Chapter 10: Outlook of the Year.

Working for Derelict is exactly what I was hoping for and it’s probably one of the most tedious, repetitive lifestyles I’ve ever experienced. And yet I don’t hate it. When we’re dockside, I spend most of my time either training in the gym, polishing my Kei-Sah or trying to get my soul perception under control. I’m not making much progress with that last part but I do manage to change the shape of my sphere with a lot more ease. It would be exhausting were it not for the lure of freedom. Not from the loop, but from the assassin. Every month I spend here gives me more options. If I find a way to deal with him every time, the world will open to me. I can explore. I can freely learn. I wouldn’t have to look behind my back fearing to hear the quiet whirr of an armed drone shortly before I get the privilege of tasting my own cerebellum. Shit, just thinking about it sends me off. Who would fuck me over like that when I haven’t even arrived?

 

Over the next few weeks we grab more derelicts, sometimes several a day if they’re close to each other. Every day, damaged ships get sent to Obis’ surface to burn and every day, it seems like more and more clutter the edge of the station. They follow Enderlith like a swarm of gnats dying on its pelt by droves. People are beyond desperate. We found bodies once. The ships’ integrity had been compromised and they’d died shortly after takeoff. I’m glad I couldn’t breathe the smell of scorched meat.

 

Today marks the 34th day I’m alive and the end of Enderlith’s first month. Soon, I’ll break the record of being alive. It’s a special day, and we have a special derelict to handle today: the largest ship we’ve ever handled.

 

“Definitely no longer space-worthy according to the scan, but it’s a survey ship from Obis. There will be a lot of valuable machines there.”

 

What?

 

“Wait. If Enderlith has been here for millennia, shouldn’t everything be mapped or am I being a foreigner again?” I ask.

 

Sethri moves his hand like he’s playing a drum, which I discovered is a voidling gesture for ‘kinda’.

 

“All the important stuff is mapped out, but there is an asteroid belt around five days away from here at the shortest. Mining combines sometimes drag them to be processed. If the ore is rich, a trip can be very profitable indeed.”

 

“Pirates used to hide there,” Stone whispers, eyes focused on the scan. “Long time ago. The previous archon wiped them out.”

 

I’m not the only one to look at Stone since he so rarely contributes.

 

“What?” he asks.

 

“Ship is big. Big!” SilSil exults. “We will need several trips. Sometimes they also find old stuff. Ships. Tombs. Good stuff.”

 

“I’m not sure exactly how much we can recover,” Sethir says, “So let’s get there first. Then we will decide.”

 

We take off soon after. I may grow tired of seeing the trail of ships near the docks like tiny pilot fish around the maw of some colossal shark, but it won’t be for several loops. The memory of what day it is taints the experience with strands of worry, a cold ball in the pit of my stomach. I don’t remember the exact time the explosion occurs but I assume I’ll see it on the local news. I’m curious to know what will happen.

 

It takes longer than usual to reach the derelict. The light of the distant star whose name I still don’t know touches the ship on only one side, the other bathed in complete darkness. The chatter of my colleagues slowly dies out. As an exercise, I touch each of their minds, as gently as I can. I do not say anything, just establish contact to practice. I stop before I feel the beginning of a headache.

 

After two hours, we finally slow down. I blink myself awake, then we line up in silence. Sethri doesn’t speak until we’re all outside.

 

It’s not that I can’t see Enderlith anymore, I can’t even spot Obis. The only ‘nearby’ celestial object is the distant belt of asteroids, barely more than a peppering of dim dots in the far distance. We are, truly are, in the middle of nowhere with the dead ship.

 

“Looking good,” Sethri whispers. “No external sign of damage.”

 

So this is a mining rig, I suppose? It’s a bulky thing, perhaps the size of a large yacht but not quite at large as an Earth cargo ship. Its gray hull is marred with light impacts, dents that give it a pitted appearance but apparently left most of the gear alone. The ship is bulky and mishappen due to a large ‘arm’ in front, while the back shows some very impressive propulsion. This brick could never land on a planet. Well, it could land once.

 

“Alright. Exterior check.”

 

I follow the exploration team around while SilSil scans the massive beast. Sethri, Stone, and Vargo search for hull breaches while I project my soul outward. It takes a while, but I feel the dull waves of brainless life.

 

“It’s where the life support module is supposed to be,” SilSil confirms. “And by the way, this is the Drunken Wayfarer. It was thought lost three cycles ago.”

 

“I remember,” Sethri remarks. “It made the news in the community. Experienced crew led by old Slud. Tough bastard…”

 

No one replies. Sethri leads us to the main entrance after confirming nothing is amiss. We do the usual little dance of pinging the ship though it’s powered down and no one expects anything. After the salvage ritual is complete, we open the nearest airlock. The inner door opens with a woosh of displaced air, and into darkness. Radiant tubes of light from our torches show a rugged, yet clean interior.

 

“Let’s check the generator first, then the bridge,” Sethri decides.

 

We cross utilitarian corridors painted white on occasion, though most decorations come from warning labels. I feel like I’m on an old submarine. Even floating tools and random pieces of gear remind me of flotsam drifting in the belly of some old wreck. It’s so quiet here, all I can hear is my own breath.

 

Stone stops unexpectedly at the next gate. He grunts with effort, but the gate resists.

 

“Don’t bother,” Vargo says. “It’s welded shut. Maybe we can go around?”

 

“Steev. Feel anything?” Sethri asks.

 

“Just us and the plants.”

 

“Alright. Stone, get us through.”

 

We stay put while the stout man uses some kind of cutter to cut through the gate, wenching it out of its support shortly after. The massive pane blocks half of the passage with its mass as it floats away from us at a snail pace. This only reveals more corridor.

 

“I see damage. Left side,” Vargo whispers.

 

The woman’s torch illuminates gashes in the wall, not deep but clear signs that something cut through. No signs of bullet impacts that I can see but I also have yet to see a basic firearm here. It’s probably an awakening thing.

 

“Where’s the crew?”

 

“Generator first, then the ship’s computer should have logs,” Sethri says with more confidence than he’s feeling.

 

Dammit this is feeling more and more intrusive. Maybe Vargo’s right. There is something messed up about perceiving other people’s emotions. My qualms don’t really do anything for us as we slowly progress through the ship, finding more signs of damage but no blood or corpses, so there is that. SilSil breaks the silence just as we arrive.

 

“Boss, the escape pod’s missing. I think your friend tried to make a run for it.”

 

“Must not have run far enough,” Sethri grumbles.

 

Fresh grief comes with an old scar, reopened.

 

“Not much traffic in the belt nowadays. He may not have found a way back.”

 

“There was a fight,” Stone says with absolute confidence, his light shining on yet another scuff mark.

 

“Might be they found something valuable. Plenty of hidden caches, abandoned bases, tombs. Every decade some lucky space rascal finds a lost inheritance. Makes people greedy,” Sethir grumbles. “Fought for it.”

 

“No blood though,” Stone whispers.

 

“It’s been three years. With the atmo still there, the scrubbers probably worked long enough to peel it away. Slowly.”

 

Stone grumbles, half convinced. We’re really outside of my area of expertise here so I don’t comment. The generator is disappointingly small for a ship this size though I don’t even know what it runs on. It looks like an engine block. Vargo pushes a few buttons then something blinks and the lights blink awake.

 

“Huh,” Sethri says, thoughtful.

 

“We got enough for a few hours but not enough for the engines,” Vargo mentions. “We gotta get back for fuel if we want to pilot it back towards Enderlith. Founder. That’s a lot of money…”

 

“Let’s not get ahead of ourselves here,” Sethri chides, gently. “We don’t know if that thing can move. If it were undamaged, the crew would probably not have abandoned it.”

 

We didn’t find any bodies yet so maybe he’s right. We exit the small generator room finding the well-lit corridor.

 

“Right,” SilSil says. “So the bridge is to your left and one level ‘up’. Right is back to the ship.

 

“I know where we’re coming from,” Sethri replies with annoyance.

 

I gasp and point right, arm shaking. What the fuck.

 

“Steev?”

This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.

 

“The… the plants?”

 

“What?”

 

A distant door hisses open. A young woman’s head pops out, eyes bleary. Her shoulder-length dark hair is half-matted by filth, half floating like a corolla around her thin skull. She is no voidling but her pale skin shows she hasn’t seen the sun in a very long time.

 

“Hello? Is someone there?” she squawks, voice made raspy by lack of air.

 

“Wait that’s Slud’s… daughter?” Sethry hesitates as the girl awkwardly drags herself towards us.

 

I can’t talk. I just don’t know how to articulate the abject horror I get from this thing’s soul. My only salvation is that I can project it, project all my disgust and loathsome terror at someone, anyone. I pick Stone. I need him to feel what I feel, understand what I perceive, because the thing in front of us is not human. It’s not even sapient, or sentient. It’s just…

 

Hunger.

 

Stone’s flamethrower snaps up. A wave of incandescent death washes over the form, sizzling its meat for an instant just as Sethri recoils in horror. Then the flesh of the ‘girl’ unfolds like ghastly petals revealing layers of barbed meat, serrated bones, teeth. Grasping limbs. The form inflates until it covers the entire path, growing, burning, shrieking, and still moving towards us.

 

I am dragged backward. Stone keeps firing, then his free hand grabs the airlock and closes it in front of me. In front of us.

 

“Noooo!” Vargo screams.

 

Stone darts to our right, the thing after him.

 

“He’s alive,” I say, then I point in his direction.

 

“Why didn’t you say anything?” Vargo screams at me, shaking me like an apple tree.

 

“But I did?”

 

A dull thud. Sethri struck Vargo who recoils, dazed.

 

“Enough. Get your shit together. It’s an aberrant, we need to get out of here.”

 

“Stone —”

 

“Is doing his job and now you gotta do yours. We leave. Stone?”

 

“Still moving,” the low voice sounds in our helmets.

 

Vargo sobs a sigh of relief. I follow Sethri through a deserted bridge which, shockingly, doesn’t have any windows. We are going straight then right towards the main exit with Stone to our back and right, also trying to leave.

 

“Stone, it stopped,” I tell him.

 

“I can’t see it,” the solid man replies.

 

“It’s moving towards you but more slowly, no wait, it’s accelerating. Parallel to us. I think it might try to cut you off.”

 

SilSil speaks with great speed over the coms.

 

“There is a, hmm, a maintenance tunnel over the engine room. It will exit to your left at the next crossing if I’m reading this correctly.”

 

“It stopped moving,” I confirm.

 

“Right, trying to ambush you. At the next crossroad, turn right. You can return to the airlock via the mess hall.”

 

Sethri accelerates ahead of me. He opens the next corridor towards what should be the dormitory, but we all freeze at the entrance.

 

“Founder…” Vargo whispers.