Fumbling for his helmet release, the kit could feel his hands shaking. Long ago he had gotten used to the confines of his RIG suit, but today the claustrophobia was kicking in again. His breaths slowed and deepened when he could comfortably pull in more air. Hyperventilating only exacerbated the constricting nature of his suit.
"That bad, huh?" the red furred fox said as she kneeled down to his level.
Tails had forgotten that he was crying. Fresh tears will still rolling of his fur and into the depths of his engineering RIG.
"I," he began unsure of how to continue, "I – I didn't sign up for this."
"Honey, I don't think anyone did," she replied offering him a hand up, "or at least I don't remember killing space zombies in my job description… not that I read it."
The kit laughed as he wiped away any evidence of his crying, taking hold of her hand with his other paw.
"Don't sweat the water works," the vixen replied sweetly. "I've already cried more than I care to admit."
"Yeah but you're a…" Tails thought better of continuing his sentence as he watched her smile turn into a scowl.
"A what?" she asked with a small hint of a growl.
"…girl," he finished his statement reluctantly and albeit in a whisper.
"And a soldier," the red-furred fox added. "I've seen wars the likes of which you would never understand. I'm tougher than you, "she growled, "so don't bother confusing me with all the pretty little things you stare at as they walk past you in the halls."
That was an odd thing to say. Almost no wars had been fought in the last thousand years, or at least big ones anyway. Only private mercenary groups had been battling on the outer edges of space as they fought over territory for their employers. Mining rights grew scarcer by the day as planet after plant was being bought up and mined.
Groups like those were notorious for playing dirty and sweeping everything under the rug. When everything happed so far away any number of war crimes could be committed and no one would ever be the wiser. Suddenly the kit wasn't sure if he felt more or less safe with his new companion.
"I didn't mean it like that," he insisted.
"I know you didn't," Fiona's smile came back, "You nerdy types are probably not used to being around girls, let alone one that could kill you."
Reaching for the button he closed his helmet as tears began to form in his eyes again.
"A girl his half the reason I am here," the kit admitted in a depressed tone.
"I'm sorry," the vixen replied with a small gasp, "I didn't know."
"It's okay. There's probably a lot we don't know about each other."
"Well we can catch up later. Right now we need to keep looking for the," but she stopped when Tails beamed the Captain's codes into her suit.
"Getting that was not fun."
"Nothing around here is," Fiona laughed. "We might finally be able to make some progress with these."
"I've been thinking about that, and I am not so sure that's the case yet. Someone's been jamming the radio signals and I doubt whatever is doing that is going to be fixed by the Captain's codes."
"So, we don't need the radio to…" she stopped, attempting to list something.
They needed communications to be up for just about everything they could hope to do on this derelict ship. Sending a message for more help was probably at the top of both their list, but at the present moment, not possible. If comms were up they would be able to tell if there was anyone else roaming the ships with more of a plan than they had. The only viable option for their safety was retreating to the ship he arrived on, which still needed to be refueled. Tails had no intention of doing that until he found Cosmo.
"There's another engineer on this ship who might still be alive," Tails continued. "I know he is trying to fix communications and I think it would be in our best interest to help him out."
The red furred fox nodded in agreement as she shouldered her weapon, "follow me then."
And arch of blue light leapt out of her suit and projected itself on the floor. Just like his RIG, her military grade armor had visual waypoint guidance for ship combat.
"Where are we going?"
"Communications is at the very top of the ship. That's where your friend will be going if he is really trying to fix this."
Tails followed the line until it ran into the door at the far end of the room. The scrolling sign at the top nearly made him cringe.
"There isn't another way?"
"Through the morgue is the fastest."
"But," he wanted to complain.
"You're not scared, are you?"
The kit gulped as he walked up to the door and mashed his palm into the scanner.
With the Captain's credentials every door on the ship would open for them both. Standing to the side he let the trained professional do what she did best. Her eyes narrowed as the door began to retract into the ceiling.
"I think I finally found some of those bodies you were looking for," she joked far too seriously for his liking.
Joining her side, the pair of their laser targeting devices bobbed around the dark searching aggressively for anything that moved.
"What the," they both muttered.
The bodies were one thing, strewn about like rag dolls while others were lacerated beyond recognition. It was the blood that was disconcerting, which thoroughly covered the walls, ceiling, and floors. Their tactical lights only did so much to illuminate a pitch black room, not that he wanted to see more of it anyway. Whatever had happened in here was beyond gruesome.
Scratches were rented into the walls while other streaks seemed to spell out warnings like 'they're watching."
"Have you seen anything like this before?"
"Sure," Fiona replied, "just not on the Ishimura."
The hair raising sound of a door squeaking open emanated from their left. Both of them spun in time to see the red glow of a locker light. There was no body, dead or otherwise, inside. In fact nothing was on the slab at all.
"Is there something in here?" Miles asked aloud.
"Your guess is good as mine, but I would be okay if we kept moving."
There was no denying the stench of this room. Even with his RIG's filtration system the odor of death and decay was sickening. Then out of the corner of his eye he saw it. One of the grotesque blade wielding fiends was standing over Fiona, silent as a shadow, raising its arms ready to strike.
With no time to do anything but what his instincts told him to he swung is wrist to face their enemy, grabbing hold of its arm as he fired a stasis blast. It froze mid swing, the tip of its sword like forearm not even an inch away from the back of the vixen's skull. Before then he had never considered using Stasis on one of these things. Without his quick thinking, it would have cleaved her in two right in front of his eyes.
"Well look at you, hot stuff," Fiona proclaimed in amazement as she looked upwards. "Cut it a little close, but I'll tell you there is no better way to a girl's heart than saving her life."
Walking over to a nearby operating table, the red-furred fox picked up a bone saw of impressive size before returning to their frozen friend. With the flick of a switch, the teeth began to vibrate and such speeds it appeared as if they weren't moving at all.
"I was just returning the favor," he assured her.
With a wink she set about her work. There was no guilt to be had by adding more blood to the room. Gushing, the red liquid leapt forth from where the creature's head used to be. The saw cut through flesh and bone with alarming ease. Before the stasis wore off there wasn't any meaningful limb still attached to the necromorph.
"I should have been a surgeon," the vixen quipped as she dropped the saw.
He laughed despite not wanting to. It was funny, just not in a humorous way.
When the silence between them resumed so too the eerie atmosphere, the dead space between the walls, the death lurking around the next corner. The quietness carried on forever unless he listened closely.
The voices were inaudible, speaking in gibberish or a language he couldn't understand. Lowering his weapon he followed their garbled calls, searching for their source. As he did so, he could feel the vixen watching him, studying his actions, but the two-tailed didn't care. There were people talking to them, someone had to listen.
"So you can hear them now?"
"What?" Tails responded as he snapped out of his trance.
"The voices."
"This isn't like before, there is a choir of people all talking so softly I am not sure if it's real."
"You mean the whispers that come from everywhere when you stand still and listen for too long? All of them calling out in a language that sounds familiar yet foreign?"
"Yes," the kit responded surprised, "exactly like that."
Fiona smiled her smile as she snorted at him, "I keep forgetting you've only been here a few hours. Get used to them."
"Used to them?" Tails answered as he cautiously traveled the remaining length of the morgue, keeping an eye out for any more unwelcomed guests.
"They're always there. If I didn't know any better, the voices might belong to everyone who used to be alive."
That was a grim thought, but at this point he wasn't about to rule it out. His time aboard the Ishimura had shown him anything was possible.
Placing his palm on the panel of the next door, Fiona again lined up ready to meet the challenges that might lie on the other side.
A wash of flickering light greeted them as the door rose above their heads. The corridor was littered with gurneys and the occasional splash of blood. However, a sound rose above the whispers of the silent in the form of a loud clank. Tails could feel his fur raising as his adrenalin shot up again. Searching the hallways there was nothing, followed by more nothing on the ceilings and in the vents. Hoping it was just a fluke he shuttered as there was another hardened metallic clank.
The vixen next to him paused, lifting her finger ready to tap it to an invisible beat, "clank," she said aloud in time with the noise. Tails could see her nodding her head to the count, waiting to wag her finger again, "clank."
She hadn't missed a beat, but why did she know it in the first place? He stared at the glowing green spots where her eyes were, hoping for an answer. Expressions were difficult to read through steel plated armor.
"Another one," Fiona sighed softly.
"Another what?"
"I'll show you."
She walked down the hall as if there was nothing wrong, as if they weren't on ship full of the undead. Her stroll was casual until she rounded a corner where she motioned for him to look.
It was a hard thing to process. There stood a human doctor in their work fatigues, a trickle of blood flowing from his nose and down the front of his garments. Smashing his head against the bulkhead, the doctor produced another clank.
Tails approached him, hoping there was something that could be done.
"Don't bother," she called after him, "he's long gone."
CLANK
"What's wrong with him?" the kit asked stopping just short of the middle aged man.
"Remember when I said that anyone who spends enough time on this ship will border indefinitely on the precipice of insanity?"
CLANK
Tails nodded.
"Well now you know what it looks like when you fall into the abyss. Some people are stronger than others, but even if you manage to fend off everything that wants to kill you on this ship, you still have to be able to fight your own demons."
CLANK
"Do they all do this? I mean the ones who live long enough to succumb to the psychosis?"
"Yes. I've watched them for hours," Fiona admitted reluctantly. "I was curious to see if they would ever get a grip and snap out of it or if they would just keep bashing their own faces in. But I guess once you check out, you don't come back. Eventually they smash their head hard enough to do some real damage… that is if they don't bleed out first."
CLANK
"So we're just going to leave him here?"
"If you want to put him out of his misery, go ahead, but don't waste anything useful on him."
CLANK
Tails couldn't bring himself to lift a finger, it was a living breathing person after all. Instead he cautiously stepped past the doctor, afraid the man might lash out at any moment. Fiona followed without even sparing a glance.
It was scary to think that he was headed down the same path. How long before the Cosmo's voice overcame what sanity he had left, leaving him no choice but to jump off the precipice he stood on.
"Come on, the elevator is just up here."
CLANK
Hey everyone. I totally forgot about this story and how much fun I was having writing it. I found this chapter and thought I would put it up. Does anyone have anything in particular they would like to see in this story? I am open to just about anything given that I don't have much of a direction for it yet. Give me whatever you got, characters, enemies, relationships, weapons, and whatever else you want. If it makes sense, I'll do my best to put it in.
And for anyone who follows my resistance series, I should be updating that tomorrow night as well.
Cheers,
M.D