"Captain?"
"Captain, are you there?" Vera's far voice echoed through my head.
I felt dizzy, nauseous. The room around me seemed to list like a ship at sea, not in space, as my focus moved in and out. It took me a moment to realize I was lying down on the deck plate in the medical lab.
As my senses came back, I stumbled to my feet and sought out the source of Vera's voice. It was coming from the headset I had cast aside when we first brought Brensen into the medlab.
Brensen - Vera. It suddenly came back to me that the black alien demon had taken Brensen and Vera had been the one who had knocked me unconscious. Hurriedly, I slipped the headset on.
"Vera, where are you?" I demanded, as I looked around the room and retrieved the pulse rifle that had fallen to the floor in my collapse.
"I'm afraid," she responded haltingly, then stated, "I've made a serious miscalculation."
A sudden thought slipped through my mind. How long had I been out? I glanced up to the nearby wall and read the chronometer there. An hour and forty-five minutes. I'd been out for too many precious minutes.
"Vera, where are you?" I repeated, stressing my desire to know her location.
"I am in the aft section," she replied. There was a pause, then she stated with unusual tenderness, "Fox is not dead, you know."
"What are you talking about?" I asked. She was clearly delusional - I had seen his corpse, and the memory made me shudder. I then remembered that previously, we had not been able to communicate to that section of the ship with the power severed. Was she lying about her location? Or perhaps she had fixed the severed juction where Fox had been claimed?
"Vera, how are you communicating from there?" I asked. "Is power restored?"
"Power and communications have been restored, Captain," she replied unemotionally.
"And the heat exchange overload?" I asked.
"I'm afraid I was interrupted," Vera replied. I sighed. That left me with a little over an hour now to fix the problem or find a way to jettison the command module.
"Vera, where in the aft section are you?" I asked. "Can you get back to the command module?"
"I am here with Fox, Greavers and Brensen," she replied.
Now it was time for me to be silent a moment as I took in her words. "You're with them?" I asked quietly.
"Fox - is indisposed," Vera explained. "And so is Greavers, but Brensen seems to be waking now."
"Vera, let me talk to him," I stated as I nervously circled the medtech room, stopping next the vacant bed that only hours ago had held Holiday before the nightmare had started.
There was a pause as I could hear Vera sloshing in the water of the alien's pit. It was followed by rustling as I could discern Vera placing her headset onto someone's forehead.
"Captain?" came a weak and bleary voice that nearly made my heart leap with joy. It was Brensen's voice.
"Brensen, thank God," I muttered. He repeated himself on the other end, and I asked him, "Brensen, can you make it out of there?"
"Captain," he said for the third time, and I could hear the grimace on the other side of the headset.
My voice caught in my throat. I could hear Vera slide the headset off Brensen as he groaned in agony. A moment later, her voice rang through the headset. "You should not have attempted to jettison them," she lectured. "I found them alive."
"Vera," I stated, clenching the rail bar at the foot of the bed. "I want you to grab Brensen - and Greavers, if you can - and bring them back to medlab." I ordered.
"I'm afraid I can't do that," she said sadly.
"Vera, this is an order," I demanded.
"I would like to very much obey that order," she replied, "but I'm afraid, like the others, I cannot leave."
"Why can't you leave?" I asked.
"Captain, I made a miscalculation," Vera repeated herself, seemed to try to explain. Her tone changed with her next words. They were cold, almost harsh. "You are alone. It has been waiting for that."
"It?" I asked. As the words exited my mouth, I heard a scraping at the door. Looking up, I saw the ebony, armored demon at the half open door, one clawed hand resting on the same grooves it had made to enter before. The door was not quite open enough to allow it through; the black, pipe-like structures on its back made it just too wide to squeeze in sideways.
Sensing that I had seen it, the creature let out a low hiss and wrenched the door wide.
However, I already had the pulse rifle. I brought the weapon up, firing as I did so. The first bullet of the burst missed it, but the other two caught it as nimbly tried to dodge into the room. The explosive shells hurled it back, exoskeleton shattering from its body in huge sprays of greenish, acidic blood.
I wasn't listening to Vera in my headset any more, and hurled the headset to the ground and stomped on it. I then heard the hissing of the dying alien's acid eating into and through the deck of the ship. It made one last, feeble attempt to claw at me, then the body sloppily slid into the hole it made, and I could hear the acid eating through the level below.
"No, no, no," I yelled, heading over to the doorway as I slung the pulse rifle over my shoulder. I had killed it, but there was no doubt in my mind that its acid-filled body would eat through the remaining three decks and possibly breech the hull. I had to move fast and leave the medlab - its single door had been compromised and the only other safe area to reach in time was the shut down computer core or the bulkhead door to the dry dock. There was simply no time to reach the bridge and seal it off in time.
With no desire to risk turning Uncle back on, I decided to take my chances heading to the dry dock. Perhaps now with the alien dead, I had a chance to fix the heat exchangers - and perhaps rescue Brensen from his fate.
I had reached the door to the service corridor that ran from the command section to the aft of the ship when I heard Vera's voice ring out overhead. She must still have been patched into the ship, her automatic subroutines continuing to fill in for Uncle.
"Warning, hull integrity fluctuations detected on deck one," the voice rang out, "Beginning emergency lockdown procedures in anticipation of hull breech."
My fingers flashed over the control panel to the door to the corridor. I had just entered the unlock code and mashed the controls to open the door as a loud countdown began. I was somewhat surprised Vera hadn't changed the code.
"Ten seconds to lockdown."
The double-thick door decompressed as the first step to opening the passage to the hallway. It seemed to take forever.
"Eight."
"C'mon," I screamed as the door started to slip open.
"Seven."
A hand's width open, and the door stopped cycling as the control panel went red. It was going to close back up. "Six."
"No! Don't do this to me!" I shouted, slipping my hand in between the doors and fighting to wedge it open.
"Five," the countdown continued as I struggled to push past the first door and pull the second open.
"Four," I heard as a whistling sound in the distance down the hall from me. The hull had breeched.
"Three," the angry voice seemed to come over the intercom as I slid past the second door and fell to the floor in the corridor beyond. I then noticed the door lingered, not closing.
"Two," the now somewhat distant countdown continued as I leapt to my feet, the rising whine of wind growing in the hall behind me and starting to tug through the cracks in the open door, like the alien's cold talons.
"One," the countdown warned, and I jabbed at the door controls. A heartbeat later, and the door started cycling closed, and the sound of exiting air in the hall beyond grew louder. Icy cold whistled through the slightly open doors, rising to a scream as the doors cycled shut and then finally sealed with a clunk, like the jaws of some beast clamping down on its prey.
I stood in the hall a moment, leaning against the nearby wall. There was no way back now. Either I had to fix the heat exchanger's cooling system now, or this would be my tomb. Once the exchangers were fixed, I could then worry about performing an EVA in one of the suits stored in the dry dock and fix the damage to the command section.
But for the moment, I needed to deal with Vera and Brensen. The corridor to the aft section was brilliantly lit white, and I carefully made my way down the hall to the red-rimmed door that would take me back into the aft section. Back into hell. Unconsciously, I brought the pulse rifle down, aiming it ahead of me as my boots loudly echoed through the metal-floored hall. The alien was gone, but there was no telling what was going on with Vera.
I reached the aft section and glanced through the large plexiglass window into the tiered room beyond. The room was now bathed in a constant, red red light. From within the corridor, the huge skylight in the room beyond was a blank, black surface. I stepped back, entered the door code to access the aft section, and once the door cycled open, I stepped in and carefully swept the gun from side to side, examining the machine-laden corners with the flashlight that was still atop the weapon.
I located a corridor that would take me back to cooling station six. There was no need to maneuver around to the elevator station we had taken to the level before, and I could easily navigate the ladders back down to level three without the injured Brensen along.
It was a lonely, cold walk, despite the heat from the humid air. Being alone in the vast ship made nervous, even without the alien presence now around. I could almost feel the entire ship breathing slowly in contrast to my sharp, quick breaths.
Within a span of ten minutes, I had made my way to cooling station six. The black water still filled the recess in the room, and the giant column attached to the cooling tank still hissed and breathed slowly. Carefully, I approached the octagonal well lip at the center of the room, and momentarily shouldering the rifle, I stepped back down the cold hole into the room below.
As before, only dim light from the blinking machines along the walls illuminated the reddish, swirling water in the room. A few steps above the swirling whirlpool below, I unslung the rifle and shone the light towards where the alien's strange shrine had been. As my light befell the grotesque, tube-lined structure, I felt cold shivers again run down my spine.
As I had feared but expected, three forms sat atop the shelf of the shrine, just inches above the water line. On the far left, Fox's body had been replaced by what I could best describe as some leathery, flowering oval, its four petals open and oozing a strange, viscious green slime. To the right, I could barely recognize what must have Greaver's fetally-positioned form, but something seemed wrong about the proportions. They were stretched and exaggerated, and in the bad light it seemed that his shark-toothed mouth ran down his left leg. I could only assume it was Greavers, for Brensen squatted to his right, one foot hanging over the ledge an into the water. He shivered as the light fell on him, and I nearly leapt off the ladder to rush to his aid when I saw another hand in the light, positioned as if it were attempting to ward the flashlight's cold glare away from it.
As I guided the light to the form, I gasped. It was Vera - or at least, the top half of her. Like the others, she had been shorn of her clothing and glistened with the strange, thick gelatin that coated the others. She was also splattered with her own white, milkish robotic fluids. Below her waist, her body ended in a clump of strange tubes, bony extrusions and pipes that seemed to meld into the shrine and the wall. It was difficult to tell exactly where she stopped and the alien structure began.
"Captain?" Vera's robotic voice queried as she seemed to attempt to cover herself in modesty.
"Vera, what happened?" I asked, leaping over the whirlpool and into the freezing cold water. She did not answer promptly, and I carefully waded towards the figures.
"Captain, I have made a miscalculation," she started again.
I partly ignored her and carefully made my way to examine Greavers first. It was worse than I had first seen. His right hand, now with webbed fingers, was merged with his left leg. His mouth did indeed merge down into his right leg, but not before it passed over a bloody cavity in his chest. There was no sign of his right arm.
"That column you and the others encountered - do you remember it?" Vera queried as I took a step back from Greavers.
"Yes," I said through gritted teeth.
"It is not just a respirator," she explained.
"What?"
"It has been hooked into the pipes and venting of the floor below," Vera continued to expound, glancing upwards where I could now see the alien vein work worm its way into the machinery and decking above. "What you see in this room is not a 'trophy shrine' as you put it," she lectured, "It is an incubation station."
"No," I said, feeling the bile rise in my throat, and glanced back at the open wound in Greaver's chest. "How is that possible? There was only the one."
"It is converting the biomatter of your crew into ...," it paused, "Eggs."
I whirled at her statement, pointing the pulse rifle at the ovid squatting at the far left. "You mean ... you mean that - that was Fox?"
"Yes," she said bitterly, and as I glanced at her, I could see tears in her eyes. "But he is not dead," she said mournfully, "Not truly."
"What do you mean?" I asked.
"It subsumes part of the host," Vera stated wistfully. "DNA, memories, attributes," she remarked. "That was my miscalculation. That is how it knew how, when and where to strike," she explained. "It had Holiday's knowledge of the ship - of us." "When it came out of Greavers, I could see it in how it moved - how it regarded me. That was why it put me here, rather than destroy me. He knows I run the ship. They do not wish to die, no more than we do."
"There's another one?" I asked, glancing about.
"It is not here right now," Vera stated. "I sent it away for a bit, when I saw you were coming."
"How did you do that?" I asked, pointing the rifle now at her.
"I am the ship," she scolded, "I watched you on the monitors." She smiled. "I am one with it now," she stated. "I am with Fox once again - I can feel him here," she stated, sliding her hands down her glazed sides. "We are all in here, now. With it."
Suddenly, Brensen let out a fearsome bellow as he strained at the resin restraints that held him to the wall.
"Soon, Brensen will be with us too," she cooed.
"Captain, get out now," Brensen roared with utter clarity in his eyes. I was going to argue that I wasn't about to leave him behind, but I saw it in his eyes. He was about to die. What had happened to Holiday, what had happened to Greavers was about to happen to him."
"Now I understand order 993," Vera stated as she watched Brensen heave. "Uncle understood," she said turning to me. "Now, Fox and I will be together, along with the others - forever. And you - you can join us."
Brensen's chest rocked as if some supernatural force had hooked into it and was attempting to pull him even further from the wall. Blood splattered his lips as his eyes went wide.
With a roar of my own, I showered the shrine with pulse rifle rounds, drowning out Vera's protests with gunfire.