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in the void, they dwell
chapter eight

Written by Alex Hera

“What are we going to tell command? That the crew is dead and there’s an alien presence? They’ll just tell us to keep investigating,” said Adair.

“She’s right, we have almost as many questions as when we started, if not more,” said Bruno, swiping a datapad from one of the cabinets.

“Okay, okay, so we’ll go to the maintenance deck. See if we can find this… Ambrose,” said Cassian.

“What a ridiculous name,” commented Florian, as the wayfarers marched back to the turbolift. Cassian pressed the button for Deck 24: Maintenance. The ride was silent, with the party preparing to encounter another set of fresh horrors once the doors opened. To their pleasant surprise, the maintenance deck seemed quite… tranquil. Pipes and hydraulics hissed and rumbled in the distance, but there was no screaming, no blood. Hesitantly, Adair stepped out, followed by Cassian, and then the rest of the party.

“Any idea where we’re going, Bruno?” asked Adair.

Bruno pulled out the datapad and looked at a layout of the maintenance deck.

“There’s a power fluctuation in chamber 76-A,” he said.

Carefully, he lead them through the deck, footsteps echoing on the grated metal floor, pipes and cables on the walls making the space feel claustrophobic. It was rougher than the rest of the station, and far more industrial. It reminded Adair of Racknoss III, a mining world she’d been stranded on for a few years. The heat and endless metal, the sheer inhumanity of the environment… they weren’t happy memories.

Soon, they came to chamber 76-A. The door slid open automatically, and they stepped inside. It was pitch black for a second, before the room flickered to life, fluorescent bulbs illuminating the cramped, dingy, rusted repair room. Bruno looked up at the ceiling – the pipes were the same as the camera feed from Ambrose. There was a chair sitting at a desk with a computer monitor where she had sat – but the servant of the strange creature was nowhere to be seen.

“She’s not here,” said Florian, stating the obvious. “Now can we go to the crew deck?”

“Wait,” said Bruno. He approached a panel on the wall, and tapped it. A section of the wall hissed and slid open – and behind it, strapped to a metal panel, was one of the Vessels, blood dripping down its body and surgery incomplete, with pieces of metal loosely grafted on, and places where its flesh was carved open and cybernetics yet to be implanted. Florian turned around, not wanting to linger on it. Bruno moved to the computer monitor and turned it on.

“Jesus,” said Cassian. “This is what they’re creating down here?”

Adair drifted around the room, looking at the various tables and workbenches for more clues; a bottle of black goo, laser scalpels, a plasma cutter, discarded cybernetic implants, artificial limbs, chunks of flesh… her thoughts were interrupted by audio playing from the computer. Bruno had pulled up a video.

Ambrose stood in the very room they stood in now, holding a knife. She lumbered towards the Vessel behind them, and carved open its flesh. It was screaming and begging for its life – not in the inhuman way they’d seen from the other Vessels, but in a very human way. It was still alive.

“I won’t tell them! Just let me take a pod down to the planet! Please!” he screamed.

“You’re the last one He wants. At least, until the others arrive. Take comfort in that, pet,” Ambrose replied.

“Who is He?!” the man screamed, as Ambrose finished fitting the arm on him. “The thing from engineering?!”

From a workbench nearby, Ambrose grabbed a cybernetic arm and a plasma torch, and began welding it onto the man. He screamed, distorting the recording. After a moment, Ambrose stepped away from the man and ended the recording.

The wayfarers paused for a moment, processing what they had seen.

“So… engineering?” asked Florian. “I mean, I already know that’s what you’re going to say.”

“Yeah,” said Adair, not even trying to fight Florian’s assumption. “I don’t think we know much more than we did in the medbay.”

“What about the Vessel?” asked Cassian. “It was still alive in the video… are we sure this man is dead?”

Art by Skyler