Phineas waved the others off and watched them exit the boundaries of their outpost into the great unknown.
He sighed with relief.
“Good riddance.” He whispered under his breath. It would do Cantwell some good to detach himself from Phineas’s hip. To take in the sights and experience what this ‘wonderful world’ had to offer.
There was work to do but he’d get along with it under his own time. Whatever that rock was communicating to the poor newbie wasn’t so dangerously important that it needed to have a strict time table.
He stopped.
“When the fuck do they get back?” Phineas whispered. If they made a beeline for the hunk of metal, using the topographical map as a reference point, it’d take them somewhere between one and three hours depending on the impediments and the need for rest?
That wasn’t even including the salvaging time and the trek back.
“Shit, I should have gone with em.” He grumbled.
Phineas slapped himself.
The newbie explained why there was only space for a party of four on that expedition and it had everything to do with the lack of a suit.
He’d given his up after getting a consultation from the neighborhood gearhead assuring him that the refitting process wasn’t going to mess with any of his settings.
“It better not…”
He was starting to stir.
Phineas stretched out his legs, bending down from side to side to get the knees less rigid and the calves less tense. With the warmup done, he took a deep breath and broke out into a full sprint.
He navigated the locked structures like they were discarded metal heaps in a junk town; unrecyclable scrap left to sit on the ground and take up space until they were inevitably melted down and repurposed into something worthwhile.
The buildings themselves were nothing to write home about. A number of em had strange lettering's on them and rudimentary sketches of ships and suits. The commander would probably get a kick out of investigating the stuff so he noted them down in his head and moved past.
The outpost was surprisingly big. He’d done a cursory run across the perimeter just to check for any interior dangers so between the adrenaline and the severity of the situation, what he was currently doing was an in-depth stroll.
He could feel the walls stretch on and on now as he ran and ran beside it.
There were four gates to speak of with long since abandoned guard posts. Gates implied walls but the mechanism for creating a blockade wasn’t immediately apparent to him. Twisting staircases were faintly lit by the light from the interior grounds, so his inspection wouldn’t bear fruit while stumbling like an idiot in the dark.
Another note in his mental docket and he was off to inspect other peculiarities with the compound.
“All in all,” Phineas spoke aloud, “we’ve got the barracks, the station, the junkyard, and a few other buildings, only one of which was accessible. Great. Guess we’re gonna have to adapt to eating dirt and drill bits.” He took a deep breath and found that he wasn’t winded.
Which was fucking odd.
He’d run around the perimeter twice now and had more than enough energy to continue his running. He wasn’t even hungry or thirsty. Not a dew drop of sweat so much as smeared his olive skin.
“What. The. Fuck?” He mumbled. Phineas wiped his hands underneath his pits and the back of his knees and found that everything was dry. His eyes hovered over the thin white grooves tracing across his fingertips and around the rest of his body towards the ember core.
It was peculiar that of all the things Aurelio had talked about, not one of his statements made mention of the little lines across their skin.
He thought about their origins. He thought about the last twelve hours.
---
The wreckage they’d been exploring groaned and heaved like a dying beast, its metallic body decomposing in real time to astral radiation and micro-debris eroding the wreck.
The comms in his ear had a pleasant faint buzz to it, the rest of the crew on another line waiting for him to return.
They’d been given a task that Kalani was in no position to refuse. Frankly, Phineas was just thankful that their request wasn’t taking them to some war-torn planet or infected mega-station.
Even better that they were in the margins of the universe, making do with the scrap left behind by frontiersmen looking to expand beyond Nul-Sec.
Phineas looked at the sonar map, attempting to piece together the corridors and purposes of the various rooms and halls left in disrepair and decay. The arm in his exo-suit waved around the exposed room, a light on his wrist shining on beakers and terminals and mathematical equations he was unfamiliar with.
“Looked like something that Canti would like…” he mumbled. He snapped a photo of the equation and sent it to his private album.
Another wail from the beast caused a shiver to run up his spine. The wreckage gave him the creeps the moment he stepped foot on it. The darkness around him felt sinuous. His flashlight could shine down on rusted debris and the abyss that licked at the edges of the circular ray of light would writhe in an unnatural manner.
They all had flags going off about the state of the mission, the recovery of some stasis pods left behind on a supposed luxury freighter, but they weren’t in a position to refuse.
Only in a position to limit the risk.
“Luxury freighter my ass.” Phineas grumbled.
His steps forward gave way to dull thunks on metallic flooring. Phineas pointed his light wherever it could pierce, illuminating more decrepit terminals and vents and sheets of metal pierced through like the end result of a shotgun blast.
The more rooms he crossed by, the more his suspicions crept up that the abandoned freighter they were investigating wasn’t a luxury liner at all. It felt more like a research station than anything else with all of the numeric gibberish scribbled on boards and inert consoles lying dormant in the dark.
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His communications linked piped up with activity as the rest of the crew entered his line.
“You alive in there, Phin?” Kalani asked in her worried tone.
Phineas chuckled, “Yeah, I’m alright over here. Our employer’s a fucking liar though.”
Elena scoffed over the line, “What else is new. Are things cleared there?”
“I ain’t picking up on anything from within the ship. Cant’s gonna have a better time assessing dormant threats though.”
“There’s a power signature in the ship's cargo hold. Looks localized.” Cantwell provided his assessment of things.
“Elena, we’re gonna steer the Skipper near the hull. Phineas, rendezvous on your end and open their access point from inside to let us through. Do you copy?” Kalani organized their plan of action and the rest of the crew fell in line.
A localized power source meant a couple of scenarios, none of them beneficial for his continued health and well being. He grabbed a piece of loose metal and moved towards the hold on his map when another room caught his attention.
He found himself in a foundry of some sort, half opened basins devoid of their contents with hooks hanging over heavy machinery. It was a marvel of engineering that they were capable of stuffing so much into the tiny chamber.
Humanoid chassis were hung on the walls like meat at a butcher’s shop, the integrity of their metal warped and peppered with tears and punctures.
“Gang, there’s a whole factory of exo’s here. What the fuck is this place?” Phineas chimed in.
“Limit comms while we’re here, Phin. We can check things out when we’re local.” Kalani reminded him.
He pulled away from the facility and after some disquieting silence spent walking, found the cargo hold.
The hold was covered in a coagulated black ichor, the sludge thinnest at the edges and nauseatingly viscous towards the center of a pillar of some sort. Whatever that goop was, he wasn’t letting it touch his feet.
Phineas engaged the propulsion system in his exo-suit before entering the hold properly.
“Get your wings on before crossing through. I don’t trust the gunk that’s on here.” He unlocked the access point for the Skipper and the rest of his crew boarded.
Cantwell gave him a solid fist bump as they floated down towards the center of the room.. Pale blue lights tried their best to shine through the tar surrounding the room, their dim glow suggesting that the power in the area was, in fact, working.
“The pods are over there. Only one of them is operational, though.” Cantwell stated.
“And what about the pillared sludge over here?” Elena gestured at the structure in the center of the hold.
Cantwell pushed himself towards the hardened sludge and opened his palm. Thin red scan lines traced across the pillar.
“Huh.” Cantwell muttered.
“Huh, what?” Phineas retorted.
“The reads off. This sludge is messing with it somehow.” He answered.
Kalani exhaled.
“Let’s step away from it then. Elena, take point in front of the thing. Cantwell, Phineas, you’re helping me disconnect the pod. Let's move quickly.” Kalani gave them more directives.
Elena pointed her rifle at the thing while the rest of the crew worked in silence.
Phineas messed with his internal systems and boosted the audio gain within his frame to listen to the local audio. What were once muted groans and warbles of a dead ship became drawn out cries of agony and damnation.
“Tick, tick, tick, tick…” Phineas strained to hear past the metallic bellows. The ticking was unmeasured and erratic, unlike any clock or core he’d ever heard of.
It sounded like a cascade of pin drops clattering on the floor or the chattering of insects with metallic mandibles.
“Got it!” Kalani exclaimed as the pod let out a hiss. The panel turned off, leaving the frozen man in the dark.
Poor bastard drifting in space all alone. Phineas was amazed at his luck though that loose debris hadn’t pierced through the pod.
“Commander, get that pod moving, now!” Elena cried out.
A mechanical shriek erupted from the center of the cargo hold, the tar around the room receding into the pillar, millions of plump worms swarming back to the source.
The tar seeped into the structure to reveal a mangled mess of wires and metal given humanoid form. It dragged and shambled its way towards Kalani, Cantwell, and Phineas.
“What the fuck is that!” Phineas yelled.
Shots rang out from Elena’s rifle, dislocating nascent limbs from the monsters frame. The sludge was quick to reform however.
Cantwell kicked his feet back and propelled himself and the pod up above the creature. Phineas and Kalani followed closely behind.
“I’ll buy us some time to get out of here!” Elena yelled.
“We’re not leaving you behind!” Kalani replied.
“Fuckfuckfuckfuckfuck!” Phineas was panicking. Whatever it was, it didn’t look like they’d been doing any damage to the thing.
It twisted and whirred before barreling itself towards Elena. The soldier propelled herself to the side as its mangled limbs flailed at where she once stood.
Phineas felt his blood turn cold and his skin curdle as the local audio picked up sounds of bending metal and squelching meat from the cargo hold's main door. Beyond the hall was a torrent of writhing fluid.
It seeped from the walls and the vents, a sentient plague seeking to subsume them in darkness.
Elena roared as she emptied the rounds in her rifle at the creature, its body knitting the wounds closed with as much speed.
“Elena! You need to come with us!” Kalani yelled.
“Phineas,” Cantwell turned to his friend, “Push the pod in the cart. I’ll grab Elena.”
He didn’t get the chance to argue with his friend. The giant leapt back down as the monster melded with the ocean sludge, half its body assimilated into the chattering sea of darkness.
“Get back, Cantwell! Take the rest of the crew and-” Elena was cut off as Cantwell grabbed her by the waist and slung her across his back.
“Commander's orders.” Cantwell replied matter-of-factly. She didn’t care. She flailed and shouted obscenities but he didn’t let her go.
“Get in the freighter!” Kalani yelled. Phineas pulled ahead of her and barred the path.
“We need to check if that infection is in our ship or not! Keep tight for one second.” Phineas stated. He wasn’t going to let the lugnut show him up like that.
He propelled himself towards the freighter's open hatch and found himself overwhelmed with a wave of nausea and heat. This heat squirmed underneath the sinews and skin of his body, his eyes incapable of witnessing the subject in the room.
Phineas felt the rest of his crew's presence behind him, their own body's crumbling from the invading physical anguish.
He felt his skin blister and boil. He felt the sweat on his skin hiss.
And then his mind cleared. There was rapturous singing. The blinding light invited him to partake in its splendor.
It was a disease that SHE would cleanse in holy fire. SHE would immolate their bones and burn them into a new life.
ThEY wOulD bE LIGhT!
He reached his hand out and the will of God graced him with her presence.
Phineas was floating in the universe as a speck of dust looking out into the far reaches of space. Tiny stars twinkling in the void, their message lost to the breadth of empty space.
Numerous spectators littered the planet below, looking at the struggle as the ill-omen threatened to consume all mundane things.
SHE would not die. SHE cannot die. SHE was LIGHT.
SHE would outlive them all.
The weight of the world sent their wreckage and freighter crashing down.
A fireball hurdling into a den of discarded nightmares.