1.

The dead forest held monsters behind every tree. Sometimes they were the trees. Gaunt white shapes against a blood red sky flecked with ashen clouds and a rotten, yellow moon. Roots from the trees drove through the layer of small bones that covered the ground, their previous owners cried in the distance. And He darted from trunk to trunk, keeping in the shadows, out of sight.

Jenny, her young face lit sickly pale in the yellow light, stood in the clearing and observed the dread shapes with a casual disinterest. A breeze ruffled her auburn hair but did not chill her despite her wearing only a clinical sleeping gown. It was not the first time she had been here. She decided on a direction and set off and walked, her feet crushing the tiny, brittle bones of powder. It was always the same. As she reached the trees there was a path leading off between them. She could see things scurrying across it, and His yellow eyes bobbing in the distance, fading as he retreated deeper into the woods. She followed Him… again.

As Jenny walked the path she saw something lying in her way. On her many previous visits to this place she had never seen anything lying in the path. Genuinely interested she walked on, looking down at the little shape. It was an old and battered hat that formed from the darkness. She gazed at it wondering where it had come from. It had never appeared before. Nudging it with her toe Jenny recoiled slightly as a many jointed scuttled from underneath and fled to the safety of the macabre undergrowth. She reached down and picked up the hat. It was perfectly normal, an archaic design with a wide brim. Nothing else hid in its depths. It was simply a battered old hat. It was then that she felt hot breath on her neck. Spinning around Jenny looked into His yellow, bloodshot eyes. They creased in a grin as she felt cold steel in her gut.

Jenny sat up quickly panting for breath, drenched in sweat. Her hands flew to her stomach, expecting to feel warm, liquid flowing from open wounds… She felt only her own deep breathing.

"Bad dream, hon?"

Jenny looked around into the dark face of the Major. Flicking her eyes back and forth Jenny saw she was still in the sleep chamber, sitting up in her deep sleep pod, the pads of the monitoring equipment dangling from her temples, and arms. She nodded, trying to work saliva back into her mouth, her hand going to her head.

The Major, crouching next to her sleep tube, was an older woman than Jenny, tall and sleek, body honed by a life in conflict, her chocolate coloured skin scarred by those same struggles. She stood up slowly, her movements reminding Jenny of a cat stretching.

"The deep sleep does that to some people. I can't remember the last time I didn't have bad dreams. Come on. The ship has brought us round. It's time to meet our employer."

Jenny was helped from the sleeping pod. Elsewhere in the deep sleep chamber other members of the crew were clambering from their pods and retrieving their belongings from lockers.

"Goddam civilians," laughed a stocky man as he reached into a locker. His curly black hair was receding and it revealed a long scar running down the side of his head to stop just above his left eye.

"Stow it, Argento!" the Major commanded. "It's too early to start with that. She'll be fine in a few minutes."

"We ain't got a few minutes!" shouted a younger man from the other side of the chamber. "If this panel is correct we're late being brought out of sleep. We're almost at the space-dock."

"You sure, Bradley?" the Major asked.

Jenny crossed to the view-screen, seeming to not hear David Bradley's voice as he tried to explain the situation to the Major. She looked instead at the picture on the screen. The vast orbital docking platform, its thick column extending down from the space station to be anchored on the Earth's surface was picked out against the distant stars. It seemed to Jenny like a huge mechanical flower against a backdrop of the cosmos. The screen flickered and the image changed to that of a face, gaunt and unshaven. Eyebrows were raised as Jenny's picture obviously filled the man's own screen.

"Morning, love!" he leered.

"That will be "Morning, Miss Curtis" in the future, Kirzinger," said the Major, gently moving Jenny aside to stand in front of the screen herself. "And I prefer Major Holland. But you know that. What's happening out there?" she asked.

"The Raiser's computer was a bit late in bringing us out of deep sleep," replied Kirzinger, still grinning dirtily. "I've told Koji and Alice to get it sorted. Anyway, we're docking in two minutes. As much as it pains me t'say it, yourself and the delightful Miss Curtis better get your gear on. Same goes for the rest of you bastards too."

Behind them Argento blew a theatrical kiss in the screen's direction, Bradley just shook his head, grinning. The Major smiled slightly as well.

"Not able to touch yourself up during deep sleep, Kirzinger?"

The pilot's face twitched, his eyes flicking down and up.

"Like I said… we dock in two."

The view-screen switched back to the docking array and the Major turned away to go to her equipment locker. Bradley cocked his head quizzically at Jenny as she ran her hand down the screen, not paying any attention to anyone else in the room.

"Wakey wakey," he said.

Jenny started and turned around. Her eyes darted around the room before settling on Bradley.

"Everything okay?" he asked.

Jenny grinned and nodded.

"I've just… never seen it before," she said turning back to the screen.

"What? The platform?" Bradley asked.

"Earth…" Jenny said in faraway tones. Bradley raised an eyebrow and opened his mouth, but the words were drowned out. A wailing siren began in the chamber, accompanied by a red flashing light.

"Kirzinger!" shouted the Major, bracing herself against a structural beam as the ship lurched. She managed to haul herself back over to the view screen.

"What's with the proximity alarm? What's going on," she cried, hammering at the intercom controls. As she did so the alarm abruptly stopped. Kirzinger's was no longer grinning, his confused expression appeared on the screen.

"Er… Not sure about that one. Just a malfunction, I guess. I got no visuals and the computer's reading negative again. I'd only just touched the controls… There was nothing out there…" He shook his head, looking at his readouts, genuinely not understanding what had happened. The Major nodded slowly. Jenny knew that although Kirzinger was undoubtedly an asshole, he was also a top notch pilot. Two computer errors in a row and we haven't even arrived yet, she thought. Maybe this job was a mistake. The Major's voice brought her back into the sleeping chamber.

"Okay, just get us into dock and we'll have Koji go through all the systems while Alice strips down the computer core. It's about time for a spring clean."

Kirzinger nodded and the screen went black…

Outside the ship slid slowly towards the vast docking array. The word Hell Raiser was painted in chipped red paint on the pockmarked hull. Lights flickered in the traditional request for docking clearance, though this was only a formality. Electronic messages shot back and forth through the void, making sure that the docking would barely be felt onboard the ship. As the docking sequence got underway, if one were to look very carefully with the correct kind of equipment from one of the space platform's many viewing galleries, the star field behind the ship shimmered briefly and then retuned to normal.