She wandered through the abandoned parts of the massive ship. Trying to find anything of value, scavenging and maybe selling loot. She recognized the area, wrecked and scratched. Looked like someone had been here already, digging and breaking down the walls for any valuable metals.

She kept checking over her shoulder, she could swear she kept hearing something or someone, something other than the ship creaking in the void.
Concentrating on keeping her wild imagination in check.
The lights barely worked, very dim, floor covered in scattered debris. Cursing at the mess as she was tripping over the rubble dropping her light.

She reached out to it in the darkness. Her hand landed on something warm and soft, a cold shiver ran along her spine.

*******
Snoozing off, mind barely wandering, eyes feel heavy.
Suddenly a loud alarm inside the guard's helmet made him wake up with a jolt. Cursing silently for himself he stood up in his room.
Faint blue lights illuminated the cubicle.

He checked the HUD. “Suspicious activity in a far dark corner of the ship, go and investigate” The message scrolled. “Unknown biomass”
“Bloody ship rat.” He cursed, grabbing his rifle from the table. Grabbing a few more shots, small cylindrical packages with a chemical mixture in the back, could be made to explode to propel rubber balls. Good to submit people, doesn’t harm the ship too much.

Leaving his cubicle he pinged a transport elevator to get to the correct level.
It was a huge old ship, almost half of it derelict, half functional. For some reason people deemed it good enough to live in, despite occasional leak and infestation.

The elevator travelled through a series of tunnels. Deeper and darker. The lights flickered, the little hair he had on his head stood on end, something felt off. Just paranoia and too many horror movies he told himself as he got deeper.
He pinged HQ to confirm the mission.

…

No response.
With a heavy sigh he stepped off the elevator. Must be interference.
His scanner spiked up nothing, mostly dust and grime. Between his HUD and the spotlights on the helmet he could see quite well. But something made him grip his rifle hard, uncomfortably so.

Despite his suit having its own oxygen, something made his air hard to breathe, like something or someone was choking him.
Lights flickered.

*splat*
*splat*
*splat*

Strange he thought as he tried to knock his headlamps into action, there should be no water here. Yet he was stepping into something wet.
Finally getting his helmet lamps working. Cold shiver ran through his body. Dark red sticky liquid flooding the floor and covering the walls, he couldn’t even recognize all the bits and pieces of a person scattered around.
He raised his rifle in fear, trying to steady his shaking hands as he proceeded deeper into the darkness.

***********************************************************

“REQUESTING PERMISSION FOR HARD AMMUNITION!” The guard shouted, hiding behind some rubble.
His radio returned static.
He had used up his inventory of rubber ammunition, he only had a baton to defend himself with and an useless rifle that didn’t allow hard ammunition inside starships. “Goddamnit goddamnit!” He cursed.
Guttural wheezing growl came from the dark corridor where he had run from. He had lost sight of his patrol partner, something had grabbed him and ripped him into a small vent, too small for a person.
His stomach churned just by the fresh memory of his scream, the bones crushing and flesh ribbing at the body was forced into the vent.

“Permission granted, What the fuck is going on in there!” He heard the speaker in his helmet buzz. His rifle clicked, red lights came on showing to use extreme care.
“Something took him! They took Jonathan! Pulled him into a fucking vent!” He shouted in response, nis nerves too tense to try to stay quiet.
“And it keeps coming” His voice began to tremble.

A loud crash. A makeshift barricade crashed to the ground.
“FUCK!” He shouted, he didn’t hear the others on the radio as he emerged from his hiding spot, unloading several bullets into whatever was coming towards him.

No effect. It kept approaching.
The camera on his helmet relayed the image of the shadow to whoever was watching. The red laser pointer danced across the slimy figure. His hands were shaking too much.

Suddenly the pointer became sharp, he turned his aim to a red line high up on the wall.
“DO NO-” Their objection to his action was cut short by a gunshot, followed by a loud explosion and a lot of fire. The fuel line dumped toxic highly flammable liquid fuel into the room, it ignited almost instantly.
The several following explosions shook through the whole ship.

They hoped whatever it was, that it was dead. They had lost almost half the ship and were now drifting with low fuel, no engines and hull structure severely damaged.
Several areas of the ship were on fire, even more without power. Automated systems cut off fuel supply to damaged areas, cutting off power to others, leaving people to fend for themselves.

**********************

The Captain watched the grainy footage, over and over and over. Whatever the figure was, it was only visible for a couple frames before the camera was destroyed in the fiery explosion.

Most of his crew were trying to contain fires and save the ship.
“Sir, what do you think that was?” An engineer had approached the Captain, who was still glued to the screen.

In a somber tone, his eyes stared into the screen with no expression.
“The body reminds me of her…” He turned to the engineer who was now next to him.
“A few weeks ago we lost another body.” The Captain continued. The engineer leaned in and inspected the single frame on the screen. It was fuzzy, strange tentacles erupting from the body. Had more than the common amount of arms, it stood in a hunched over pose. The metallic armour has melted into the biological parasitic growth. “Is that….”

“One of our passengers.” The Captain confirmed.
“Really? That’s her?” The Captain didn’t respond. He couldn’t call for an evacuation because of the contamination risk.

***************

Alarm blared through the ship, wherever there were power speakers crackled to life. “Emergency contamination! Everyone locks themselves in their rooms!”

No one responded to the Captains alarms, he feared he was piloting a derelict structure.
His radio hissed in its loneliness, no one responded to him.
His hand clenched tightly around his pistol.





(artist themefinland )