IX
Rufus wasn't pacing. He definitely wasn't pacing on the bridge. He made sure of that, one aching second after another. But it had been a long time. An achingly long time since Murcheson had radioed anything in. The Ira Populi maintained its slow, steady inertial fall into the Eye, and the transport pod remained docked to it, but after letting them know that they were good to enter the ship, Murcheson had gone silent.
That had been 47 minutes ago. The Ira Populi was not that large of a ship. There had been no signs of fighting, just … nothing.
Rufus again made the conscious decision not to pace.
At precisely 57:22 on the mission clock, the transport pod slowly unhooked itself from its dock and began its way back to the Rex Experiores Spatiorum. Rufus let out a sigh.
He keyed a channel into the Marines' band. "Murcheson?" Nothing. "Anyone?" Again, nothing.
The shuttle docked, and still nothing. He finally decided to go down and greet the shuttle. That made the most sense.
He'd barely left the bridge when his personal comms device beeped.
"Garamonde here."
"Captain? Whit."
"Mm?"
"Have we … is the singularity affecting our systems any?"
"Not that I know. Why?"
"Maybe it's just my quarters, but does it seem awfully cold to you?"
"Cold?" Rufus felt a chill at his lower back, but it wasn't from malfunctioning heating systems.
"Yes." Whit was shivering now; Rufus could tell from his voice. "It's fething–what is that!"
"Gaius!"
Only tortured static came through. For a moment he could've sworn he could hear distant, dark laughter through the communication device.
"Dammit."
Garamonde changed directions and headed for Whit's quarters. He checked his pistol, making sure a bullet was in the chamber ready to fire.
The door was ajar, enormous furrows in the metal of the door, as if some creature had forced it open with talons.
He rushed inside and swept the room with the gun. Nothing, and no chill. No signs of a struggle, just a hat on the floor as if Whit had dropped it suddenly. And near that, smoking burn holes in the floor, the size of raindrops.
A word adorned the wall - not in blood, thankfully, but in some odious black bile. Chunks dripped from it. One word that Rufus tried his best to ignore until he'd at least made a cursory glance around the room.
"Whit," he growled, and left the room, sprinting to the transport pod as quickly as possible.
The word: FOLLOW.
"Sorwensen," he voxed as he ran.
"Yes, Captain?" Sorwensen sounded edgy.
"I'm going to use this shuttle to–"
"Yes, Captain, I know. You don't have to tell me yet again. Just go. I've got control of things here."
Again?
No time to question it. Pistol out, Garamonde swept the transport shuttle. Two of the Arbites were here, or what was left of them. It looked like they'd both been cut in half, with the tops and bottoms jettisoning away from each other, strange yellow ichor spilling out of the pieces of the carcasses.
Garamonde used his balance hand to pull his ascot up and wipe the sweat from his brow. He thumbed the door close controls with his pistol hand, then swiped the 'return course' button.
He tried to take shallow breaths as the pod moved out.
On the bridge, Sorwensen answered the 19th call from Captain Garamonde. How long does it take him to travel to the bloody shuttle? he wondered. Since Garamonde never seemed to remember his last calls, Sorwensen had gotten more inventive with his invectives each time. He was still quite proud of "pony gobbler." It was just vague enough to be seen as a clever sort of obscene. He bet that Aribites, DeClerq, would like that one.
Imagining sharing it with him, a smile on his face, Sorwensen didn't hear the pneumatic hiss of the door until it closed.
Of all the - did he call me repeatedly simply to run up here and tell me in person?
Only it wasn't Garamonde at the door. The creature reminded Sorwensen of a starfish, only there was a strange fleshy quality between the arms of it, and the arms were human arms. A mouth, or rather, an amalgam of many mouths poorly stitched together, lay in the center of the pulsating mass. Sorwensen couldn't tell if the mouths were laughing or screaming. Both, of course.
Starfish were one of the few things that terrified Sorwensen. When he was small, he'd found a mutant, or hybrid, or some bastardized version of one on the lakeside, and when he'd tried picking it up a sucker pinched at him so hard it caused a burn. He dropped it, running because he feared to step on it. Those early fears, implanted so deeply.
The creature pinwheeled toward him, the hands grabbing at the air. Sorwensen grabbed for his gun, but his hand shook. He tried to run but his legs were water.
"Pony gobbler!" he managed querelously before the hands gripped him at different places, pinching so hard the skin burned, and threw him to the floor as they continued their deadly rotations.
