Blood In The Space Station

No one can hear a scream in the vacuum of space, or so they say. We did though, we definitely heard a scream. The weirdest part is the scream sounded very human-like, very prominent, and loud. Yet it came from outside of the space station, quite literally from the nothingness surrounding our base of operations.

We are all accounted for however, all seven of us, here, where we are supposed to be. So how could there be a scream from outside? Forget the fact of impossibility, no one can breathe out there long enough to scream, and we definitely didn't hear it through our intercom or helmet auditory systems, even if it was possible, there is no one else within hundreds, heck even thousands of miles to make such a noise.

Of course this has the entire station on edge at the moment. We finally just got over the meteor scare, now this. What are we in some weird virtual reality version of Clue? Was it Mai Ling, the Chinese astrophysicist on the western solar panels with the monkey wrench? Even if it was, who could have possibly been the victim?

The commanding officer of the space station takes it upon himself to figure the situation out. He's certain there is a logical explanation for the noise, something like a bit of space rock scraping across the outer shield of the station, or a vast explosion millions of lightyears away finally making itself heard at our distance. He's a smart man, but we aren't on board with his theories. That was one hundred percent a scream of some sort, no matter what logic wants to tell any of us.

He goes and snoops about the windows, air lock chambers, and even checks the camera angles, all of them, and finds little to no evidence of any of his theories. There was some space dust left on the eastern wing from the recent meteor storm, but even if it wasn't from the storm, it is on the opposite side of the space station that we heard the scream from. After poking about a bit and muttering a few more ridiculous theories, the commander finally gives up, and decides to put us "space nerds" to work to figure it out. Yea, that's how our big bad military commander refers to the people who get him paid... space nerds.

He wants us to suit up and check the perimeter of the station, outside, where the noise came from. None of us volunteered, who the hell would? So he appoints us, in groups of two per sector. I'm of course paired with Mai Ling, the one person I already made a horrible joke about. We are to split up into our groups, take a shock baton, and search the nooks and crannies of the outer surface of the station. What are we looking for? Who the heck knows, hopefully we don't find anything and we can move on from this freaky situation.

Mai Ling and I are assigned to the south point of the station, also known as "the butt", in our joking terminology. Its the big round generator attached to the lowest structurally sound point of the space station. It has loads of nooks, and even more crannies surrounding it, as it's quite literally a big sphere attached to a cylindrical pillar. We link up and jump out from the air lock chamber, and quickly attach ourselves to the tether line as soon as we are on the "butt".

As we make our way to the first connection point between the generator and the main frame of the space station, we hear it again, the scream, this time it was much, much louder. I nearly peed on myself from the noise, it was terrifying, and now we are out here with it, whatever it is. Over the helmet communicators we hear one of the other astronauts whisper, "There's something watching us...", but nothing else. We all call out to that person, yet there is no response. Now, it's safe to say, we are all too scared to go on. I radio back to the bridge, to the commander, and tell him we are pulling out from the task, but get no response. My partner and I hop back up to the top of the "butt" and back into the air lock chamber. I radio to the other astronauts and tell them I couldn't reach the commander, and get no responses. I call out again... still nothing.

As Mai Ling and I are floating the hall from the south point to the bridge, a noise blares over the PA system, a loud, gurgled yelp. It sounds like the commander, and it sounds like he is being choked. I activate my shock baton and hurry to the bridge as fast as the low gravity will allow. What I see when I open the sliding door is beyond words. It's gruesome, terrifying, bloody... It's a murder scene.

A giant, serpent like creature has the commander locked in it's jaws, swinging him about like a dog with a chew toy. My first reaction is to close the door quickly, but it was too late, the monster had already caught a glimpse of me. I hurry back to Mai Ling and send her to the armory, I tell her about a secret weapon we kept on board incase of invasions, it's a sound based pulse rifle, some new tech, that emits a radio wave frequency high enough to explode the brain of anything not human. She asked what I was going to do while she grabbed the weapon, my response was, "To be honest, I have no clue, but I have to try to slow it down... somehow."

We go our separate ways, and I turn back to somehow face the creature. I crank my baton up to full blast, a shock strong enough to subdue a grizzly bear, and say a quick prayer. I see the monster, face to face from maybe twenty feet away, it's eyes are locked directly on me now. I ready my baton, and hope for the best. As the beast is jumping toward me, I hear Mai Ling over the radio, she sounds scared. "Jack, Jack... there are more of them... They have the station surrounded, I can't...", her radio goes dead. The monster is within swinging distance as my mind and body shut down, I take a wild swing in front of me, and everything goes black...