think about it…
As he was halfway down the hall suddenly he heard a loud thump! And the ship jarred hard to the left which made Vex lose his footing with his magnetic boots. His body was flung hard into the wall knocking the air out of him. He floated there dazed for a moment. The ship continued to jar, thump… thump, thump!
Vex shook his head, and then pushed off the wall hard so his feet touched the floor and grabbed on. He made his way quickly back to the cockpit, fighting the tremors every step of the way. He clamored his way into the pilot’s seat and quickly shut down the engines. He breathed a brief sigh of relief when the jarring had stopped.
He stared out again into the dark abyss ahead, Did we hit something?… Maybe the engine destabilized? His mind raced trying to decipher the problem. As usual there was nothing but blackness to look out at, but then, the darkness moved. “What the fuck!” Vex nearly fell out of his seat.
Vex rubbed his eyes. Am I seeing things? He wondered, his heart pounding in his chest. He continued to stare, there was nothing, and he was beginning to doubt himself, and then…. Movement! The joy of knowing he wasn’t losing his mind quickly wore off and became uneasiness about whatever it was on the ship. His mind raced about what to do, but he was out of his league. He needed help.
Rushing down to the cryo bay, Vex bit back his panic. What is that? The sensors were right after all… how did anything else get this far into dead space? And it was moving! Oh Yena!
Running into the cryo room he went up to the captain’s pod first and initialized the waking sequence. Once it was underway he ran over to Zev’s pod to wake him up too. It seemed like it was taking forever this time for them to wake up. After a moment the seal gave and slowly the captain’s pod opened.
Cain came to rather quickly, and without warning, vomited all over the floor. He wiped the bile from his mouth, “Urg, this never gets easier…” Then he noticed it was Vex who had woken him, and that Zev’s pod was beginning to open. His ears were acutely tuned to his ship, having spent most of his life in space, and he could tell the engines were off, “What’s going on?”
“I, we, there’s something out there, in dead space! We just ran into it… I don’t know what to do,” Vex told him, glad to not be alone anymore.
Zev’s pod finished opening and he woke up and stretched heartily, “Nothing li
ke a good nap,” he said, wholly unaffected by cryogenic sleep.
Cain’s eyes darted to Zev, “How you enjoy this I’ll never know.”
“We have to hurry!” Vex exclaimed.
“What?” Zev asked, confused.
“Kid says the ship hit something,” Cain said casually while climbing out of his pod, his legs shaky.
“Really?” Zev said, and looked to Vex. Vex’s pale serious expression said it all. “Well, shit,” Zev said and got out of his pod.
The captain and the engineer quickly dressed, with Vex trying to rush them. The older men both tried to keep their calm composure; they’d seen unusual things in space many times over the years, but Vex’s distress was hard to ignore.
“Keep it together kid, the Universe is full of surprises,” Cain told Vex.
The three of them began making their way up to the cockpit. Along the way the lights began to flicker. “That’s odd,” Zev said, “how bad was the collision?”
“I, uh, not that bad, I don’t think, just jostling,” Vex said.
“Maybe a relay came loose,” Zev said.
They walked into the cockpit and Cain sat at the helm. He pulled up the sensor logs, “That’s weird,” he sneered.
“I thought the sensors were malfunctioning,” Vex said. “Look,” he said pointing out the window.
“At what?” Cain said, seeing only the darkness.
“Just wait,” Vex told him.
A few second later it moved. “What the hell?” Cain said in a loud whisper, standing up to get a closer look. It moved again, “Yena! It’s alive!” he exclaimed.
“This certainly takes the prize for the weirdest thing I’ve seen in space… how can anything live out there? It’s a total vacuum. There isn’t even any light out here,” Zev said, wracking his brain for answers.
“We can figure out the ‘why’ later, I want this shit off my ship and to resume course,” Cain said sternly.
“How?” Vex asked, perplexed.
“More importantly what after that? The sensor feedback is garbled, it can’t make sense of whatever these things are. We don’t know how many are out there,” Zev said.
“We have to go out and see for ourselves. We’ll take the floodlight and use our eyes,” Cain said gruffly.
Vex felt a shiver run through his body at the idea of having to go out amongst those things. He had a sinking feeling in his gut he couldn’t shake. “We’re not enough,” he blurted out. Zev and Cain looked at him questioningly. “We, uh, need more crew, people to go out and pry those things off while we process the data in here and try to get accurate scans,” he said, his brain grasping for any excuse not to have to leave the ship.
Cain grinned, “Knew we brought you along for a reason, kid. Alright, you two get things set up in here, I’m going to go wake up some more of the crew and lead the team on the hull of the ship. I’ll loop my helm feed for you to figure out,” Cain said and got up to leave.
“How are you going to get those things off the hull?” Zev asked.
“Zap ‘em off,” Cain said as he left.
30 minutes later Cain had 5 other crewmen awake and suited up ready to exit the ship. They had equipped themselves with shock rods which had been brought to be used as non-lethal defensive equipment to fend off wildlife while they established colonies in the next galaxy. They entered the airlock and sealed it off. Each of the crew attached their safety harness, which connected back to the airlock, and would keep them from floating off into space if they lost their footing.
Cain radioed the cockpit after he finished attaching his own harness, “Ready to depressurize,” he told them.
“Confirmed,” Zev’s voice came back, and he began the depressurization sequence.
It took less than a minute for the oxygen to be sucked out of the room. Cain then opened the exterior hatch, and one by one the crewmen made their way out onto the ship. Cain was the last one out, and when he set foot on the hull he was taken aback by the vast number of the tendrils that had attached themselves to the ship.
“How is it?” Zev asked.
“Oh, one minute,” Cain replied, and turned on his helm’s camera feed. He then turned on the flood light he’d brought out with him. For as far as the eye could see these ugly brown-black tendrils filled dead space. “It’s like being in the middle of a school of fish in the ocean,” he said as he panned his head around to get a full view on the hull. “You seein’ this?”
“Yes,” Zev said, his voice grave.
“They look like the tentacles of a fish, or some sort of engorged worm,” Cain said, looking closely at one.
“It looks like they have suction of some kind, like some sea creatures do, by the way that they’re able to hold on,” Zev agreed.
“We’re completely surrounded!” Vex cried out as he watched the incoming video footage, his fear getting the better of him.
Cain could hear Vex through his headset, “Kid, keep it together,” he told him. Cain walked along the hull. The other crewmen were in place and readying their shock batons. “Alright, have at ‘er, men,” he told them.
The first crewman who was in place set the stun baton to the highest setting and zapped the tendril that lay before him. The tendril didn’t let go of the hull like they had expected, and instead buried itself deep into the ships plating. “It’s eating its way into the ship!” the man called out, in shock. Another crewman shocked another tendril, and this one snapped up with alarming speed and grabbed the stun baton right out of his hands.
The third crewman to attempt to dislodge a tendril hadn’t been so lucky. After stunning it, the tendril latched onto his leg and began squeezing with excessive force. The man was screaming at the top of his lungs as he felt the crunch! of his bones breaking. Cain ran over to help as fast as he could, but before he could make it the tendril had made its way up the man’s body and across his midsection and chest. Cain shocked the tendril with his baton, but it only seemed to make it act more hastily. The crushing continued, and one after another, the man’s bones snapped.
When the tendril got hold of the crewman’s arm and broke it the break was so severe that the bone pierced through his space suit. The man began gasping as his oxygen flooded quickly out into space. His screaming was frantic until finally, the pressure collapsed his lungs and the broken ridged bones of his ribs pierced his heart. There was a disturbing gurgling as he choked to death on his own blood before he was fully silenced.
“Back in the ship!” Cain commanded.
The crew hastily made their way back to the airlock. Cain thought about trying to free the dead man’s body from the death grip of the tendril but thought better of it. I’m sorry. Rest easy now…
Cain followed up the rear and got in the airlock. It didn’t take long to pressurize. Once they were back inside of the ship their panic and fear were palpable. They stripped off their spacesuits. Cain told everyone to come to a meeting in the observation room in 15 minutes.
Before the meeting Cain needed to clear his head. He went to the nearest bathroom, locked the door, and ran cool water which he splashed on his face. He let his mind digest everything that had happened and tried to push the horrific images of the crewman’s death out of his mind. He took a few deep breathes, put on a brave face, and went out to lead his crew.
When Cain walked into the observation room, he heard the men’s terror as they spoke, recanting the events outside the ship. “Keep it together,” Cain said as he entered the room. “The worst thing we can do is lose our heads. This is just a problem we have to find a solution for,” he told them.
“But…” one of the crewman, distraught and scared, went to argue.
Cain cut him off, “What happened was awful, but we’ll mourn later. We need to stay focused right now. If we can figure out what happened and a way to counteract these things, then we’ll be in the clear.”
“I may have some insight,” Zev chimed in.
“Go on,” the captain told him.
“I w
ent to go and check if we had a loose relay to see if I could get the lights to stop flickering. There’s nothing wrong with our electronics, but when I was looking I saw our power reserves are down. You saw how those things reacted when you shocked them? I think they absorb electrical energy,” Zev said.
The crew scoffed, but Cain hushed them, “How bad are the reserves?”
“Down to 70% but I don’t know when the drain began. Could be coincidence, but for now it’s a working theory,” Zev said.
“I don’t believe in coincidence,” Cain said.
A silence fell over the room. They were all deep in thought. A couple of the crewman were on the verge of nervous breakdowns. The lights were flickering more rampantly now.
Amidst the silence a loud screeching of what sounded like grinding metal filled the room. Everyone covered their ears and looked around. When the noise finally subsided, the crew all got to their feet.
