I
The Eden was an immense colony settling ship some three miles long and five hundred meters wide. Spanning over twenty levels, the ship was one of three hydroponics ships in a fleet of ten. While The Eden, along with The Babylon and Gaia carried all manner of flora and fauna for new settlements on distant worlds in the giant domes that ran their length, another three ships carried everything needed to add breathable air to even the most barren of planetoids. The remaining four ships were Behemoth-class Marine cruisers, assigned to provide protection and deter any would-be raiders; colonising ships were a valuable commodity and carried billions of dollars worth of equipment, most of which could fetch a very high price on the black market.
The control room of The Eden was a large rectangular room set over two levels, with a balcony looking out across the lower level and towards the view port that dominated two thirds of the largest wall. The window itself was constructed from toughened glass three feet thick, reinforced with a titanium frame and programmed to seal up with steel shutters should it ever become breached.
Before the view port there were three control desks, two used primarily for navigation and the third for communication across the fleet, while the balcony held two terminals for sensor readings across the ship, both internal and external, as well as a larger consol to be manned by the captain of the ship. This large desk held a number of monitors and displays, each of which were fed information from all other terminals on the bridge.
John Tomly sat at this desk, his feet stretched out before him as he sipped lazily at the tepid coffee that filled the plastic disposable cup he held. He wasn't the captain, he was just the pilot, he had another ten or fifteen years before he could even think about becoming a captain. And when he didbecome a captain, he wasn't going to be stuck on long-haul journeys of shake-n-bake colony settling fleets. He wanted to be in charge of the deep space exploration vehicles; that way he would travel from system to system, cataloguing different planets that may be capable of supporting human or animal life. He'd rather do that instead of being stuck on the ship doing the settling work: as it was, the fleet could spend months in orbit while the terraforming took place on the planets surface; at least the exploration ships were always on the move.
At the moment, Tomly, or JT to his friends, was manning the graveyard shift for the watch, keeping an eye on all the systems while simulated fleet time dictated it was one in the morning, and everyone else should be in bed.
It wasn't all that bad, though: his friend and co-pilot Naki Redhorn had also been assigned on the same duty rota. The large Native American sat at his own desk, the chair barely able to contain the muscular bulk of the man as he occasionally ran a diagnostic check on the course of the ship was currently on, or the engine status. His long black hair had been coiled around beneath the cap he wore, keeping the flowing hair from getting in his way as he worked. His dark brown eyes were set close together, and his brow always seemed to be knitted into a permanent frown. His nose looked like it had been broken one too many times. He held a plastic tube in one hand, occasionally lifting it to his mouth and pressing it to his lips and breathing through the replacement cigarette, taking in a drag of simulated nicotine. He frowned in disgust at the device he held and slipped it into his pocket, wishing not for the first time that real cigarettes hadn't been banned from consumption aboard deep space vehicles.
"How's everything going over there?" Naki announced, spinning around in his chair to face the balcony, then standing to his full height of six foot so he could see over the railing. JT sighed and shook his head.
"Same old stuff, same as every other day. Power output in the green, atmosphere and pressure in all the domes nominal."
"What about that?" asked Naki as he made his way up onto the balcony by hauling his bulk over the railing. He was right next to the stairs, but preferred to participate in as much physical activity as possible. After all, long shifts sitting in an uncomfortable chair didn't offer much of a workout for him. He pointed at the command screens in front of JT, and the blinking lights that flashed on part of the readout.
"Looks like a malfunction with an airlock. Readout says it was breached about an hour ago, then sealed up automatically. Stray rock fragment, probably, but the hole's not opened up again. Near the main drive engines, do we have any people in that sector?"
"Check the manifest," Naki suggested, withdrawing his replacement cigarette again and taking another drag. "There's always one crew of grease monkeys around there somewhere, even in the middle of the night."
"This is the same shit that supposed to be picked up in the regular maintenance," grumbled JT, hammering on the keyboard in front of him. A list of crew on duty scrolled across his screen, and stopped on a list of seven names, each highlighted name flashing. "Collins is the section chief on duty at the moment. Call him on the com, get him and his pack of monkeys on the job. The last thing we want to do is piss away our atmosphere. I'll get hold of the graveyard shift on The Babylon and Gaia, see if they've had any similar problems, it could be a batch of faulty parts we picked up on Gamma Outpost."
"Gamma Outpost," Naki smiled to himself as he plugged the comset he carried into the main communication board. "I miss that place. I mean, it was a real dive, had a bad case of rust and fatigue, but the women… oh my, the women…"
"Yeah, and soon as your wife hears about it, she'll scalp you."
"That's a horrible thing to say, paleface," Naki said, his scowl thickening as he glared at him. "My wife won't find out."
0
"Jesus," Jameson muttered to himself as he pressed his hand into a thick mound of lubricant jelly that had been left on the top of one of the coolant vents that scattered the engineering level he was currently on. It was bad enough that he'd been sent down to one of the hottest levels of the ship to work on, searching for the apparent fault that may have triggered an airlock malfunction. One of the more senior men on the shift had suggested it could have been an automated response by the ship if it was getting too hot and pressurised inside: a lot of the larger and older colony settling ships were well known for being temperamental and a lore unto themselves, and a logic circuit somewhere deciding to do something illogical wasn't unheard of. Because Jameson was the youngest and greenest on the shift, he'd been sent into the inferno to check the systems there.
He sniffed at the thick gelatinous liquid that coated his had, then wiped it on the back of his leg, wrinkling his nose. The lubricant jelly normally had a strong oily smell, but this particular batch had a very acidic odour; the heat had probably made it go bad. He made a note of the location of the jelly, and that he'd have to report it to the line supervisor when he got back. Supplies like lubricant weren't easy to come by in the middle of nowhere, and leaving it out to go bad in the heat wasn't something he wanted to encourage.
Jameson unfastened the top of his work suit and pulled his arms from the sleeves, tying them around his waist before pulling off his grime-encrusted vest and throwing it to the ground. He ventured deeper into the forest of pipes and wires that made up the level, ducking beneath pipes that clattered and vents that hissed jets of scalding steam as he tried to make his way to the logic bank that was nestled in the centre of the deck.
"Next work rota I get, I'm getting off this barge," he muttered to himself, cursing as he scratched his shoulder on a low-hanging exposed wire. "Then I'm gonna quit, design star cruisers…"
He dropped to the floor and crawled beneath a length of thick steel piping. He could feel the heat on his back as he shuffled along the warm deck plate and clambered to his feet, careful to not use any of the scalding pipe work as leverage. "And I'm gonna make the engineering level's the biggest frigging level of all. With no pipes, or wires, or nozzles that piss steam in my face!"
His voice raised in volume until he shouted the last few words, then he relaxed, his shoulders slumping forward. He continued on his trek through the conduits, constantly wiping sweat and grime from his face with the palm of his hands.
The deeper into the labyrinth he went, the more the humidity levels increased. Piping and wiring seemed to meld and twist together, the mechanical seemed to flow into an organic mess, and the smooth deck plates took on a ridged appearance, similar to roots coated in a thick layer of a viscous and translucent liquid.
"Shit," moaned Jameson, kneeling to prod the obscure coating that lined the floor with one of the wrenches that hung from his tool belt. It looked like some seeds from one of the hydroponics domes had found their way into the engines and gone to seed. It had happened once before, and had taken a week to clean out the system. But, on the plus side, he'd found out what had tampered with the logic circuits: they'd probably been punctured with roots and shoots. He reached for the small communication headset he wore, but held off on operating it. Signals rarely got through all the pipe work and heat of the engineering levels, the added foliage would only add to the distortion. He'd have to work his way back through the pipes to get a clear signal. Plus, he knew that the longer he waited to get back and pass on the news, the less time he'd have on his shift until he was relieved by the morning shift.
Realising there was no rush in getting back to report this, he stepped closer to the organic matter that coated the pipes. He didn't know much about botany, that was the job of the scientists aboard, but he knew about machines, and this plant-like material seemed to be a mix of both.
Curiosity got the better of him, and he stalked further back into the chamber, hoping to find the source of the plant infection. The web that covered the floor began to show signs of further development in that giant fruits seemed to have blossomed on the ground: large grey blooms, three feet in height, lay scattered around the floor, covered in the same liquid as the roots. He reached out and touched the ovoid closest to him, feeling the flesh of the fruit quiver and pulse beneath his touch. Whatever strange plant this was, the swollen fruit seemed overripe, almost ready to burst. As he withdrew his hand a trail of thick viscous fluid pulled away with him, and with a chattering rattle, the top of the fruit sac peeled open, lips blossoming open like a flower at dawn.
A sickly odour washed over him, an acrid and bitter stench that reminded him of lemon and bile mixed together, and the centre of the opened flower swirled and twitched as folds of pale white flesh rolled over one another.
"What the fuck?"
Something stirred within the opening, and Jameson stepped back, realising that it hadn't been such a good idea to go exploring on his own. His feet caught on one of the roots that mapped the floor, and he fell down to the ground, watching in horror as a pale bony digit crept over the lip of the ovoid. Another followed, then another; eight claws fanned out across the ridge of the fleshy grey vase, quivering in anticipation.
With a piercing screech, the pale enlarged arachnid hurled itself forwards, claws digging into the back of Jameson's head and a thick, fleshy tube pressing against his lips as the creature pressed its clammy body against his face. He could feel his face tingle and burn slightly, opened his lips to scream in terror and panic, and felt his teeth being prised open as a thick and slime-covered extremity rolled down his throat. He could feel himself gagging, heaving as the uncoiled proboscis hardened in his throat. He tore violently at the soft shell-like back of the animal, his fingernails breaking the flesh and coming away with an acidic residue on them, smouldering and smoking as he finally stopped flopping around, unable to resist the suffocating lull of the parasite.
While the engineer lay comatose on the ground, the silent and hulking shape of the ebony queen alien watched over the dawning of her new brood.
