Day 8:

The path has been cleared after much effort. The parasites were much tougher to take down than before, perhaps as time passes the parasite has absorbed more of the host body. In any case we’ve made it through with only two moderate injuries, they’re currently under the care of Dr. Fornsby who’s making due with what he’s got available in the cargo hold. I’d like to get control of the med bay but seeing as it’s roughly half a mile away it would cost too much time and resources to just gain control of the med bay. For now the patients are in stable condition and are on heavy doses of antibiotics to prevent infection so hopefully the med bay won’t need to be a priority any time soon. On the bright side of things we’ve managed to rig a makeshift comms network by stringing together ten helmets spaced roughly fifty feet apart to act as relays and thus make use of their local comms integration. With functioning comms between the cargo hold and engineering we should be able to operate much more efficiently. In addition to working comms we’ve been able to get into life support since the ship is no longer running on emergency power so we should be able to run proper maintenance if need be as well as access the emergency rations should food ever become an issue. Tomlinson’s group has been working tirelessly to rid themselves of constant annoyance from the parasites, it seems as though there are far more infected than I could have guessed. I had hoped most of the crew had made it off the ship through the escape pods, and that may still be the case, but now I have to operate as if none of the roughly five-thousand crew members made it off the ship. Regardless of the number of parasites we still need to get ship comms back online if we want to make it out of here, once we reach this goal then I can focus on sending a distress signal and taking my ship back from these pesky parasites.

Love this story? Find the genuine version on the author's preferred platform and support their work!