She can taste blood, her blood? Of course it’s my blood! Not like anyone else is in the pod with her. She can hear screaming, was she screaming? Is the ship screaming!? She opens her eyes to make sense of her battered senses, she can’t see, inside her mind, inside the pod, outside the pod, everything is over exposed, whited out, harsh light, unnatural, bright light is bleeding out of everywhere. Devoid of any other sense, she stretches out, hands and feet searching for orientation a way to gain perspective, her foot bumps up against something solid inside the pod, that’s not possible… The something, uncoils, nothing but a light blur in an ocean of blinding white, but it is there, no doubt, no escape, the ship is screaming around her and now she is screaming too.
Space is huge, when things vanish in space they have a tendency to stay vanished and although your day to day spaceship pilot is light years removed from historical sea going ship captains both in terms of distance and technology used they still have one thing in common, they are nothing if not superstitious. Pirates, Sansha, Sleepers, the list of potential reasons for a ship vanishing without a trace is endless, pick your favourite poison, the rationale that allows you the most sleep at night and never, ever look beyond it. Space monsters, unexplained phenomenon, undiagnosable technical glitches, simply, hell no! They don’t exist, because they just don’t. Nobody in their right mind wants to be Sansha’s new drooling corporate nobody, but at least you can see him coming on your overview and run in the opposite direction, space monsters, what overview setting are they under? How do you fight what your ship can’t see and your mind doesn’t want to believe in? Good job they don’t exist then! But… what if they did?
His head felt like a couple of amenable young women had convinced him to spend his month's pay all in one night. That analogy held up for the whole second it took him to notice he was bleeding. He was also missing a tooth. He liked feisty women but that was taking the piss. With a superhuman effort and a few choice curses he heaved himself up into a sitting position. He was slumped like a sack in a corner of his cabin. The air smelt of burnt wiring. The light, he blinked, the light was just weird, oozing out of the walls and round the buckled remains of his door. What the hell happened to his door? The wall panel for the door controls had blown out, scattering its innards towards him across the floor, the door, usually retractable from the roof, hung like a guillotine blade descended two thirds of the way. A pair of legs burst past clanging along the metal gantry outside, the hollow sound of the footfalls breaking a silence he hadn’t recognised had existed until it had gone and left him with a horrendous throb behind his eyes. Hauling himself up by the wall behind him, he felt uncomfortable, more than just the mother of all headaches and an inability to remember how he found himself in this predicament. Spaceships were not silent, a myriad of different systems collaborated to make a cacophony of noise regardless of the time of day, a lifetime of working onboard would create a tolerance, an ability to shut out background noise, but this was different, this ship was silent like the grave. Hoping to quiet the growing sense of unease within him he hobbled across his quarters to his personal computer terminal, he needed answers even if he wasn’t entirely sure what the questions were.
Frightened of what he might learn and unsure where to start he tries use the terminal to determine the ship's current location, unknown, access camera drones to get an external view, unavailable. Next on his list is the capsuleer pod status, his fate as a crew member is inexorably tied to the viability of the ship as a whole and that pod. The pod is there which is always a positive but that is where the good news abruptly stops, the data flow between ship and pod is severely compromised with the terminal unable to decipher any meaning from the generated data stream. Head spinning and not getting anywhere accessing current data he decides to access historical data and try to piece together what exactly has happened. It only takes a few minutes and for once he gets exactly the answer he asked for, to say he doesn’t like it is an understatement. Rocking back and forth in a state of shock he pitches sideways at the last second to avoid vomiting all over the terminal screen.
The Dominix Crystal of Caille had been doing what she did best, persecuting enemies of the federation when she had been set upon by opportunistic bandits. What first appeared as an overly aggressive and doomed assault developed into a holding action as a larger force had appeared on directional scans. Luck seemed to be with the Crystal however, the inbound Sabre misjudging its interdiction bubble placement and just missing the Dominix as she fought to extract herself from the escalating conflict. However a closer look at the archived camera drone footage told a different story and spelt the doom of the stricken battleship. The interdiction bubble, though shockingly poorly placed did just kiss the forward engine housing of the Dominix ensuring by mere metres that under normal circumstances she would be unable to warp. These however were not normal circumstances, a warp engine failsafe that would prevent engine power up in prelude to warp speed fails to engage. The engine caught in the interdiction effect of the bubble and thus unable to provide warp power quickly overloads as it fights to comply with the overriding order to warp away. The taxed engine implodes unable to contain the power build up inside of it. Engine housing and surrounding armor plating blast outwards from the hull like confetti at a wedding. An engine deck is voided to space. People die. The remaining engines not confined by the bubble do what they are designed to do, warp speed is reached and the battleship punches her way clear seconds later, just not to safety.
The disparity in engine power and resulting explosion has put her into a sideways spin and Crystal enters the warp tunnel at an alarming angle. Alarms sound, shields flash and gutter like candle flames as one side of the ship grinds along the edge of the tunnel, the differential forces threatening to tear the ship asunder. Under extreme pressure pressed against the side of the tunnel a second engine succumbs and blows out, this goes some way towards correcting the horrendous trajectory of the ship but creates a new problem. Smoke, ship debris and the bodies of crew are ejected from the rear of the ship, invisible against the blackness of the space around them until they block light and are thrown into ghastly silhouette. Speed is falling, the Crystal looks less like a wonder of Gallente engineering and more like a rock with every passing second as she drops towards the floor of the warp tunnel. With unwavering inevitability the hull impacts the floor of the tunnel. Like a stone lacking the inertia for one last skim across the tranquil surface of the pond it drops below the surface. Yet this is no tranquil pond, this is a raging torrent of uncontrolled energy, forces the ship was never designed to battle against rampage across her hull. With a screech of tortured metal and a blinding flash of light the ship falls all the way through the warp tunnel and vanishes from view.
Falling through the warp tunnel isn’t what has him hurling his last meal into the corner of his cabin. Logically, unless the random firings of his dying synapses are generating a very realistic hallucination, the ship survived the event because it and him are still here. What has him one step removed from soiling himself is the final set of sensor readings that accompanied the last part of the historical datastream. The ship is stationary, there is nothing but gibberish coming from the capsule diagnostic system, the remaining warp engines are jammed at maximum output, sensors cannot triangulate a position due to there being no cosmic entities for them to triangulate from and the self destruct was initiated five hours four minutes twenty two seconds ago and counting. He dry retches into the corner again unable to process any of what he has just read but getting the feeling he couldn’t be anymore fucked if he was in a Seven brothel. Another set of footsteps thunders along the gantry outside which shakes him from his forlorn mental state, the scream that accompanies them does nothing for his shredded nerves but he is no longer staring off into space while rocking in the corner. More than slightly dazed but clinging to the fact he’s still alive he ducks under the remains of his cabin door and out onto the gantry.
She must have passed out from sheer terror when the thing had started coiling itself around her leg. She comes around with the frozen panic of a victim, burning to move, terrified that moving will give away the fact she is conscious and haunted by the fact she probably moved and gave herself away in the split second between regaining consciousness and regaining her wits. She dares not move, not breath, she doesn't want to look around, until she looks the thing isn’t there but if she opens her eyes it could be right there in front of her face waiting for her. The panic burns inside of her till she feels she will explode her skin must be so hot she’s about to flash boil the amniotic fluid she’s suspended in. Eventually she is forced to breath, nothing happens, seconds drag into minutes, nothing happens, the sound she took for screaming earlier penetrates her senses and spikes her curiosity, her eyes twitch to open and investigate. Crippling fear recedes. By the time she opens her eyes the thing has vanished from the pod because she is no longer thinking about it. Instead she is focused, determined, she is immortal and there is nothing that can defeat her.
With every step he takes a plan is developing in his mind, he still feels sick to his boots and thinks he is doomed to die wherever here is but such thoughts are yet to stop him from moving forward. Gather more crew members, secure a working engineering deck, find a way to override the self destruct system and engine damage, go home, sell his story to all listeners and finally, profit. His positive attitude is rocked as he rounds a right angled turn as the gantry follows the edge of the block of living quarters. A body is slumped against the gantry railing. Hair matted with blood struggles to cover the remains of a face blown in at extremely close range. Wisps of smoke like residue rise from the dead man’s body as though he pulled the trigger only moments ago. He bends to inspect the firearm, a pistol, tightly gripped in the man’s outstretched hand. He heard no shot and the weapon isn’t silenced. Furthermore as he blinks the wisps vanish. He can feel the uneasiness simmering away in his gut the flickering flame of his fear threatening to bring it to a full rampaging boil. He fights it back down swallowing hard as he tears the pistol from the dead man’s hand. The wisps are back caressing the dead body as they play across his prone form. One passes through his hand as he fumbles for the pistol. As it touches him there is a flare of light a rainbow explosion of colour and the wisp begins to grow in size. He jerks back as though electrocuted, only just maintaining a grip on the pistol as he grasps the hand the wisp touched as if it burnt him. There is no pain, just a realisation the dead body is suddenly a writhing mass of pale thin tendrils growing out of it and straining in his direction. He bites back a not very masculine sound and vaults over the dead body forcing himself down the gantry at speed. Not looking back.
The thing is back, doubt had come first, creeping into her mind accompanied by the light. Thin and ghostly pale slivers trailing away from her body until it seemed that light not amniotic fluid supported her in the pod. The lighter it gets the harder it is for her to retain a connection with the ship. She had been attempting to disengage both the self destruct and warp engines, but every system she accessed was sluggish to the point of unresponsive. The fear came back then, trickling in from the corners of her mind. She needed control, her immortality was for naught if she was trapped in the pod. She didn’t remember initiating the self destruct but no-one but her could have done it. The thought she would sacrifice the hundreds of crew just to escape her prison didn’t even cross her mind. SHE WAS IMMORTAL! She should not be trapped like this. For a second her anger burned brighter than the light surrounding her eclipsing her fear with its cold righteous fury. The fear crawled back and the thing came with it, her worst fear made real, trapped with no escape with a monster unimaginably in the pod with her. The thing could kill her. She would die with the pod intact. She would die here alone, beyond the rescue of her clone, all of her power, all of her time. Those thoughts smashed the final remnants of her hope. The fear conquered her. Paralysed by her terror, screaming silently, the thing pounced.
He had abandoned his plan whatever his plan may have been. His life was nothing now but blind sprints down dark corridors till his fear could drive him no further and he collapsed exhausted. Though how can you outrun your fear, escape your terror, sooner rather than later she found him. The first time he had seen her he didn’t believe it. Seeing your dead mother is disconcerting at the best of times and would have provoked a more instant reaction if it wasn't just another on a long list of unexplainable sights. He had stumbled across a man, laid on his cabin cot a look of pure bliss on his face. His cabin door was fully open, a ghostly light flickering into the corridor. The man was surrounded by three unbelievably attractive women, naked, ghostly pale to the point they glowed under the cabin light. They were all over the man, literally, wherever they touched him his skin, his clothing burned away, crumbling to ash. The man had his head rolled back, mouth open, eyes open, tears rolling down his face as he dissolved into a pile of ash on the cot. He had run from that room aroused and terrified in equal measure. His blind dash had led him to the canteen, whether looking for company or sustenance he didn’t know. He found neither. She was there, in the middle of the canteen between the tables, her body glowing like the women from the room. Her eyes met his across the distance the pupils dancing like candles in a breeze. He might have soiled himself then, already exhausted from the mad dash here, he turned tail and bolted once more. He had sought respite in a munitions storeroom. The door had been blown out so he charged straight into the storeroom without needing to slow. He skidded to a halt almost losing his footing on a strangely textured floor. Only then did he notice he hadn’t been the first person to attempt to hide here. He has slithered to a halt ankle deep in a carpet of flesh, bone and clothing. The floor is slick with blood. Something drips from the ceiling and splatters across his shoulder. He looks up. Gravity is slowly removing crushed body parts from the ceiling. They are smashed into the ceiling like insects trapped beneath a boot. He has nothing left to retch up but he tries anyway his head bowed between his legs brings him closer to the floor and only intensifies the urge to purge. He breaks once more into a run slipping on the floor is what saves him from running straight into his mother as she stands outside the munitions room. He turns the slide into a sharp turn and with dwindling strength he once more runs for his life. Now he’s laid in a dark corner of an unknown room sobbing away the tattered remains of his sanity. Light breaks breaks across him, he doesn’t look up. She has found him, in truth she never left him. Yes, she died, she abandoned him when the capsuleer ship she was a crew member of was destroyed. He had carried her with him since then, first as hatred, then when he had a family of his own she re-manifested as fear. Fear he would become to his family everything she had been to him. Had his greed for the ISK that came as a crew member blinded him? Had his pride that he was nothing like his mother convinced him he was somehow beyond risk. She was here now, her ghostly glowing hand stroking his forehead, silently soothing him as she whispered a lullaby he hadn’t heard for years. His skin is burning away, he is dying, he will be with her soon.
The bandits found the guttered wreck of the Crystal of Caille only a few AU from their failed attempt to tackle her. She was drifting, dark and dead in space. They salvaged the wreck and left hastily an unknown anxiety palpable around the wreck. As they warped away one final transmission flickered from the site of the wreck.
The only monsters in space…… are the ones we carry inside us.
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