One thing about space travel that Captain Kent could never get used to was the unnatural cycles that were meant to simulate the environment back home. Every twelve hours, the lights would dim, then, in another twelve hours they would brighten again. Even the temperature would fluctuate slightly throughout the months. There were even areas of the ship that would simulate rain and snow. But it was all so artificial, so scheduled. Kent found himself missing home more and more. The USS Marlin was a state of the art ARK class colony ship designed to explore the farthest reaches of space to find new worlds for humanity to claim. It had been five years since they left Earth. On that day, May 7, 2187, thirteen ships left in different directions to try and find a new home for humanity. Back then the experts suggested the earth had maybe a century left before resource exhaustion made the planet inhospitable. Kent would have rather left to find nearby worlds with resources to replenish the ones back home, but his contemporaries told him he was being too nostalgic for home, and he knew they were right. The damage had already been done. All the mines stripped bare, all the natural water was poisoned, and all the forests now bare. It was too late to save his home.
He tried to stay positive and imagine what kind of wonderful things a new world could have in store. Would evolution have followed the same path as it did on Earth? Would he land and be able to declare that pandas and giraffes are no longer extinct? Or would everything seem as strange as in the movies? Maybe he would stumble on an odd world with blue grass and green skies filled with giant slugs that survive only on water. Daydreaming like that was the only way he could stave off the madness of such a long voyage. His ship was designated to scout out Cluster Ten, where the astronomers back home had seemed to believe that there may be several Earth like planets in close proximity.
For as fast as the Marlin was, the trip had still been taking too long for Kent, who at this point just wanted to stand on some actual dirt. When he was asked to be the captain of the Marlin, he assumed the job would be much more exciting than it was. He thought he would be soaring through the cosmos making all kinds of discoveries that would make him a modern day Marco Polo. Instead his job mainly consisted of reading maintenance reports and a weekly captain's log that was sent back to Earth. He doubted that the reports even made it back home, just floating out in the void just like the Marlin was. On a good day, some of the crew would start a small fight and Kent would have to go break it up.
He was just about to drift to sleep in his captain's chair when a beep on his coms drew his attention. It was the head engineer, Jamison, no doubt calling to tell the captain that all systems were good, as he does every day. "Jamison, what is the status?"
A garbled voice responded back, "Uh... Sir... you may want to come down here. Something weird is going on with the airlock." Something is always going wrong with the airlock. If it wasn't for the fact there were three separate blast doors between them and the endless void, the entire ship would be sucked out. But still, if its important enough that Jamison is requesting the captain personally, then maybe it actually is important. Kent left the bridge and called the shuttle to take him to the cargo bay. The Marlin was a huge ship, bigger than most skyscrapers back home. It had a crew of 5000 people, but most of those were civilians.
The shuttle system was like a long tramway that connected all major points of the ship to each other. At its high speeds though, Kent was at the cargo bay before he knew it. He hopped off the shuttle and flashed his key card to open the main hold. There stood a team of engineers looking on the security monitor of the airlock. And something else caught his eye too; two of his soldiers standing behind them, guns in their hands. "Alright Jamison, what about this is different enough that I needed to be down here?" He felt he had to be stern to make sure this wasn't a waste of his time, but under the surface, he was glad for something to break the monotony.
"Well Captain, we don't actually know. One minute the security cameras go to static for a few seconds, and when the signal was back the airlock was open. Then the signal cut out again and when it came back... the door was shut. We sent Adam's to investigate but he hasn't come back, nor is he answering his comm. We figured you would want to be in the know on this, Capitan."
"Well you're right there." Kent said, then pointed to the two armed soldiers next to Jamison. "I'll take Croy and Velasquez here and we will check it out." He could barely contain excitement in his voice. Finally something to do. The three men put on their beathing masks and lined up at the first blast door. Kent nodded to Croy, and the soldier punched a code into the keypad and the door opened. Past the door was a long corridor that lead to another door. Croy punched in another code and the first door closed behind them. The whirring of machines started its hum as the room was being pressurized. Kent could feel the air being sucked out of the room and made sure his mask was fit snug. Past the door was an even longer corridor than the first, and this time every light was off. The three men turned on the lights attached to their weapons and proceeded down the walkway.
Suddenly with out warning, the door behind them shut hard leaving them in pitch black. Kent doubled back to the door to try and get it open again when Velasquez yelled out. "Captain come quick!" Kent sprinted forward to see what had Velasquez so worked up, but then immediately wished he hadn't. There, slumped on the floor, was a gaunt body in a loose fitting engineer outfit. The head drooped down with a small trickle of blood forming a stream that flowed down the corner of the lip to the chin, before finally dripping onto the ground. The nametag on the uniform said 'J. Adams' on it but this thing in front of them looked barely human, much less the tall muscular man that was Adams. Croy gently pushed the head up to see, but instantly fell to the floor when he saw the face. Where Adams original bright blue eyes were supposed to be, were two pitch black cavities. His hair had mostly fallen off with only a few strands left that wasn't lying in the floor. His skin had a sickly grey hue to it and the body had shriveled up to just skin and bones. It looked as if Adams had been dead for years, but it wasn't even an hour since he left to investigate. Kent was starting to regret wanting something to do.
All of a sudden, the red warning lights flashed on and an alarm sounded. Before anyone could process was happening, the third door flew open, and in the quick flash of red illuminating the hall, Kent saw it: the airlock was open. Before he could warn the others, the vacuum began to suck them all towards the abyss. Kent managed to grab a panel on the wall and hold on, but Velasquez wasn't so lucky. He had been standing in the middle so he had nothing to anchor himself. Kent couldn't help but watch as his body flew straight back and out of view. Right behind Velasquez, Adam's limp body flew like a ragdoll banging against the wall before following the unfortunate soldier. Kent turned just in time to see Croy, who had already moved closer back to the second door, being sucked in his direction. He reached his hand out and grabbed Croy's arm, and managed to hold on for a minute, but it was too much. The young man mouthed something to his captain, but Kent could not hear it. Then his arm slipped from Kent's grasp and he too went flying to the void.
Kent had to think of something quick or else he would be right behind them. In a panic, he pulled out his pistol, which miraculously managed to stay holstered through all of this, and pointed it to the keypad beside the airlock door. He fired the first shot and the bullet went left out the airlock. A second shot managed to hit just under the target with sparks flying from the metal. Kent could feel his grip starting to loosen so he took one final shot and managed to hit his target perfect. Bits of the keypad exploded into shrapnel that was at once sucked into space before the airlock door slammed shut, and Kents body fell to the floor with a hard thump. Gasping for air, he stood up and told himself he will never take the gravity generators for granted again. He sprinted back to the second door and punched in his override code and the door opened without hesitation. He repeated the process for the first door and ran back into the cargo hold. Once the doors shut behind him, the adrenaline wore off and his legs gave out. He threw his arms out and manage to roll over onto his back before his head hit the ground.
He lay on the floor for what felt like an eternity while he tried to process what just happened. How did the third door open? Why were all the lights out? And most importantly, what happened to Adams? It was as if the life had been drained out of him. Was there some kind of radiation leak? No, that wouldn't explain it. Some kind of pressure sickness, maybe? Probably not, Kent wasn't even sure it that was a real thing. Then he started to remember Velasquez and Croy. He had lost men under his command before, but this was supposed to be a safe trip. "Jesus, Croy was just a kid too," Kent told himself out loud. Croy was just twenty-three, eighteen when they first left. Straight from boot camp to guarding the most boring post in the galaxy. And now he was gone. What was he going to message back to Earth? That some kind of door malfunction killed three good men? Would the message even make it back to Earth? They were so far away now, who knows if his logs were actually making it back.
After finally catching his breath, and finding the strength in his legs, Kent stood up and made his way back to the engineer's office. Maybe they had some kind of explanation for this. He rounded the corner and what he saw made him almost sick to his stomach. There on the ground were three of the engineers, looking much the same as Adams, like they were just dug from an ancient grave. A few feet from the rest was Jamison, who was against the wall bleeding from his mouth, but still breathing. Kent ran up to him and crouched beside the dying man. "Jamison, what happened her? What's going on?"
Jamison looked up and coughed, splattering droplets of blood on Kent's chest. "Some... some... some kind of creature. It just drained us. Like... some kind of... Void." His words were feint and strained, and he gasped for air between every other word. Then suddenly the breathing stopped and Kent couldn't believe his eyes. Jamison's eyes morphed into black orbs and his skin greyed. His whole body decayed in seconds. And just like that, Jamison was gone. Kent looked around the room for clues but saw nothing besides the bodies. Then suddenly he heard a bang and looked up. Then he saw it. The Void, isn't that what Jamison called it.
The creature wasn't just pitch black, but it was more than that. Its as if light itself couldn't find this creature, and its shape was constantly shifting and changing. One second it was shaped like a humanoid, then the next it was just an undulating blob. It had no face, but Kent could tell it was looking at him. Then in the blink of an eye its body became liquid-like and flowed into the air vents. "No," Kent thought. "Those vents are connected to the whole ship. It could get anywhere within minutes. I have to get to the bridge and warn everyone." Moving as fast as his legs would carry him, he ran back to the shuttle and pressed the button for the bridge. He didn't know what he was facing, but one way or another he was going to find a way to save his ship.
To Be Continued