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

‘Joint minds. Fuck; that’s it,’ he breathed to himself. Leon’s head snapped towards him. The pain stopped and Holden’s vision returned. He stood upright again, and Leon cocked his head to one side, as a dog might consider something before him. Holden stopped. The two locked gazes for a few seconds, Holden’s body tingling with electric energy. Then Leon screamed, a scream from the very bowels of hell itself. Holden turned and ran. Leon advanced, far faster than Holden. He was going to reach him, tear him apart, slit his throat…

"Blam". The gun went off and Leon howled in pain, his face eroding away. Jenny pulled Holden around the corner.

‘Let’s fucking move it,’ she yelled, and the two sprinted towards the dining area and to the cockpit of the ship.

Oliver came from checking the observation room; he had wanted to check the situation. He told prissy to strap herself in but to arm herself if she needed the extra firepower. She took one of the larger guns that were kept in the cockpit and primed it, ready for firing. Oliver stood up and flicked switches.

‘Nightingale, initiate Code 101,’ Oliver said. His tone of voice was that of a man resigned to the gallows.

‘Code 101 activated Oliver,’ the ship replied. Prissy frowned.

‘What does that mean?’ Prissy asked. Oliver went over to a stash of large XF-76 Gammas, strapping them to his back in a large X. From the back, he looked like a walking skull and crossbones.

‘I’m sorry Prissy, I really am,’ he said solemnly. He walked through the door and shut it behind him. A siren went off inside the cockpit.

‘Oliver, what the fuck have you done?’ Prissy exclaimed, unbuckling herself and leaping towards the door. She tried to open it but couldn’t.

‘Nightingale, open this door now!’

‘Negative Prissy, Code 101 engaged,’ the ship replied.

‘The door can’t be opened for another three hours,’ came Oliver’s voice over the coms system, ‘I discovered it yesterday. Jenny and Holden are running into a trap, the other three have set up an ambush in the dining area, they’re about to get massacred. I’m going in over the top. Only you can hear this.’

‘Then let me come and help. Nightingale…’

‘No Prissy, someone has to survive this to tell them what’s happening. You’re second in command, you’re the one that needs to live through this.’ A pause here. Oliver tried to gather his thoughts, Prissy tried to stop the tears flowing.

‘If what you’ve said is true, those things are pretty damn unbeatable, but like hell is I going to go down without a fight.’ The navigator moved away from the door and towards the maintenance hatch in the roof of the corridor.

‘Prissy,’ he said.

‘Oliver,’ she replied through choking tears and every negative emotion known to humankind.

‘It’s been a pleasure, a privilege, and an honor.’ With that, Prissy heard no more from her crew.

Jenny and Holden looked around, the central table now a relic, forgotten in the panic. Nobody there. Jenny signaled to Holden to move out, it sure was a good thing she had had the time to grab another gun from the weapons room on her way past. Holden stepped out, gun raised. Slowly he moved towards the hallway that led down to the maintenance hatch they had been using to get to the cockpit since the airlock went. Suddenly…

‘Holden, back!’ The psychologist moved his foot back out of the sight just as a shot was fired. Yuki’s rose from her hiding place and shot as she crossed the hallway. Holden spun back as he dodged the shot. Jenny spun to behind her, where Leon was moving out into the light from the shadows. Another miss. The psychologist and the weapons expert stood back to back in the place they had shared so many meals together, their home from home in the darkness. Their backs rubbed together, they felt their camaraderie radiate from one another, their shaking hands began to ease their shivering. From all three corridors the slit-throats emerged, guns raised. The two crew members spun, guns alternating targets. Silence ensued.

Suddenly, a crate crashed down on them. All five looked up, stunned, as Oliver dropped down, triple barrels raised, arms extended in a cross.

‘Anyone need some help to take out some tough sons of bitches?’

‘Like you could hit anyone,’ Jenny quipped.

‘Oliver, they can communicate without speaking. They’re a hive mind. We need to talk and work as a team,’ Holden said. Oliver turned to face Duma.

‘Holden, I don’t know what bullshit you just spouted, but I just want to go out all guns blazing,’ the navigator retorted. Jenny focused on Yuki.

‘Too right. Time to showdown,’ she said. Holden aimed for their former captain.

‘Celestrian style.’

They fired.

Prissy heard none of this, only the shaking and rocking of the ship and the shots were fired. The whole ship seemed to be breaking up behind her, and it felt like they were losing. For a brief moment, Prissy allowed herself hope, but then a sinking feeling in her heart told her otherwise. Eventually, the shaking came to a halt. Nightingale became as silent as the outside of her hull.

‘Nightingale,’ she tentatively spoke.

‘Yes Prissy, how may I help you?’

‘How, how many people are on board the ship?’

‘Just you Prissy.’ Prissy bowed her head in mourning. All of her crew dead. Her friends that over the past few days had become family. They were the best companions she had ever had, loyal to the end. And something had done this to them. This wasn’t natural. She wanted revenge. A fire began to burn within her core.

‘Nightingale, can we eject this cockpit from the main ship, then explode the ship?’ It was a wild and crazy idea, but she remembered a case of someone doing it in one of the old wars to fight a cabin fever outbreak.

‘It is possible Prissy, my backup computers would remain in the cockpit so I would still be able to communicate with you. We would have almost no ability to change direction however,’ Nightingale replied.

‘Aim me at Outpost 73. Eject me straight towards it; you’re firing me at it.’

What became of Prissy will never be known. Something, however, must have gone wrong or malfunctioned, for the cockpit never reached Outpost 73. A few days after however, chunks of space debris floated into Outpost 73, later identified as the remains of the exploration vessel Nightingale. The blank space, years later, remains a cursed area, never having been ventured into since. It remains a quiet, empty void, where anything may lurk in the dark, in the quiet, in the space where humans fear to tread.

Christian Oesterling

Neuperverstrasse 37

D-29410 Salzwedel

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