'There's nowhere in the galaxy you can hide.' It echoes in my mind, reverberating like an endless dirge sang by a choir of the damned. It haunts my every waking moment. Dements my every dream into nightmares of impending doom. Poke one teenage princess in her tiny pink virgin asshole and your life's over forever.
Half of the notification lights circling the portal of the ancient airlock flicker green rather than flash. The other half remain dead, shorted or burned out, same as the chamber lighting. The speakers crackle and pop a buzzing cry to indicate the completion of pressurization. The door unlocks with a heavy thud but fails to open automatically, so I clutch the handle and strain to pull it open by force. It seizes a quarter way, and I groan, "Fuck it."
I unseal my helmet and it deactivates as I disconnect it from my intelligent skin-suit, quelling the headlamp and plunging me into darkness. I glance up through the porthole to view the starfield warp, stretching and streaking, as the cargo hauler I hitched a ride on enters slipspace via an artificial wormhole, marooning me here. Icy tendrils of trepidation creep into my thoughts at once. I regret being unable to secure a prearranged means of departure, in case the info I bought was inaccurate. Fuck knows what awaits me inside.
Minus my helmet, I squeeze through the partially opened door to the derelict spaceport. It's located on a forgotten moon orbiting a ravaged planet on the fringes of uncharted space. What better place to hide?
The corridor is pitch black. Pulling a flashlight from my hip, I stick it to my wrist and spark it.
A naked, withered corpse lays on its stomach, sprawled as if reaching for the airlock at the moment of demise.
I sigh. "Well, that isn't discomforting at all. Welcome and salutations to you too, buddy." And I step around the strangely odorless cadaver to trek ahead, sweeping the deck with the beam of my light, surveying my path for obstacles.
I entered through one of the emergency airlocks in the maintenance area of the installation since they have manual controls. The central module is a good distance away through a maze of darkened tunnels. But no helmet means no HUD which means no nav-guide. The station A.I. is corrupted, or more accurately psychotic, as denoted by its shrieking warning of demonic intrusion, so any navigation would be unreliable anyhow. At least someone had the foresight to quarantine the life-support systems. Insane A.I. are extremely rare but highly dangerous. The last report of a berserk A.I. was several decades ago. It executed an entire orbital colony. Millions expelled into the cold vacuum of space without warning. Their lungs bursting in their chests due to explosive decompression. Wouldn't exactly be my first choice of ways to go.
As I rove the dark, claustrophobic passageways, listening to the whispering hum of ventilation fans, steady dripping of condensation, and periodic hisses of steam, mounting anxiety strangles my guts, driving acidulous fluid into my throat. I'm not usually such a pussy, but this place has a foreboding ambiance about it. A palpable dread that's asphyxiating. An altogether smothering ominousness. Like a sinister force is slowly siphoning the oxygen while poisoning the air with a toxin.
I jolt in fright as a hazy figure whisks by the edge of my flashlight beam and a searing image of a man screaming in horror flares in my mind. Fuck! Fuck! What the fuck?!
A chittering of gnashing teeth shoots a shiver up my spine and I spin around searching for the source. Another grinding chatter directs my attention toward the low ceiling. A quill-armored little creature screeches at me through circular rows of serrated fangs, and I bolt.
I discern more and more of the critters skulking over me as I run hunched over. The corridor is infested. Maybe they're responsible for the shriveled body. Fucking blood suckers!
Another shadowy shade skirts my flashlight beam, assaulting my psyche with a horrid picture of a man roaring in agony. What the unholy fucking hell?!
I've heard barroom stories of supernatural entities of a malevolent persuasion lurking on deserted settlements on the outer limits of charted space, but I never suspected they were anything more than alcohol-soaked myths until now.
As I reach a three-way junction a ghostly wraith materializes in the left route, blinding my inner eye with a jarring scene of a man howling in excruciating pain, so I dart to the right and discover another withered corpse. I bound over the stiff and charge down the corridor, cursing myself for hitchhiking across the galaxy to a spaceport besieged by some diabolical power.
Rounding a corner, I perceive the presumed safety of illumination ahead, and break into a hard sprint, my lungs burning, my heart hammering in my chest, sweat stinging my eyes, my mind aghast with terrors.
I hurdle two more shriveled bodies before stumbling through the dislodged door of the maintenance area and dropping to my knees, holding my aching sides. My gasping breaths gag me with the stench of death.
I look up and gape at the central module of the spaceport. My head spins and my stomach wrenches at the tragic sight. Withered cadavers are littered far and wide. In every restaurant, shop, and lounge. But worse, so much fucking worse, are the rotting, mutilated corpses. Crushed skulls, severed limbs, eviscerated torsos and mangled viscera are strewn everywhere. Dried blood stains every surface. Even the high ceiling is splattered. What the fuck happened here?!
After gathering my strength, I climb to my feet and tread ahead. Pinching my nose and breathing through my mouth, I scan for evidence of what transpired here, and soon realize all the shriveled corpses are male. But why? And what could have caused this? A better question to ask, is it still here somewhere? Fuck the why, what and where. I need to get off this gravestone, but how?
The lighting above and in the shops and eateries blink off and on as a soothing nocturne begins to play from someplace ahead. I follow the lulling music, forgetting my revulsion to the carnage surrounding me, and it leads me to a neon-lit strip club, The Eternal Caprice. It looks out of place among its ascetic surroundings, the architecture a cross between a gothic citadel and a sex carnival, like it sprouted from a magick bean planted by a wicked sorceress with an ill disposition.
A voice in the back of my mind cautions me not to enter. Pausing at the threshold a moment, I ponder what may lie within. Booze, pretzels and sex-bots most likely. Ignoring the warning of my intuition, I step inside the black-light illuminated erotic theater.
The hairs on the back of my neck rise almost as quickly as my manhood. Fuck me schoolgirl!
Long golden-blonde pigtails whipping about, peach skin glistening with perspiration, an adorable adolescent girl, eighteen judging by her small peaks and cute little apple bottom, is working a pole like an angelic ballerina for the gods. I should clarify she's designed to appear teenaged as she can only be a bioroid. A pair of snow-white velvety bunny ears flop around on her head as she swings and spins. Her sylphlike body is naked but for baby-blue thigh-high stockings, plaid miniskirt and a lace choker. Her sparkling sapphire eyes shine bright when she notices me, and she affords me a demure smile, round cheeks flushing, and climbs down off the pole.
Neglecting the bloody massacre outside the club, I stroll down the sloping faux-marble floor under the mirrored ceiling to the circular stage and slump into the reclined black syntha-leather seating.
