Ransome, page 7
Why? Why would she do that? To what end?
“Because she is not who she claims to be… she is something far more evil…”
For a creature of this dominance, this bloodthirsty to claim that Drusilla was something worse, chilled Darven’s already cold blood. The images he had seen had made him want to vomit uncontrollably. Never before had he seen so much blood, pain, suffering, torture and displays of someone playing god. He forced himself to push the horror to one side, and formed his next thought.
What is it you want me to do?
“Find her and bring her here… and the rest of the humans…”
Humans? Why do you need the humans?
“We must feast…”
With those final words, power was restored to Darven’s ship, and when the lights returned, both the creatures and body parts of his crew were gone, leaving only a large amount of blood, an empty ship, and it’s shell shocked Captain.
SIXTEEN
There was a stark contrast between the seeming safety of the blue ocean lights on the bridge and the pulsing glow of the blood red emergency lights throughout the rest of the ship. Never before had Harry Ransome felt less safe than he did now. He was prey on his own ship. Although his mind had been made up before they left the bridge, and the thirty-two crew members had been safely hidden in their cryo-pods, his nerves were now starting to show. Sweat pooled on his forehead, and he could feel it trickling down his back. There had also been a distinct rise in the ship’s temperature over the last few hours. So much so, that Harry, Kelly, Teale and Knight had all shed their uniform jackets, choosing to patrol in their black under vests instead. Knight suggested the colour change would give them a more tactical advantage. Harder to see black in the dark. He knew it was nonsense, given these creatures abilities, but it made everyone feel better. Harry made a note to get to know this young man, if they survived.
“Lifesigns up ahead,” Kelly whispered. “Four humans, looks like the mess hall.”
Harry nodded to Knight and Teale, and they both took up flanking positions at the junction of the corridor. So far they had heard no movement, and no sign of the aliens. Standing directly in front of the door to the mess, Harry handed his rifle to Kelly, and began to prise the doors open with his hands. He knew there were emergency release devices located in the bulkheads nearby to make this job easier, but they daren’t split up from each other. Besides, Harry was in good shape, and soon, the doors began to part. When the gap was wide enough, Harry slipped inside, and Kelly passed his rifle through the gap to him. She gestured for Knight and Teale to head inside, and covered them while they did so. Once inside, all four aimed their rifles ahead, the lights on the weapons illuminating similar devastation to Sickbay.
Tables were smashed into pieces, glass fragments everywhere, and countless food items littering every surface. Again, there was a large hole visible in the roof at the mid-way point in the room, the twisted metal at its edges giving Kelly flashbacks to her earlier attack.
Suddenly, there was a loud clatter to their right, and a tin of soup rolled into the beam of Knight’s torch. The can was coated in blood. He gestured to the others, and gradually, keeping a constant sweep around them, they moved forward towards the source of the sound. Another noise, this time the sound of a cupboard hinge whining. It reminded Harry of the ancient horror movies he had watched as a teenager where the creaking of a door would often signal a character’s impending doom. He could not help but draw comparisons to their current situation. However, the rifle torches found a half open supply cupboard, no doubt the origin of the mysterious tin of soup.
“Open it,” Harry gestured to Knight, who nodded in reply.
With a swift lunge, Knight leapt forward and ripped the cupboard door open, three officers in various states of health tumbling onto the floor in a heap.
“No! Get away from us! Get away!” one of them screamed.
“It’s okay! We’re hear to help!” Kelly whispered as loudly as she dared.
It took a few seconds for the others to realise just who they were looking at, before one of them attempted to salute the Admiral. He shook his head and lowered the saluting hand with his own.
“No need for that crewman. We need to get you out of here. Our scanner showed a fourth person. Are they not with you?”
The cupboard dwellers shook their head in unison.
“It’s just been us three for the last two hours. It’s the only place we could find to get out of sight. They… they’re in the walls.”
Harry nodded, fairly confident already that the creatures were using the maintenance tunnels to get around the Odyssey. But most of them were too small, hence the holes in the ceilings between decks.
“Sir,” interrupted Teale, “I’m still reading a fourth lifesign.
The team swept their beams before them, but it didn’t take long to locate the fourth person. It was Harry’s torch that landed on the face of the female officer in question. Her abdomen had been all but shredded, blood pooling around her. Both legs were gone, as were her arms, and her left eye was nothing more than a congealed mess of flesh and fluid. The mouth was taking in quick, short breaths, as if she was hyperventilating. But it was Knight’s torch which illuminated the true horror. Pressed against the throat of the female officer, was an enormous black foot, the claws at the end embedded in the woman’s shoulder. As all four lights moved up to show the alien in all it’s glory, it bared its teeth, and lifted its foot. As it did so, a huge stream of blood flowed upwards like a fountain from the throat of the woman. Within seconds, she was dead.
They had been baited.
“Mother fucker,” spat Knight. “It kept her alive to lure us here.”
Almost in response it seemed, the creature appeared to smile. They all heard the sinister voice in their heads.
“Clever boy.”
Kelly ushered the found crewmen out through the doors of the mess hall, but as each one exited, a dark shadow burst past the door, snatching them away, blood spraying up the walls as each one was lifted into oblivion. They were now trapped. And the creatures knew it. Again, Harry felt the voice intruding his thoughts.
“Hello… Harry…”
Hearing the creature say his name terrified Harry to his very core. It began to move slowly towards him, taking one huge footstep at a time, the complete opposite to what he knew of these creatures. The others had not been privy to the mental voice note Harry had received, and Kelly tugged on his arm.
“What is it Harry?”
Harry tensed up and took a step back.
“It knows my name.”
“We wondered when you would join us…”
Pain burst through Harry’s temple, and he dropped his rifle. He heard manic laughter in his head and he tried to shake it away but he couldn’t. The creatures outside the mess hell were now slashing through the metal, trying to create a big enough gap to fit through. The one already in the room was now mere steps from Harry and the others, and Kelly was on the ground desperately trying to shake Harry back into focus. This was it, thought Teale. This is where they died.
Except… they didn’t.
There was a huge jolt as something rocked the ship, violently. Everyone was knocked off their feet and sent careening into the wall, the creatures also losing their footing. An odd look of confusion was etched onto their black, gleaming faces. Their heads seemed to gesture to each other as if they were communicating in the same way they had done to Harry. Another jolt, and everything seemed to tilt to the left, debris on the floor rolling into the team, the broken glass and discarded tins smashing into them, slicing and bruising their bodies.
With no warning, the creature which had spoken to Harry let out a shrill scream, which was joined by the others, and as if fired from a cannon, they all launched themselves upwards through the ceiling and out of sight. The scrabbling of their claws on the decks above grew ever more distant as they fled.
“What the fuck is going on?” shouted Knight.
“I’ve got no idea, but one thing I do know,” Kelly said, “is that somehow, we’re moving!”
A bleep came from Harry’s communicator, now relocated to his belt from his sleeve. His head was still swimming with confusion and residual pain, but he managed to activate the device.
“Who is this?” he managed, failing to get up off the floor and landing on a shard of broken glass, wincing with the pain.
“Admiral Ransome, this is Darven. Hold tight, I’m getting you out of here!”
The communication cut off, but the stunned look in the room from everyone screamed one thing. Nobody knew what the fuck was going on.
SEVENTEEN
ELEVEN MONTHS LATER
The red and blue pattern wasn’t quite the same, but Harry appreciated the work the tailor had done on the garment. It was almost a perfect match. Although a large part of him wondered if he preferred not to don his uniform again. After all, it was a symbol of betrayal and death. But, given the efforts the kind people of Santana Prime had gone to in order to help him and his remaining crew, he decided he would wear it. At least once.
It had been a long journey to this point. After their rescue from the Expanse by Darven, Harry and the others had learned there were actually almost two hundred survivors on board the Odyssey. Still, that meant eight hundred lives had been lost. And for what? They still didn’t know. Darven had refused to explain to them what he had seen. He was clearly incredibly disturbed after his own experiences in the Expanse. He did explain how he had managed to suppress the invasion of his mind long enough to lock on an energy tether and pull them clear. Something the creatures were not impressed with, he could tell. They had fled the Odyssey as it approached the golden nebula and attempted to infiltrate Darven’s mind once more, but his increasing distance helped keep his safeguards in place. The Darla Captain had sent them on their way, before fleeing himself, but had failed to give them the access codes to their lockout. This meant thruster travel. For three months.
Finding themselves here, was a miracle. Not only that, but to find an intact colony willing to trade was invaluable. The people of Santana Prime had made it clear they could not stay, as they had limited resources themselves, but it was part of their custom to never turn away those in need of help. The ship was all but repaired, the bodies of fallen crew relocated to the cargo bays in proper caskets, ready for burial among the stars, and food supplies had been topped up. With the lockouts now broken, Harry was free to resume whatever journey he saw fit. And yet he was troubled.
He couldn’t shake the feeling of discomfort at the alien creature knowing his name. There had been a tinge of the artificial to the sound of the voice, but also a touch of familiarity. In order to move forward, he tried to put it down to something he must have picked up from Drusilla while their minds were joined previously. After all, it was her who he assumed had planned to send them to the Expanse eventually, as Darven had alluded to when they first met.
“Ship is ready to go Admiral.”
Commander, now Captain Kelly Dresden, stood alongside Harry, in a straight stance, hands clasped behind her back, and her blonde hair in a perfect bun, not a hair out of place.
“Well then, Captain, let’s get back to it.”
Kelly nodded, still proud of Harry’s promotion of her, despite the haunting of their experiences. The Odyssey was hers now, Harry deciding to take a backseat advisory role. He needed time to think. About what came next. Where he should go. What future there was for them out here. And where and when Drusilla might turn up again.
The Santana Prime engineers had done wonders. The Odyssey sat on a landing gantry the size of New York City with three other ships of differing design. She looked brand new. No exterior damage visible, new weaponry, new shielding, and even a special gift from the Prime Minister of the outpost – a cloaking device.
Inside was the same. The bridge was even more advanced than it had been originally. There were now two chairs in the centre of the room. The Captain’s chair which would now be occupied by Kelly, and the First Officer’s chair, which would be occupied by Harry, despite another promotion for Commander Teale. She had generously donated her new chair to the Admiral until the completion of their journey, although nobody was sure of how long that would be.
The crew was down to just one-hundred-sixty-five upon departure, dozens succumbing to their wounds after landing. Positions were promoted, and shuffled around, and Teale was trained in security to serve alongside Joshua Knight, who was the new Chief. Harry had a good feeling about those two. In the near calendar year they had been here, Knight and Teale had gotten very close. He had considered advising against inner ship relations, but given what they had been through, he decided everyone deserved a little happiness however long it lasted.
As they left orbit, leaving the moon outpost of Santana Prime behind them, they did not realise that their happiness would stretch to almost a full decade. Travelling among the stars, meeting new species, and even an encounter with one of the other starships, the Valiant. But like everything else, all good things must come to an end. And almost ten years to the day of their departure from Earth, the end came swift, brutal, and unforgiving.
EIGHTEEN
9 YEARS LATER
There was a distinct air of betrayal surrounding both Harry and Drusilla as they sat in the same quarters that years ago they had made love in. Looking back on those times, Harry now wondered if he had willingly succumbed to those tender moments, or if it was more of Drusilla’s manipulative influences on his mind. Several times over the past decade, he had found himself trying to remember any lead up to those encounters, and often found himself drawing a blank. Of one thing, however, he was certain. He had no feelings of any kind for her now. Except contempt.
After eight years of blissful exploration with his remaining crew, Harry had received a tip-off from an acquaintance he had made on the trading station Azanti Prime. Someone was looking for him, and she had taken out three staff members to try and elicit the location of the Odyssey. Harry had known immediately that it was Drusilla. He ordered a change in course and for the last eighteen months, they had been fleeing. That’s when it started.
During a deep sleep in the middle of the night, Harry would hear whispers in his ear. Promises that she would see him again soon. He had no idea how powerful Drusilla’s powers were, but he surmised they were extremely potent to reach him from such distance. One of the crew, an Ensign Colbeck, had retrained to become their new Chief Medical Officer, and Harry had sought him out to try and stop these messages from coming through. But in the end, it made no difference. Just a matter of hours ago, he sensed she was close. He ordered their pilot to push the engines to the max, but it wasn’t enough to outrun Drusilla’s talons. In a moment of blackout, she had commandeered Harry’s mind, and forced him to knock out the pilot, alter course, and stun three of his crew before releasing him. By that time, they were already on board.
“What’s the matter Harry? You used to be happy to see me.”
Her voice no longer held the soft and melancholic tones of the woman he once knew.
“Something tells me Dru, I was never willingly happy to see you. And certainly not now.”
Drusilla puckered her face in a mock display of hurt.
“Well that’s not very nice is it? At least your wife was happy to see me when I paid her a visit.”
The words hung in the air, Harry unsure how to process them. He had thought about Annette and Findlay quite often recently, often wondering if he was betraying them by continuing in his new life.
“What did you do?” he questioned, words low and harsh coming slowly from his lips.
Drusilla slid a white blade from a sheath on her hip, and twirled it in the air, catching it by the tip.
“Just tying up a few… loose ends.”
The smile that spread across her face was almost demonic, and Harry lunged at her, but his eyes glazed over, and he stopped mid stride, slowly turning back to his seat and lowering himself into it calmly. When Drusilla released his mind, the fury returned, but he stayed seated.
“And my son?” he spat through clenched teeth.
“Yes, terrible shame. So full of honour, that one. I’m sure he would’ve made an excellent commanding officer one day. Never mind.”
Pain and torment tore through Harry, knowing that the woman he had betrayed them for, that he had turned his back on them for, had killed them both in cold blood. He bit back his response, but a tear did fall down his cheek. There would be time for grieving later. His crew was at stake now.
“What do you want from us?” he said, thinking each word as he focussed on it, making sure he didn’t say anything that would cause another invasion of his mind.
“I already told you Harry. You don’t listen well do you?”
“You said you wanted our humanity. You didn’t elaborate.”
Drusilla stood up and strolled around the room, digging under her nails with the blade as if it were a tool for manicuring.
“You know, for a man fucking his Captain, you’re awfully tense.”
That knocked the wind out of Harry’s sails. Clearly he had not been protecting his thoughts enough. The very second he showed inner concern for Kelly Dresden, she had latched onto it.
“That’s none of your concern.”
Drusilla smiled once again.
“Oh, but it is Harry! It’s a perfect example of humanity. The ability to adapt to new surroundings, environments and circumstances. To be inventive when the need arises, to explore the human condition! That… that is what I’ve been looking for all these years!”
The concern for Kelly grew. Harry had only been officially in a relationship with his former first officer for the last twelve months, and only then after much soul searching and the realisation that they were never heading home. He now feared she was about to become a pawn in Drusilla’s games.
