Futuristic Dark Secrets

The shuttle exited the cargo bay of the SSV Belfast some distance away from its intended destination. Colonel John Waggoner locked in the co-ordinates of the station and set the shuttle to autopilot. Designed to carry a Marine squad of twelve and two pilots, John was the shuttle's sole occupant. The true nature of why the Belfast was in the far reaches of the Pierre-Mao Cluster was known only to the Captain and John himself.

The Office of Naval Intelligence was still actively seeking out stations and outposts that had been lost to the war, hoping to recover any surviving databanks. The Colonel had been tasked with their latest finding, deep in the fringes of Coalition space.

John checked the terminal in front of him as it beeped. Five minutes to target. The shuttle would bring itself down in a projected arc toward the station before John took over the controls to bring it in for landing. In terms of success, the job ahead should have been academic; there should have been no one on board the station and no need for a potential confrontation. The situation had changed when the Captain had brought John the most recent scan showing another shuttle already en route. "Pirates?" The Colonel had asked.

The Captain had shook her head. "This far out and on that kind of craft? No. Someone on the run, maybe. I'd say a scavenger most likely. I could get a squad ready...."

John cut her off with a shake of his head. "I appreciate the thought, but no. We need to keep this strictly confidential. If there's any problems station side, I'll handle it."

The locker behind where John now sat held a suit of combat armour as well as an Avenger rifle and pistol. As the craft began it's arc toward the station the Colonel grabbed the pistol, checked it once and holstered it at his side. He left the rifle and armour where they were. He had no intention of starting a firefight if he could help it and appearing fully kitted up could only put someone on edge.

Instead, John favoured his casual Coalition fatigues. The top and camo pants were pressed and freshly laundered and clung tightly to the Colonel's tall, muscular frame, while his black combat boots were polished to within an inch of their life. The heavy stainless steel Rolex Daytona clasped onto Jon's left wrist caught the light from the shuttle LED's with every swing of his arm. Even without armour, John knew the image projected an aura of authority and an attitude that he could back up if he needed to.

Jon brought the shuttle into land without issue. Across the deserted bay, another shuttle sat, seemingly deserted. Obviously they had gotten here before him. "What's your game?" John asked as he studied the craft. Seeing there was no sign of life in the immediate vicinity, John set up a number of security measures between the craft interface and his personal tablet that would alert him if anyone tampered or even approached it. Satisfied that he was ready, the Colonel confidently stepped off the shuttle and onto the station.

After accepting the job and getting half the payment, Pippa prepared for the flight and the exploration. She had to get some new supplies, but mostly she just had to plot out a course. For some reason scavenging was looked down upon and she couldn’t exactly fly past half a dozen military stations. She was, unfortunately, known to the government. As a minor threat, thankfully, but still. They had a picture of her and everything.

The flight time to the abandoned station was a bit longer than she preferred, but it also gave her the chance of hacking a few databases and dig for some information. She wasn’t the best hacker, but even she could get into a library and search their archives.

Except there wasn’t much to actually find, and by the time her ship slid to a halt, hidden by the large bulk of the station, Pippa had given up in frustration. She took manual control and flew around a bit more until she could hide her craft in the perfect place – a groove in the outer hull of the station – then she shot out the grappling hook/tethering line, and made certain that it was securely fastened before she left the controls.

Pippa put on her few pieces of armour. She grabbed a knife and fastened it to her thigh, and made sure that her utility belt was firmly in place before she went for the hatch. Pulling on her oxygen mask, she pushed the button to close the hatch to the ship proper and watched it close before she pushed the button that would open out towards space.

She propelled herself from her tiny little ship, pushing off as hard as she could and into the darkness of space. Grabbing onto the tethering line once her momentum, Pippa pulled herself hand over hand across the small distance that remained. It was a heady feeling to float around in space like this, weightless, worriless, and with only the stars and the silence around her. She could have stayed like that for hours if her oxygen wasn’t very limited.

Latching onto the rungs on the outside of the station’s hull, she climbed upwards and towards one of the maintenance hatches. It took some work to get the hatch open, but she did manage it and slipped inside easily. There she was pleasantly surprised to find that the core systems were still working, and a few simple buttons later the hatch closed and air filled the vacuum.

Putting her oxygen mask back in its pouch to recharge, she looked around at her surroundings. She was still in the outer part of the maintenance hatch; there was still at least one more door between herself and whatever treasures there were to be found on this place. Pippa made sure that the door out was holding firm before she pressed a few more buttons and entered the ship proper.

The first thing that struck her was that it was in remarkable good shape for being abandoned. Usually scavengers would have had a field day with a station like this, stripping it for all it was worth from the inside out. Quality metal like this was hard to come by in the outer reaches of space, and some of the components were worth a small fortune.

And yet there were no signs of anything of the sort anywhere.

Pippa frowned.

This was… worrying.

As Intelligence reports had indicated, the station still had back-up power, enough to dimly light the facility and keep its computers on stand-by. The station was clean, remarkably so for somewhere that had been officially abandoned for almost five years. There was no clutter of broken machines or discarded parts, no streaks of dirt or leaking pipes. If it wasn't so utterly deserted you could have believed it was still an operational outpost.

He stopped at a room and took the time to peer inside. The work stations were powered down but appeared intact. The facility was in the deep reaches of civilized space but John found it somewhat surprising that not one scavenger had made an attempt to pick the place apart. It was a big outpost and he knew he could find evidence to the contrary later but the desolation of the station, the sense of abandonment was slightly unnerving.

Above him a vent groaned, loud in the still surroundings and surprising enough to cause John to take a step back. "Bust pipe," he said to himself. The main data centre was at the station's core and would be the Colonel's primary target. Download would take several hours but John was a patient man.

As he entered the Atrium, he thought he saw something scuttle into the shadows up ahead. John scolded himself for allowing the location get to him. Still, he lightly touched the butt of his holstered pistol before moving forward.

She stuck to the walls and the shadows, carefully placing one foot in front of the other as she moved along the corridor. There had to be something wrong with this place, something this clean and perfect had to have some sort of secret. If that secret was a bad floor that could send her plummeting to her death, then she didn’t want to find out midfall.

Keeping silent as a mouse Pippa made her way through the station. The place she had chosen to dock her little spacecraft had been at the very back, down below most levels. It was in the area of the station meant for storage spaces. She passed room after room that were empty. In one she found a couple of forgotten boxes – empty, she checked – and in other a couple of forgotten work gloves. But there was nothing else.

“I’m really not likin’ this.” Pippa muttered as she reached a fork in the corridor. She could go left or she could continue upwards into the levels designated as living quarters, or she could go on to one of the engine rooms. Or she could go back to the hatch and her ship, and getting away from this place for good.

That last one would mean having to give back the first part of her payment for this job, and she really needed that money in order to reach the Glintello quadrant.

There was a rattling in the pipes from somewhere to her left, and it was almost a comforting sound after all the silence. Pippa stared in that direction for a moment. It was darker than anywhere else, the lights not turning on even when she tried to order them to. Another rattling came, this time from behind her and the way she had come, and it sounded closer this time around.

Pippa started climbing upwards and onward. If there was something on the station along with her, then she wanted as much distance between it and her as possible. There was more than one way back to her ship after all. There was no reason to panic quite yet.

She did, however, draw her knife and held it at the ready as she reached the second level.

John continued upward and toward the living quarters on the inner ring, getting steadily closer to where the data core was held. He knew it had to be his imagination but the lights appeared dimmer as he made his way through the narrow corridors that separated the apartments the station workers had lived in. At different points , lights were out, plunging sections of the path into complete darkness. Everytime John stepped up to one, his sense of foreboding grew, yet he pressed on.

Coming to a corner of one of the apartment blocks, he stopped. It was dark but John could make out the splatter of blood on the walls well enough. He crouched down for a better look. The blood was dried in, more brown than red, so had likely been there for a while. Although that fact offered little solace. More bloodied drag marks marked John's path down the corridor. An argument among stowaways that had ended in violence? An injury during the station's initial evacuation? John would likely never know the answer, and didn't need to. His concern was the core.

The Colonel stopped suddenly, honed instincts warning him of potential danger ahead. There was someone approaching. John pressed himself to the corner of the wall and carefully drew his pistol. he took one breath to steady his nerves before stepping out with his gun levelled.

Pippa was an adventurer, a lone woman in a large universe. She had seen blood, death and any manner of horrible things during her lifetime. Even so, seeing the bloody drag marks on the floor, the splatter of blood on the walls, and entering one room that was literally covered in crusty old blood from floor to ceiling, well, it was enough to send chills down her spine.

Her hand tightened on her knife as she sneaked along the wall, keeping her back to it as much as she could. If something attacked her on this station then no one would search for her. If she got hurt and couldn’t make it back to her ship or to civilisation, she would die alone in the middle of nowhere. And no one would care. That was a fact of her life that she had had to face more than once through the years, but every time it was just as difficult.

Having a gun suddenly levelled at her was never a good thing, and Pippa’s automatic response was to jump back and into the closest opening the could. She wanted a corner between herself and the danger. What she would prefer was to have an entire universe between her and whatever the threat was, unfortunately she as currently caught in someone’s abandoned sleeping quarters with only a knife to defend herself with. Fighting was out of the question and in order to flee she had to come into the other’s view and shooting range.

“Hey, mate, if this is ya haul then it’s ya haul. Just lemme get outta here an’ we’ll call it a day, aye? I ain’t here for a fight.” Pippa called out as she looked around the room. There was a ventilation grate in the ceiling and a quick silent movement brought her to the dresser. She got on it and could just about reach the grate.

“Seriously, mate!” she called again, casting a worried look at the doorway. At the same time she was using her knife to unscrew the screws holding the grate shut. “It’s an honest mistake me bein’ here! No need for the guns, alright?”

They were at an impasse of sorts. John had the advantage of having his gun drawn and as far as he could tell from the brief glimpse he got of the intruder, had the physical advantage too. Problem was, as soon as the woman had seen him, she had jumped into cover and out of his line of sight.

The Colonel pressed himself to the wall before pivoting around it. "Drop the knife," he ordered. His voice was calm but firm and there was no shake in his hands as he aimed the pistol directly at the woman. She was a pretty young thing, that much was obvious even with the dim lighting and the large hood obscuring some of her features. "Put the knife down and stand up slowly. What are you doing here?"

It was quick work to remove two of the screws holding the grille in place, and it swung down and open just as she noticed heavy footfalls approaching the doorway. She returned the dagger back to its holster and looked up.

Pippa stared at him as he rounded the doorway. Military man, older than her. The way he was acting and reacting she would bank on him having been in the military for a long time, had a career in the military even. Probably had a rank above the average grunt. That just made him even more dangerous to her, and she didn’t like being in danger like this.

“Yeah, I don’t think so, mate. Not while ya got your peashooter there. Toodles.” She jumped up, grabbed the edge of the ventilation shaft and pulled herself up and in. It was hell on her muscles, the space was so small and she had to contort in order to get in, and she had to do it all quickly, but it was a move that she had practiced for just such these sorts of occasions.

Pippa was up and in the pipe in the blink of an eye, crawling on her stomach and sneaking her way away from Mr. Military and in the direction of the room out of Mr. Military’s sight. She found a small nutter that someone had forgotten in the shaft, and threw it away from herself and as far as she could in the opposite direction. Hopefully Mr. Military would think that she had gone in that direction instead.

Turning a corner and putting a hand in something gooey and soft that popped under her weight, Pippa frowned and leaned in closer to see.

She found herself staring at an eyeball. Her hand had just landed on the other eyeball and had squished it, gunk now oozing between her fingers and staining her gloves. There was a pile of clothing and skin and muscles to the side, black blood still dripping from some of the cuts. Something touched her shoulder and Pippa turned her head as much as she could in the enclosed space.

A grinning human skull was embedded in the ceiling of the shaft. Along with the rest of the skeleton, and something was digging its way through the metal of the ventilation shaft that had enfolded the skeleton, disturbing the bones. There was a tearing of metal and a large, long claw broke through, coming to a halt just before it punctured Pippa’s eye.

Pippa screamed.

John could only marvel at the speed, the interloper had used to escape up the shaft. By the time he reached it, she was already out of sight. There was no question of following her, the shaft was much too tight for the Colonel's muscular frame. He was impressed, to get into a space like that so quickly, required serious skill and dexterity.

He followed the sounds as she made her way along the vent, only to be stopped by a different sound at a junction. Then another. Is she doubling back? John wondered. He was trying to think on his next step when he heard the scream, even muffled by the covered metal shaft it was enough to make him jump. The noise the woman made as she retreated back along the shaft left no question as to where she was going.

John ran back into the previous room and looked into the shaft. The woman had retreated back but appeared as if she were stuck. The Colonel reached up and seized her by her trailing ankle and yanked hard as he pulled himself back.

The woman fell out of the shaft and landed hard on the metal floor. John stopped her momentum, with the heel of his boot, pinning her by the chest. He pointed his gun at her once more. "I'll ask again, who are you?"

She landed harshly on her back, the air knocked out of her. A boot on her chest pressing her down was the last thing she needed as she gasped desperately for breath. Pippa was wildly gesturing up beyond the man’s head, towards the shaft she had just been pulled out of. At the same time she tried to push the gun away from herself.

“The other way!” she managed to gasp, air finally returning to her in increments. “Point it the other way! Up! Point it up!”

How could the man not notice it?! How could he be more focused on her, harmless little her, when there was something else on the station?! How could he not notice the big craw slowly, silently forcing its way through the metal as if it was butter?

“Fuckin’ hell, mate, point that gun up there! Do ya hear what I’m tryin’ to say?!” Pippa almost shrieked. She was flailing wildly trying to get out from underneath his foot. She wasn’t even trying to go for her knife. She just wanted to get away from him and from the danger above him. As soon as she managed that she was getting out of this place, giving the pre-paid money back and getting the hell out of this part of the universe.

John had been convinced it were a trick, a desperate ploy designed to distract him long enough for her to reach for her knife. Belatedly, he realised there was no attempt at illusion here, her fear was genuine and it wasn't because of the old man pointing a gun down at her.

Against ever fibre of his being, John turned back to the shaft. The sight greeting him was one he would never forget. Squeezing itself through the entrance to the vent was an emaciated figure of what was once a human. The beast was naked, its skin an unnatural grey. Long claws had replaced the fingers and left long scratch marks on the metal as it tried to pry itself free. John raised his pistol and fired.

It screamed as the bullet took it in the shoulder and John felt his stomach drop. It was the most bone chilling sound the Colonel had ever heard. A piercing shriek of anger rather than pain. He took a breath to steady himself and fired again. Once more the creature screamed but the bullets managed to back it up, pushing itself back into the vent.

John kept his pistol on the opening until he was sure the monster was gone. He lowered his gun slowly, just about keeping his breath steady. "What was that?"

It was like a monster from a nightmare or one of the ancient horror movies. All stick thin limbs, grey skin that was stretched grotesquely over skull and bones. There didn’t seem to be any sort of muscle definition left, but still the creature moved around with terrifying ease. Fingers ending in claws and teeth that were sharp and shark-like finished the picture of a twisted hunter.

“Fuck if I know!” Pippa finally got off the floor, her limbs shaky. She was trying not to give in to hysteria and panic. She had seen a lot in her life, yes, but this was something completely new. What was worse was the way it looked so very human and yet not.

“Fucking hell, mate, I think it was one of the previous occupants of this place.” She rubbed her arms harshly in hopes of removing the last vestiges of the creature’s shriek from her bones. It wasn’t working too well.

Pippa backed away from the hole and carefully peeked out into the corridor, looking left and right as well as up and down before she exited the room. There was nothing and she couldn’t hear anything either, but after what had just happened she wasn’t about to take any chances. This time she kept to the middle of the corridor as she started heading back the way she had come.

“I ain’t stayin’ here for a second longer.” She said. Pippa had drawn her knife and she had to keep reminding herself not to hold it too tight. That would just tire her out and make the weapon next to useless if she actually ever needed it.

She cast a look at the man. “I don’t care who ya are, mate, I don’t care why you’re here. I just wanna get off this place. I ain’t signed up for somethin’ like this!”

The woman was shook, that was clear. Not that John could blame her, he wasn't his usual composed self either. He doubted anyone could be after having just witnessed that. Getting a closer look at her for the first time, the Colonel saw she was young, probably not much older than her mid-twenties and pretty.

"I know you're scared," John said. "I don't know why you're here and to be honest at the minute, I don't care. But I need some help. I have to get to the data core and I don't think I can do it by myself. I need someone to watch my back." It was unorthodox. John was aware of that. The woman was a criminal of some description, that much was clear. The Colonel had a good read on people and while he knew her motives for being here were illegal, he didn't believe the girl would do him harm. After the war a man or woman might not look too closely if a job opportunity landed in their lap.

"You help me reach the core and I can promise you some serious scratch, courtesy of a grateful Coalition military. More than whatever you're making on this salvage job." John's voice was clear and confident, as if the job he was proposing was a simple one. He sized the woman up once more, unsure if the sales pitch was working. "Look, first we'll get to know each other." John held out a strong, callused hand. "Colonel John Haverson."

“Mate, ya need an army to get anywhere in this place!” Pippa growled at him. Hadn’t he watched any of the old earth movies? In all of them the one thing you shouldn’t do was to underestimate the scary place, and go in with too few people.

But, then again, fulfilling her original mission and getting paid, and then earning some extra credit on the side? That was definitely a tempting offer. She would have to be an idiot to pass that up. It was only the little bit about an unknown enemy running around in the walls that stopped her from agreeing outright.

She whirled around and stared at the man, and the hand he held out. Colonel John Haverson. He seemed strong and dependable, and he was carrying enough fire power to probably blow this entire station to smithereens. Maybe. If Pippa was allowed anywhere near his equipment and could position it just so. Either way, he was definitely better prepared for this than she was with her single knife.

But he was also big and lumbering and cumbersome. He wouldn’t be able to pass through the ventilation shafts or any other maintenance routes, not without great problems at least. Any route she planned for them whether it be for escape or getting to the next section, would require her to work around his size. And if they were separated then she would be in great trouble.

Unless the creatures would focus more on him and give her a chance to get to her ship. That was always a possibility.

“Pippa.” She replied, finally taking his hand and shaking it firmly. “And if all of this goes to pot, I’m so gonna blame ya.”