The fanfic is here at last. I would ask you to be gentle as this is my first attempt at a fanfic, but I know y'all better than that. You may notice that I've given all the cameos in the Prologue to infamous SD.net trolls. Have faith, they will all be dead by the time Chapter 1 rolls around. That said, here goes.
Disclaimer: Alien and all sequels and related materials are the intellectual property of Twentieth Century Fox (I think). No copyright infringement is intended. This fanfic was not written for the purposes of commercial enterprise.
PROLOGUE
The sun was just beginning to rise, but it didn’t seem to get appreciably brighter. It could barely penetrate the cloak of perpetual mist that swirled lazily over the barren, volcanic surface of the small moon, stirred by winds nearly strong enough to knock a man over. The effect was rather like a giant spotlight shining in a foggy night. The black scar tissue of lava had congealed into twisted shapes, creating terrain rougher and more uneven that existed anywhere on Earth. The world held no liquid water to wear away the sharp rocks and dramatic pinnacles, no life to soften the oppressive fog-shrouded vista with green. There was only the eternal hungry wind to whittle the landscape into vicious edges. A ringed planet was visible through the tendrils of mist, its surface cracked with what one would think were canyons is one didn’t know it was actually a gas giant. Two of its lesser moons twirled around it. Stewart Davies knew he shouldn’t be able to feel anything through his environment suit, but the air was so obviously laden with cold moisture it was impossible not to imagine he felt it condensing on him. Of course, if he actually felt anything the deep cold of the satellite’s bilious and poisonous atmosphere would kill him instantly.
“It’s just over the next ridge” Commander Robert Scott Anderson gestured at a contorted rise of black rock like the broken spine of some titanic dead beast. He slowly picked his way across the broken surface of the satellite, with Commander Anderson in the lead and Xenotechnologist Ted Rodgers behind him. It was hard work, especially in the dim light, and his labored breathing echoed hollowly within his helmet. The faceplate would steam up with every breath. The sun had risen completely by the time their little party crested the ridge. It still wasn’t appreciably brighter; this hellish world apparently existed in a state of permanent cloudy twilight. But it was bright enough to see what the survey craft’s sensors had picked up from orbit.
Rising at an angle from its tight prison of clotted volcanic stone was a crashed spacecraft of clearly alien design. Two irregular, curving arms extended out from its body to terminate in odd projections, the purpose of which Davies couldn’t discern. Their position suggested they might be elements of a drive system, but they didn’t look like rockets. The whole arrangement rather brought to mind the mandibles of some huge deformed beetle. The body of spacecraft was largely buried, and what could be seen had an almost organic look. The material was a grey metal or ceramic, and it blended into its blasted environment with an appropriateness that was almost eerie.
“We should check that out’ Rodgers pointed at the body of the ship. There should be a door somewhere.”
“Unless it’s buried” Commander Anderson pointed out.
“Then we’ll have to come back with proper equipment and blasting charges and try to dig for it” Rodgers concluded decisively.
Davies strained to make out the details of the hull. “I think I may see a door.”
“Then let’s go.” Apparently Anderson detected that this wasn’t a universally popular opinion, for he then reminded everyone “If there’s anything valuable in that thing we could go home rich.”
The door was high in the side of the ship, and the men had to break out the climbing gear to reach it. The door had apparently fallen away with age, leaving a circular hole in the hull. Or perhaps it was in fact a meteor puncture rather than a door, for the edges were ragged enough to be natural. If so, that would probably explain how the ship crashed. Very little light made it into the interior of the ship, so they were compelled to use flashlights. The door (if that was what it was) opened into a long hallway. The sides of the corridor were ribbed, so that one had the impression of walking through the ribcage of some gigantic skeleton. There was some sort of piping running along the floor and ceiling, and the whole thing had seemed organic and primeval, as if they were walking through the bowels of some dead titan.
The corridor terminated in a vast open chamber. Most of the chamber was taken up by a raised platform. Several short bridges connected the platform to corridors similar to the one the men had recently explored. The actual floor of the chamber seemed to be at least several meters below the level of the platform. At the center of the platform was what appeared to be some sort of acceleration couch, upon which was draped a calcified, ancient corpse.
“I think this might have been the cockpit.” Rodgers concluded.
“Yeah, looks that way to me.” Anderson agreed. “Let’s take a look.”
The corpse was huge; at least five or six times the size of a man. Davies thought that it must have been a very strange creature indeed. It was not a skeleton, as they had at first presumed, but rather a hollowed shell. It resembled some sort of fantastic prehistoric beast. The torso was barrel shaped, like that of a cow, and the head rather resembled that of an elephant. There was even a trunk which, most bizarrely, seemed to grow out of a spine-like bone on the chest. Davies tried, and failed, to imagine what purpose such an organ might have served. Perhaps the trunk had simply fused to the chest as the husk fossilized over unimaginable millennia of time. He couldn’t tell how precisely humanoid the thing was: there seemed to be arms but it was built like a quadruped.
“Almost as if it was growing out of the chair.” Commander Anderson said. It was indeed true that it was difficult to tell where the skeleton ended and the acceleration couch began. Over the centuries the bones had mineralized, becoming almost indistinguishable from the organic-looking construction of the ship itself.
“I think this must have been the pilot.” Rodgers said. “See, there’s some kind of instrument panel up here.” Davies noted the projection extending down from the dizzyingly high ceiling to a point just above the dead alien’s head. He could even make out a kind of eyepiece, rather like that of a periscope, at the end of the projection which the alien had presumably looked into while flying the ship.
“Only one pilot? One operator ran everything?” Davies wondered.
“Yeah, my guess is they probably had better automation than we do.” Rodgers said.
“Hey, take a look at this.” Anderson pointed to a hole on the side of the alien’s carapace.
“Looks almost like something exploded out of its stomach” said Davies.
“Well, now we know they ate pepperoni pizza.” Rodgers joked “Cause only pepperoni pizza does stomach damage like that.”
Davies circled around for a closer look, and then he noticed that his foot had come perilously close to a hole in the floor. The hole was just big enough to fit a man, and square, as if perhaps a panel had been removed. He shined his flashlight into it and got the impression of vast space.
“Hey Anderson, take a look at this.” He yelled.
“What?” Commander Anderson asked. “Oh, hey, it looks like some kind of hole in the floor.”
“Does it go anywhere?” Ted Rodgers asked.
“Looks like it” said Davies. “There’s a big empty space down there.”
“That could be the engine room” Rodgers said. “Somebody should check it out.”
“Who?” Davies asked. Anderson and Rodgers both gave him a look.
“Shit” he mumbled to himself as he dug pitons into the deck and threw a rope over the edge. He climbed into the hole and began his descent.
At first he was climbing down through a dark tunnel, but then he emerged into a huge cavern. “Looks like a cave” he reported over his radio link. “A cave of some sort, it’s absolutely enormous.”
The walls of the cave were supported by ribs of some kind. It was a somewhat different architecture than the corridors of the ship, but there was enough of a resemblance to tell him he was still in the ship and not some natural formation. The ribs were space every couple of dozen meters, and he was descending along one of them. Davies reflected that even if this space represented most of the volume of the ship then the craft would have to be truly massive. He couldn’t see the ends of the cave, it just seemed to stretch out forever like a subway tunnel designed by giants. At last he found himself on the bottom. The supporting ribs continued along the entire circumference of the cave, and on the floor they formed elevated walkways. The sunken areas around the walkway were covered with a blue mist that was curiously flat, as if being held in place by some sort of forcefield. Experimentally he thrust his hand into it. The restraining forcefield glowed red as it was interrupted by the passage of his arm. Davies noted that there were objects concealed in the mist.
“I think it’s some sort of cargo hold.” He reported. He briefly summarized his observations thus far, and then jumped down into what he presumed was the cargo hold proper. “The cargo looks like some sort of big leathery eggs” he continued. He bent over one to examine it. The skin off the egg had been bleached transparent with extreme age, and when he shined his flashlight into it he saw the outline of something moving. “There’s something moving, some kind of life… wait, it’s opening.”
Four fleshy petals peeled back to reveal the interior of the egg. There was some kind of pulsating wet thing in here that looked vaguely like a skinned chicken breast. Davies bent down for a closer look.
That was when something jumped out of the egg and hit him in the face so hard it sent him sprawling. Davies screamed with shock and pain. There was some kind of crab-like creature squirming against his faceplate. Davies frantically tried to tear it off. The creature vomited on his faceplate, and then he heard a sizzling sound. His faceplate was dissolving, the plastic blackening and softening as if was being held in a fire. Davies realized with horror that the creature was throwing up acid on him. He tried to wrap his hand around its writhing legs and lashing tail, but it was tremendously strong. The faceplate was peeling open and Davies shrieked in pure agony as the moon’s lethally cold native atmosphere began flooding in. Little droplets of acid fell on his face, burning away his skin and accentuating the torture. Then the horror wasn’t on his faceplate anymore, it was on his face, and its tail was wrapping around his throat. Davies gasped for air and something slimy forced its way into his mouth and down his throat. Finally, mercifully, he fell into unconsciousness.
btw, might I suggest placing a spce inbetween your paragraphs? just to assist the reader.
So far, I like
XBL: Darek Silver | Wii Friend: 5602 6414 0598 0225 LibriumArcana - Roleplaying, Fiction, Irreverence Trekker (TOS, TNG/DS9-Era) | Warsie (semi-movie purist) | B5'er | TransFan Cult of Vin Diesel: While it is well known that James Earl Jones performed the voice of Darth Vader, it is less appreciated that Vin Diesel performs the voice of James Earl Jones.
CHAPTER 1
For several days the ship’s CMO, Dr. Setzer, had been unable to remove the creature. At first he tried pulling its legs off, but that caused it to tighten its grip on Stewart Davies’, and it was clear it would crush his skull before it was successfully torn away. Nor had it been possible to remove the legs and tail, for the creature’s blood contained a corrosive enzyme of tremendous potency. When Setzer tried to cut one of the legs off the blood had eaten its way through the plating of three decks. The creature had forced some kind of tube down the unfortunate Stewart Davies’ throat and was apparently supplying him with oxygen. This puzzled the doctors and biologists. The creature was (as far it was concerned) apparently actually benefiting the host and didn’t seem to be drawing any nutrients or other benefits from him, which seemed rather strange behavior from a parasite.
The ship’s officers had decided that the best course of action would be to set a direct course back to Earth. Stewart Davies hadn’t been getting any worse, and at any rate there was nothing that could be done with the facilities at hand. Then, after a period of several days, the creature had for some reason simply died, much to the relief of everyone.
The first thing Stewart Davies became aware of was the hideous slimy taste in his mouth. Memories instantly flooded back into his mind. He reached up blindly and grabbed his own face, trying to rip the thing off. Then he realized it wasn’t there, and a tremendous relief flooded through him. He tried to get up and realized that he was in sickbay, strapped to the wall. Or, more accurately, strapped to a hospital bed in zero gravity (the beds were rather like ironing boards; they could be pulled out when under gravity but most of the time they were kept against the wall to save space). He was bound to the bed with leather straps. This alarmed him for a moment, until it occurred to him that they were used simply to keep the patient from floating away.
“Hey” he called out. “Hey, could somebody get me out of here?”
Dr. Seltzer, the Moskva’s CMO, walked out of the dissecting room and began to undo the straps. “Good to see you’re awake Davies, you had us worried for a while.”
Davies peeped through the door of the dissecting room, and saw something that looked like a freakish yellow crab with a scorpion’s tail pinned to the examination table. His stomach rolled as he recognized the creature that had attacked him in the cargo hold of the alien ship.
“How long was that thing on my face?” Davies asked as he scratched his short yellow beard. He was a short, pudgy man with a round face and scratchy hair beginning to grey.
“A couple of days.” Seltzer replied. He wore an expression of concern on his narrow, fine-boned face. “After a while it just died. The exobiologists say it doesn’t have a digestive system and died of starvation. They tell me it’s one weird critter. Now, I’d like you to stay here for another day so we can run some tests, make sure you’re OK.”
“Yeah, sure.” For a second Davies thought he felt something move in his abdomen. “Hold on, I think I feel a little funny.”
“You all right?” Setzer asked. Davies nodded, but then something rolled over in his guts. Sweat broke out on Davies’ skin and he clutched his stomach in pain. “I’ve got to use the head!” he gasped. He started guiding himself toward the head, but then he was seized by violent pain, almost as if something was trying to punch his way out through his ribcage. “Goddamn!” Davies swore, then another explosion of pain knocked the air out of him. He curled up like a poked bug. There was something wet on his shirt, and he realized with dizzy horror that it was his blood. Then his chest exploded, sending droplets of crimson gore flying. The last thing Stewart Davies was aware of was Dr. Seltzer looking on with a dazed expression as a yellow snake-like creature launched itself from the giant hole in his chest and flew across the room.
The small creature moved easily through the zero-gravity environment, propelling itself with its powerful tail like an eel. It had no eyes, but it was guided by far subtler senses. Sensing other entities surrounding it the creature hissed to frighten them off, showing tiny teeth that glinted with an almost metallic sheen. It immediately began searching for the mentalic emanations of others of its own kind, seeking guidance. Finding nothing it fell back on pure instinct. It headed for the nearest small, confined space wherein it could find sanctuary. It headed for the nearest air vent, chewed its way through the grill with acid-dripping teeth that were nearly as hard as steel, and slithered inside. Having attained sanctuary it began searching for a means to fulfill its next need.
Food.
It roamed the air ducts of the Moskva, looking for a secluded place where it could feed in safety. Everywhere it went it sensed the presence of other entities, until at last it came to the main computer room. It chewed its way out through the ventilation grille and floated gracefully over to the clicking, whirring banks of calculating machinery. The computer room was small, little more than a walk-in closet, but it would do. There was nothing a man would have recognized as food, but the creature’s blood was already sufficiently potent to dissolve metals, and its digestive juices held seven times the concentration of corrosive enzymes as the blood. The creature could digest virtually anything, including metals, and it instantly began to devour the computers. There was relatively little carbon to had, but plenty of silicon and the creature’s physiology was rich in silicon and could adapt itself to whatever materials were locally present. Within less than an hour it had almost completely stripped the computer room bare. Its digestion was highly efficient, and it absorbed every last atom of carbon that was to be had. Wastes were disposed of by the secretion of slime from its skin. By the time it had consumed all the machinery the beast had increased its size by several orders of magnitude.
The creature rested against the ceiling like a giant bat. The walls were coated with successive layers of dried slime which had congealed into a sticky, glassy resin. The slime released heat as it decomposed, turning the air into a fetid, humid soup. The beast had transformed the computer room to match its natural environment, changing it into a miniature replica of its dark, hot, putrid, stinking homeworld.
“What do you mean the main computer’s gone?” Commander Robert Scott Anderson demanded of the squirming Engineer Axis Kast.
“Well sir” Kast explained “about an hour ago we noticed the main computer was experiencing significant decrease in performance. We thought it was a software problem but it got worse and worse until we were forced to switch to the independent auxiliary systems. Now we can’t even get a response from it. It’s almost as if it was physically removed or the power was disconnected.”
“Well, have you had somebody take a look at it?”
Axis Kast shifted uneasily. He was a thin man with an almost skeletal face and a small moustache. “Well, we tried to but the door’s stuck. One of the men tried to kick it in but even then it wouldn’t budge.”
Anderson groaned. “Well then take a cutter to it you nitwit! Jebus, I better go down there and oversee things myself since you’re obviously too fucking stupid to do your own jobs.”
Kast swallowed. “Yes sir.”
Anderson followed Kast through the cramped corridors of the ship until they finally came to a reinforced security door marked MAIN COMPUTER. Kast barked orders and one of the engineers retrieved a welder/cutter and sliced off the door’s lock and hinges. They waited for the door to fall off. Oddly enough, it failed to do so.
“Force it down” Anderson commanded. A big, muscular crewman gave the door a solid kick. It still remained in place, although there was an odd crunch when he kicked it. It sounded a little like broken glass being ground underfoot.
“Shit” Anderson swore. He grabbed the welder and cut a hole in the door large enough for a man to pass through, then gave it a good kick. There was some resistance and he was forced to hit it several more times, but finally it gave way and fell into the stygian darkness of the computer room.
The men instantly recoiled as a blast of burning, reeking air hit them. Some covered their mouths with their shirtsleeves, others gagged and retched. The smell of backed-up toilets and used condoms bellowed out through the hole.
“What the fuck!” Anderson exclaimed. “Did a sewer pipe burst or something?”
“But there aren’t any sewer lines running through the computer room” Kast protested.
“C’mon, let’s check it out.” Anderson said. Axis Kast visibly blanched at the thought of entering the stinking hole, but he didn’t dare protest. “You first.” Anderson said.
With obvious reluctance Axis Kast began crawling through the gap in the door. “Ah shit!” he said as he crawled in. “There’s some kind of sticky shit on the walls! What the fuck is going on here?”
As Anderson began crawling in after Kast he noticed that the door was indeed covered with a thick layer of something that felt like congealed snot. He swooned as he was forced to suck in the most disgusting scents he had ever experienced. The air in the computer room was as warm and wet as a jungle. It was as if Anderson was standing next to a festering pool of sewage boiling and ripening in the heat of a tropical forest. Kast had brought a flashlight with him. The sweeping beam revealed the walls to be completely covered in the mysterious rancid substance. It sparkled in the light of the beam as if embedded with little bits of glass. Perversely the effect was almost beautiful.
“The computer’s just..; gone” Kast said skittishly. “Where did all this stuff come from?”
Just as Kast turned the flashlight on the ceiling something moved. It was the same color and texture as the filth encrusting the walls, and had been nearly invisible before. Axis Kast screamed in surprise as a vicious barbed tail whipped out and slashed his throat. Anderson shrieked as the man’s life blood splattered in his face. A skeletal four-fingered hand seized him and he was being ripped limb from limb, his arms and legs torn from their sockets, his flesh messily devoured. His yowls of absolute agony lasted for several minutes before finally petering out into mucousy wet gasps as he drowned in his own blood. Several of the men outside began yelling hysterically as the sounds of the slaughter reached them. Other grabbed their pistols and began firing blindly into the beast’s stygian lair. Sensing that its habitation had been threatened the monstrosity retreated into an air duct, leaving the savaged carcass of Robert Scott Anderson floating in the foul air.
Last edited by Junghalli on 2005-03-17 03:38pm, edited 1 time in total.
XBL: Darek Silver | Wii Friend: 5602 6414 0598 0225 LibriumArcana - Roleplaying, Fiction, Irreverence Trekker (TOS, TNG/DS9-Era) | Warsie (semi-movie purist) | B5'er | TransFan Cult of Vin Diesel: While it is well known that James Earl Jones performed the voice of Darth Vader, it is less appreciated that Vin Diesel performs the voice of James Earl Jones.
"Oh no, oh yeah, tell me how can it be so fair
That we dying younger hiding from the police man over there
Just for breathing in the air they wanna leave me in the chair
Electric shocking body rocking beat streeting me to death"
- A.B. Original, Report to the Mist
"I think it’s the duty of the comedian to find out where the line is drawn and cross it deliberately."
- George Carlin
Commander Robert Scott Anderson looked like he’d been put through a paper shredder. The body was covered with dried blood and huge pieces were missing from it. Something seemed to have punched through his ribcage in multiple places, and his limbs had been found floating separately from his body.
Captain Nua looked away from the ravaged corpses of Anderson and Davies and addressed the tight knot of skittish, frightened men gathered in sickbay.
“Dr. Setzer I thought you said the creature that bust out of Davies was small.”
“From what I saw it was, but I can’t really describe it to you-I could hardly believe what was happening. I’ve talked to some of the exobiology guys and they told me they think the creature reproduces by laying eggs in its victims. There’s a wasp on Earth that does something like that to caterpillars.”
“So this” Nua indicated the heavily disfigured corpse of the Moskva’s late Commander “is another of those crab-things. How the hell did that do this to a man?”
“It can’t be” Setzer dismissed. “I mean just look at this guy! It looks like a bear was eating him or something. No way that little crab-thing did this.”
“Then what the hell did?” Nua said.
“How should I know?” Setzer said. “Maybe it metamorphosizes or something. Ask the biologists, I’m just a doctor.”
“Engineer Nurzaman” Nua turned to a sweaty, beefy man with a round face, stubble on his chin, short hair, and a vaguely eastern European look. “What happened down in Engineering?”
Kreshna Aryaguna Nurzaman wiped perspiration from his forehead with the sleeve of his blue Navy uniform. He was clearly shaken by the experience. “The main computer failed and we were-ah-unable to open the door. Commander Anderson came down to check it out. We cut the door and he went in along with one of my men, Axis Kast. I didn’t see what happened in there but-“ he paused, unwilling to carry on.
“Then what?” Nua asked.
Kreshna Aryaguna Nurzaman blurted out “Listen Captain, whatever this thing is-it’s huge-I’m telling you-it’s-it’s like a man.”
Nua thought things over for a minute, then addressed the crew in his best man-in-charge tone. Nua was not a big man, but there was something about him that naturally lent him a commanding air. He was slim and dark-hued, with features that reflected his ancestry among the natives of New Zealand.
“OK, here’s the plan. We’ll do an internal sensor sweep of the Moskva, looking for any alien lifeforms. If this thing is as big as Engineer Nurzaman say it should show up big and easy. Once we know which part of the ship it’s hiding in we’ll gather the crew into several secure locations.” He tapped his finger on an imaginary map of the Moskva’s interior. “Then we’ll take all the air out of the rest of the ship, and leave the bulk of the ship in hard vacuum for several hours. That should be more than enough to kill any animal.”
“But what if it doesn’t need air?” a slim woman with hair so blonde it was almost white demanded.
“Nua said patiently “I’m no biologist but I do know that on hundreds of surveyed worlds we have yet to find an animal that can survive in cold space. It would need to have an exoskeleton that was almost perfectly impervious to heat and airtight locks on all its bodily orifices, not to mention the ability to go without oxygen. No, I’m pretty sure this will kill it.”
F. Galkin tapped the purge button on the console as he awaited the order to depressurize the bulk of the Moskva. He was a life support technician, and his specific function was to monitor and control the circulation of atmosphere throughout the Moskva. As such the honor fell to him.
Most of the Moskva’s crew had been gathered into the sickbay and laboratory areas. These parts of the ship were on an independent air-circulation system; a precaution in case dangerous biological agents should get loose, so they were natural perfect for this purpose. The officers and essential enlisted men were gathered separately in the cockpit. The Moskva was not a proper warship, but it was well within the realm of probability that it might encounter a hostile force and have to fight, and of course there was always the danger of micrometeorite damage. So its design was compartmentalized, rather like that of early twentieth century seagoing ships, and for much the same reason. A hull breach could be dealt with by isolating and depressurizing the effected section, preventing a dangerous loss of atmosphere.
“Everything’s ready down here” he reported.
“We still have several crewmen outside the designated area” came the response from Captain Nua. “Give us another couple of minutes.”
“Rodger that” Galkin said as he closed the visor of his environment suit and switched over to its internal air supply.
The creature sensed the electrical signature of another lifeform through the layers of metal between itself and Galkin. It sensed that he was alone. Easy prey.
Homing in on the faint electrical stutterings of Galkin’s nervous it bounded easily through the tight confines of the ventilation duct.
Galkin carefully opened the secondary intact valves of the air tanks in the Moskva’s wings and prepared the life support system for atmospheric withdrawal. All that remained was to reverse the air circulation and turn the fans to maximum.
“Atmosphere control here, shall I commence decompression?”
“Negative” was the response. “We’re still moving some sensitive equipment and specimens into sickbay.”
“Rodger that.”
Galkin heard something crash behind him. He awkwardly turned around in his bulky spacesuit. The room was darkened, but as far as he could tell there was nothing there. Still, it freaked him out. There was supposed to be some kind of dangerous animal loose on the ship. What if it was sneaking up on him right now? There were lots of shadowed places where even a large beast could conceal itself.
He turned back to his console, his breathing heavy and shockingly loud in his helmet.
The beast ripped off the cover off the ventilation and slithered through the shadows like a snake, hiding itself behind some pipes. The prey was less than five meters away and it could perceive it clearly, with senses far more sensitive than men possessed. It inhaled sharply and prepared to strike.
Galkin looked up sharply as the command at last came through. “Atmosphere control this is the Captain. Atmosphere blast doors are up. All personnel and sensitive equipment have been gathered in sickbay and the cockpit. You have the go to remove the air from the rest of the ship.”
“Rodger that, yes sir.” Galkin said with unconcealed relief. He entered the final commands and all the air was sucked out of the ship. A severe wind picked up momentarily as the atmosphere was drawn back into the tanks and frost formed on Galkin’s faceplate. By the time he reached up and scratched it off the chamber was in perfect vacuum.
No sound could carry without air, so he was completely oblivious to the agonized convulsions of the beast behind him. The thing had been just about to leap upon him when Galkin had taken all the pressure out of the chamber. It struggled for a few seconds before finally choking and freezing solid in the hostile environment of space. It was nearly invisible against the pipes which it had been hiding behind. Galkin never saw it.
Kojikun was burning alive. This was something he wasn’t really used to, hailing as he did from a rather cold part of Japan, and it definitely wasn’t something he was used to in a spacecraft. For all its lack of amenities the Moskva did have one redeeming feature: the life support system saw to it that the temperature was always comfortable. In fact, if it ever got too hot it was generally a sign that the ship was about to plunge into a star and be vaporized. Since it was only uncomfortably warm in Kojikun’s cabin he felt reasonably safe in the knowledge that this was not in fact the case.
Kojikun returned his attention back to the large collection of porn that had been his chief amusement throughout the voyage. His cabin, like all the accommodations for the Moskva’s science team was cramped and jury-rigged. He shared it with three other people, and he hadn’t gotten along with them terribly well after he’d made a couple of ill-considered comments in an argument about a month back.
“I think the air vent’s blocked or something.” He said to nobody in particular.
One of his bunkmates shrugged. “Go talk to the life support people.”
Kojikun determined to try to fix the problem himself. He loosened the screws on the small ventilation grille on the wall with his fingernail (he reminded himself that he’d have to cut it afterward) and pulled the plate off.
“Hey, I don’t know if you ought to be fucking around with that thing” his other bunkmate declared, looking up from the game of chess she’d been playing with the exobiologist who’d volunteered the first suggestion.
“Yeah, they never did find that thing that ate the Commander” her partner said as she removed a deceased pawn from her board. Kojikun paid her no mind. He was certain the thing was dead. How could anything survive for four hours without oxygen? Some crewman had issued paranoid ramblings about how they thought the monster might have been able to survive in space, but Kojikun knew better. It was probably rotting somewhere the air conditioning system. Hell, that might be what was blocking the air flow to Kojikun’s cabin. Now that he paid attention it did stink a little. He couldn’t see anything in the ventilation shaft, so he felt around. He found the obstruction, and grimaced with disgust. Whatever it was it was hard and cold and wet. He pulled his hand back and was horrified to discover it was covered in snotty slime.
“Uh, now I’m gonna have to wash my hands…”
If Kojikun had more to say it was destined to never be heard. For at that moment a bony grey hand reached out from the air ventilation duct and ripped his face off.
“How could it still be alive?” Nua demanded. “We kept the ship under vacuum for four hours! How could it survive that-it’s just an animal after all!” He knew he was only farther rattling the men by talking this way. A good Captain should never appear to succumb to anxiety, for it would encourage his crew to do the same. But Nua couldn’t help but feel the same dreamy terror as they did. If that monster could survive for hours in space what could kill it? It was simply against the laws of nature. Like a shambling mummified zombie it just shouldn’t be possible in the normal universe. It was as if Nua had been plunged into some unreal dream world-or horror movie-where such things did indeed exist. And that was a terrible thought, because if that was the case then literally anything became possible. Normal reality had been pulled out from under him.
One of the exobiologists volunteered an explanation. “Certain fish and frogs in cold areas on many planets can survive being frozen for months. Then when they thaw out they come back to life.”
“Thank you” Nua said. He felt more relieved than he dared to let on. Finding a reasonable, scientific explanation for the event comforted him tremendously. His mind finally touched firm ground after a dreadful interval of floundering in the quicksand of paranoia. “Now, the question is, how do we kill it?”
“Maybe we could take some of the guns from the armory and hunt it down” the Chief Engineer suggested. All around the conference room Captain Nua could see his officers stir nervously at the thought of having men crawling through the Moskva’s corridors and ventilation ducts looking for a highly dangerous and unexpectedly resilient beast.
“No, that’s suicide” Nua dismissed.
“I have an idea” the exobiologist said.
“Yes, what?” said Nua.
She shifted and licked her lips. “Well, it should be quite helpless in its frozen state. I say we did the same thing we did before. Only after we decompress the ship we have some men search the ship in spacesuits. When they find it they could use picks to dismember the body.”
Nua thought it over for a few minutes. Then he regarded the assembled officers. “Anyone else got a better idea?”
There were no replies.
“All right, looks like we’ll try your plan. You all know the drill now. Get everybody into sickbay except those that are needed in the cockpit and Engineering. Salvage any sensitive equipment or anything else that won’t take contact with hard vacuum. Then have ten men in suits sweep the ship from top to bottom and we don’t turn life support back on until they find that bastard and hack him into ten separate pieces. Dismissed.”
As before it took several hours for all the necessary preparations to be made As before Captain Nua was strapped into his chair, watching a pen float randomly in the zero gee of the cockpit as the airtight blast doors were thrown down and locked. As before he gave the order to remove all atmosphere from the uninhabited portions of the ship and Galkin did so. This time he had Galkin sprinkle in a severe temperature decrease just before depressurization, in order to better facilitate the immobilization of the beast.
Twelve men in environment suits were positioned just outside the bridge. They carried picks, shovels, and machetes with which to render the sleeping horror into separate pieces of frozen meat, as well as machine guns from the ship’s armory (just to be absolutely safe). They waited five minutes after the ship had been brought down to zero atmosphere and then split up to carry out a thorough search of every space on the Moskva large enough to hide a raccoon. Nua was listening to the first reports come in when he heard a loud crash behind him. He turned his head to see what had happened, and then he realized his plan for killing the creature had a severe flaw.
He had never anticipated that it would be hiding in the cockpit.
The thing rose slowly its crouch beneath a console like some hideous apparition emerging from the fog of a cursed swamp. Nua had imagined the creature would be quite intimidating judging by what it did to Anderson, but what rose up in front of him was not an animal at all but rather a spawn of nightmare. It walked on two legs like a man, but it was also like a snake. Its head was long and featureless, its only mark being a toothy maw from which slaver ran as if there was a spigot in its throat. Its body did not quite terminate at the legs but rather continued into a long gothic tail which ended in a viciously sharp spike. It was covered with a dark grey exoskeleton that gleamed with foul slime, and its arms ended in four fingered claw-tipped hands. Great horns erupted from its back. Nua shivered to imagine on what sort of world nature might have brought forth such a lifeform. It was the ultimate testament to evolution gone mad, run wild to talons and destruction. The monstrosity turned on the Chief Engineer, who was too frightened to do anything more than gawk at its penultimate horribleness. It inhaled deeply and opened its drooling mouth. There was a second mouth within the first one, and then a snake-like tongue punched out from the beast’s head and broke through the man’s ribcage. Blood spilled from his mouth and he slumped over dead with a huge crater in his chest.
Panic broke out and men ran to the opposite side of the cockpit, desperate to escape the vile slavering jaws of the beast. Captain Nua pulled out his pistol and fired at it. The bullet struck deep into the monster’s chest and its green blood sprayed all over the walls, instantly dissolving everything it touched. In zero gravity the recoil of the pistol had knocked Nua back into the pilot’s chair.
Enraged the wounded monster turned on Nua and leapt at him, its fanged tongue striking out to cave his skull in. For an agonizing fraction of a second Nua allowed the monster to sail toward him. It was a vision of pure death, its claws outstretched to carry him down into the underworld. Then at the very last possible moment he ducked and allowed it to sail over him, at the same time he turned and emptied the clip of his gun into it.
The creature smashed against the cockpit window, acid blood leaking from a dozen wounds. The wounds themselves were insufficient to stop it, and the impact was a mere irritant, but as it impacted upon the window it left the glass streaked with its blood. The window was made out of ultra-tough bulletproof plexiform plastic, but even that could not resist the acid blood. The thing was just turning to leap again when the entire window pain disintegrated. For a few seconds a hurricane force wind blew through the cockpit, then the compartment was emptied of air. Every loose item in the cockpit was swept out, including Captain Nua. The creature was desperately clinging to a console that was dissolving under the caustic fluid leaking from its perforated exoskeleton. As Captain Nua flew into outer space the thing reached out for him, as though even now driven to seize and devour him, but the wind carried him past it and into the emptiness.
He was floating free, amid a diminishing swarm of ice and debris. The Moskva was rapidly retreating behind him. Ahead of him lay a gorgeous blue and green world. Despite the fact that he knew he was doing from lack of oxygen he felt a peculiar exhilarating sensation of freedom as he flew toward it, to eventually burn up in its atmosphere as a bright meteor.
Those trapped in the cockpit died within seconds. The creature lingered for somewhat longer, but within a few minutes it had lapsed into dormancy, awaiting the warm kiss of sun and air to revive it so that it could kill again. And with nobody at the controls the Moskva slowly fell toward the planet known to its inhabitants as Earth.
Last edited by Junghalli on 2005-03-17 03:36pm, edited 1 time in total.
OK, it's finished!
What's the procedure for completed fanfics? Do they get cleaned up and posted at the Completed or Cleaned Up Fanfics forum, or is that just for honorary mentions like Starcrossed and Happy Target's mirror universe fic?
Nieztchean Uber-Amoeba wrote:You killed me! You killed everybody in fact!
No, thanks to your heroic sacrifice there are still about a hundred crewmen alive down in medical. It's just everyone on the bridge that died. Of course, some may die in the crash...
Not to mention that if there is a sequel they're going to be letting an Alien loose on Lagash, right after the Darkness. An Alien hive might not be a planet-scale threat to a civilized world like Earth, but one which's civilization just collapsed...
Pirty, now that you mentioned it I almost wish I'd had the ship crash on Earth instead!
As for the fanfic, this looks much shorter than any of the others on the completed fanfics section... Not sure if it matters or anything.
Yeah, when I write short stories I notice they usually tend to be very short.
-grabs his knife and stabs Junghalli many times in the chest-
Better write a sequel damn it..this was good
XBL: Darek Silver | Wii Friend: 5602 6414 0598 0225 LibriumArcana - Roleplaying, Fiction, Irreverence Trekker (TOS, TNG/DS9-Era) | Warsie (semi-movie purist) | B5'er | TransFan Cult of Vin Diesel: While it is well known that James Earl Jones performed the voice of Darth Vader, it is less appreciated that Vin Diesel performs the voice of James Earl Jones.
Maybe, I changed the ending to allow for the possibility of one. The ship now crashes on Earth, with the Alien still frozen in the cockpit just waiting for the warmth of the sun to thaw it.
Don't worry DarkSilver, I'll find a cameo for you in the next fanfic... hopefully.
-grabs his knife and stabs Junghalli many times in the chest-
Better write a sequel damn it..this was good
I wasn't there either.
Cool fic though.
"Oh no, oh yeah, tell me how can it be so fair
That we dying younger hiding from the police man over there
Just for breathing in the air they wanna leave me in the chair
Electric shocking body rocking beat streeting me to death"
- A.B. Original, Report to the Mist
"I think it’s the duty of the comedian to find out where the line is drawn and cross it deliberately."
- George Carlin
You may notice that I've given all the cameos in the Prologue to infamous SD.net trolls. Have faith, they will all be dead by the time Chapter 1 rolls around. That said, here goes.
