The ship was silent, and dark, thrumming only with the throbbing power of the distant warp core. it rolled upwards through the metal of the ship pulsing like a beating heart, sending its power through the pipes and the electrical wires, like the heart sends blood through the body.
Its life pulsed through the ship, helping it to move, giving it life.
Dr. krill felt like he could feel it as well, pulsing through him, giving him just the slightest bit of extra life he always felt when aboard the ship, a cell placed exactly where It was supposed to be, fulfilling the function that it was supposed to fulfill, clear and whole.
He didn't often feel this way, mostly at night when the rest of the crew was asleep, and the sound of the distant warp core could fully permeate the silence. He floated quietly over the floor in the medical bay, the solitary watch for a solitary night. The rest of the crew would be asleep leaving only a red eye skeleton crew on duty for the night. Dr Krill didn't sleep, so he had taken the night shift as his duty. He had been busy for most of the day as a mild accident in engineering maintained most of his focus. It was only now that the night was quiet and everything had slowed down that he got the chance to look at the mercenary.
Dr Katie had been indisposed as of the early morning, so neither of them had had the time to get a good look at the body. Some of their less experienced medical officers had been given the task of tending to the body and had reported nothing out of the ordinary, though they would leave the final determination up to Krill on what had happened.
Certainly something had gone wrong for her to have lost her higher function, but there was no indication of outward physical trauma. The leading theory had soemthing to do with poisonous gases or asphyxiation, but the absence of petechial hemorrhaging in the eyes and bruising around the neck indicated that choking or smothering wasn't a likely suspect. Not to mention that Drev were significantly more difficult to suffocate, smother or choke, considering the Drev equivalent of "nostrils" was located on their upper chest just above where the collar bones might be on a human, so that made it impossible to crush and difficult to cover.
Gas was a possibility, though Drev were relatively less susceptible to poisoning by way of gas than other species.
Having evolved on a primarily volcanic planet will do that to you.
Krill stopped at the edge of the Drev's bed, looking down at the limp body, whose carapace glittered with the sickly yellow of an infected wound. He pulled up his tools, readying himself for the deep dive into this investigation.
He began with an examination of the vitals, like any good doctor would, finding a steady pulse and observable movement of the chest, up and down with the slow mechanical sameness of breath controlled only by the brain stem and nothing more.
The eyes were as unresponsive as ever and would certainly require imaging to determine if there was any other brain activity, though he doubted that very highly. He was showing no signs of higher functions other than the most basic functions required to live.
He had observed the breathing of course, but it wouldn't do to simply report upon an observation. He was, after all a doctor and a scientist, and he would not base his report on simple observations without observing the facts.
He leaned over the body to grab his stethoscope, but that is when something strange caught his attention. He wouldn't have noticed it, if he had not leaned over the body, it wasn't an observable sensation, so much as a tactile one. Where his bare neck and chest hung over the Drev's upper body, and the extra cervical breathing holes in the creature's chest, he felt it.
Or it was more about what he didn't feel.
No breath.
Dr. Krill pulled back in shock for a moment, and then reached a hand forward pressing his palm over the holes which flared and contracted at regular intervals.
Where he expected to feel the light suction or expelling of air, he felt nothing.
No wind moved in or out of the Drev's body.
He held a hand up to her partially open mouth, and observed the same phenomenon.
How had no one noticed this!
What did it even mean?
How was she still alive?
He turned towards the call button ready to summon Dr. Katie before he continued on with his observations. He was going to need her help with this. If anyone was going to have any idea what this was about, than it was going to be her, she worked with humans after all, so she should have seen plenty of things more crazy than this.
Like how a Drev could breathe without actually breathing.
Something metal clattered to the floor behind him. Krill turned sharply, eyes scanning over the room in a sharp sweep. His body had gone taught like a wire ready to snap. His antennae were stuck straight up and vibrating slowly with the power of his agitation.
He saw nothing out of the ordinary.
Nothing aside from the bedpan lying on the floor between him and the Drev's bed.
It was rocking gently from one side to the other, its rocking growing slower and shallower as the moments went on until it finally stopped and went still. Ambient blue light glittered from the side of the metal pan. Krill lifted his eyes to the bed, afraid of what he might see when he looked up.
But when he did.
There was nothing there.
Nothing out of the ordinary anyway.
The Drev was still lying there as she had been lying before, not a finger shifted out of place.
Perhaps the Bed pan had simply fallen. Things like that happened all the time.
He continued to turn, his insides twisting and churning with a sudden irrational fear. He didn't often experience this kind of fear, and certainly not in his own infirmary. There were plenty of rational explanations for this, so why did his mind insist on jumping to the worst possible conclusion to begin with.
He turned his head back to the Drev, approaching slowly.
Nothing was off, yet.
Something was.....
And then he saw it.
The rise and fall of her chest had, stopped.
All of a sudden the silence in the room seemed very very loud as he stared at the still body lying on the bed before him, in that same state of prone heaviness from before, though, now, when he looked it seemed to him that the sallow glow of her skin only grew more sallow. The tightness of her skin began to sag. The gleam of her carapace dimmed and festered right before his eyes, as if he was watching her decay in time elapse, until he had a corpse resting on the bed before him
Not a fresh corpse, not one just second sold.
But based on what he could see.
Three days old.
Dr. Krill turned towards the call button arms flailing.
And screamed.
He never made it to the call button.
***
Admiral Vir lay on his back in the half dark, one hand laid across hic chest, the stump of his missing leg propped up on some pillows, while his other leg was cocked at a sort of half angle wrapped partially in the sheets.
He couldn't sleep.
The bed felt too warm, but at the same time it also felt too cold. The humming thrum of the warp core, which usually put him to sleep almost instantly wasn't doing it for him. He felt restless, and, if he had to admit it.,..
Lonely.
He closed his eyes, but when he did all he could feel was the cool touch of her skin, brushing over his hands, over his chest, over his legs, the cool hard lines of carapace pressing into his body, brushing over the skin, causing the hair to rise on his arms to stand straight even at the thought. He could imagine the warm brush of her breath on his neck as he lay in the silence, two of her arms wrapped tight around his waist, the other two around his chest.
He opened his eyes again, resting his hands against the vacant sheets besides him, and shivered.
It was like his body had forgotten how to regulate its own temperature now that he spent most nights with her. He rubbed at his eyes and sat up leaning heavily on his one good leg, and absently rubbed at what was left of his opposite thigh.
He felt groggy, tired, but frustratingly unable to sleep.
That's what he got for dating an introvert. Sometimes she needed her space even though he never got tired of her company. It was hard for him to admit how much he had grown to need her company, he used to be so good at being alone, most of the time. But she needed her privacy in a way that he would never understand, but he could accept that.
That's what you did when you loved someone, right? Made concessions for them, allowed them their rest, even if it meant resting from you. Besides, she gave in to him most of the time, spending ungodly amounts of time with his needy ass, and she was a saint for that.
The irony made him smile as he dragged himself to sit on the side of the bed.
The room was lit by the dim blue lighting over his neon posters, and sci-fi paraphernalia, and in his half state of wakefulness he noted something.... Odd.
His dog, waffles, and his? Alien? Jeffery.
They weren't in their usual place.
The circular dog bed beside his was vacant, where she would usually lay curled in a ball with Jeffery intertwined in her paws, head resting on her side as the two of them slept, but not tonight. Waffles was sitting next to the door, hunched in the half darkness, her head dropped low, the hackles on the back of her neck raised to their full height.
She was completely silent.
Simply a silhouette in the dark.
Something about that unnerved him.
The posture was so... unnatural for a dog.
Off to her side, Jeffery lay with his head arched in a similar fashion, all of his frills and spines sticking straight up.
Neither of them moved.
Staring at the door.
Waffles made no noise.
Adam was suddenly hit with an overwhelming sense of dread. The kind that conjures an iron hand to reach inside our bowls and twist them around its fingers. He felt his body go cold, the hair stand up on the back of his neck even as his eyes stung with waiting tears of fright. They didn't come, and they never would, but the tingling sensation in his face was a warning, one that made his heart speed up and throb inside his chest like the rhythm of horse's hooves over dusty ground.
He opened his mouth though his voice was choked with fear.
So
Wrong.
Hands shaking, he reached down for his mechanical leg, quietly fumbling to put it on, cursing his shaking fingers as he socketed the steel eye leg into place. It let off a quiet hiss as he did, and he stood from bed slowly. Neither Waffles nor Jeffery had moved in the time it took him to do that.
"Waffles." He managed to squeak.
She didn't move.
"Waffles." He said again stepping forward over the cold metal floor.
As soon as he took that step, the two animals turned their heads to look at him. He froze in place heart hammering in his throat. What did he expect? Anger? Snarls?
Certainly not what he saw.
Fear.
Pure unadulterated terror.
Startled fear, but a strange kind of fear. One that kept them pinned to the door, afraid to keep their eyes off of it, but also afraid to make sound.
Adam walked over and knelt next to the two of them, resting one hand on either body.
Waffles was shaking like a leaf, and Jeffery was as cold as ice.
"its ok." He whispered, "Shh, its ok."
They didn't seem convinced.
Waffles scooted closer to him, pressing her body against him. At first he thought she just wanted comfort, but when he tried to give it to her, she continued to press into him, pushing him backwards over the floor until he was sitting against the far wall.
She wasn't looking for comfort, she was trying to keep him away from the door.
Adam stood throat constricted as the two moved back to the door and hurried over to the far wall where the emergency call button was located. He pressed his hand against it with a sharp slap, "Omen, initiate immediate lockdown protocol."
Initiating Lockdown Protocol, the cool female voice said.
All around the ship, he felt the shuttering vibration as doors and hatches slammed shut, closing their occupants inside, and sealing them tight.
His own door locked shut with a loud clatter.
"Call bridge."
No answer.
"Call bridge crew."
He waited.
"Admiral, is everything alright?"
"I was about to ask you the same question. Why is no one up on the bridge."
"Oh, sorry sir. I had to use the bathroom, and Jackson went down to grab a snack. I wasn't supposed to be more than two seconds." The man said guiltily, "I'll go now." Adam heard the man tug at a door and then, "Shit, what the."
"No use, I've locked down the entire ship?"
"Locked down...."
"Something is wrong."
"What, sir."
"I don't know, but I am going to find out. Hold tight and don't try to leave."
He didn't let them finish with their line of questioning as he reached up to press the button again, "Announcement."
HE waited until the beep.
"Omen crew, this is a ship wide PSA. The ship has been locked down for your safety, please remain calm and do not move from your lock down areas. I repeat, the ship has been locked down for your safety, please remain calm, and do not move from your lock down areas."
He let go of the button.
What now?
He had to do something right?
The bridge was unguarded, and if there really was some sort of threat, than someone had to deal with it.
And who better to do it than the admiral himself. He hated the idea, every fiber of his being wanted to run back to his bed and hide there until someone else dealt with the problem, but he wasn't a child, and he didn't have the luxury of hiding under his covers and pretending the monster away. Out of anyone on the ship, it was his job to take up the mantle.
He didn't want it, but he took it upon his shoulders like a heavy cloak, reaching into his nightstand past a battered copy of The Martian and to where he kept his sidearm. People didn't generally like to keep rounds chambered on their guns, but admiral Vir was of the opinion that, if someone had broken down the door to his room and was about to kill him, he wasn't going to have the time to chamber a round.
He stepped towards the door.
A soft rumble accompanied his step forward, and he looked down in surprise to find waffles and Jeffery standing in front of him, blocking the doorway. Waffles was on her feet, head low ears back tail up and wagging slowly, not the happy wag.
Had she just growled at him?
"It's ok girl, I need to get to the bridge."
She growled even lower, a menacing sort of thrum that took over her entire throat and pulsed through her body raising the hackles on her back even higher than normal. He took a step back unnerved. Waffles didn't growl at him, she wouldn't. She was a service dog after all, but she was also scared, terrified even, of something.
And she didn't want him to leave the room.
Jeffery had his mouth and all of his spines frilled outward like a lizard.
He reached a gentle hand down towards waffles realizing now what police suspects must have felt like as they faced down a police dog. They had told him at one point that waffles had flunked out of police training because she was a bit to cuddly, but right now, he was seeing none of that.
She let him stroke her ears, though she pressed against his legs trying to keep him from the door.
But he had to go.
He quickly pressed the door override and shoved past her, the door hissing shut before she could make a move to stop him.
He was left standing in the hallway outside the door, listening to her frantic scratching from the other side.
Half of the ships lights were out, dimmed to a night-time ambience.
The hall ahead of him stretched outward like the gaping throat of a dragon terminating to where the little set of stairs went down onto the command deck. From here it looked like a black hole.
Admiral Vir wasn't stupid, he knew to trust the instincts of animals. And by the reaction that waffles and Jeffery were giving him, he knew soemthing was horribly wrong, unnaturally wrong even.
Over the past few years, he really felt that he had come into his own, matured a little, and gotten a bit more smart. If it had been up to him, he would never have stepped out of that door. He would have locked down the entire ship and called for backup, and he would have done that were it not for an absence of a crew on the bridge, and he wasn't going to let someone else take that fall for him.
A captain goes down with his ship, and an admiral protects his crew.
He took a soft step forward, wincing at the sound of his mechanical footstep thudding rhythmically across the metal floor.
He made it to the steps, craning his neck over and peering downward. A dim light flickered up from the administration deck, but there was nothing at the base of the stares.
His feet rattled quietly as he moved down the steps, hugging the wall and keeping his gun at the ready. The metal was cold under his bare feet, like the windswept rock of a dark, icy planet watched only by the stars above.
He took another step finding himself in a long, dark hallway.
There were offices down the length of the hall, doors shut and locked tight for the night, and at the very end of the hall a singular light was on, illuminating the emergency entrance to the stairs. The light glowed a pallid, flickering yellow, he had meant to get that light fixed, but with everything that had been going on, none of the engineering staff had had the time, or anyone else for that matter who knew how to change a light.
Usually, it was the dark that tended to scare men, sending them into the spiraling reaches of fear, but there was something about that wan flickering light that took the terror inside him and turned it up to eleven crushing his innards until he felt like he was going to explode. It was a good thing he only planned on going halfway down the hall to the service stairs to the bridge, where he would use an admiral's override to make it through, and then seal shut behind him.
He hurried up the hall, keeping an eye on that pallid pooling light as if expecting it to creep up the hall towards him, to trickle like ooze up to his feet and nab him when he least expected it. His hands shook with delicate tremors as he did.
What was wrong with him.
He hadn't seen anything.
Admiral Vir turned towards the keycode lock ready to disarm the door and allow him through, and that's when he saw it, a dark shape flicking at the edge of his vision. He turned sharply expecting to see nothing, but when his eyes fell at the end of the hall he nearly screamed jerking so hard his gun rattled in his hands, almost dropping to the floor.
He leveled his gun and then, paused.
The shape was familiar, floating at the end of the hall.
It had four arms and four legs and floated by way of a helium sack. There were only two Vrul on the ship that he knew of, and the medical bay was just a floor down.
"Krill, he said tentatively." Weapon still half raised.
The figure didn't speak but floated to the floor dropping its helium sack.
It looked like a Vrul, as much of it as he could make out in the dim lighting.
But there was something.
Odd, about it.
It was hard to explain but, Admiral Vir got the distinct impression that its limbs just didn't fit together right. Its legs stuck out at awkward angles, and its upper arms hung listlessly at its sides. The large bulbus head was cocked slightly to the side antenna very still.
"Krill." He squeaked again.
He was nothing but a silhouette at the end of the hall, and despite his size he seemed to fill the entire pool of glowing light, taking up the space with a malevolent presence so powerful he thought he would choke on it.
Admiral vir had never been afraid of Vrul.
But he was afraid of this one.
Not just worried, but the choking sniveling, sobbing , run for our life, piss your pants kind of fear. The kind of fear that rooted you to the spot, turned you into an Olympic athlete, or a champion boxer. He hung on the cusp of all three not sure what to do.
The Vrul's head twitched.
It didn't seem intentional, more like a tic or the way a dg flicks their head as a fly lands on their ears.
The hallway was completely silent, absolutely breathless.
The Vrul's head twitched again, so violently that it's neck seemed to snap.
He heard the crack all the way up the hall, ringing in his ears, with the Vrul's neck bent at a ninety degree angle.
He screamed.
And the Vrul rushed towards him.