With engines dead and coms destroyed this ship was most people’s worst nightmares. Fortunately for the crew their terror had ended almost a week ago now, after a month adrift. Unfortunately for them, it had ended because they were all dead, hunted down one by one and reduced to bones.
No more did they have to attempt to survive in the corrupted space, as the caverns mingled with the rooms, shifting them just enough to make it impossible to navigate.
Not a single cover remained on the air ducts, child-sized hand prints making it clear what was using them. Something with claw like fingernails and ash covered hands, that definitely wasn’t worried about cleaning up after itself.
Now the walls were marked with weapons discharge and claw marks, contrasting with the ash used to paint strange trees and animals in some corridors. Items were strewn about like toys, abandoned by a child who had gotten distracted by one of the many interesting bits of the ship.
Panels had been torn off to get to bits of wire, ones that were then twisted into more toys for whatever roamed the halls. The ship had become a playground for something sinister, and the creature was absolutely delighted with itself.
It had even turned the mess hall into a macabre version of an art gallery, every bone from its prey carved and placed in an arrangement the creature found most aesthetically pleasing.
Yes, the creature was satisfied with its work, for it was definitely done well.
If she’d had a single ounce of sense she would’ve skipped straight back into hyperspace the moment they’d come out of it. She’d spent a long time trying to override and ignore the whispers of unnatural instinct that her masters in her early years had hoped to hone, but the sense of wrongness that permeated her through to the bone at the sight of the ship left adrift had been impossible to ignore. It listed, spinning slowly like a child’s top that had been left unattended, clouds and wisps of oxygen and she didn’t want to know what else hazy in the dull expanse of space around them. The cause of the damage to the ship was not immediately clear, but there was no doubt that the hauler was beyond salvageable and the chances of anything or anyone being alive aboard it were beyond slim.
It was only some small comfort that the cargo they’d been sent to retrieve was probably still intact: a data packet secured in the ship’s records. There was at least enough power to keep the lights on and she could splice into the system ... from any of the terminals in engineering, command or the captain’s quarters and get what she needed. She’d suited up, a rebreather and slim atmo suit just in case, weapons and slicing kit, keeping it light and breezy, an in and out. She could’ve, maybe should’ve, just sent one of the tag teams, but the client had been extremely clear: eyes only.
Stepping foot into the cargo bay, the doors half blasted outwards, the energy field struggling to keep in the remnants of atmo, she felt her stomach clench and the further she slunk through the ship, the more she had to ignore the sense of dread that simmered beneath the surface of her thoughts. Blood, viscera, twisted and gnarled remains lay scattered about, images scrawled across the floors and walls and ceiling in blood and ash, and among it all, an inky, smudgy substance that seemed to watch her malevolently. In, and out, she reminded herself, hand hovering near, but not quite on, the blaster at her side. What she wouldn’t give for the saber hidden away in one of the many recessed hidey holes in her quarters...
Stories, half forgotten, of the creatures, the monsters, lurking in the Dark crowded the fringes of her thoughts, stories whispered among the acolyte children, heralded by the Apprentices and Masters, as if the inhuman devourers of flesh and souls were something akin to gods.
