Paradise Lost(ONC Entry- Unfinished)

Part 10: Saxon

Eddy's distorted voice croaked across the ship's intercom.

ALL HANDS PREPARE FOR REENTRY!

Deep Colony-50 shook violently to the sound of the hull shrieking under the pressure.  The bulkheads moaned, the superstructure burning bright red.  Glass shattered, power conduits failed, and pipes burst.

Warning sirens wailed in concert with flashing emergency lights.  Sergeant Saxon struggled to put on his uniform after being tossed from his bed.  He grabbed his sidearm, and crab walked out of his trembling room.  He wanted to get to his combat armor.  If they crashed, there was a chance the added protection might save his life.

The barracks were empty.  Bunks and supply crates slid across the room like crashing waves caused by the violent tilting of the plummeting vessel.  Knowing he needed to reach the other side, Saxon braved the ebb and flow of the furniture.  Halfway across the room he lost his footing and a foot locker took his legs out from under him.  He slid across the floor and was buried beneath a mound of boxes and bed frames.  He only had a moment to contemplate the weight pressing in on him before the ground split, metal rending with a shrieking cacophony.

Fungal ooze poured through seams in the hull as Deep Colony-50 cracked like an egg.  The power failed choking the doomed ship with darkness.  Shafts of sunlight pierced the gloom.  Tubes of fuzzy fungi slithered through the shadows with shuffling hisses that made shivers skitter across Saxon's nerves.  He struggled to his feet.

Sections of the ship fell away, revealing a roiling landscape of mycological wilderness.  A fungal mountain rose up above the ruin of a ship.  It looked down upon Saxon with a face of tubers, caps, and mold patches.  It's was the aspect of a deathshead writhing and skittering with alien silhouettes.

Horror gripped Saxon's chest, making it difficult to breath.  He looked around for help, for other survivors, but all he found among the wreckage were dozens of cocoons.  A hideous laughter seeped out of the fungal visage, sinister and tormenting.  Saxon took a step back and his foot sank into the loamy surface behind him.  Out of the broken ground erupted luminescent purple feelers.  They grabbed him, squeezed him, wringing the life out of him.

He took one gasping breath...

Saxom sat up in his bed, covered in sweat, and gasping for air.  He frantically traced his hands along his cheeks, the sensation of his fingers chasing away the feel of those purple feelers. Between deep breaths he searched the gloom for any signs of slithering darkness.

That didn't feel like a dream, he thought.  The images weren't his own.  On a subconscious level Saxon knew there was a malicious consciousnesses lurking behind what he saw, and it had a dark message.

Shaken, Saxon wandered out of the ranger barracks and to the promenade.  He was surprised to find Heinrich staring out into the vastness of space.  He approached the ranger, and took up position beside him.  He looked out at the unfamiliar expanse of space.

"I can't sleep, Sax," Heinrich explain.  "Something is talking to me... I think it's the little girl from the habitat."

"There was no little girl."  Saxon kept his tone cautious.  He wasn't in the mood to argue when his own thoughts were in turmoil.

"You and Floyd keep saying that, but I know what I saw.  She shows me things in my sleep, horrible things."

Saxon focused on the stars rather than the sinister visage that even at that moment lurked in the back of his mind.  There'd been no little girl, but somehow the two had brought more than just a cocoon back to the ship.