The Infection

He jolted upright frantically feeling around in the darkness for a light, anything, anything at all to stave off the feeling of dread. His frantic sweat-slicked fingers fumbled with the comm light on the wall before finally flicking on the interior bulbs bathing the room in a delicate blue glow. He sat up on the edge of the bed and took a long, shaky breath dropping his head into his hands. A soft whimper accompanied him, and he reached out with a hand to stroke the dog's ears. Waffles sat on the bed beside him head lowered and cocked to the side making sure he was okay.


He couldn't have been sure, maybe he was and maybe he wasn't. His PTSD wasn't so bad as it once had been, but every now and then, the dreams still plagued him. Though he could not remember the content he was still aware of the feelings of dread that had washed over him. An impending sense of doom. He took another deep breath and reached down to strap on his prosthetic. Perhaps a walk would calm him down, it was unlikely he would be getting to sleep again tonight.


***


Out in the hallway, the ships internal lights had been dimmed to simulate dusk in synchronicity with the circadian rhythms of the average human. The ship was still, despite the undoubted movement of the graveyard crew working to keep the ship through the night. He was unlikely to meet any of them at this hour as graveyard shift would consist of the operational minimum of crew members required to run the ship. As a class D-6 Battle Cruiser with a Warp Capable Alpha 1 engine the Harbinger required a two man bridge crew, five auxiliary and a twenty member team of engineers to operate.... A surprisingly low number truth be told as the crew numbers could level out well over 100.


By way of his late night wandering, he found himself down in the crew quarters..... He momentarily played with the idea of waking Sunny for the company against his still uneasy mind, but he quickly dismissed it. He couldn't do that, perhaps he would find Krill, the Vrul had no need of sleep, though he wasn't exactly psychologically supportive. Sure he would try to help, but he only knew what he read from textbooks, he wasn't exactly intuitive. He sighed and backed himself against the wall. Waffles sat at his feet leaning her head against his human leg as he stared into space. Inside his stomach churned, butterflies rode up and down his throat, and he absently rocked from side to side trying to stave off the nervousness.


He tried to think of something else to distract himself from the fear. His thoughts crossing to the starborn Conn, so "lovingly' known as convict. They had recently made efforts to bring him aboard the ship. The further they went out into unknown territory the more extreme and dangerous their work became, and despite Conn's ability to survive in the most extreme of conditions, the vacuum of space, it was becoming increasingly dangerous, so the ingenious mechanics crew had rigged together a portable gravity field generator to fix the one problem that prohibited the starborn to enter the ship: the fact that his neck would likely snap and his own weight would crush his internal structures under the weight of gravity.


Someone had even managed to rig together a set of translation gloves, the kid that used to be used for translating sign language. It was relieving to know that soon he wouldn't be the only one that Conn could incessantly annoy.


His stomach churned again, and with annoyance, he pushed himself away from the wall. Something felt so wrong, and of course deep down he knew that it was nothing, but that didn't make the feeling any less real. WIth waffles at his heels, he continued his walk down the length of the ship staring up at the ceiling and just.... Thinking.


He turned a corner startled out of his revery as waffles began to growl. He turned to look at her with confusion and sudden worry. Waffles NEVER growled..... At least not on a silent ship in the dead of the night when there was nothing there.


They are here.


Commander Vir nearly leapt out of his skin spinning in a tight circle as the whispered voice seemed to come from nowhere and everywhere all at once. Eyes moving wildly, his heart pounded in his chest, as he turned towards one of the dark service tunnels leading into the inner bowls of the ship, and there he saw it, ghostly white ribbons fluttering and scattering on a backdrop of darkness waving behind the skeletal white face and reflective black eyes. The starborn drifted from the darkness, his skeletal body so similar to a human but disproportionate enough to add an itching sense of horror.


"Get out of my head convict." The commander snarled. The dog growled again, and he could hardly blame her.


They are here.


Commander Vir ventured forward a step as the starborn drifted a little closer hands floating out to either side of him, gloves unused. He looked... wrong .... Somehow.


You feel it too, you feel it too human, you can feel it You Can feel it YOU CAN FEEL IT.


Commander Vir grabbed at the sides of his head in a futile effort to fight against the raising volume. Beside him the dog began to bark frantically.


YOU CAN FEEL IT!


The starborn lurched forward from the darkness, and Commander Vir was just able to pull himself to the side as the starborn rushed past him. The dog stepped in front of him teeth pulled back in a rabid snarl. Commander Vir clutched his head as his mouth began to go dry.


Oh no.


"Commander!"


***


The frantic howling of the dog had woken members of the crew who had rushed to his help. Krill arrived at about the same time the others were subduing the starborn. The dryness in his mouth slowly retreated and he relaxed as Krill came to his aid. The starborn was carted off to the infirmary unresponsive and cattonic. He rocked slowly back and forth in the air mouth open making an unnerving dry gurgling sound from the depth of his throat. As all this was happening a member of the night crew called him up to the bridge, and he went with some amount of confusion.


"Status?" He wondered walking onto the bridge and taking a seat in the Captain's chair.


The navigation operator turned in his seat, "Short range radar in picking up multiple signals, sir. Too small to be asteroids, way to small, but there are..... Well there must be hundreds of them, and they're just floating there sir. We already tried exterior hull cameras, but we've got nothing. Whatever they are, we can't see them."


"Give me a size estimation lieutenant." He said turning in his chair to monitor the rest of the bridge crew at their stations.


"No bigger than two meeters sir, probably less than that, but there are hundreds of them."


Commander Vir tapped his chin for a long moment of thought before, "Prep a raptor, I'll be down in five so we can get a closer look. Lieutenant, you have the chair." With a swift turn, he twisted on his heels and made his way down to the docking bay.


***


By the time he reached Bay 1, the raptor was already in place. The bird was a rather clunky piece of equipment, but it had to be fitted with all the weapons and scientific equipment as one could argue was prudent. Commander Vir took a moment to suit up in one of the auxiliary rooms getting help from a crewmember to strap on the tight fitting space/flight suit, attached helmet, control enabled gloves, and vital monitoring systems that had become standard on the ship since Krill had arrived.


As he was strapping himself into the cockpit, he looked over to see Sunny and the other Drev running onto the floor alerted by the sudden commotion that had overtaken the ship. The cockpit sealed over him still allowing him a wide angled view of the bay doors before him. He reached up and pulled the straps into position about his body allowing them to auto auto adjust around his chest and arms.


He wrapped his hands around the ship's controls and auto engaged the targeting, and navigations systems. Neon circles, vestors and numbers appeared on the inside of his visor as he powered up the engines spitting purple tinted blue fire from the two rear thrusters. The room cleared for his takeoff, and before he knew it, he shot off into the vacuum of space and it's endless darkness. "Alright, lieutenant, load the location feed." In response to his request, The screen in front of him lit up, highlighting what must have been at least 90 to 100 location vectors, but by his vision there didn't seem to be anything there.


Granted this part of space was rather dark, thousands of miles from anything but an unusual formation of asteroid fields dominated by monolithic stones the size of small moons,. WIth one hand he toggled the acceleration and sped into the intervening space delicately avoiding the space debris with the delicate touch of a surgeon.


"I'm here lieutenant, but I don't see anything."


"How can you not captain, they..... Holy hell Commander, they're all around you."


"You mean the asteroids because yes, yes they are everywhere."


We see you.


Commander Vir froze where he sat wrecking the rotating engines around with a quick burst to pull himself to a stop. Hiis heat began to pound in his chest, his mouth went dry.


"Commander, commander what's wrong. You're pulse just spiked, and your blood pressure just shot up, are you ok." that was Krill this time, but he was to frozen to respond bogged down as he was in a cold sweat


We see you hiding in there..... In skin meat sack you call a body. The voice reverberated in his head seeming to rattle through his bones with the power of a speaker system with the base turned up all the way.


His lips quivered as he looked around following the slowly drifting location vectors, but still unable to see anything, "I.... I don't know what your talking about.... I'm not h-hiding."


"Commander, repeat that would you, we didn't quite catch it."


Come out of there Deus and face us in your true form.


A line of sweat trickled down his spine, "Now I don't know who you're talking to, or what you're talking about." His hands slowly tightened around the joysticks as his trigger finger inched towards the trigger on the forward guns.


LIES!


He cried out in pain at the volume as his eye lurched out of focus. His ship was jogged to the side, something thudded against the hull, once twice than three times. He lifted his head shaking his vision... and screamed.


The creature stared back at him twisted and skeletal with charred brown and black skin, horribly long spidery fingers and an open mouth with chattering twisting teeth. It lurched its head towards the glass causing a thud to burst through the cockpit. Behind it strings of charred black fanned backwards into darkness.


WIth a frantic burst born of instinct, he jarred the acceleration and then maneuvered reverse thrusters at the last moment. Throwing himself against the harness, and the creature off into blackness. But he could see it now, fingers clutching around the side of the cockpit..... Hundreds of them.


Come out Deus.


Come to us


Come with us


Face us


Coward


We see you.


His head was beginning to grow light, his mouth was as dry as sandpaper, he felt as if he was about to fall out of himself. He gritted his teeth against the feeling begging his body not to give in, not to be overwhelmed as the sudden burst of telepathic voices threatened to send him into a wild convulsions.


He rotated the joystick to the left and forward sending them spinning diagonally into the dark. Bodies flew past the cockpit's windscreen, as the pressure cuffs in the pant legs of his suit contracted to restrict blood from pooling in his legs.


DEUS.


His vision was fading.


"COMMANDER, commander, come in what's happening."


"He's going into convulsions."


"Someone needs to help him NOW!"


"I can't, something's blocking our systems."


HE couldn't move thousands of hands obscured his vision climbing and rolling on his windscreen. Face and eyes, and charred skin.


Calm your mind human, and I will help you.


"Conn?" The commander muttered turning his head groggily inside the cockpit. Even as he did something seemed to flow around his consciousness beating back the hundreds of clamoring voices. Hurry, I cannot hold them back for long.


With a desperate jolt, he turned the raptor in another sharp series of spins careening over and around asteroids at one point slipping through a gap that left him only a foot or two to either side. Bodies flew in all directions. Hands grasped at the cockpit lit from the background by the light of distant, nebulae. He didn't know where he was, didn't know which was way up or which way was down, but he followed the vestors flying by instinct when those weren't enough acutely aware of the war being fought around his mind.


Conn Vs a hundred.


He broke from the asteroid field rocketing towards the ship with wild abandon. Fingers still clasped at the corners of his vision. He only had one chance, "OPEN THE BAY DOORS!" He yelled into the com, "NOW NOW NOW." Somewhere, someone must have heard him, and the doors opened just as the raptor passed through, upside down.


He rotated the thrusters and gave a powerful backwards burst which dropped them to the ground and had them skidding across the floor. His head rattled and his body jolted as sparks went up in front of his vision. He was jolted back and forth. His head rattled inside his helmet. The raptor spun once, twice on its head and then came to a halt. Lights flashed red through the cracked, but not shattered, cockpit screen. He could hear frantic voices. The wind screen screeched and cracked, and then opened. He couldn't move, suspended upside down as he was groggy and disoriented.


"Hold him steady, easy, there we go, now pull him out." The release catch snapped open and he slid into a set of waiting arms. Through his disorientation he recognized the blue carapace.


"What in the hell are those things!"


"SHIT."


He turned his head slowly to the side looking past the trail of destruction he had left through the docking bay. Scattered along he floor, amidst the pieces of broken paneling were bodies. Charred and shrunken twitching and gurgling as they were slowly crushed to death by the weight of their own bodies.


"Lay him down. Someone help me get the helmet off." A bright light was shown into his eyes and he squinted trying to push away whoever it was. Arms tightened around him.


"Stay Still Commander."


"Bridge team to docking bay, bridge team to docking bay we have a problem. THEY'RE CRAWLING EVERYWHERE, THERE ARE HUNDREDS OF THEM!" The entire crew was awake now, he could hear them, the panic and confusion at what was going on.


He tried to swat away the light again "Tell them to turn on the exterior hull gravity."


"Commander?"


"Just do it."


Inside his head, he felt it as Conn gave way. The voices flooded into his head, and not moments later everything had gone black. Outside a jolt ran through the hull of the ship, and the clinging infected starborn were dragged downwards crushed and choking against their own weight. Conn stopped his frantic twisting, and commander Vir's seizure subsided.


The GA was alerted immediately, and samples were taken of the recovered, and now quarantined, corpses.


Something was very, very wrong.

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