Fresh Blood

Lucille Vandra had always regretted her decision to join the Navy. She was a loaner who preferred her own company, and had been enamored by the excitement of traveling and exploring new worlds while leaving her life behind; however when faced with the reality of a barely bed sized room on a ship where she was constantly either working or sleeping, her adventurous spirit was quickly squashed.

Lucille was assigned to the UWSC support ship Epsilon. Epsilon traveled between exploration ships and the closest settled worlds to bring them supplies. It was dull work, organizing shelves, monitoring inventory, and dealing with the other crew members on board. Being a crew member of Epsilon certainly did not fit her personality. Whenever she was not in her small dull room she was constantly surrounded by the brash loud-mouthed people that worked alongside her.

Laying on her bed staring at her ceiling she continued her internal argument of getting up and facing the day, or laying there until her superior inevitably barged into her room shouting for her to get to work.

Deciding it wasn’t worth the verbal assault, she forced herself to get up to get dressed in the uniform she had left crumpled unceremoniously on the floor. Donning her wrinkled clothes, and her hair done in a pony-tail so loose it could barely be classified as such, she walked slowly out of her room. She knew she was at least going to endure a verbal lashing for her less than satisfactory appearance.

The long bright hallway felt all too short as she ambled her way forward for yet another long shift staring at shelves and making notes on any misplaced packages. As she walked forward distracted by her own longing for a different life, she began to notice a putrid smell. It reminded her of the dirty all you can eat seafood restaurant she had visited as a kid, but if it had been deserted for years with all of the food left inside. As soon as she first noticed it, it quickly overwhelmed her senses. She gagged and wretched at the smell.

Covering her nose with her uniform she continued to the storage bay where she worked. She worried that something must have gone horribly wrong with the environmental controls and somehow caused all of the food they were transporting to rot at the same time. If she had been on time to her shift she may have been able to stop what must be a catastrophic failure.

As the door opened to the storage bay Lucille braced herself to face the wrath of all those on board. Charles who typically sat at the front desk was sure to let her have it first. She prepared to look him directly in the eye and own up to her tardiness as soon as she could. The door opened and where Lucille stared expecting to find the eyes of Charles, she instead saw a bloody stump.

She took a step forward and then froze at the terrible scene before her. The floor was covered in blood, the bodies of all of those on her shift were strewn apart in pieces across the room. A headless body slouched backwards in the office chair at the front desk with a name tag identifying it as Charles. Movement caught her eye behind one of the shelves.

“Hello?” she called out, the word catching in her throat.

“One lives. Good. All others are dead,” a horrifying voice responded. It bounced and echoed in her head as the syllables took meaning.

She turned to run hoping to escape the fate of the others. Before she could even take a few steps she nearly crashed into a nightmare. Standing in the doorway blocking her escape was a horrible monster. Humanoid in shape with a greenish blue lobster-like shell covering its body, evil red eyes stared at her. One of its arms ended in a large blood soaked claw. The other ended in a shell covered hand that held Charly’s head by the hair.

“You will listen. You will obey, or you will end as this one,” it said, shaking Charly’s dismembered head at her.

She turned back around towards the storage room and fled in absolute terror. Nearly slipping on the gore she darted down a hallway of shelves. There was one other exit to the storage bay. If she could just make it out she was confident that she could lose the monster in the various rooms onboard the ship. Just a few more steps and she would be there.

A tremendous force pulled backwards on her hair causing her feet to fly out from underneath her as she tried to keep moving. She stared up from the ground into the lifeless eyes of Charly’s head as it was held overtop of her. There were now two of the creatures standing above her. They both glowered down at her hungrily as wolves do to helpless prey.

“We are giving you a last chance for survival. Return to your home. Tell of our deeds to your leaders. They must bring war to us. Can you do this?” The one holding Charly’s head said. Lucille noticed that this one was a head taller than the one who had caught her. Its face was so human besides those horrible red eyes and gray complexion, but as it spoke Lucille could see all of its teeth were predatorily sharp. It waved Charly’s severed head again to echo the threat.

“Yes,” she replied shakily, “I can. I will tell them what I saw, and they will want revenge.”

“Good!” it shouted. Then smiled at her.

Its smile was full of malice, it was a worse site than that of the dismembered people she had seen. It was even worse than the shocked expression of Charly’s bodiless head. She knew that smile of pure evil would haunt her dreams even more than all of the horrible acts its wearer had committed on Epsilon.

The other creature reached down with it’s clawless hand and casually threw her over its shoulder. She was carried swiftly towards the pod. She was tossed roughly inside and heard the door slam shut.

“War is coming. We are the Nokken,” the voice entered her head one more time before the escape pod jettisoned.

***

Lucille peared out of the small viewport in the escape pod to watch the fight happening in space. She could not believe her eyes as the ships flew back and forth with their blades attempting to destroy each other. Having seen one of the terrifying “Nokken” creatures she could not imagine what the beings in the other ships looked like.

All she could do was watch. Tears flowed freely down her face as she tried to repress the horror she had just seen. Whenever she fidgeted her shoes made horrible wet noises as they were soaked from running through the blood of the others on Epsilon.

She had attempted to enable the distress frequency in the escape pod but it continued to flash a red inactive sequence. As if it was being intercepted or blocked somehow.

If these horrible things want me to bring “revenge” so badly, why would they jam my signal? She thought to herself.

Just then she watched the large pyramadic ship sweep in between her and the fleet of approaching ships. It spun and sent many of them tumbling end over end in pieces. She flinched involuntarily at the sight of the destruction.

Hold it together Lucille. You can do this, she repeated the thought over and over, reminding herself to breath as the battle continued to rage.

She noticed that one of the smashed ships that had collided with the large spinning ship was careening out of control towards her pod. She gasped in horror as she realized that it was on a course to collide with her.

She tensed all of her muscles and held on to the safety handle as tightly as she could, peering through narrowed eyes at the approaching vessel. She hoped it would miss her, or at least that one of the blades that was sticking out of the sides wouldn’t cut her in half as it spun end over end towards her.

A jolt of impact sent her flying into the side of the pod. A black tunnel encircled her vision as she mercifully lost consciousness before the complete pain of the impact could set in.

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