USCSS Casimir: Outer Rim Territories

Bleep....Bleep....Bleep.... went a steady warning tone waking Madison with a start. Everything hurt. Her head was a fog of pain, her ears were ringing and worst of all she couldn't see! An immediate flash-back with the memory of being shot at point-blank range terrorized her. Do I still have a face?! she wondered, reaching up timidly, feeling at her badly pulverized face shield.

Bleep....Bleep....Bleep.... insisted the tone. The camera's! Their motion sensors have been activated! Regrettably, damage to the face shield disabled its image display functions. Right now she desperately wanted to see those! Instead she reset the audible alarm and waited three heartbeats. When the tone didn't go off again she knew whatever set the cameras off had already moved on. Now useless, she detached the face shield from her helmet and discarded it.

Only the hammering of her own heartbeat and the sound of her own rapid breathing kept company with the lingering ring in her ears. Hesitantly she worked her jaw and felt over her face for injuries. Cuts and a tender bruise under her left eye stung sharply when she touched them. Her nose was also broken, yet not for the first time. Holding her breath, she immediately pinched it and forced it back into place, clenching her jaw to avoid crying out. Pain is an affirmation of life, she reminded herself, blinking tears of anguish from her eyes wondering, How long was I out?

Madison was sprawled out in the corridor beside the locker room outside the hypersleep chamber. The seated corpse of Seleste was only a few feet away, still hugging herself in a cowering posture with a gaping hole punched through the top of her skull. Fuck that! That's not gonna be me! Madison promised herself with a heavy swallow getting to her feet and taking stock of what weaponry she had left.

Her heavy auto-repeating shotgun was gone, as was the pistol out of her belt holster. Only the knife and her bull-pup F90 assault rifle were still at hand. Son of a bitch took the grenades?! He shouldn't have the first clue how to use them!

Madison clutched Kitten back safely in her arms checking that it was fully loaded. Only then did some semblance of calm return to her psyche. Taking a breath to steady her nerves she peered around the corner of the corridor towards the ladder in the middle of the companionway junction. I placed both those camera's below this level. The question is, what activated the motion sensors?

At this point it didn't make much difference to her if it was the engineer or the Alien. Bartimaeus proved himself to be a threat to her, same as the Alien was. At this moment, the fact Kitten killed men and Aliens both suited her just fine. That asshole deserves a bullet as much as the Alien does!

However, the Alien was the greater threat, and in that regard she wasn't entirely sure what she was dealing with? Why was this Alien so choosy about picking its battles? Was it unwilling to attack armed prey? Madison quickly dismissed that notion with a quick shake of the head. Mad, don't kid yourself. Underestimating that monster will get you killed!

Slowly she stepped around the perimeter of the companionway junction, her back to the walls, eyes always moving. When she reached the entrance to the corridor that led through the mess hall to the bridge she paused and took a long look in that direction. From here it was obvious the pressure door of the bridge was shut, but was it locked? She couldn't determine that without getting closer.

If Bartimaeus and Sophelia were both on the bridge right now they couldn't have set off the motion sensors on the camera's. The Alien was close! Madison felt the hairs on her neck rise with growing dread. This put her in a very precarious situation. What would a self-absorbed murderous asshole do from the bridge in this situation? Was it worth the risk to verify his presence on the bridge or not? It made sense at least to take a peek. Glimpsing where the Casimir was at this minute was important towards planning her next move.

As she stepped into the corridor approaching the mess hall Madison placed another camera behind her overlooking the companionway junction. Even a moments warning about something moving up behind her was better than nothing. Even better than that would be to shut the next intervening pressure door behind her, isolating the mess from this corridor. The problem with that was touching any of the door controls could set off monitors in the bridge. Just now she didn't think that was the wisest risk to take.

Inside the mess hall the lighting was brighter, almost cheery, intended to confer a homey sense of safety and warmth. The sight of cushy seats and cabinets full of foodstuffs were tempting offerings. However, her experience and hard-worn instincts prevailed over the urge to take comfort; focusing instead on places someone, or something, could hide in the near vicinity.

Poised on the balls of her feet, Madison did a quick sweep of the lounge, behind the food prep counter and anywhere else that might hide a threat. On the other side of the large circular table to her left was another corridor with another intervening pressure door which was also open. She placed a camera facing down that direction as well, covering both her flanks before she moved on.

Past the main mess hall was the smaller galley, which was more specifically a beverage station. Close now to the bridge pressure door Madison saw that the door controls were indeed red indicating it was locked from the other side. Through the windows inset into the door she glimpsed blinking indicator lights and what she thought might be someone moving?

Crouching low she approached the pressure door quiet as a cat, pressing her ear against the cool surface straining to hear what was on the other side. She didn't make out any voices. Slowly, Madison raised her head to the lower edge of the window and peered inside.

The bridge of the USCSS Casimir was the standard design of an old Bison. Old-school. Functional. No-frills; designed to interface the crew with the ships surfeit of systems in a direct, practical way. It was large enough to make use of the whole crew with ease, yet sufficiently cramped with poor ergonomics to resemble an over-sized flight cockpit. Every square inch of space was predominated with control surfaces made up with switches, buttons, computer readout screens and auxiliary equipment. People had to clamber, duck, bend and squeeze their way around.

Bridge lights were arranged unto the perimeter of a raised, roughly hexagonal, overhead compartment inset into the ceiling. A smaller hexagonal module dropped down from the center with several display screens and status readouts. Other overhead lights were spread out throughout the edges and corners of the bridge to provide illumination in tighter, more confined areas.

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All these lights were dimmer in nature than the glowing screens of flight console terminals, buttons and switches offering a cool, diffuse light which added depth, if not clear definition, to the size and space of the chamber.

Intended perhaps to be easy on the eyes of the crew, it also made it difficult for Madison to see everything at a glance as it served only to highlight; rather then penetrate, the many shadowy corners. Most of the bridge was raised up on a level two steps up from her line of sight, further hindering what she could easily see. Madison only sat on this bridge once during the take-off from Torin Prime, but she remembered who was sitting where on lift-off.

Of the six primary command flight consoles, four were set up in side-by-side pairs, one in front of the other. Captain Yago and his brother Fausto were in the rear command seats (which were also the highest vantage point on the bridge). His wife Seleste and Sophelia were in the forward pair of seats taking on the duties of XO and Navigation Officer.

Along either side of these four primary command seats was a walkway of metal grating lit from beneath by a soft white light. On the far side of these were the two remaining command stations for the ships engineers, Bartimaeus and his apprentice Vicente, Captain Yago's son.

The Casimir had large, multi-faceted viewing ports on either side of the bridge, bulging convexly outward like two bulbous eyes of an insect. There were no view ports facing directly forward, up, or any other direction that she could see out of the bridge. The problem with the positioning of the view ports where they were was that they were designed to offer excellent visibility to the command crew seated at their stations, not to someone peeking through the pressure door set into the rear bulkhead. She couldn't see much of anything from this vantage point beyond a glimpse that the ship was drifting somewhere through space.

At the rear, behind the six command consoles, were for more auxiliary flight seats; two of which were fixed on either side of a star-chart plotting table. Madison was strapped into one of these during their take offf, but now Bartimaeus' daughter, Sophelia, was seated there clutching a pistol on her lap in both hands. My pistol! Madison noted. She could also see that Sophelia looked non too confident to use it. Presently her eyes had a distant, far-away stare to them. She's still in shock, Madison guessed, but where is her father?

She remembered then that the bridge had two entrances. This one leading from the mess and another by way of the main bridge corridor that arched around the infirmary. If she doubled-back and circled around she could peer through the windows on that other pressure door as well. Maybe there was something else she could see from there? Maybe not.

Sophelia's posture suddenly changed as Bartimaeus the greek stomped unto the bridge from that direction. In his left hand he was dragging a bulky vacuum suit by the collar. Madison's heavy auto shotgun was gripped in his right, hanging by a strap over his shoulder. Son of a bitch! The sight of him prompted an immediate spike of rage from Madison.

“Put this on while I get another one!” He grunted at Sophelia dropping the suit to the deck along with its helmet.

Madison felt her teeth clench together as her anger was swept over by panic. Fuck! The asshole was planning to vent the ship! Before she even realized she was doing it, Madison started hammering on the window prompting both of them to look over, startled.

“Wait!” She cursed loudly. “Let me in!”

At this instant the Alien burst through the open pressure door behind Bartimaeus with a soul-withering shriek closing the distance on its prey with unreal speed and lethal timing. It pounced on the engineer before either he or Sophelia could even suck in a breath to start screaming.

Bartimaeus roared a howl of the damned even as the breath was knocked from his lungs. Reflexively he pulled the trigger of the big auto shotgun at the moment of impact. A concurrent, double blast of high-load buckshot boomed loudly, its barrels aimed somewhere low between himself and his daughter. The weapon kicked like a mule sparking against the deck plating as a hole the size of a basketball punched through it.

Yet as a natural consequence of the low, shallow angle of his shot several ricochet's deflected off the steel, one of which caught Sophelia in the upper leg as she was standing up from her chair. She screamed and collapsed to the deck, her eyes watering up, flush with tears. Other wayward buckshot punctured control panels and blasted through display screens at random.

The kick back of the shotgun sent Bartimaeus and the Alien spinning, tumbling together against the rear auxiliary flight seat on the port side of the bridge. A tangle of limbs and the creatures long, thrashing tail. In truth the big engineer outweighed the Alien but he was no match for its uncanny strength and unrivaled ferocity. His only hope was to somehow bring the shotgun to bear on it before it tore him apart.

Madison was so engrossed to behold the sudden ambush that she felt her blood run cold. In her heart it was her underneath its teeth and claws. The sharp pang of recreant fear and the certain knowledge that this is my fault, wrenched her gut into knots. Her best chance to kill it was now while it was still preoccupied and that motivation was the only thing that kept her focused.

“Let me in!” she yelled banging her hand against the window again and again.

Sophelia was lying on her side across the deck, one hand clamped over the wound in her thigh, the other clutching the pistol holding it up defensively. However she couldn't shoot at the Alien without hitting her father. More blasts of the the shotgun went off as they wrestled in a pool of his blood perforating the command consoles and bridge equipment with huge, smoking holes.

“Sophelia!” Madison yelled again. They were running out of time!

Finally, the young woman struggled back to her feet, half-limping, half-lurching towards the locked pressure door. She had to step down off the raised bridge level, leaning heavily on one of the control pedestals in the process. Blood bubbled through her fingers and soaked the leg of her flight suit.

Behind her the thrashing, violent struggle of the Alien and the engineer seemed to reach a climax. One final shotgun blast was heard, followed immediately by the high pitched scream of the Alien.

Was it hit?! Madison wondered, straining to see through the window. A spray of the Aliens acidic blood splashed across yet more equipment on the port side of the bridge. More smoke, sparks and shorting electrical circuits started a fire. Likely some of the acid must have also splashed unto Bartimaeus himself as his screams reached an ever-higher fever-pitch of agony.

Alarms and flashing lights started wailing all over the ship. Sophelia paused in her limping steps towards the pressure door, looking back as Bartimaeus made one final, gurgling scream. Suddenly the Alien's head rose up besides the captains control console, covered in gore, hissing with rage, back lit by flames as the electrical fire flared up and rapidly spread. There was a wound in its hip where a few hits of buckshot had cracked open its hardened carapace leaking acid blood that steamed and sizzled on the deck plating.

“HURRY!” Madison shouted, pounding on the window, trying to break Sophelia out of her state of shock; but it was too late. Sophelia didn't have the willpower to turn her back on the monster who had just tore her father to pieces.

Instead she stood still, shaking, fixated with horror so complete and paralyzing that she could do nothing but whimper and sob. Her eyes renewed streaming tears as the Alien focused all its attention and hate on her, hissing and spitting through its glistening fangs while the flames roared. Sophelia raised her pistol up defensively and started pulling the trigger.

The Alien burst apart in a massive concussive explosion, spraying gore and body parts to almost every corner of the bridge. Madison stared with disbelief before she remembered. The Grenades! That son of a bitch pulled the pins right before he died!