Doctor Joachim Vindi stepped from the boarding craft onto the space station. His leather boots hit the floor with a metallic clang. Without looking up from his datapad, he took three more steps forward. Only when his breath fogged up the screen did he raise his head. The non-essential systems like heating should have rebooted long before they arrived.
Vindi’s eyes widened as he peered down the corridor. Panels were strewn from the walls, floors, and ceilings. Wires hung loose like an electrical spider’s web. In the limited torchlight, they looked almost like stretched and hanging intestines.
Vindi dispelled this thought and approached Sergeant Kerensky. He clipped his datapad into the holster on his waist like a cowboy's revolver.
“Thoughts, Sergeant?” he whispered. They were the only life forms on the station, but breaking the silence seemed dangerous.
Kerensky inhaled and unfolded his arms as he faced the Doctor. He smacked his lips before speaking.
“Hard to tell. My guess is some kind of raiding party. Probably boarded, slaughtered the crew, took what they wanted, and left.”
Vindi nodded without conviction. “Then where are the bodies?”
Kerensky smacked his lips again and stroked the end of his greying moustache. “Well, as I said this is just my initial guess. We’ll know more when we get to the command centre.”
On this, Vindi agreed. “If it was raiders, keep your men alert. There may be booby traps.”
Kerensky nodded the trace of an amused grin on his lips, and drew his pistol from its holster. There was nothing of the cowboy in him, Vindi mused, only the soldier. With gun poised for action, Kerensky strode forward followed by the escort squad of four marines.
Vindi walked in the centre of the group, wishing he had brought his gun. The firearm would have been a small comfort in the dark and desolate corridors. Not that he’d know what to do with it.
The journey to the command centre passed without incident. All power except for basic life support was shut off, meaning every door had to be pried open by hand. By the journey’s end, Vindi’s feet ached and he greeted the opportunity to sit in the command chair like a dessert hermit greets an oasis. When his body hit the cushioned seat a cloud of dust erupted which Vindi batted away to prevent his choking.
The glass panels, which should have glowed a soft green as they relayed information to their attendants, had all shattered. Many computer terminals, likewise, were charred from where electrical fires had erupted. Vindi bit his lip as he spun in the chair and wondered what on earth could have happened. Through the observation window, the cruiser Amethyst they had departed from hung suspended in the void. It looked small enough to fit in the palm of Vindi’s hand.
In testament to their discipline and training, the marine squad remained on their feet at rigid attention. Their eyes watched the exits with grim determination.
“Hideki, hack into the control panel. Get the lights working,” Kerensky ordered.
Hideki slung their rifle over their shoulder and saluted, then went to an opened control panel to hack away at the circuitry.
Deciding he had rested his legs enough, Vindi stood and found a functioning computer terminal to plug his datapad into. There was dust on the screen which he wiped away with his hand.
Grimacing, Vindi struggled to ignore the dust on his palm as his datapad unlocked the station’s computer. This took time as the override locks lay beneath thousands of walls of code. It was moments like these Vindi cursed the secrecy that came with association with the Tsardom Scientific Bureau. Facilities like these were designed to lock down tighter than a Drisrat’s arsehole at the mere suggestion of a security breach. Good for keeping secrets. It only made his job harder.
“What could be so important to require a level twenty security program?” Vindi grumbled as he wiped the sweat from his brow. The only other facility Vindi knew had software so complex was the Imperial Palace.
“Are you questioning the reason of the Tsar?” Kirensky asked, his hand ghosted to his holstered pistol.
Vindi’s gaze fixed on the sergeant’s hand as he gulped. It was a crude reminder that his escort served as his overseers just as much as they did his protector. Imperial Marines were the elite of the Tsar’s military. Along with superior training, equipment, and supplies, they possessed a fanatical loyalty to their commander-in-chief which bordered religious devotion.
“Not at all, Sergeant,” Vindi backtracked, “I was expressing my frustration at the facility’s systems.”
Kerensky's eyes narrowed. Vindi squirmed like an ant beneath a magnifying glass desperate to escape the lethal gaze. Kerensky's hand dropped. “In future, express your frustrations in a less treasonous manner, Doctor.”
Vindi breathed a discreet, relieved sigh. “Quite right, Sergeant. Please, forgive me.”
“It won’t be me you have to ask forgiveness from. Get that computer running.”
Vindi nodded and returned to the reams of data. “Yes, Sergeant,” he said, trembling with unspoken fury.
Vindi’s breath quickened. He felt he was nearing the end of the security encryption. Licking his lips with anticipation, Vindi watched the numbers stream almost too fast to register until his datapad flashed green.
Vindi’s short-lived elation disappeared when the emergency lights flashed red and a klaxon rattled their ears. “ALIEN LIFE FORM DETECTED. COMMENCING PURGE,” Shrieked the station computer’s grating voice.
“What the hell is that?” Kerensky shouted over the sound of the alarm.
The marines formed a defensive ring round Vindi. They showed no sign of fear except for slight perspiration amassing on their foreheads.
“I don’t know,” Vindi said as he pressed buttons without reason.
“Well shut it off!”
“I’m trying,” Vindi squawked. Panic had seeped into his mind like a virus, clouding his thoughts.
“PURGE IN PROGRESS.”
“Hurry!”
“Just a second!”
“ACTIVATING INCINERATION DEVICES.”
“Doctor!”
In a last-ditch effort to save their skins, Vindi opened a factory override on his datapad and uploaded it into the station’s computer. The warning lights shut off and the klaxon silenced. Vindi stuck a finger in his ear to dig out the residual ringing.
“What just happened?” Kerensky asked.
“By the sounds of it, we almost got incinerated.”
“I could have guessed that,” Kerensky spat, “Why? Why did it call us Alien life forms?”
“I don’t know, I’m a human, are you?”
Kerensky frowned at Vindi’s attempt at humour. “Well, what did you do?”
“I shut down the computer.”
“Is that safe?”
“I hope so.”
Kerensky nodded. His head snapped to Hideki. “Get those lights back on.”
Hideki rushed to the panel while Vindi returned to his seat. He smacked his lips, the near-death experience had left him surprisingly peckish. He needed to recoup his strength before he took another crack at the computer so he took a ration bar from an Emergency Survival Kit. Vindi decided to search what data had come through in the brief seconds the computer was functioning. Perhaps he could find answers to his growing pile of questions. As Vindi scrolled, his frown deepened and his brow which had hitherto been knitted in frustration became a double arc imbued with confusion and terror.
“Sergeant, you’d better look at this,” Vindi said and offered the datapad to the soldier.
Kerensky looked at the data without comprehension. “What?”
“This is the data I pulled from the computer before I shut it down.”
Kerensky's silence denoted his ignorance.
“Read the code.”
Kerensky read again, mouthing the words. “Captain is unclean… Crew has become tainted… God is dead and the devil has emerged.” Kerensky scoffed. “What’s that mean?”
“I don’t know. I’ve never seen anything like it. If I didn’t know better, I’d say the computer had gone mad,” Vindi said with a nervous laugh, half at the ridiculousness of the idea and half at the slim chance it might be true.
Light assaulted Vindi’s eyes. When they adjusted to the brightness he squinted at Hideki staring at the ceiling with wide-eyed confusion. There was a hint of fear in their expression which piqued Vindi’s curiosity. Anything that could scare an Imperial marine was worthy of note. The ceiling had the same film of dust as the rest of the command centre. In the dust, symbols were drawn in cyclical patterns with branches coming off the outer rings to join the separate pieces together. Along the inside of the circles were etchings in a language Vindi had never seen before.
“What is that?” Vindi said.
“Whatever it is, I don’t like it,” Kerensky said before putting a finger to his ear. “Pilot, contact the Amethyst. Tell them that they're to destroy the station as soon as we’re free from the blast radius.”
The pilot responded on the open channel. “Sir, we’re trying but we’re getting nonsense back.”
Just as they finished a voice came through the earpieces so loud that Vindi had to take his off and could still hear it. “GOD IS DEAD AND THE DEVIL HAS EMERGED,” it shrieked. Vindi looked out the observation window to the distant cruiser. Flashes, like stars twinkling, appeared along the ship’s bow as the ship’s weapons fired.
Kerensky continued to bark orders but Vindi knew it was too late. They could never escape the blast radius in time. Instead, he reclined into the command chair and watched the dozens of missiles hurtling toward them with fear and adoration. A relieved calm overcame him as hundreds of missiles approached. Instead of dwelling on his past sins, Vindi simply gazed with awe at the beauty of the cosmos.
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