“Talk to me, what did you see out there?” I crouched down next to him.

He opened his eyes and met my gaze. The look in his eyes was confused, a bit haunted, even, but no words came out of his mouth.

“What did you see, Chen?” I repeated.

“I don’t know. I don’t… I saw a shimmer, but it was like it looked at me, I could swear it was thinking. I could feel its hunger. Was it a fucking alien? What the hell was that thing?” He was pale, hyperventilating, halfway to terrified, I realised. Needless to say, he also sounded like a basket case and wasn’t making much sense, but I didn’t want to rule anything out yet. Space was a strange place. It could be that he really did see something, or he could’ve snapped, or he was perfectly fine and just a victim of some kind of toxin or poisoning. I wasn’t a doctor, shrink or some kind of lab-coat wearing nerd.

“I don’t know what you saw, but it's about to be a long way away from us. Don't sweat it.” I squeezed Chen’s arm and nodded to him, then moved off to check on the rest of my team.

Larsen and Carver were hunched over two different consoles chattering back and forth, bickering about retrorockets and comms. They were still working on the pod clearly, but I hadn’t forgotten about the weapon of mass destruction sitting somewhere on the Spear. I was surprised, actually. Both at the fact that it had been detected by the ship’s A.I. and that we’d actually had time to do anything besides watch it kill us all.

I frowned. “Are you two done? We’re still docked, you realise that, right? I really don’t want to stick around. Infantry combat I can handle, but a dirty bomb? No thanks.” I asked from across the pod, unease creeping up on me.

While it wasn’t strictly true that our armour was impervious to chemical, biological, radiological and nuclear threats, our suits were sealed and gave us a modicum of protection. That however, did not mean we could just stick around. A modicum of protection did not mean complete protection, and I had no way of knowing how long it would take until radiation from that bomb killed me. Maybe some Marines were still on the ship, ignoring the order to try and find and defuse that bomb. Maybe Santa Claus was real, all I knew was that I wasn’t a fucking idiot and I wanted to stay well away from something that had the word ‘bomb’ attached to it.

Chen’s odd behaviour, our ship being the victim of a perfect ambush in the massive void between stars and Engineering being taken by people using our own gear did nothing to improve my mood, either. It was all suspicious as hell and too perfectly orchestrated to be coincidence. Something strange was going on and someone was behind it all. Unfortunately, I wouldn’t get to play investigator anytime soon, in fact I probably never would. If we were lucky, we wouldn’t see the Spear of Midnight again until it was recovered and cleaned up. The far more likely fate for the ship was that it would sit out here dormant until whoever attacked us co-opted it for their own purposes. We’d probably never lay eyes on it again. That just felt wrong to me, maybe because ti was the heavy cruiser's first real deployment.

A sudden shout interrupted my thoughts and it took me half a second to process what was said.

“We’re done, go!” Larsen shouted as she gripped a handhold attached to the wall.

My eyes darted around for a handhold close-by and in that split-second my eyes latched onto one two steps away. I lunged for it, hoping.

“Launching!” Carver called out as he gripped the sides of the console.

I didn't make it. A moment after the words left Carver's lips, the escape pod lurched and I was knocked off my feet before slamming into the wall with incredible force.

I slammed into a hard surface and registered that I was pinned to the wall for a fraction of a second before I realised I couldn't breathe. My lungs had been compressed so much that the air had left them. I mentally cursed the day I ever decided to take command of Carver. I was very thankful for my armor’s padding. Unarmoured, or without such material built-in to my suit, I might’ve broken bones or developed serious internal bleeding from the impact, maybe even snapped my neck.

As it was, I saw stars and my body bitched at me quite angrily. I'd have bruises later, I was sure. A few seconds passed and I felt the pressure on my body abruptly vanish. All I could do was groan as I picked myself up and looked around. I felt like shit, but a quick medical scan told me I was in fighting shape, despite a few bumps and bruises.

“A little warning next time?” I glared at Carver, leaning against the wall to stand up again. I forced air back into my lungs, all the air in them having been pushed out by the sudden acceleration.

“I did! I did!” Carver insisted.

A moment of silence carried my glare across to him. When I had my breath back, I resisted the urge to smack him and chose the kinder option.

“One second isn’t enough of a warning, you dick.” I growled, pushing myself upright again.

"Well, you said you wanted to launch as soon as possible.” He threw his hands up.

“Not into a fucking wall, you-“ I bit down on my retort, growling instead of saying what was on my mind. “Nevermind! Keep me posted."

Calming down a bit and reining in the oh so tempting urge to go over and smash Carver's head in for that stunt, I studied Chen who looked more lucid by now. The faraway and wild look in his eyes was more absent than before, but he was still spooked.

“Chen. What did you mean by that? You saw a shimmer?”

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“I thought I saw something, so I stopped. It was like… a heat haze, only it looked at me. I could feel it judging me, like it was making some kind of decision on whether to eat me or let me go. Do you think it was alive? It felt alive... I don’t know how to explain it.” He trailed off, disturbed. So was I. Whether that was by the possibility that what he was describing was real, or that he was nuts, I wasn’t sure yet. It’s a scary thing to see your friend lose their mind in front of you, I hoped that wasn’t what was happening to Chen. Of course, that meant he really did see something, which was almost worse in a way.

“Alright. Don’t worry about for now. We’re nearly free from this death trap of a ship.” I told him.

I didn’t know if Chen was telling the truth, but I knew that he thought he was. Since I’d met him, he’d struck me as the dependable and positive type, not someone prone to breakdowns or mental gymnastics. That sort of thing was screened for on an annual basis by an army of Corps-approved psychologists, psychiatrists and other specialists, but it did happen.

I hooked into the pod’s feeble sensors and cast a longing look towards the aft end of our escape pod, back towards our distant cruiser we’d called home only days ago. I couldn’t see it of course, not with the laughable optics on the pod’s exterior, but I knew which direction it was.

“Carver, is that thing blown yet? Is the Spear a radioactive hellhole now?”

“Not yet. A lot of escape pods just launched though.”

“Alright, let me know if it blows up, I guess.” I turned back to Chen, noticing as Larsen took a seat beside them.

“Edward, what was that thing?” Chen asked again. He looked exhausted.

“Hell, I don’t know, you’re the one who saw it. Look, forget about all that. You’re alive and we’re far away from it now. Send me your suit recordings, we’ll see if we can make sense of things.”

I didn’t know what else to do. I’d heard about some of the crazy conspiracy theories surrounding the military and space in general, but I didn’t have a clue if any of it was accurate. Paranormal activity, dimensional rifts and mythology were all above my pay grade, if any of that stuff actually existed. If it did exist, it was probably classified to the heavens. I’d done one or two classified projects in my time both before and after my demotion to Corporal, but they’d been relatively mundane projects, rather than earth-shattering.

Chen nodded tiredly, seeming to exhaust himself completely with that one small motion. He let himself drift off to sleep as he lay slumped on the deck. I watched him for a while, then decided to let him rest and turned to the rest of my team.

The exhaustion hit me then as well. It had crept up on me gradually, but I realised that I was probably as exhausted as Chen. I pushed myself against the bulkhead next to him and looked over at Larsen. She didn’t look half as bad as Chen, but she was likewise coming down from an adrenaline high after a good fight. That was enough to drain anyone under the best of circumstances.

Carver looked tired, but he was busily digging into something on the ship’s computer, despite that. His fingers blurred over air in front of the flat touchscreen interface. We didn't use something as delicate and complicated as a holographic projector, though those did exist for other less critical applications.

No, instead our ubiquitous implant technology allowed us to have things projected in the air in front of us via neural trickery. This did come with the side effect of being unable to see what work was being done on any given console without the right codes, but rarely was that an issue.

The old manual interfaces, 'keyboards' I think they were called and 'touchscreen' systems had been phased out a long time ago. Who wouldn't want to move away from a system that required specialised design considerations for variable gravity, pressure, temperature that needed cleaning as well as a whole host of other considerations. Our control interfaces today from the largest console to the smallest datapad were all self-contained and designed to operate in a vacuum and in extreme temperatures in the event of decompression.

I'd had the misfortune of needing to use a weapons console while in hard vacuum once. I could attest to the fact that while they weren't the easiest things in the world to use without gravity or an atmosphere, they didn't stop working under those conditions either.

I assumed Carver was in good enough shape by the way his fingers danced in the air and the thick silence that surrounded him. I watched him for a few moments but boredom reached up and slapped me in the face. Carver was probably fine. If he wasn’t fine, well, I’d probably hear him bitching about something in short order.

I turned to Larsen again, her eyes were closed, chin tilted slightly up as it rested against the bulkhead. Sweat soaked her hair and skin. She was fine, though. A quick look at her vitals confirmed it and

I moved on to the next member of my team, myself.

I reached up to scratch my nose and stopped myself just in time. I’d almost forgotten I was wearing my helmet, exhausted as I was. I undid the locks and placed it next to me. With a great sense of relief, I settled against the wall across from Larsen. Chen had the right idea. The floor was comfortable even if it was as hard as steel and far from warm. I didn’t really feel any of that through my armour, but I was happy enough with being able to rest and stretch out my legs.

I sighed as my mind unspooled, the fatigue from combat slowly and gradually dissipating. “Hey Vic? When we get home, remind me never to accept an offer to serve on the ‘latest and greatest’ ship. An old rust bucket in a shitty fringe system will do fine, I think.”

“Sure.” She laughed softly. “You know, this isn’t half bad. We’re alive, aren’t we?”

“Could be worse.” I agreed.

My peace was interrupted by a fast-talking Carver who didn’t seem to understand that some of us might want to sleep.

“So, I figured out what that bomb was. Well, bomb isn’t an accurate term, but whatever. It wasn’t a dirty bomb.” Carver interjected, holding up his datapad to us. He’d taken his helmet off like the rest of us. I suppose we all instinctively knew any kind of loss of pressure was certain death at this point at this point, helmet on or off.

I looked over and squinted at Carver’s datapad briefly for a moment, then concluded it was all a bunch of bright light to me. Codes or no codes, half the time I only ever saw gibberish on his datapad. I mentally shrugged.

“Let’s hear it then.” I told him. Larsen opened her eyes to Carver’s grave expression. I hadn’t thought it was that bad, but now I wanted to know more. It was a desperate, reluctant kind of want. I didn't want to know, but I needed to know.

Carver looked relieved, but also tense at the same time. Not the worst combination, I suppose. At least he wasn’t looking like he wanted to run for the hills, because there were no hills here, and more importantly, if Carver started panicking over something now, we were probably all screwed.

“Modified Sarin gas. Not a completely original compound of course, but there was some kind of radiological component. I’m not sure how much gas they had exactly, but they had a tank of the stuff hooked up to a very modern looking bomb housing in the port flight bay, easily enough to kill everyone on the ship three times over." Carver paused, taking a breath before continuing on frantically.

"But that's not the worst part. Someone did a full data dump and transmitted it via laser link. Encrypted to hell and back, tight beam, too. Whoever was receiving it was close and probably still is, relatively speaking. I'm almost certain the gas was just a way to get us off the ship so they could reach the cores and take the ship without us scuttling it. It looks like we played right into their hands."