Five Part Story, part 2.

[zesty_pinto]

I could still hear the whining of decompression, the heavy thuds of metal rivets of the emergency lock pop and crunch away against the hatch as we sat in the cabin of a cramped shuttle that was filled with equipment, supplies, us, and the bright sanitary lights we sat in that now dimmed to a faint red. The others were silent, and to be honest, so was I and even if there was a sound from any of us it would not be heard over the radios we carried in our vacuum suits. The shuttle had docked and was now only one hatch away from taking us to the airlock.

The captain of the team was a grim looking man even under the slick bubble helmets.

"Entrance locked." It was the first sound that broke over the radio. "Still no sign of any activity. Even the ship's system doesn't sound like it's responding."

"Decker. Peters. Banjo. You stay here." Out of the twenty-seven men, twenty-four of them stood up. I still remember some of them unconsciously gripping the handles of their slung submachine guns "Admiral, I'm sure you still remember how to fire a pistol like the rest of us?"

Half of a chuckle entered the empty radio noise "You should know it never leaves your blood after all these years."

"Then I am sure we will be as ready as the rest if you follow us." His voice then raised with a callous touch that showed just how much less he respected us "The rest of you will be called up once we're sure it's okay. Two men will garrison. We're still not sure how safe the rest of this ship will be. As far as we know, this old can's Pandora's box and we're about ready to let the rest of the plagues go."

I think that was the last thing I heard before I watched the hatch open with several of the men following him into an almost dead, lightless airlock. The rest of the men slowly emptied out into the room and then the hatch closed behind us. The shuttle grew empty. The others may have wondered why they carried firearms. I was one of those that wondered, but it was somberly quiet in the shuttle and its sanitary white light as it bathed us again during the trip there.

Radio contact could be heard in vapid moments, only fleeting. Some of the problem may have been from all the electronics in the ship getting in the way. I knew it as well as the others that all those electromagnetic drives would foul something. Although we knew that the drive was dead, this ship was designed to have a backup system in case there was a critical failure with the engine, and even though we could detect nothing, it would have been wrong to have believed that it could not have been possible.

An hour passed and the radio signals now were empty. The air finally drew in more silence as we all sat wondering what happened until the sound of the radio came on.

"All of you might want to come out." It was not from any of us. It may have been a sentry group that was stationed outside. I looked to the others.

"I have to stay here," the pilot's voice admitted through the band of the dead air "It's the procedure."

"You might want to get out then. It's starting to look bad here."

A ripple of space rumbled and slapped the hull of the ship immediately afterwards. You would know the sensation if you ever walked by a ship that was slipping by you; the mass would push you with what little mass there was available in space. Something was moving outside, something large.

The pilot came onto the air again "We're heading out now."

"Fixed?" The navigator's voice came on the air shaking with fear. Like the rest of us, it was pent-up. The hours of radio silence may as well have been days. I think the head engineer was talking to himself all this time. We looked at each other and around each of us behind the plexiglass hoods were the looks of concern if this really was just a troubleshooting mission.

Then one of the men brought their hands to their machine gun.

"Captain's order. We stay here until ready."

The rest of us grew still. The pilot could not see what was happening as he sat in a room separate from us, but I think he knew.

"One more hour then," we could hear the pilot amend.

"No. Until he returns."

I was muttering to myself about what he said before. Pandora's box. Another angry wave of the vacuum was rumbling through. Now we could hear it tremble through the hull, through the equipment crates that rested around here. We could hear the shuttle start to creak and whine with pressure. The air grew heavier and angrier and more vibrant.

"We need to leave now!" The programmer was shrieking into the radio and it hurt my ears.

It was too late then. The shuttle began to creak and grunt. You could hear the rivets start to groan from the vibrations into the suits. The clean white lights on the ship now broke into the dark red again, bathing us in the dark.

"Anyone that can get out, get out NOW!" The pilot's voice broke out.

This time the man holding the firearm held it down, and then turned to the rest of us "Get what you can! We're going to the airlock." He slammed his fist on the control for the hatch. It opened slowly, slowly as it began to cry as it scraped outward with a rusty grating that bombarded our ears. I grabbed the nearest crate I could after remembering what was said and ran out after the man with the gun out jumped out and yelled at us with his radio off, telling us mutely to get out with a flashlight out since the airlock was still dead lightless.

As I stepped off, that was when the ship already began to crunch harder. The lights of the shuttle were now dead, but now so was what was left of the shuttle. Something crunched the vessel to a point where it now crumpled before us, spilling out a few ruined boxes and shrapnel. If the pilot was still alive, I could have only assumed he was dying. We were alone, and as I looked down, I realized we were even without any others.

There were two men that stood sentry outside, standing statuesquely still. At first I had wondered why they stood so still until we saw them begin to float from the low gravity of the ship as the shuttle crumpled itself into a metal ball, as still as the metal of the ship's walls.

We could see their faces frozen with eyes open wide as a clean hole was seen from the back their neck. Something round and and sharp punctured them there and immediately killed them and, without so much gravity left for them to go, still stood guard over something they could do nothing about. I turned to the others and we looked back at each other, grim faces in each of our expressions. Someone turned their radio on by accident as he muttered.

"Welcome to hell."