Finding the Way Home

Prologue: 09 JANUARY 2474

Nobody can hear a scream in the vacuum of space, or so they say… Since the dawn of man, we have gazed at the stars wondering what the universe held in store for us. I wonder sometimes what it is my ancestors imagined, what gave them the drive to shoot for the stars. From earth they look truly beautiful, its when you get close and realize those glistening stars are giant balls of fire, if they had known that the same was true with most of space maybe, just maybe we never would’ve left Earth.

My name is John Houzer, age: twenty-eight, Rank: Technical Sergeant, I joined the United Nations of Earth galactic fleet in 2463 When I was eighteen years old. When I first joined things were simpler, our colonies stretched far past Sol and even Alpha Centauri. In these days I would travel the galaxy and provide aid to less fortunate planets, helping to establish clean water, food resources, and energy. It was always a pleasure to see the smile on the faces of those we helped, even if sometimes the Aliens we helped had a terrifying smile.

The years had passed, and I could see the good I did in the galaxy, wars fought in the beginning seem trivial looking back. Considering humanity has unified and the United Nations of Earth Military forces consists of mostly those working towards humanitarian goals, and occasionally suppressing terrorist activities. I was assigned to the ISS Possum in the control deck, having power over secondary controls if something ever happens to the bridge, a support cruiser meant to maintain the fleet. In a year I’ll be leaving the fleet and heading to a nice office on earth.

Chapter 1: Just Another Patrol

While on patrol on the outer arm of the galaxy we were looking for rumors of a stranded ship. At this point in time the fleet only had three ships the ISS Possum the support ship, ISS Elephant the warship, and the ISS Fox a heavy cruiser. We were unsure what we could be facing but regardless we believed we were ready.

We saw the stranded ship in empty space. With more questions than answers we had to investigate. In case of hostile personnel, the battleship was to board them as they had the most marines. Once the battleship was docked, we lost signal, not abnormal in circumstances like these so there was nothing to worry about. We realized that it wasn't just the battleship a full radio blackout had taken place. We awaited the Captains orders but they never came.

Something flew into our ship causing multiple alerts to ring out on after the other

“shields offline, Weapon systems offline, life support running on backup generators, engines offline, life support in sectors two, seven, and eight offline”

the alarms began to sound, they were deafening, I ran to my station in the control deck as fast as I could making sure the crew and marines were ready. Out the window we could see the ISS Fox taking hits, they were in the same situation as us. We were searching desperately for the enemy, the weapons could be manually powered and operated to save us. We saw a ship coming towards us, it looked like something out of a horror film, the ship was all black with no windows. We began to fire at the ship with our main cannons, but there was no chance of us breaking their shield defenses with a support ship. We watched in terror as the ISS Fox was blown to pieces by a large blast from the black ship’s cannons.

“We have to get out of here!” A Marine screamed out

“I don’t want to die!” yelled a crewman

I grabbed a random crewman.

"You, run to engineering and see how long it will take to get the engine systems and jump drive back online!" I was more aggressive than I had intended but I couldn't help it we were all panicking. He ran away without a response.

I paused for a second, sector two was the entire command bridge and rooms. The situation was not looking good. I didn't think it could get any worse until I saw that the black ship get closer to us. We were entirely unable to defend ourselves from being destroyed but we still had a chance to prevent them from taking our ship.

“All lose hands, get a weapon and ammo from the armory! We do not know our enemy, but I would rather fight and lose, than die in the fetal position!”

I gathered a small group to go to the armory and return with weapons to arm the rest of the control deck. I grabbed the laser rifles from a locker on the control deck with four others. Our squad of five would have to hold off an assault. We felt a jolt that rocked the ship. They were docking with our ship. I had to take a second to catch a deep breath and gather myself. I was terrified, if I achieved nothing else, I would protect as many of my men as possible.

The morale was long gone, and the unity of the soldiers was only held together by fear but fear is still a pretty good motivator. Private Jack Mathews, Corporal Samantha Rodriguez, Corporal William Host, Sergeant Jenny Glass. All of them are good space marines.

This may be a suicide mission but we will save as many of the other crew members as possible, when they're armed they should be able to set up a good defensive position in the command deck.

"Alright, so um, ehem. I'm not going to lie, we are likely going on a one way trip. Leave an ID tag here. Your lives today will be remember for the sacrifices you make. We will die so everyone else can live!"

They all looked at one another. Private Mathews turned to Corporal Rodriguez.

"If we survive will you go on a date with me?" She looked at him for a second then everyone else then him.

"You're an idiot, but yes" they all laughed a little but then it was back to business. Not sure if he was serious but I give him props for lightening the mood a bit.

We ran down the corridor. Our armor would be weakest at the airlock, so we just had to get to airlock 1B before they breached the door.

When we reached the airlock, we began to set up crates, boxes of papers, furniture, we put everything in place to prepare for the eventual breach. Once everything was in place we prepared, we said our final prayers, kissed photos of our loved ones and kept our laser rifles trained on the doors…

Time stood still, I began to remember my childhood, playing in the slums of earth, wanting to escape, to be free, to be my own person. Yet here I am, about to die and I never even found someone to love or had a home to call my own. My thoughts were interrupted by a massive explosion out the side of the ship and airlock.

“Throw on your oxygen converter!” I yelled as I put mine on and began to blindly fire at whatever was through the door. As the air cleared, I began to get a clear look at our enemy, it was a mound of flesh with many limbs in all directions its mouth a gaping hole with pointy teeth circumferentially around the mouth. It had multiple eyes all over its body almost like camouflage.

We fired our laser rifles; it didn’t seem to be actually hurting it, but we kept shooting we wanted to bring this monster to an end. It began to spit foul smelling black mucus globs at us. Everywhere a glob hit it started melting away at everything it touched. It spit a glob that landed directly on Sergeant Glass's head she screamed in pain and dumped canteen on her head. She stumbled a little more then collapsed. I got desperate, I drew my officer sword and ran at the monster and slashed it, it went clean through like butter. I felt relieved for a moment but then it started putting itself back together, I continued to stab at all the eyes if nothing else I could at least temporarily blind it and then we could attempt to use fire.

I slashed out the last eye and looked up. I got a good look into the ship and saw that it was a large hanger bay full of monstrosities like this, made with human, animal and alien parts, it made my stomach sink and the smell of rotting flesh was overwhelming causing me to keep gagging even through my oxygen converter, and all my primal instincts were telling me to run as fast as I could. Even through the darkness I could see a skeleton wearing a cloak and holding a scythe on a beast that looked like a hairless bear with its flesh rotting off and extra lumps of flesh. I attempted to shoot the skeleton with my laser rife and the laser would stop about three meters from the skeleton and disappear. I did manage to alert the entire room of my presence causing the monstrosities and the skeleton to start moving towards the airlock of the ISS Possum.

The Skeleton began to speak in a deep condescending tone.

“It’s been two thousand years and I have come to reclaim my throne and all of you will make lovely puppets"

It lifted an arm towards us, and a black mist shot from its hand and smacked into corporal Host causing his skin to start to boil until he was a puddle of meat and bones. We ran away but could still see as his meat and bones slowly moved into the creature we were just attacked by. We started to sprint towards the control deck Locking every door we possibly could behind us.

When we arrived at the control deck be banged on the door and yelled for them to unlock it and let us in. Once we were in I explained the situation and the encounter. Fighting was not an option we had to flee.

A random space marine raised his hand then spoke

"The crewman you sent to check out engineering never returned he might still be helping them what do you want to do?"

I looked at him in the eyes clearly he was upset, but there was nothing that could be done.

"either he dies or he and everyone that goes to help him dies. That is our current situation." He looked at me in disgust.

"Well I'm going to go find him" I watched as the marine and 5 others left.

"Everyone else we need to get off the ship, follow me to the escape pods. Put on your oxygen converters just in case."

The closest evacuation pods were about 100 yards away through several corridors. There was about fifty of us in the control room and we ran down the halls to the escape room. While passing through the ship a massive explosion hit the side of the ship blowing out a chunk of the hall. About 20 people were sucked into the vacuum of space. Everyone else was holding on. Luckily the ship was build with numerous automatic airlocks. Which sealed and prevented us all from being sucked into the abyss. The automated alert kicked on.

"Sector one has been compromised"

With the main path blocked we had to crawl through a ventilation shaft to get to the escape pods. The crawl was relatively short and we were back on our feet running in no time. We arrived at the escape pods there were only two left. The pods were only designed to hold eight people but we could pack in more and hope for the best. However this would risk the pod crashing and possibly all on board dying.

I was unwilling to make the decision so i called for a quick vote. Ten in favor of packing in. Three for leaving people behind. seventeen refused to vote. Everyone was going despite the risk.

We packed into the escape pods and launched out charted to the nearest allied settlement. Limer Prime a Gorgo colony. We would arrive in a few days; I am super hopeful that the Gorgoes will help us with this unknown enemy. They may be our only hope to make it home. I am logging the events as they have happened Date on earth 27 February 2474. Full estimated losses are over a thirty thousand. I don’t know if you can hear screams in the vacuum of space, but you can definitely hear them inside of a human cruiser. The only problem is that after launching the escape pod, I can still hear them.