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DEAD SPACE: ON BOARD
Chapter 7: Ever So Closer
With the quarantine still blanketing the Ishimura traversing the unfathomable stretches of its hull was a staggering thing to imagine. Isaac had, in one way or another, guided himself ever closer to the Medical Deck—to Nicole herself. Isaac had recently procured an idea and hoped it would work.
Being an engineer, communication was one of the main concerns and tasks for his job description while aboard the Planet Cracking vessel. Often times they would have to repair communication arrays and/or channels two, and on rare occasions, three times in one day. These jobs were always long, laborious, and tiring to no end and sometimes could take two men to get the job done right. That meant two men, their full shifts, were necessary; an endeavor of 20 hours between the two. It was really the Ishimura's doing, Isaac knew. Not like it was an entity—he stopped his train of thought for a moment, his booted feet coming to a halt in the tram tunnel. His echoing footfalls had also ended. The Ishimura being a live entity: it was funny banter before, but now it was very well transcending to the ideologies of realism. Then Clarke gave his head a vigorous shake. The ship was not alive! The communication problem he'd often faced was due to the Ishimura's age, not a mechanical mind, a ghost in the machine. Being 50 years old, or was it over, made its installed programs, hardware, and whatever else a catastrophe on the verge just waiting to happen.
Isaac lowered his left hand; fingers spread like a fan, and permitted his holographic guidance system to show him the way. Straight ahead… surprise there, he thought almost maliciously. Afterward he opened the holographic map that projected from the broad chest plate of his suit. The map hovered before his helmeted face and illuminated both him and the surrounding tunnel walls and flooring in the same ominous blue glow he'd grown so accustomed to.
The poor engineer sighed. The map showed him to be a fair distance from his intended goal still. The suit wasn't the heaviest thing to adorn, but its bulky shape and overbearing HUD made it tiresome for long treks not involved in zero G atmospheres. He stifled the map then and trudged onward, the cutter still in his other hand. Still, he reminded himself there was his idea, and he managed a gallop in his step somehow.
At last he found what he was after. An old telecom station sat nestled in a nook in the tram tunnel. This system had been bypassed some twenty years ago for the system the Ishimura had used since then all the way up until now. If that system were a caveman, he thought in a comical fashion, this telecom was a dinosaur. That got a faint smile on his face beneath the helmet. He undid the cap of the telecom, its hinges creaking from slight rust, and he lifted it to reveal its contents. Looking at its innards was a laugh in itself as, to Isaac at least, it looked like a child's toy compared to contemporary means of communication. He'd have it hacked in no time. All that was required was to cross some wires, if they still carried life in them, and adjust to the proper frequency. If Nicole's comm. Link was in close enough proximity Isaac should be able to patch through to her, if only through a barely audible means.
He went to work; his breathing so subtle one could mistake him for holding it in. It took only a couple minutes for Isaac to have the procedure done and his anxious fingers fiddling with a squeaky dial to find any frequency that could carry the old station's messages.
It was a simple setup. Isaac played with the wires until he had them properly crimped and assorted. Once that was done he hooked their connection up with his own suit's communications and from there he could use the dial to sort through the visceral static the telecom station hadn't been subject to in at least a couple decades.
In a methodical fashion the engineer siphoned through the varying frequencies with a determination none could truly hold unless first back into a corner. He felt all would be lost otherwise and so he pushed both his body and mind to an extent he never knew was personally possible. Every other five seconds or so he would call out stating his name. Dead static and lowly hums met his ears within the helmet. At times the sound became so piercing he'd cringe and other times he'd halt all breathing in order for severely intent listening.
Here and there the young man peered over his shoulders to make sure no more of those nightmarish creatures were swooping up from behind. Oddly enough, they never were. Isaac had convinced himself by then that they only preyed in tight corridors. Whether or not they knew how to hunt, or even manipulate basic knowledge for that fact, eluded him, however.
Such a period of time passed that Clarke's eyes began to droop. He'd begun falling into a hushed stupor by the hypnotic rings and tones of the coming over the speakers in his helmet. His one leg had fallen completely numb and the other followed as it began tingling with a burning sensation. He'd given up calling out and forced himself to speak only one word now; one name: Nicole.
He chimed it over and over as if a broken record had replaced his vocal cords. "Nicole, Nicole…" After several unsuccessful minutes, Clarke fell to his last leg, his voice a quivering mess of hushed whispers. "Nikki," he said wearily, "Nikki… please. Nikki, answer me—please. Nikki…"
His eyes bolted open then. A strained voice answered his beckoning. It was female. It was familiar and a godsend to him at that point. It really was Nicole.
"Isaac?" Static reigned supreme again as nearly all else was cut out. She returned in between spouts of gruff static. "Isaac, is that you?"
The engineer nearly thrust himself into the aged telecom station. Its tabs where it was bolted into place rocked and squealed some from the sudden motion. "Nikki!"
The speech broke from hushes to intangible blather. Nicole's voice was sweet, yet panicked, beautiful in so many words, yet frightened to sincere ends. Isaac caught one final phrase before everything became blotted out: Zero-G Therapy. The line went completely dead as some of the ancient wiring sputtered and fizzled out.
Feverishly, Isaac punched the coordinates into his RIG and spanned out his left hand again allowing his built-in Locator unit to show the way and enlighten his confused sense of direction. It etched further down the Tram tunnel and went on out of sight in the distant darkness. His suit's chest piece read roughly 300 yards. Three football fields, he thought, stand between her and I. He sighed letting out a sulking feeling of desperation. When would this task be done?
His footfalls echoed off every available surface like a mighty bass drum once more as he left the old communication's station behind and dead. Clarke's mind raced through the muddled past. He began picturing Nicole when proposed to her. Down on one knee, just like he'd been only a minute ago at the old terminal, a glistening ring held seemingly aloft in his outstretched hands. Her tears of joy gave the same distinct shimmering as that ring. She was pure gold to him, and her tears were that of jewelry as well. His isolated conscience chuckled then. That was two days before they were Jupiter orbit bound. They met up with fifty other crew hands and boarded the USG Ishimura. Two weeks later and here they were in complete disarray and terror.
He stood still for a moment, brief, but eternal all the same. Fiancé… He'd never said the word until now, not even in the folds of his mind. It still didn't feel real to him that his girlfriend of four years was more now. A fiancé—his fiancé, he felt a shock of awe. She really was his.
Then the engineer furrowed his brow, the Plasma Cutter in his dominant hand clinking of the ribbed armor of his suit. She wouldn't be his if she were dead. With that maniacal thought he exploded into the quickest sprint the cumbersome suit would permit. When his breathing grew heavy he kept on and when his throat grew hoarse he cared in the least.
He was coming for Nicole. He was coming for his fiancé.
Only a hundred meager yards now; that was all that separated the two lovers. Isaac Clarke would soon be reunited and hopefully happy again. But as he trudged on something demonic lurked in the shadows to his back, and it was just about to pounce.