Christian Oesterling - Blank Space - Into the Depths of the Universe

The lights were of a hallway down from Jenny. She stopped, reading her heart rate. Too fast. She tried to slow it down mentally, slowing her breathing, trying to regain control of her body. She trod lightly, almost on tiptoes as she skulked her way towards the blackout area. Gun up and at the ready, she peered around the right-hand corner. A bright white light shone from down the other end, and in the center of it stood a man. He was looking towards the wall, his right side facing Jenny. He was simply a black shape, arms by his side, head looking up, as if to some divine being. His hair confirmed to Jenny that it was Duma. His calm, tranquil nature unnerved the weapons expert. Her grip on the gun tightened, and she moved around the corner with it extended, focused on the killer before her.

‘Duma,’ she said, trying to keep her voice from shaking from nerves. Duma’s head snapped towards her so sharply she almost thought she heard his neck crunch. Jenny caught her breath just in time. Duma’s eyes seemed radiant, their own luminescence shining through, blood red. They were demonic, as if from the very pits of hell. Jenny’s blood ran cold; there was something more than a demented archaeologist here, though what it was she wasn’t sure.

The two locked gazes. Jenny’s eyes were fearful, though her eyebrows were furrowed in an attempt to suppress her anxieties. Duma’s were full of evil intent, malevolence, and an inhuman quality so overpowering it seemed to pollute the very air around them.

‘I don’t want to hurt you, Duma. Just come quietly, and…’ Jenny never got any further than that. In a split second, Duma was sprinting towards her, almost so quickly that she couldn’t react. She went to squeeze the trigger but Duma collided with her, knocking the gun from her hands. He fell on top of her, lashing out and slashing with a knife he had been holding in his left hand. Jenny grasped his wrist and tried to hold it back with all her strength. She tried to get her feet underneath his hulking body, she couldn’t remember him being so well-built, and they rolled. For a split second, Jenny was in control, but the fates quickly turned again and she was once again underneath the crewmember’s enormous strength.

A hand squeezed around her throat and Jenny went to try and prize his fingers from her windpipe. She tried to cough or splutter but couldn’t. Duma’s now-free hand raised the knife high to deliver the killing blow. Jenny closed her eyes, fingers desperately trying to break her neck free of the hold. It was the end for her.

The sound of a gun blast rung in Jenny’s ears, and she heard a clattering of metal upon metal as Duma dropped the knife. His body collapsed onto hers, and she opened her eyes to see Leon rush over to her and shift the hulk from her. Jenny was helped to her feet, and she looked down at the archaeologist. It was only now that she noticed something she hadn’t before during the fight. His throat had been slashed; the blood dried and crusted over. Nobody could survive such a wound. And then there were the eyes.

‘Fuck, thanks to Leon,’ she panted.

‘Don’t mention it. Heard a tussle and came running,’ was the reply she got. They stared at him for a few seconds.

‘The fuck happened to his throat?’ That wasn’t me,’ Jenny said.

‘Nobody could have lived with that. Something else was up with him.’

‘His eyes. Oh god, you can’t have seen his eyes. They, they were red. It was like looking at the devil,’ Jenny told him.

‘Fuck,’ was the one-word reply.

‘Everyone alright?’ Prissy came over the coms system.

‘Yeah, we are. Holden and Oliver, Duma’s here. I shot him, he went mental on Jenny,’ Leon reported.

‘I’m on my way there,’ Oliver said, rising from his chair and making his way out of the cockpit.

‘Same here’ Holden replied, starting the trip down to the scene of the scuffle.

‘Wait,’ Prissy said, confusion in her voice. The crew waited for a reply from her but didn’t hear anything for several seconds.

‘Prissy what is it? Come in, Prissy,’ Leon said.

‘Oh gods, LEON!’ she exclaimed. It was too late, however. Before Leon realized it, a hand had come around from behind him to hold his head in place, and another came up, bearing a large knife. It slashed his throat cleanly, blood gushing out. Leon’s eyes bulged, and his hands tried to make their way to his throat. Jenny gasped in surprise and fear. The captain collapsed, and Yuki brought her knife back, wiping the blood off onto her trousers.

Jenny tried to crawl away, rising to her feet and fleeing, but Leon was too fast for her. He reached her with lightning speed, blood still gushing from the slash in his neck, grabbing her shirt. She spun, executing a back kick, rising up towards Leon’s face. It struck home and he howled in agony, letting go of Jenny. She ran down the corridor and turned. She had no weapons, nothing to defend herself with. She felt powerless to defend herself from whatever the hell was going on inside the ship.

‘Prissy, what the fuck is going on?’ She cried, turning another corner, heading towards the front of the ship.

‘I’ve no idea. Everyone head towards the cockpit, we’re sealing ourselves into a secure place!’ Prissy leaped from her position in the observation room and ran down the hallway to the cockpit. Oliver was scanning over instrument after instrument, calling at the radio aimlessly for help from anyone nearby.

‘Anyone there Oliver?’

‘No gods damn it. We’re still in The Blank Space so there’s sod all we can do in terms of help. We’ve still got half an hour until radio contact with Outpost 73. The fuck is happening back there?’

‘I don’t know. Yuki’s still alive somehow and…’

‘Wait, hold your friggin Zestrilian horses. She’s ALIVE?’

‘Yeah, but gone rogue like Duma. He’s had his throat slashed as well. They’re like… Zombies almost… Leon is…’ Oliver held up his hand to stop her from speaking, she was starting to crack her voice under stress and tears.

‘Don’t bother. From the sounds of it, Jenny and Holden are ok though.’ Prissy nodded slowly, swallowing for breath but not her fear.

‘Right, let’s arm this place, get them in, seal it shut and ride for 73, they can sort it from there.’ Prissy nodded again, showing her agreement. Things were out of hand, it was time for damage limitation. Hell was being unleashed on her ship, and Prissy didn’t know how much more she could take.

Holden took a right, scampering with his gun extended. A shadow to his right. He fell flush against the wall, hiding. He saw a person move through a doorway ahead of him, going down another corridor. Leon. The dead Leon, the walking wounded, the hell on legs Leon. That was not his captain. He wanted to rush after him, turn him around, punch him in the face and rip his face off. He was angry. This mission was routine, as revolutionary as it was. There was nothing in the blank space, and cabin fever had apparently got to his crew. They had to be taken out. But he had heard Prissy’s order. He knew it was a sensible one. It was just that…

He clasped his head. It was that sensation again, someone probing his head. He heard voices once more, Yuki’s, now Leon’s, now Yuki’s again. It was the voices of those who had defected, those who were dead. He was hearing the voices of the dead. Unless…

Unless they weren’t dead. Perhaps it was some kind of possession, some kind of ethereal spirit that was causing all of this controversy and mayhem aboard the ship. Perhaps it was telepathy. But no, telepathy didn’t quite seem right. It was something else.

More searing pain flashed up again. It was an excruciating agony. He looked up briefly to see a shadow at the end of the corridor. Leon was returning, his demonic, hellfire eyes somewhere else, looking into a distance not there. Leon’s voice was in his head again, conversing to Duma in a language, or at least Holden guessed it was language, indecipherable to him. He wasn’t the language guy. Duma was the language guy, it came with the whole ancient civilizations thing. If they had put their minds to it once, just once before all this had taken place…