Finally, the next chapter is here!
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Fulton shook his right hand experimentally, working out the pain in his wrist from the shock of firing his weapon full auto for sustained bursts, then turned to look at the engineer standing beside him in the cramped confines of the service elevator.
"So…, uh, any idea what the fuck that was?," he asked, gesturing vaguely at the doors to the elevator as it slowly made its way deeper into the ship.
"No way, never seen shit like that before," Isaac answered, then stopped to think for a moment. "The Flood, maybe?"
"Nah, I've seen the file footage on the Flood. Those things didn't look anything like combat forms, or anything else the Flood came up with," Fulton said, reaching around behind himself. His hand came back into the dim lighting of the lift clutching what was obviously a weapon of some kind.
"Here," he said, handing it to Isaac. "M9 sub-machine gun, firing the new seven-sixty-two Tungsten-ferrous shredders."
Isaac turned the compact weapon over in his hands. It was reminiscent of the outdated M7 SMG, with a vertical foregrip, collapsible stock and side-mounted magazine feed, but the weapon itself was heavier and carried a thirty round clip of 7.62mm anti-personnel rounds. The rounds themselves were essentially a downsized version of anti-capital ship Magnetic Accelerator rounds, with a Tungsten jacket for limited armour penetration and a ferrous core that splintered inside the target, making it impossible to remove the bullets.
"Thanks, but I've never fired one of these before," Isaac said, starting to hand it back. Fulton pushed it back into his arms.
"Not like its hard. As long as your pointing in the general direction of what you wanna hit, chances are you'll hit it," Fulton explained. "'Sides, if you're gonna be watching my back, I want you packing something more than that sidearm."
"Fair enough," Isaac muttered. He watched as the Marine beside him went about quickly reloading his assault rifle and pistol, then turned his head to face the doors. With a quiet 'ding', the lift came to a halt and the doors slowly spread apart. It was unexpected, and Isaac swung the SMG up to aim out into the short hallway the lift opened up into, just before Fulton raised his rifle.
Somewhere off in the distance, they could hear what sounded like machinery rattling away, doing whatever it was that it was designed for. Aside from that, it all appeared quiet.
"Looks clear," Isaac said, gently chewing his bottom lip behind his faceplate. Fulton nodded slightly, moved out slowly and cautiously into the hallway, sweeping his rifle slowly around, ever watchful for danger. Nearing the end of the hallway, Fulton braced his back up against the wall and peeked his head around the corner. He quickly scanned the room, noting a blood spatter on the floor a short distance away, with a trail of it leading behind a support girder in the poorly lit room.
Without turning back, he waved his hand, signalling Isaac that it was safe to move forward.
"Let's check the place out, see if we can find anything useful," Fulton said, then pushed himself away from the wall and moved deeper into the room. He eyed the blood spatter on the floor warily; up close now, it looked pretty fresh.
"Fuck me," he heard Isaac say softly behind him, and he turned to see what it was. Propped up against the far wall, hidden in shadows, was a badly mangled corpse. Whether it had been a man or a woman, neither Isaac nor Fulton could tell. There were a few small splashes of blood around the body, and grasped in one hand was something that looked like a weapon of some kind.
"Whatever got this poor bastard sure made a mess of him," Fulton said, licking his lips nervously as he looked around the room once more, making sure that there was nothing that could pose a threat hanging around.
Isaac gagged behind his faceplate, fighting the urge to throw up. Inside a vac-sealed suit, vomiting was probably the most unpleasant thing one could do.
"I think we should just keep moving," Fulton said, shuffling back away from the corpse. Isaac shook his head.
"He's got something in his hand," he said, reaching out and gingerly prying the object from the dead man's stiff fingers. He pulled it away, turned and held it up to the light.
"It's a plasma cutter, it could come in handy," Isaac said, examining the tool to make sure it was in working order.
"Whatever, let's just go," Fulton muttered irritably. Isaac pocketed the plasma cutter and shouldered the SMG again, nodding to the Marine that he was ready to leave. The other man turned and headed for the only other door in the room, directly opposite the door to the elevator.
He reached out, tapped the holographic display and the doors sprung open. The pale beam of light from the flashlight mounted on Isaacs SMG caught sickly tan flesh for a split second before another one of those things leapt from the open doorway at Fulton. The Marine shouted, stumbled backwards and fired off a poorly aimed burst of fire, clipping the side of the things body.
Fulton fell flat on his back, the creature standing above him, arcing back, those wicked sharp bone-blades on its arms gleaming dully as they flashed downward in what seemed to be slow-motion for Fulton. He squeezed his eyes tightly shut, hoping for a quick end, when the chatter of the SMG deafened him over the screeching of the monster.
He opened his eyes again and saw blood spray in macabre patterns all over the wall behind the thing as it jerked and danced under the hail of rounds, and just as suddenly as it began, it was over. And it was still standing.
Fulton heard Isaac cursing behind him, heard him fumbling for his sidearm, and knew that Isaac couldn't help him now. But he had bought Fulton some time, time he used to gather his wits and raise his rifle. The confines of the ship were once more filled with the sounds of gunfire, and Fulton swung the assault rifle back and forth twice, cutting the thing in half at the waist and sending it sprawling to the ground with a short-lived screech.
Heartbeat thundering in his ears, Fulton sat upright, weapon still trained on the abomination. He scuttled backwards a few feet, then stood up and backed away until he was standing beside Isaac, still eyeing the creature.
"Here," he said, handing two SMG clips to Isaac. "And thanks, I thought I was gone for sure."
"No problem. Like you said before, I need someone watching my back," Isaac replied, casting a sideways glance at the impassive reflective visor of Fulton's combat suit.
"Alright, let's go," Fulton said, taking three short steps forward. As he neared the thing on the floor, the top half of its suddenly sprang up at him, screeching.
"Holy shit!," he yelled, stumbling back and emptying the remainder of his magazine into it. A bladed forearm flashed past his visor barely an inch away and slammed hard into the reinforced titanium doorframe. The thing shuddered violently for a moment, then seemed to deflate and was perfectly still. Cautiously, Fulton nudged it with his boot.
"Jesus Christ, what does it take to kill these things?," Isaac whispered behind him. Fulton just shook his head, then moved past the creature out into the corridor beyond the doorway. The corridor ended a few feet beyond the door to the right, but extended some thirty feet to the left, ending in a corner that branched off again to the left and presumably led deeper into the ship.
"We should keep moving," Fulton said, turning back to face Isaac, who was crouched over close to the corpse of the creature that attacked them. "Hey, did you hear me?"
Isaac continued looking over the creature for a moment longer, then looked up and nodded. "Yeah, I heard you. Come take a look at this."
Fulton spared another glance down the corridor, then stepped back over the creature to stand beside the kneeling figure of his companion. Isaac waved him down closer, and with a sigh, Fulton complied.
"Okay, what are we looking at?," he said as he settled into a crouch beside Isaac.
"This," Isaac said, reaching out to the creatures chest and yanking something off of it. He handed the object to Fulton and waited. Fulton looked at the piece of fabric he had been handed uncomprehendingly for a moment, then turned it over. There was writing on it.
"J. McArthur?," Fulton said aloud. After a moment, he turned to look at Isaac. "J. McArthur? Christ, was this thing a crew member!?"
"I don't know," Isaac said. "But we have to find some way of getting back to the others, then we've gotta get the Trireme on the horn and try to get a patrol cruiser out here or something."
"Right, assuming the others are still alive," Fulton said, then stood up and rolled his shoulders, trying to work out some of the rapidly building tension there.
"Yeah," Isaac said, "assuming they are."
The two men fell silent after that, sparing a glance at each other's reflective faceplates. Almost in perfect unison, they turned and stalked cautiously down the corridor. The next few minutes were thankfully uneventful, and they made swift progress through the bowels of the enormous ship.
"Hey," Isaac said. "Check it out."
Fulton glanced at the small glowing sign that read "MONORAIL CONTROL BOOTH", then looked at Isaac.
"Assuming everyone else made it, I guess the first place they'd head would be the monorail station. We can use the monorail to get pretty much anywhere in the ship, but the Bridge is the most likely place we would find anyone," Isaac explained, then hurried his progress with Fulton picking up the pace to keep up.
"So, what do you think the Ishimura is doing out here?," Fulton asked.
"What do you mean? It's a mining ship, my guess is it was mining," Isaac replied.
"Maybe, but you do realise we're about a quarter of a light-year beyond the Rim?," Fulton said. "It's forbidden for non-military ships to travel this far out."
"True," Isaac said, waving his hand through the hologram in front of the door to the Monorail Control Booth. "I didn't think we were that far out, maybe they got lost or heard about a big score and thought they could get away with a fortune without anyone knowing where it came from."
The two men swept the room with their weapons carefully, no eager for surprises at this point, then Isaac moved over to the controls.
"Looks like you were right," Fulton said, peering at the controls from over Isaac's shoulder. "Monorails last stop was the bridge, eight minutes ago."
"Yeah, and it's still there."
"Well, call it back then let's get out onto the platform, see if we can meet up with the others soon," Fulton said, looking over his shoulder as a distant screeching caught his attention. "This place gives me the creeps."
"Yeah," Isaac murmured, as he recalled the monorail to the station.
"Who the hell designed this rust-bucket? There isn't direct access from here to the platform," Fulton said, looking at a map mounted on the wall opposite the glass view port. "Looks like we have to go through this doorway and circle around."
"I don't like the sound of that, it'd be pretty easy to get ourselves lost from the look of all these corridors, side passages and maintenance tunnels," Isaac said, stepping up beside his companion to examine the map himself. "But it looks like it's either that or we go back the way we came."
Isaac looked to Fulton, noticing for the first time a combat knife strapped to his shoulder pauldron with the words "Mister Stabby" scrawled across its sheathe in what looked like chalk.
"Fuck that," Fulton said, turning around and shouldering his assault rifle, he flicked off the safety and fired a burst into the view port. The thick glass erupted into a spider web of cracks immediately.
"Jesus Christ, some warning next time would be nice," Isaac seethed, having jumped in fright at the sound of the weapon firing. Fulton patted him on the shoulder as he walked toward the view port, grabbing an office chair along the way and hurling it through the glass.
"Option C? Looks like we've got direct access to the platform now," the Marine said with a chuckle, before leaping through the shattered view port and landing nimbly on his feet on the monorail platform. "You coming or what?"
"Yeah, yeah. Wait up," Isaac said, muttering a curse to himself as clambered out onto the platform with considerably less grace than his companion just as the monorail turned up.
The two men entered the monorail quickly, sweeping the interior and finding two dead creatures and a few dozen spent casings from an assortment of weapons.
"Let's get this show on the road," Isaac said as he brought up the monorail travel interface and selected the bridge.
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So, what will our protagonists find when they reach the bridge? Where will they go from there? How many other team members survived? Find out in the next instalment! (Which definitely won't take as long as this one did to arrive)