Woke up in the middle of the night, drenched in cold sweat.
What a horrible nightmare…
The day before we had a gone through a tough salvage mission. Faces of the men frozen in space still haunted me throughout the night.
You see, it wasn’t the usual run-of-the-mill salvage. There was no wreck, ship was completely intact, no scratch on it.
The distress signal we had received just 2 days before was baffling, it only said HELP and a bunch of coordinates. We don’t normally do rescue missions, but in this case we were the only ship around for millions of kilometers and we’re bound by space law to respond. But we also hoped there was *something* to salvage.
What I had not expected was to find a ship floating around… as if it has just been powered on. Not a single scratch on it. One crew member of that ship was outside in space and looked as if he was about to do some repairs but in fact he was frozen stiff, as he’d run out of air with the repair tool stuck in his hand.
Then we started to check out the ship. There had been some internal struggle, but what had got into them? And why was the other guy outside? Had he been locked out?
Some parts of the ship were sealed off and the windows smudged with dry blood. More dead bodies in there. The logs of the ship gave no useful information to help us understand the current situation. According to the last journal records, they were a small exploration vessel with 4 people on board. They’d just gone down to a planet nearby where they had scanned some mining areas and found a cave with rich deposits.
The captain ordered us to take the bodies to our ship, give them a proper burial once we got on land. The ship, we could take with us to an insurance agent. Not quite the salvage we expected, but the pay was good.
One of my colleagues decided to pilot the Freelancer DUR, the explorer ship, as it was still space-worthy and we would head to the nearest space port, then take care of the burial planetside.
En route, Mike – the colleague who was piloting it alongside our huge Reclaimer – dropped all comms and went out of Quantum Travel out of the blue.
Took us a solid day to find our way back to him, and we did eventually, but the ship was blown up and Mike… was dead. As much of an asshole as he was, we were like family on this ship, sometimes months on end out to scavenge wrecks. This got to me badly.
Now, we recovered *his* body, what was left of it anyway, and started to scavenge the broken ship. Our salvage ship, the mammoth Reclaimer, was perfectly suited for this task. Turned it into raw materials with a steady grind in less than 2 hours. Due to the whole situation, we still kept the black-boxes, the recordings and the crew’s mobiGlass devices.
The Captain called a meeting with all of us in the mess hall and told us that the situation was very fishy, but he remained confident we’d get to the bottom of it.
“Stay strong men, have a drink and don’t trust any ghosts”, he said half joking. “We’re all going back to civilization to take care of this. I know Mike was like a brother to you all, as he was to me. We owe it to him to find out what happened.”
Back in his quarters, he showed me and the chief engineer our crew-mate’s recovered mobiGlass. The wristband contained an undelivered audio recording. Now the captain’s voice was less brave, full of uncertainty. He gave us that look, by which he meant what was said in this room stayed in this room. We were his most trusted men after all.
Mike’s voice on the recording was eerie, agitated and full of fear. He was muttering something about monsters on the ship coming to get him. He was screaming and wanted to get away from them. So he had exited Quantum Travel and self-destructed the ship on purpose, not by accident. He’d gone… crazy.
“Ghosts?”, I asked rhetorically. They shrugged and tried to laugh it out, but looked worried.
The odd part of it all was that the exploration ship was completely devoid of life when we had found it. Nothing hidden, no life signature. There were no monsters on that ship. That night I went to sleep with a heavy heart.
***
A loud banging on the door woke me up for good and I stood up, alert. Looking around, there was nobody else in the other bunk beds. Went to see what was going on, grabbing a wrench from under the bed, for good measure. The Captain was outside the door, eyes bugling, foaming at the mouth. He was trying to open the door but he’d gone nuts, didn’t even find the controls so he was banging his head against the window glass and let out the wildest scream I had ever heard in my entire life.
This was not a nightmare, this was REAL. The Captain had found the button somehow and burst inside the sleeping quarters. This man had been my friend but I couldn’t recognize him now. His eyes were bulging, bloodshot, foaming at the mouth, he was like a wild animal.
His uniform was torn and his hands were covered in blood. As he shot towards me, I realized it was either me or him. There was no in-between here and whatever had got into him, be it ghost or madness, it would mean the end for one of us. I reacted instinctively and dodged his attack and struck him with the wrench. He reeled with pain, but was undeterred in his attack and lurched towards me again. The second time I struck him he lost his balance and tripped, hitting his head on the bed’s metal bar.
After all that, I was in shock for a couple of minutes. Eventually, I mustered the courage to get close and check his pulse. The Captain, my friend, was dead. The huge salvage ship that had been my home for so long started to feel like a madhouse and a prison all in one. Nothing made sense anymore. I felt a chill running down my spine. Maybe I had a fever.
Like a ghost, bloody wrench in hand, I went to check for my crew mates. The captain’s quarters just across the crew’s was a bloody scene. The mechanic was slumped in a corner, in a puddle of blood, his head smashed, still clutching a repair tool in his hand. He and the Captain had fought here.
I headed towards the mess hall, like a madman, trying to keep a hold on my sanity. I was sweating heavily, my body felt drained. I can’t remember how long I roamed the halls, but everything was blurry, could not find anyone, nor the way to the mess hall. Fell on my knees, feeling very sick, but I resisted the urge to throw up. I don’t know how, but I ended up in the mess hall after some time. That’s where I found the rest of my colleagues, my family away from home, all motionless.
The room and the stench of death all around got to me, that’s when I couldn’t hold it in anymore. My intestines felt like fire, my breath like a volcano. I was extremely feverish by this time and was shaking uncontrollably. Somehow I managed to get to the medkit and took a few pills and painkillers but don’t ask me what.
I fell asleep in a corner, realizing that may have been my last day. I had nobody waiting for me anyway.
***
“He’s alive”, someone whispered around me. But I couldn’t open my eyes to see who it was, and everything was aching. I could barely remember what had happened to me and it felt like a distant dream… nightmare. But deep down, I knew it had been for real. Tried to move, but I couldn’t, I was too weak.
“Rest now, you’re safe”, the voice before told me in a soothing voice.
Another voice in the room which bore the mark of authority spoke to me in a loud, clear voice.
“Darren, I hope you can understand me, even if you’re still in pain. You’re now aboard The Gaia, Cutlass Red class. We found you on an infected ship after a distress signal we received from your captain. You’ll be ok now, your body is recovering. The virus that killed everyone was picked up from the bodies you were taking back for burial. You seem to have a higher resistance to it so we were able to save you. Maybe after some additional lab tests on the samples we took from you, we could devise a vaccine for others. You’re a hero, son. Rest now.”