Author's Note:
Retitled from In Space Everyone Hears You Scream. We are getting through quite a bit of plot with this chapter. Some BDSM and light horror elements in this chapter, you have been warned. Enjoy.
*******
Chapter 3
Anna flung the empty bottle of gin away and watched it spin across the hanger bay. The reactor had sprouted error after error. Despite her best efforts she seemed no closer to getting it back to full operation and, as if things weren't already difficult, she'd grown jumpy. A couple times, strange noises had prompted her to spin around only for her to realize that it was just her tools bumping into each other.
So she had decided that she needed a break.
The hanger bay was the largest open space on the colony ship by a wide margin. By function, it had to be. This was where the ship housed all manner of vehicles: everything from shuttles that could be flown for space missions, aircraft for scouting, and all terrain ground transport. The place was about twenty meters tall ground to ceiling by her guess. Tall enough that it felt almost like the old YMCA back home. But thinking about that brought back painful memories of Leah and their old life back on Earth.
So she pushed back the memories and tried not to remember. Alcohol helped. And the mess hall's supply closets were well stocked. She closed her eyes, enjoying how numb her mind felt. Drunk like this she could make believe it was all a dream and that she would wake up at any moment.
Pushing off the "ceiling," she floated up through the air towards the vehicles anchored to the "ground." As she passed by the shuttles, something managed to catch her eye. One of the shuttles had soot around its exhaust port. All the other shuttles looked factory new even after all this time. It had been flown out.
Anna grabbed hold of a railing and spun herself around, angling herself toward the shuttle and pushed off again. Once she was close enough, she stopped her movement by grabbing one of the shuttle's aerial fins. She lowered herself so that she was oriented right side up and the shuttle's thrusters faced her. Dragging a finger over the edge of the metal the pad of her finger came up dark.
"Huh. Well I guess the ship
did
wake some of the crew at one point. They must have flown this thing out," she muttered to herself.
She undid the latch cover and pressed the switch the release the door lock. There was a low hiss and the door lifted upwards like the wing of a great sea bird. The lights inside the shuttle flickered a few times before staying on.
"Oh wow. Wasn't expecting that to work." She was surprised the shuttle's batteries had held charge for this long. She drifted inside.
It smelled musty. A bit like an old library but with a faint sour note as if someone had left dirty laundry laying about. But it was thankully faint. Her eyes took a moment to adjust to normal lighting. She'd become so used to the dim red emergency lighting that swathed the rest of the ship that normal colored light was almost disorienting.
Anna made her way to the front of the vehicle. The cockpit contained two seats. The controls were a mix of analog buttons and screens installed in a wide dashboard that spanned the entire front of the pilot's cabin. There were also a bunch of controls fitted into a secondary dash that sat above both seats.
As she brushed her hand over the yoke and buttons, something caught her eye.
Dark stains peppered the dash. She leaned forward and traced the pattern. It looked like someone had spilled coffee over the dash. She turned to peer at the pilot's chair and saw similar stains soaked into the fabric of the chair near the head rest. It had long since dried out. She pressed her finger against the fabric and it came away staining her finger with a dark color.
"What the..." she lifted her finger up closer to the light shining overhead. What looked at first like a dark brown powder took on a reddish hue. Anna frowned and muttered to herself, "is that... blood?"
*****
Lights flashed, alternating red and cyan. That was code for abandon ship.
Not
good. Ophelia sprinted down the hall.
Metal shuddered and screamed as parts of the ship twisted. All of a sudden, a low tone echoed throughout the ship, reverberating off the walls. A monotone voice spoke through her helmet's comms:
"Hull integrity 41%. Warning! Artificial gravity has malfunctioned."
One second she was running and the next her feet no longer touched the ground. She spun through the air, crashing headlong into the bulkhead before clawing at a railing and righting herself. She pushed off and floated towards the end of the hall.
Sounds reverberated. Metal on metal crunching noises. The ship shook
hard
.
"
No.
No! Come on! Hold together for a little longer!" she cried.
"Commander! What the hell are you doing? We need to get out of here!" A voice yelled from behind, coming through her helmet's rear speakers. It was Gonsalez. Of course
he
would be the one to stay behind to make sure she got on an escape pod.
"Maxwell is in Engineering to try to hold the ship together! Not going to abandon her!" responded Ophelia.
"They're shredding us with plasmic rounds--" The ship jolted and the bulkhead slammed into her right side. She smashed into the opposite wall and grunted. If it weren't for her helmet and combat augs, she probably would have suffered a concussion right then and there. She shook it off and righted herself.
Gonsalez yelled again from behind her, "--ship is about to go planetside! We need to delta the fuck out of here!"
She felt a hand on her shoulder, pulling at her. She wrenched it off and twisted around the corner. The walls lurched again as the ship heaved in the opposite direction. But not as far this time.
Scummers have us pinned.
Ophelia flew towards the opposite wall but gathered her legs underneath and pushed off to correct her angle.
"I'm
not
leaving Maxwell!" She was close. So close.
There. A clear metaplex window separated the hallway from the engineering bay. They could see into the bay from the hallway. They should have been able to see the reactor core itself.
"No. The bay."
It was half gone. Jagged edges of twisted metal framed the black expanse of space and the blue-green atmosphere of the planet they'd been orbiting. In that moment Ophelia knew that they were fucked. She could see the flash of purple lightning and white storm clouds swirling on the planet's surface.
Too much orbital decay.
They were too close for comfort. Much too close.
Their ship's head engineer, Chief Warrant Officer Helena Maxwell, swung from a yellow safety railing. Her vac suit's helmet obscured her face but the fact that she clung to the railing with one hand was enough of a tell. There were spiderweb cracks along one side of her visor and air jetted out of the back of her suit. She was losing oxygen.
"Maxwell!" yelled Ophelia as she banged on the metaplex. "Hang on! We're coming to get you!" She pushed over to the door and lowered her head down to the biometric scanner.
The lock shuddered and blinked an angry red.
"Fuck! Lieutenant, help me get this open!" Ophelia bellowed. Gonsalez--who had doggedly followed her--reached over to take hold of the latch. He pulled, putting counterpressure with his feet against the adjacent wall.
"Urrrgh! It's stuck!"
"Keep trying, goddammit!"
Gonsalez sank his fingers into the crack between the door and the wall and tried again to haul the door open. Ophelia pushed over to the window to check on Maxwell. She tried to signal with her hands that they were working on the door.
Maxwell must have seen them. She lethargically raised a hand and gave Ophelia the universal 'ok' sign by touching her thumb and index finger together.
The ship rumbled. Lights flashed. Holes appeared in the walls of the bay as projectiles ripped through the side of the ship.
Ophelia watched, helpless, as one of the bullets tore through Maxwell's chest. The force of it jerked her hand free of the railing and she spun. Blood streamed from her torso in globules and began to boil. Bouncing off a protruding piece of bulkhead, she flew out the back of the ship and fell towards the planet.
"NOOOOOO!!!!" Ophelia screamed.
She banged against the metaplex over and over again. They had been so close. Her mind was a haze even as she felt Gonsalez yank her away and drag her down the hall into a nearby escape pod.
The images melted away and the clean, modern lines of Dr. Lilian Kruse's office faded back into her vision. Ophelia's voice trailed as she wound down her story. Her cheeks were wet.
Lilian seemed to understand. "Thank you for sharing that with me," she said, her face sympathetic.
Ophelia sat kneeling in the center of the carpet inside Lilian's office. She wore only her zesh--a thin, form fitting smart suit designed for space travel. Some called it a "second skin."
Lilian herself stood leaning against the front of her desk. Dressed in a light gray blouse and beige pencil skirt, she was elegance manifested. Her clothes, while inspired by ancient fashion with details like tort acetate buttons and dart lines, held contemporary cuts. With the top buttons of her blouse undone her cleavage threatened to spill out of her shirt. Her skirt was long enough to be professional but short enough to tantalize. Sheer stockings and a pair of nude high heels completed the look.
Lilian waved her hand and the office melted away. Their Teem chips fed both their visual cortexes a new setting.
A dim room. With an ornate patterned carpet that stretched out underneath both of them. Gone was the furniture. The walls became simple brick covered in layers of dark drapery. There was a soft red glow along the outer edges of the room with a spotlight shining down in the center right on top of where Ophelia knelt.
"You will answer my questions truthfully," commanded Lilian. Ophelia expected her to come up close but instead she kept her distance, circling around until she was out of sight. "Remember the safewords," she whispered into Ophelia's ear.
Ophelia turned her head but was immediately chastised.
"Ah ah ah," Lilian tutted. "Face forward."
Sighing, Ophelia fixed her gaze back to stare at the cloth draped wall.
"I want you to picture your friend, Helena."
Ophelia's mind buzzed with memories. Helena materialized in front of her, her form twisting into existence. A woman of above average height. Tanned skin and long brown hair. Tattoos covering her exposed arms. She wore a worker's jumpsuit with sleeves tied at the waist over a grease smeared tank top. She blinked down at Ophelia and gave a conspiratorial smile and wink.
Ophelia wasn't sure if it was the Teem chip or the drug that Lilian had given her but everything
felt
so
real
. She felt as if she could reach out and touch her friend. She didn't of course. It would break the illusion.
"Look at her. Do you feel that you let her down?"
Ophelia's head lowered as sadness rushed through her. Inside, her chest suddenly felt cold even though her skin felt inflamed.
"Look at her and answer the question, Ophelia."
She raised her head to meet the eyes of the Helena construct. Those deep brown eyes seemed to pierce into her soul. "Yes," she whispered.
Helena's face frowned.
"Do you feel that you could have tried harder to save her?"
Ophelia paused and trembled.
"Answer me," Lilian pressed. Firm but not harsh.
