Star Titan

The crash site was even worse than Mara anticipated. A crater the size of a city stretched out in all directions. The Star Titan was aptly named; it was nearly 3 miles long, so the ensuing damage was roughly equivalent to several city blocks slamming into the planet at terminal velocity. Dead brakka bushes and uprooted grubnar trees littered the area, and massive scorch marks suggested the surrounding forest had been on fire for days. The height from the edge of the crater to the ground was almost a hundred feet. It was a good thing Kerrigan packed climbing gear, otherwise they wouldn't have been able to get to the bottom of the crater at all.

Illiana looked at her. "What do you think?"

"I think there's no way in hell we're going to find any survivors."

The others exchanged glances. They had been friends a long time. Every one of them knew what Mara's face looked like when she was on the edge. She didn't care. All she cared about was whether or not they could find Sean's body.

Roland turned his left wrist over. His suit's built-in holo-pad illuminated, splashing light across his furrowed brow.

"Readings look clear," he said. "There's some residual radiation, but most of the initial contamination has dissipated by now."

Mara was the first to enter the wreckage. It wasn't hard to find an entrance. She just picked a hole in the hull and hoisted herself inside. Illiana and Kerrigan were right behind her. Roland was dragging a bit, but that was normal for him. She'd never known an alien fauna expert who wouldn't spend every second looking for signs of wildlife, especially on an unexplored exoplanet like this one.

"Okay, team," Kerrigan said. "Let's make some credits today. I've had my eye on a particular light-jumper model that ITO just dropped for some time."

"Knock it off, Kerr, " Illiana interjected. "This is a serious mission. You know that."

"What? I'm just trying to lighten the mood. We can still joke around, can't we?"

Illiana shot him a warning glare.

"What? She said it herself. No way in hell anyone survived this crash."

Illiana's fist shot out and hit him in the arm faster than a snake strike.

"Ow!" He proclaimed.

Mara rolled her eyes and tried to ignore both of them.

Just a few feet into the ship, the sun's rays quickly faded to nothing. Darkness crept out of the Titan's nooks and crannies like a predatory animal, stalking them through the ruined hallways, waiting to pounce the second somebody let their guard down.

"Activate lights," Mara said.

Her visor lights came on. The invasive darkness fled wherever she looked. Illiana and the others activated their lights as well.

They picked their way carefully through the rubble, examining rooms and debris, taking notes where applicable, searching for signs of life. Mara must've done a hundred missions just like this. It was nothing new. Search, find, rescue. Simple. But this time everything was different.

She'd begged Sean not to join the Star Titan. He had been so excited she almost didn't want to say anything, but she knew she had to. Colony missions were always dangerous, but one this far out in deep space was particularly risky. When Mara's ship received the Titan's mayday, they immediately entered hyper speed. They wasted no time at all. It still took them almost three weeks to get here.

Even if anybody did survive the crash, they wouldn't have lasted three weeks. The colonists were headed for a nearby planet with a lower oxygen content in the atmosphere. Here, the air was almost seventy percent oxygen. Any human that wasn't wearing an exosuit would pass out within minutes. Then the oxygen poisoning would claim them within a few hours. Sean was gone. Mara knew that, and so did her friends. Still, she had to see him. She had to know for sure.

Each room they cleared looked like the last. Scattered debris, massive damage, furniture and equipment irreparably destroyed. It wasn't long before they started finding rooms with occupants. Most of the bodies were mangled. Getting tossed around a giant tin can and then slammed against a planet has a way of breaking bones and severing limbs. One body, evidently the remains of an off-duty watch captain, had been completely decapitated. His wound was jagged and torn, consistent with an injury received during the crash, but Mara couldn't see anything sharp in the room. Something about that unnerved her. She made a note of the room and its tenant and kept moving.

Eventually, they entered the cafeteria. The wide, expansive space would normally be lined with neat rows of long tables and benches. In its current state, the damage was immense. In the descent and subsequent crash, the benches and tables had become spears, battering rams, wrecking balls of metal and wood. Splinters littered the ground. Twenty-foot-long benches stuck out of the aluminum serving stations like rows of wooden rancar teeth. Spoiled food was splattered all over the walls and floors, various smears of pallid colors and chunks of malodorous mystery meat. It looked like a food fight gone terribly wrong.

"Hey guys, I've got something over here."

Kerrigan was near the back of the cafeteria, crouched over a dark red blotch on the floor. When Mara looked at it, her visor lights illuminated the pool of blood. It was wet and shiny, a small scarlet river sitting still and stagnant atop the metal floor.

"It's fresh," Kerrigan said. He swiped two fingers across the pond's surface and held up his hand. Blood dripped from his fingertips.

Mara's eyes followed the long red streak. It trailed across the floor, away from the two of them, and turned into erratic drag marks that lead out of the cafeteria. Mara took off. She heard Kerrigan's shouts behind her, but she didn't care. If there was a chance Sean was still alive, then she had to find him. She needed to know.

Mara cleared the mess hall in seconds. She heard the pounding footsteps of her team behind her, but she didn't slow down. The hallway outside the cafeteria was dark and narrow. Something white and vaporous hung in the air here, and small specks drifted in and out of her visor's light beams. It was harder to see the trail of blood, but she managed to follow it all the way to a body lying prone in the middle of the floor.

Her heart stopped. The figure before her was unlike anything she had ever seen before. He had been disemboweled, but that wasn't the most gruesome part of the scene. His body was bulbous at odd intervals. Yellow pustules characterized most of his exposed flesh, and he seemed to be growing a second tongue outside of his mouth. Mara gaped at that big pink flap hanging limply from his cheek and felt the bile rising up through her throat. It took every ounce of willpower in her body to keep her lips closed and choke it back down.

The other three finally caught up to her.

"It's him," Mara said.

Illiana's face fell. She said nothing. Mara didn't expect her to. They all knew this was coming. Nobody could have survived that crash.

"This doesn't make sense," Kerrigan muttered.

"What is it?" Roland asked.

Kerrigan shook his head. "This kill is fresh. And look at the state of his body. He's deformed."

"Kerrigan!" Illiana said.

"What? I'm saying he looks...mutated. He must've survived the crash somehow, but the radiation from the fusion engines was cooking him alive."

"Wait, back up," Mara said. "Why did you refer to him as a 'kill?'"

"Well, people don't just get their insides ripped out, mutant or not. This was clearly a wildlife kill."

"That's not possible," Roland said. "There aren't any droppings inside the ship, or anywhere near it. I checked."

Kerrigan made a face. "You're disgusting, you know that?"

Roland took the insult in stride and carried on. "Wildlife could not have killed this man. He also could not have disemboweled himself, and obviously we all saw the signs in the cafeteria."

Roland paused, evidently reluctant to voice what they were all thinking.

"It's like he was attacked, and then dragged here."

A loud clanging noise split the stillness. The singsong-y pings of metal-on-metal echoed through the halls as loud as an explosion. In unison, all four of them unslung their blasters and took up battle positions without a word.

"If it's not wildlife, what else could we be dealing with?" Kerrigan's voice was strained, words forced through gritted teeth like logs in a woodchipper.

"Could be other survivors," Roland offered.

"That's not possible. Nobody could have survived this long."

"Sean did," Mara whispered.

The others carried on like they hadn't heard her.

"If it is other survivors, we need to find them," Illiana said.

"Hell no," Kerrigan answered. "For all we know, these freaks have lost their minds. They're probably just crazed cannibals by now."

"Unless we aren't dealing with survivors at all," Roland said.

Mara shot a glare at Illiana in her peripheral. She saw the other woman stare back. They didn't have time to get into Roland's superstitions. Mankind had colonized much of the known galaxy, yet there was no credible evidence to suggest that intelligent alien life existed. Flora and fauna, sure, but that was about it. All the stories she heard her whole life were nothing more than campfire tales.

"Okay, fan out," Mara commanded. "We won't know what we're dealing with until we find it. Let's move."

A direct order was given. The others moved wordlessly into the surrounding corridors. Mara pushed deeper into the hallway she was facing. Tears tried to well at the corners of her eyes, but she willed them away. Grief could wait. Right now, she needed to focus on the mission. Faltering even for a second in deep space could be fatal.

A nightmarish scream silenced her inner turmoil. The comms speaker inside her visor crackled and buzzed with the intense volume. She stabbed at her wrist pad, trying to turn the volume down, but the scream didn't last long. It was quickly replaced with a muffled gurgling sound.

She turned and ran back down the hallway, her rifle raised and at the ready.

"Check in!" She shouted.

"Here!" Illiana's voice came over comms.

"Here!" Kerrigan said.

"Oh no." Illiana's voice was shaky this time. "Roland."

Mara cursed under her breath and moved faster. Kerrigan came out of a side passage ahead of her and barreled down the hall that Roland took. Mara turned the corner after him. A moment later, Illiana was right behind her.

Kerrigan stood over Roland's body. Roland wasn't moving.

"Come on out, you coward!" Kerrigan shouted. "Show yourself!"

Something dark shot out of the blackness and into Kerrigan. His head jerked backwards, then his entire body slumped forward. He collapsed over Roland's corpse and didn't get back up.

"Open fire!" Mara said.

Laser fire erupted from their guns. Red bolts of plasmic death raced down the hallway. Each ray illuminated the dark for only a split second before the umbral womb closed back over them again. Mara let them both spray a few dozen shots each, then shouted into her mic for them to retreat.

Illiana and Mara ran back the way they had come. Mara kept waiting to see Sean's corpse. She didn't want to, but his body marked the entrance to the cafeteria. When it didn't appear, she kept bracing herself to trip over him in the dark, but that moment never came either. Had she passed him? All these damn hallways looked the same.

Eventually, she had to admit they were lost. She was running out of breath, and Illiana's labored wheezes spilled over the comms system. An open doorway loomed on their right. Mara waved a hand at it, and the two of them slipped inside.

The room appeared to be a dry goods pantry. Long shelves of canned fruits and beans leaned against each other, and the floor was littered with hundreds of cans. The last two survivors of their team crouched behind some of the shelves to catch their breath.

"What the hell is that thing?" Illiana panted.

"I don't know. I didn't get a good look at it. You?"

"I couldn't tell. It was too dark. The only thing I could see was a huge shape of some kind."

"Yeah, me too."

Illiana scanned the room. "We gotta get out of here."

"I agree. But first we have to figure out which way the exit is."

"Mara, we're lost! We're just gonna have to catch out breath, pick a direction, and run!"

Mara shot her a warning look. "Illiana, keep your voice down. Do not panic."

Illiana threw up her hands in disgust. Her elbow bumped into one of the shelves that had fallen against the wall during the wreck. The shelf rattled, and halfway down its length, a lone tin can that had miraculously maintained its perch toppled over. The can hit the ground with a loud CLANG and rolled out into the hallway.

For a second, there was blessed silence. Then the clamorous crash of the can was answered with a low, heavy thud. Illiana and Mara held their breath. The thud was followed by another. Then another. Then another. Mara tried to focus on the noise. It didn't sound like the clicking claws of wildlife, or the slapping sound of bare feet on metal. It sounded like heavy boots.

Illiana lifted her rifle, her movements slow and methodical. She crept away from the door, locked eyes with Mara, and then nodded towards the other end of the room. Mara quietly lifted her own rifle and followed after.

The footsteps continued their agonizing approach. Illiana snuck around the far corner, leveled her rifle, and spun around the collapsed shelves. Time slowed down. Mara's gaze was glued to her friend. Several agonizing seconds later, Illiana lowered her gun, turned towards Mara, and shrugged. That was when her skull split open.

Mara stared in shock as Illiana crumpled. Brain and blood spilled onto the floor and began pooling around her boots. For the second time that night, tears sprang to her eyes.

Mara screamed, raised her rifle, and charged. She came around the corner with all the rage, grief, and sadness that riddled her heart, and she pulled the trigger. A hand reached out of the darkness and grabbed her gun. Plasma fire lanced the ceiling as the weapon was wrenched upward and twisted out of her hands. The figure swung something at her. She ducked, tripped over Illiana's corpse, and fell on her ass.

Mara's hands struggled for purchase, but her fingers slid through her best friend's blood. She managed to scramble backwards. As her visor lights banished the darkness, she finally got a look at her attacker.

There, towering above her, was a man.

He had a thick neck and bulky arms. The same yellow mucus that covered her brother obscured the behemoth's face. A dirty blue jumpsuit hung from his shoulders in tatters, and his left breast was adorned with embroidered words that read ENGINE ROOM. In his meaty right hand, he was holding a wicked axe that looked like a jagged piece of metal tied to a steel rod.

The monster lumbered towards her. He was slow. That could work.

Mara swung her hand at him. Blood flew from her fingers and splattered into his eyes. The monster grunted angrily and swiped at his face. She slipped between his legs, ducked underneath a row of shelves, and ran.

On the other side of the room was another doorway. The lights on her helmet revealed a curtain of hanging bones tied to the doorframe with string. There was nowhere else to run, so she charged inside.

Before the crash, this room was probably unassuming. It had a small desk, a couple filing cabinets, and a few more shelves. At one time it had probably been the office of a quartermaster, in charge of stocking shelves and tracking inventory. Now it was a grisly nightmare.

Meat covered the room. Rotting piles lay in every corner. Long strips of skin and sinew hung from the walls. There was a human thigh half-hacked to pieces sitting atop the desk. Mara stared in horror at the rotten display. She was suddenly grateful that her suit prevented her from smelling anything outside the foggy glass visor.

Splitting pain exploded in her leg. She screamed, and for a split second had the insane thought that there was nobody on the other end of the commlink that could hear her. Wet blood dripped down her thigh, and there was a fresh blast of agony as the beast yanked his axe from her.

Mara tried to hit him, but her sundered quad muscles betrayed her. Instead she screamed again, and he responded by chopping her other leg.

The floor rushed up to meet her. Mara clawed away from him, dragging her useless legs behind her as if her limbs had already been added to the monster's hideous stock. She clambered through piles of rotting flesh, and he stomped after her one languorous bootstep at a time.

When she had backed up all the way to the wall, she pressed herself against it and waited for her doom. The monster loomed over her and paused, as though he was savoring the moment.

Mara looked him in the eyes. He stared back, though his gaze went right through her. There was no light behind those bloodshot irises. He raised his axe high above his head, ready to deal the killing blow.

Mara produced a proton grenade from her belt, pulled the pin, and dropped it at his feet. Unlike the mutant beast, her eyes were clear and fierce, filled with every ounce of wrath she possessed.

"This is for Sean, you sick bastard."