PULP! - Adventures in Bad SciFi

PULP! Episode #3 - A Flow Chart of Cliches

PULP! Episode #3 - A Flow Chart of Cliches

"I hate this stupid suit!"  Erika whined, watching as Nebis moved effortlessly in the lack of gravity, her glossy hair forming a dark cloud around her waxen features. The Deep One's eyes were obsidian and expressionless, ichor seeping from the lower rim, pooling in black crescents before lifting away in an unsteady stream of weightless drops. Places on her exposed hands had bruised, the blood at the surface boiling before her strange body regulated to its native environment - the vacuum.

"What?" Nebis mouthed at her human companion, but there was no sound without air to transmit it. As she flexed her fingers, she showed off one of the darkening bruises, mouthing without voice, "Hey look, space hickies!"

"You asshat!"  Erika yelled, knowing that Nebis wouldn't hear her.  Reaching out, they clung to the magnetic tether connecting the courier vessel SoHo and the wreckage and hand-over-hand made their way toward the hull. Carbon scored and battered by micro-meteors, it was impossible to know how old the wretched thing was.  As Erika ran the beam of her light across its surface, it was hard to quell the growing sense of trepidation.

-

"What kind of vessel is this?" Nebis asked, snapping a handful of chemical torches and shaking them, the warm orange glow filling the service corridor with an out-of-place cheeriness.

"No idea. Looks like some type of freighter. Old though...these guys don't have many decks, its just sort of a warehouse with a hull." Erika said absently, taking up one of the chem-lights and forging ahead down the corridor, making her way toward the center of the ship where the heat was still on. The suit's on-board interface with the SoHo had a rough layout of the place, but only what little information was available on typical freighter design - far from conclusive. "At least it won't be like the last one, this looks pretty straightforward."

Nebis yawned, warming up one of the crank powered floodlights, peering suspiciously down the service corridor before starting forward, hearing the shuffle of Erika's suited feet behind her.  The atmosphere was thin, but at least it was there, and using her gills, she could taste the human death here, the piss-and-skin reek of fear, but it was hard to know the cause.

"I'd say that my people did this, but they wouldn't have left a survivor, they'd have taken them for some nefarious and unnamed purpose," Nebis remarked, stepping over an open pressure door and making her way toward the source of heat. "So, let's go through the list."

Erika fiddled with her wrist-board computer, pulling up a dynamic flowchart and navigating it as she followed the Deep One through the ship, monitoring temperature levels in what little air there was. "Okay, so...claw marks on the deck plates?"

"Negative." Nebis said, guiding them deeper into the vessel.

"Strange, slimy substance on the walls?" Erika asked.

"Negative."

"Clusters of foot-tall eggs with a suggestive, slightly vaginal opening?"

"Uhh...negative, there'd be more heat in the brood chamber. Besides, if those fuckers were on board, wouldn't they be eating your head right about now?"

"Point taken." Erika laughed, referencing the chart. "Are there any floating, frozen corpses?"

"Negative on corpsicles so far. Not cold enough for them anyway." The corridor gave way into a main, multi-deck warren of rooms and hallways, the crew compartments all empty, no signs of life, but more troubling, there were no bodies either. The suspended hydroponics array in the open space had long since withered and blackened, fallen, long desiccated fruit and leaves littering the deck plates.