Astronomicon: Icarus

20 - Ghosts

As they reached the junction, the corridor lights all simultaneously switched back on, for a moment making the scene around them look quite normal, then they felt a deep vibration through the deck beneath them. It grew in intensity becoming a visible shaking of the floor panels before the most terrible sounding metallic, grinding groan seemed to rush from the stern of the Oppenheimer, growling past them before heading on towards the bow. The vibration died down as it passed them.

"What the hell was that?!" asked Captain Taylor.

Maria had already clamped her hands over her ears and shut her eyes tightly. George looked just as scared, but put his arm around Maria to comfort her.

"I told you the ship was unstable," said the First Officer. "Her structure is twisting and bending. The access tubes between the two sections of the ship are already badly ruptured. You can't get to the drive section without suits, but you'd be mad to want to go there."

"What's wrong with it?"

"Nothing's right with it," shivered the First Officer. "We evacuated it before the drive test but afterwards we could see people in there on the internal cameras. Some of them we knew, some we didn't. There were two people in EVA suits that none of us had seen before. Soon after that weirdness spread to the rest of the ship. Sporadic system failures and damage to all parts of the ship. A couple of days ago we even saw a ship dock with us, a sleek-looking vessel. We thought it was a rescue, thought it was all over. They put a team aboard but that was it."

"They didn't rescue you?" asked Captain Taylor.

"We don't know if they were really here. We saw your ship a few days ago too. We even heard it dock but then it vanished. The other team walked about the Oppenheimer, talked to each other, appeared to access our computer system but never took the slightest notice of us. After a few minutes, they simply faded out."

"This is why you didn't greet us when we arrived?"

"I've already lost one man who got sucked out of the airlock attempting, in a panic, to get onto a rescue vessel that simply wasn't there. I didn't want to get anyone's hopes up. Can we please leave now?"

"Certainly."

They set off along the corridor to the airlock, glad that the main lights seemed to be holding for now.

"Captain," announced Enzo suddenly after turning to look at the wall of the corridor. "What's this?"

Maria and George shuffled around Enzo as Captain Taylor caught up with him and looked at where he was pointing. The white surface of the curved wall appeared to be covered in a fine spray of brown specks. He leant closer to get a better look but did not learn any more. It just looked like dried droplets of brown liquid.

"John, what's this?"

The First Officer begrudgingly clunked back down the corridor towards them. He barely looked at the marks before saying, "Blood. I don't know whose."

"Blood? How did it get on the wall in such a fine mist?" asked Enzo.

"We don't know for sure. I've seen a few blood sprays like that around the ship, we think they're left when someone passes through a wall, or any other solid object. Sometimes it's a fine mist, other times a solid smear."

"Don't tell me anymore," replied Captain Taylor. "Let's just get that airlock opened."

As they walked onto the large airlock doors at the end of the corridor, he pressed some buttons on his suit's wrist control pad. His suit gave a low beep tone to let him know that the radio had established contact so he spoke, "Hugo, override the airlock and open both doors. There are five of us and I want us all through in one go."