Phantom Trajectory: Part IV
(Check out Part Three HERE)
Making Contact
They had a plan, of sorts, fairly quickly. All three of them had put on their survival suits and helmets. After a short discussion, it was determined that the cosmonauts had already been able to alter some systems on the ship, and losing life support or gravity might become an issue. Especially once the Soviet stowaways found out the crew of the Odysseus 3 had no intentions of peace.
Reggie and David were to arm themselves with an ILB-2 and move together to the cargo hold and see if they could find a solution to the problem at hand. Elisa would stay in command, and try to monitor them, watch their backsides, and watch for any interference from the ghastly trespassers.
They had their suits all on, and Reggie was giving David an outline of the gun and how to use it. David was nodding and turning the gun in every direction, and Reggie was going a mile a minute with the ins and outs of stun gun use.
"The main thing you want to do is just hold down that trigger. The kick is minimal but the gun will get a little hot in the hands because of the lack of the inhibitors now. Just make sure you got it pointed the right way. This light up bar on the side is your battery. These usually hold enough battery for about thirty bursts, but with the inhibitors out it’s gonna go pretty quick, so make sure you got something tangible to shoot at before you do. You good?" Reggie finished and put his hand on David's shoulder. He knew not much had sunk in; he just hoped the most important things had.
"Yeah, yeah I think I'll be fine." David said with false confidence, but it was enough. They both holstered their pistols and Reggie looked back to Elisa, who was sitting at the command console with the view-screen showing their suit vital readouts.
"I don't have camera access anymore. But I can track you on the ship schematics and I'll have your vitals up as well. I'm going to try to patch through to mission control, but I'll have my eyes on your progress as well. Intercoms through the wrist consoles are still operational, so use those to keep in touch. Be safe. I... don’t want to lose you. Either of you. Let's get those things off this ship and go home." Elisa turned from them back to her readouts. She activated a few buttons on her console and the door from command opened. Both Reggie and David hesitated to walk out into the still bloodied anteroom and into what felt like certain death. Reggie took the first steps.
"OK, let's get to it then." Reggie said as he lumbered through the door. David looked back at Elisa, who was now focused on her console. He had no choice, really. He looked once more at the gun he hoped he knew how to use and followed Reggie out of command.
They moved as quickly as they could through the anteroom and had entered the main body of the vessel. The ship had two main corridors that ran down it like arteries. The port corridor connected to a lot of the social living chambers, such as medical, mess hall, recreation, and basic supplies. The starboard corridor had more facility rooms, such as labs, work stations, and quarantine. Each corridor connected together at the rear of the ship, where the cargo hold and core systems were located.
They had chosen to go down the port corridor. Reggie and David moved very deliberately, scanning visually in front and behind them as they moved down the corridor. It took a little bit of time to get to the cargo hold normally, but it was going to take them a little longer with the pace they were moving.
They had moved from one section to the next, staying mostly quiet. Reggie was about to say something to try to take the edge off of the moment. It wouldn't have mattered much. Just as he went to speak, the lights in the corridor, the entire corridor, went out. A visceral darkness settled on them.
"Oh...no..." David breathed out through trembling lips. His grip on the pistol in his hands got so tight he nearly set it off.
"Don't, don't move. Elisa? We got no lights in port corridor. Can you help us out here?" Reggie said into his wrist console. There was no response. No static. Nothing.
"Oh, shit." Reggie said as he reached up and hit the lights on his suit. David did the same, but took longer out of sheer panic.
Each suit had one large light at the top of the helmet. Reggie bobbed his head side to side to light up as far down the corridor as he could. The light danced eerily across the empty hall, but it revealed nothing. Reggie turned to David and his eyes were seared by a bright white pain. Reggie took a few steps back and waved his arms a bit in anger.
"Not in my fucking eyes, David! Shit! Face your helmet away but just turn your head a bit, fuck!" Reggie yelled.
"Sorry! Sorry!" David apologized as he grabbed for Reggie in the dark. Reggie shook his head, but his eyes swirled with many colors as his eyes went to re-adjust. He couldn't see well at the moment.
"David. I'm OK. But I gotta let my eyes recover for a sec. You take the lead and let’s keep going. You take the left side of the hallway, I'll take the right, and both of our lights will shine forward, got it?" Reggie was blinking continuously trying to get his vision back as he spoke.
"Yeah, got it." David said meekly. He turned back down the hallway and they both started walking slowly again.
Their steps echoed faintly down the corridor. The light beams bounced with each step, sometimes flicking up and down to the shadowy corners of the hallway in front of them. Reggie tried once more to contact Elisa.
"Elisa, do you read? Are you there?" Reggie said and waited. No response. He turned back for a moment to make sure nothing was following them. The light he cast found nothing trailing them. David had stopped and had turned his head, this time making sure he was aiming away from Reggie.
"We should go back. Something is wrong." David said. Despite the enveloping dark, Reggie could see David was barely hanging on, his fear was seeping out.
"We stick to the plan. They might just be trying to deter us." Reggie spoke firmly. It's what Elisa would have said, and he knew the shit they would get if they turned back now.
"We've lost contact, we have no lighting! We are walking blind in some sort of ghost hunt and this is all wrong and you know it!" David said, now with desperation and anger birthed from fear.
"Hey! Calm down! I know this is all wrong but we can't sit here and argue. What are we going to do, huh? Go back and find Elisa like Denise? Like Colt?" Reggie hoped what he had just said wasn't true, but he could see David beginning to register everything, so he continued.
"We are already fucked, man. This is a never happened before situation. We better step up or we will die out here. You hear me?" Reggie said as he stepped closer to David. David was looking down, sorrow and self-pity evident. He scowled, and then he nodded and looked Reggie in the eyes. It was David, and Reggie was glad to see it.
"Yeah. Yeah. You're right." David said and took a deep breath. Reggie patted his shoulder and they exchanged a smile, their faces just visible in the soft glow of their headlamps.
"OK, let's get at it then, right? I’ll stay at lead..." David was saying as he turned back down the corridor. His words evaporated in his throat, as his light this time did not extend down the hall into empty space, but it fell upon the torso of a white spacesuit. The suit was ripped, exposing blackened ribs, dripping with some sort of viscous ooze. David's head flicked up to put a spotlight on a skull within the helmet of the cosmonaut. The skull leaned left and right and the lower jaw opened slowly.
Reggie lifted his ILB-2. He aimed it directly at the skull, a decent shot, he felt he could hit it. David dropped his ILB-2 to the ground. Fear had found its form, and David lost himself within it.
Before Reggie could pull the trigger, his head pounded with a wave of sound. It was as if a breathy shriek was bouncing inside his head, going from distant to close over and over. There were words within the pained screams, and they were of a different language. Russian.
Reggie did not know how to speak Russian, but despite that he could feel the meaning behind what was being said. It was as if its thoughts were being forcibly smashed into his mind, and Reggie had fallen to one knee from the sheer impact of each statement.
...this ship is ours...
...we are going home...
...you will die...
...as we did...
Reggie was trying to deal with the messages being delivered, but David hadn't moved. He stood still as the skeletal cosmonaut lumbered through the light and gripped with inhuman strength. The skull of the cosmonaut regarded David momentarily, its eye sockets blacker than the deepest parts of space. That ultimate void bore into David and his body grew cold. The cosmonaut then ran down the dark corridor with intense speed, David being pulled along violently. He screamed, and it too shot down the halls maliciously quick.
Reggie saw David's body get sucked away into the dark, and as it did the bombardment within his head ceased. Reggie stood up, and the lights turned back on in the corridor. Despite that, the corridor spun in Reggie's eyes. He was still reeling from the assault in his head, but he shouted in spite of it all.
"David! You fuckers! Come and fight! Cowards!" Reggie looked down the bright empty hall, and knew he had to make chase. He saw David's ILB-2 on the ground, and went to pick it up, his eyes still down the corridor. His hand wrapped around the grip, but it would not budge. Reggie turned to see the boot of another cosmonaut standing on the pistol. It stood over him, in a fairly intact Soviet era suit, save for a partially broken visor on the helmet. Reggie tried to swing his own ILB-2 up and fire, but the cosmonaut caught him mid attack and with one heavy backhanded swing, Reggie was thrown hard into the wall of the corridor. So hard, his helmet visor cracked and spider webbed.
Reggie screamed in agony as sharp, talon-like fingers raked his chest, ripping through his suit and drawing blood. Through the shattered visor, he saw the cosmonaut grab him through the tears on the chest of his suit and once again he found himself flying across the corridor. Reggie hit the wall back first, his helmet broke and flew off of his now shredded suit. The cosmonaut turned, swaying its skull back and forth, as if taking in the aroma of the death that was coming.
Reggie lay in a heap. The cosmonaut took steps towards him. Reggie's eyes shot all around the room, looking for any hope, any way to stop the death coming for him. His eyes found their way to David's ILB-2, still on the floor, and within reach. Reggie flashed his eyes once more at the terror approaching him and then with all he had left in him reached out for the pistol. The pain within him howled, but Reggie disregarded it. Still on his back, he gripped the gun and aimed it at the skull that was taunting him. He pulled the trigger and the orange glow of the laser launched at the cosmonaut, finding its way through the only broken opening in the visor.
The skull within the helmet arched in apparent agony and began to glow the same orange hue of the laser. It was just a few seconds, but it felt like an eternity. The skull drowned in the laser beam and then exploded into spectral shrapnel. The suit collapsed to the floor, and Reggie watched it deflate as it lay there, smoke and a pungent odor of death leaking out of its helmet.
Reggie sat up, and looked over his ravaged survival suit. He picked up the cosmonaut suit in front of him, and watched ashes fall out of it. He emptied the contents onto the ground and regarded the suit. A plan arose within his head, and he began to disrobe.
David awoke. He had fainted as the cosmonaut had dragged him down the hall, and now he was awake, with only his fear and panic. Wherever he was, it was dark, save for a single large ray of light coming in through a circular window. David stood and looked at the window, and then he knew where he was. As this realization came to him, the room itself illuminated in full.
The cargo hold.
David looked around for a moment, and then back at the door. A blackened skull regarded him, and David charged at the door. He slammed into it and began hammering at it. The cosmonaut looked him up and down, and then stared its sockets directly at him.
"Let me out! Let me out you fuck! I swear..." David screamed his threats through his tears. He then noticed the skull staring at him, and found himself able to stare back. Then its ghastly gaze shifted from David to something behind him. David watched it become transfixed, and he was compelled to look as well. He expected something macabre, something he couldn't even fathom perhaps. David saw nothing. What was it looking at? The room was empty, all the way from David to...
The outer doors. The doors that separated the room from open space. David’s face drew pale and he turned to find the skull awaiting him, its sockets like demonic black holes. It stared right into David's eyes and then David heard the warning signal that the outer doors were opening despite the pressure difference.
The warning was overridden.
The outer doors opened from the center, one going up and the other going down. They opened about two feet and stopped. The air from the pressurized cargo hold jettisoned through the opening into space. The vacuum that was created violently pulled David from the door to the interior of the ship. He was pulled away, his back and rear angling straight to the open outer doors, with his lower body and upper body forming a near perfect V as the force careened him out of the leak. David's body folded upon itself as he hit the door. His back broke, and the force snapped his head forward. As his body was yanked through the two-foot gap, his helmet had turned and snagged. The vacuum had its way. David's broken and battered body tumbled out into space, leaving his decapitated head in the helmet that had wedged in the gap. The doors then shut, and the helmet crashed to the ground, leaking blood all over the door and the floor of the hold.
The cosmonaut at the door shrieked in a form of laughter. It then noticed its comrade coming down the hall, surely finished with its task. It walked differently however, and kept its head pointed down. The cosmonaut turned and faced its comrade, perplexed as it raised a weapon towards it. Before it could react, an orange glow cascaded over its face, and its agony was brief. Its skull burst, and it too became a suit of ash.
The other cosmonaut ran up to it and loomed over it in stoic rage. Through its broken visor, the angered face of Reggie let out a scream of pure anger as he kicked the remnants of David's killer. Reggie took off the cosmonaut helmet he had used and then looked into the cargo hold, seeing the helmet and the stain on the outer doors.
Reggie took a step back and said a silent prayer for David. Checking that both ILB-2's he had still had some charge, he fasted one on the suit and carried one in his hand.
He put back on the cosmonaut helmet, and then he began to sprint back to the command cabin.
Retribution was all he could think of now. Reggie knew he was going to die. But so…could they.
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