Alien – The Lone Encounter
The dark bowels of the starship Organella seemed vast as we shone our flashlights through the spacious caverns of machinery. Though the repair ship was only five decks deep, each deck was a good five meters tall, and in the aft hold, three decks came together to form one enormous dry dock that was lined with labyrinth metal catwalks.
The four of us kept close as we maneuvered along those ice-cold catwalks, shining light into every crevice as we carefully and slowly searched the quietly thrumming ship. Vera, our ship's android, tracked our progress from the bridge. We had been infiltrated by something dark and evil, and now it was somewhere in our ship.
Dante's horror. That's what Fox had named it. Like some nightmare demon dredged up from that ancient story, this creature had birthed itself from one of my crewmembers. Only a few hours ago, the malformed gargoyle that had burst from Holiday's chest had only been perhaps a foot long. Six hours later, we had no idea how large it might be.
Fox, with Brensen's former military knowledge, had helped me crack the encryption on the military vessel where this whole nightmare had begun. We'd watched video witnessing the same birth of one of these monstrosities from some hapless colonist, and we'd seen the adult versions tear apart an entire squad of well-armed veteran marines.
I wished we had never responded to the distress signal we received from the accursed ship, much less that we'd hauled it in to attempt to tow it back to a military port. Damn company regulations and perhaps my own greed at the bounty for returning a military cruiser had gotten the better of me. Though we'd dumped the ship as soon as we discovered the truth, it was too late for Holiday.
The creature was already proving to be cunning. Somehow, it had enough knowledge to cut into the ship's engines, diverting power from lights, heating, air and even preventing us from using the ship's internal cameras to find it. Though Brensen and Greavers had rigged up emergency power to the forward areas of the ship, it was drawing us out and forcing us to deal with the mess it had made of the aft section of the ship. According to Vera's calculations, we had less than four hours remaining to rectify whatever it had done before the engines overloaded and vaporized us.
"Sir, internal sensors are almost worthless in the hold," Vera apologized, her sweet voice ringing in my headset. "There's too much kinetic motion in your area to make anything out."
"No kidding," Brensen growled as his steel gray eyes flicked to one of the many dangling heavy chains in the hold. Unlike the rest of us, at best armed with pistols, Brensen carried a battered pulse rifle Holiday had liberated in his excursion to the military vessel. Brensen kept it at the ready, having strapped his flashlight to the top, somewhat like a scope. We'd been turning off machines as we advanced through the drydock to try and get a better reading, but with all the other support structures that dangled and swayed in the area, Vera was right, it was like trying to single out one individual's violin in the middle of a concert with your eyes closed.
As we approached another console, I sheathed my pistol long enough to examine the readouts. "Another one that's dead," I commented, noting the smashed controls. It'd been the third we'd run across in the same condition. It didn't make a whole lot of sense though, the consoles that had been attacked were the ones that controlled the heavy machinery designed for locking onto and holding ships brought into the repair hold, or the huge hangar doors that lay far below us in the dark.
"Why the hell is it smashing consoles?" Brensen observed over my shoulder.
I shook my head in response. I didn't understand it either - perhaps it was merely some form of vandalism by the organism. But it certainly was strong, and clearly from the size of the dents in the metal, it was fairly large as well - its fists certainly dwarfed Brensen's hamhock-sized fists.
"Captain," Fox nudged me, glancing at the chronometer on his left wrist. "We're losing time here. We need to keep moving."
"Yeah," I agreed, drawing my pistol once again and scanning the dark hold. "We need to keep making for the engine room, figure out what this thing has done to start overheating the engines and reverse it."
"How about me and Brensen go ahead and check the cooling units?" the slight Fox smiled running his hands through his irish red hair, to which the chocolate-colored giant Brensen only rolled his eyes. The two were as opposite as one could be, and as well Brensen's brawn and mechanical skills meshed with Fox's technical skills, they constantly remained on each other's nerves. Leaving Brensen and Fox alone together was inviting trouble. Fox enjoyed pushing Brensen's buttons, and it was clear he aimed the comment at doing just that.
"No, we stay together," I warned. We had all seen how quickly these things could tear even a group apart, I had no desire to split our meager strength any further and give this menace an unwarranted advantage.
"Well, at this pace," Fox sniffed, "We'll be in here all four hours, wasting time with these consoles and such," he stated, wiping his freckled nose with his free hand. It was clear the cold was getting to Fox, which he hated. He'd told us on numerous occasions he'd left Nebraska to get away from the cold. To which Brensen had often reminded him that space itself was even colder.
"Fox is right," Greavers sighed, his latino accent emerging, as it always did when he got nervous. "We can't move at a snail's pace, we've got to fix those engines before something irreparable happens."
"Do you know what that word means, gringo?" Fox teased.
I wasn't sure I agreed with Greavers assessment. The Organella was a class two stellar reclamation vessel. We had stores to fix any sort of system on any sort of spacecraft we ran across, up to and including the class five star liners - the ones designed for months of pleasurable intersystem sightseeing. If this alien creature had done permanent damage to the engines, we had plenty of replacement parts and should have enough time to deal with the situation.
"No," I finally stated, urging the group to move forward. "We stay together - for now."
At a somewhat more brisk walk, we reached the aft portion of the drydock without further incident. Along the way, we passed two more destroyed consoles and a catwalk intersection torn to pieces. Without my permission, Fox had jumped the gap instead of following my lead of finding another way around. It had saved us a few minutes, but I wasn't happy and I let him know about it.
At the bulkhead to the rear section of the ship, I noticed the power to the automatic controls were dead. After uttering a few choice words, Brensen pulled access panel on the lower right side of the door off and began manually winching the door open.
As the bulkhead cleared the first inch, a warm cloud of steam began to issue from underneath door.
"What the hell?" Greavers asked, taking a cautious step away from the sudden influx of warm, foggy air into the cold dock area.
We all had our weapons drawn as Brensen continued to operate the manual jack, slowly pulling the door open. We could hear something rapping against the walls on the other side, and we all took three steps back from the landing. Sweat was beading on Brensen's bald head as the door continued to rise, and I was sure it was just from the exertion or the sudden flush of warmth issuing out from the expanding hallway.
"Greavers - take my rifle," Brensen shouted as something black flickered into sight beyond the billowing steam that trundled in from beyond.
Instead, Greavers was the first to unload with his pistol into the swinging mass. A hair's breadth later, I found myself likewise unloading into the black, spinal-like form that whipped across the open doorway.
"Whoa! Hold it guys! Hold it," Fox barked at us, throwing his arms up.
I'd let off three shots and Greavers' gun was clicking empty by the time we stopped. Brensen, who had backed off as we started to shoot, leapt to his feet as Fox strode towards the open bulkhead door. Before we could stop him, Fox moved to the swinging, braided limb and grabbed it. It hissed and sparked as he brought it up for us to see. "It's just a power coupling," he chided us.
"Son of a bitch," I hissed, feeling foolish.
"Where is all that steam coming from?" Greavers asked, waving his empty pistol at the slowly subsiding steam that crawled out like wispy fingers around the doorway.
"I think we found our engine problem," Fox stated, looking upwards at the ceiling for the conduit's connector. "That damn thing has breached the coolant lines for the reactor." He wiped several drops of condensation from his face before he stopped, suddenly realizing it wasn't water vapor.
It was saliva.
Fox's face froze in terror as the steam cleared above him enough to realize exactly what was hanging from the ceiling above. All we saw were the long, black, chitin-covered arms reach down and grasp him by the shoulders.
Before I could bring my gun back up and Brensen had unslung his rifle, it hauled him up out of our sight.
We heard him scream once, and then a sackful of dark, red blood spattered to the floor below, sending the remnants of the steam skittering away from the vile fluid.
"The Goddamn thing was waiting for us," I could hear Greavers stammer behind me as I found myself racing forward, shouting for Fox. Brensen stopped me before I slipped past him and beyond the threshhold of the bulkhead door.
"He's gone," Brensen breathed, carefully glancing up through the open ventilation shaft beyond the door, his rifle aimed upwards into the bleeding hole. "It's already gone."