nothing 5

The droning sound of the oxygen life support system was constant. It never faltered, never changed. It was a white noise that gave the explorer 97AN-02 station life. Camile knew this yet she still found herself hating it. A year and a half of constant sound was slowly eroding a space in her brain every day she thought. She started to hear it in her dreams.

She woke slowly, unbuckling her restraint as she collected her thoughts. She had allowed herself to be too aware of the noise which caused her unneeded stress which unchecked would lead to fatigue. She could not allow any such emotion to control any action during such an important mission. The mission of a lifetime and for the betterment of all humankind.

Expansion.

She stood slowly, already mentally calibrated to the 25% weaker artificial gravity on the station and looked out a small round window at the alien planet below. They had only been in orbit for eight days and yet she felt as though she recognized each and every feature like she new her own home planet. It helped that she had topographical maps to study during the voyage, but still, she felt a connection to the new world below.

Her small sleeping quarters showed the signs of her extended stay. In what was designed to be a small space perfectly crafted for containing only the essentials of day to day living, meant to be used by many different people week to week as missions flowed one to the other, the space had been changed subtly due to the long time use of the inhabitant. The usual panels containing supplies showed minor shifts due to careless misuse. A shelf intended for a few personal belongings was folded lower and cut into with a bag fashioned to it with a cinched top. A few spare socks here and there that were missed in the last laundry cleaning operation tucked behind various books and other items peaked out if you really looked for them. It was a small comfortable lived in space that was an afterthought.

Camile pressed a worn button to the left and with a click from somewhere within the wall, a small chair swiveled in revealing a toilet on the other side. A few moments later the days work suit was pulled on and wristband computer fitted. Her vitals showed no irregularities. With a swipe of the screen she was staring at the last message received. It was dated a week ago from Hermes.

"The panel is really giving us trouble over here just like we thought it might. Conner says we can fix it but it won't be a one day job. I'll stay over here to be another set of hands in case he needs me, he's been staring at the thing for a while now and hasn't made a move. I'll update you when there is a better timeline."

Camile had sent a normal response to communicate her understanding and it showed received. Three days later with no word back she had asked, "Please provide an update." It did not show received. The day before she resent the message and it was received but not responded to. She was not worried and assumed there was a communication line mishap, maybe even caused by the computer panel malfunction in section 2, but she knew she would need to check on things that day.

She made her way out of her quarters down a slightly rounded hallway towards the Sector 1 main cabin control. Every hallway was either curved or rounded due to the shape of the station which was two elongated egg shapes connected by a round circle tunnel and the artificial gravity system requiring rounded spaces. With a slow whoring sound the door opened and she entered. Lights slowly glowed to life as she sat in the main control chair. Computer screens that had been dimmed increased in brightness showing dozens of systems and their corresponding status. All were either green or white, identifying normal ranges. All except for one. P-qry2 lit up yellow. The panel on the other side of the ship in the other egg that was being worked on.

There had never been a yellow error on a panel that took more than 5 hours to fix, yet, there had never been an expedition extended by this long. The ship had shown excellent design by lasting so long without a proper mega station dock and re-orbit maneuver without the assistance of an orbitron. One panel malfunction after this trip was a best case scenario.

The reason for Camiles unease was due to the journey as a whole rather than the pressing panel issue. A year of near light speed travel with one message from base? It didn't happen. Then again the message was clear that for the next 10 months they would be in the dark as systems would be blocked by the passing of GX153 the black hole that was positioned in the middle of the galaxy traversed. It just so happened that the destination planet would be positioned on the other side of the black hole for much of the voyage and first month after orbit. CGC system would not function through.

The lack of communication back from base was far more unnerving to Camile than her two partners onboard not responding for a week, but all the same, she wanted to prove the quiet voice in the back of her head that she had successfully over rode to this point that all was fine.

She stood up and grabbed a small food bad from a shelf  compartment as she walked to the suit room. She walked down the sustenance bar in two bites and as she chewed she pulled the radiation blocking oversuit in and snapped a helmet in place on top. A small squeak and sound of a seal clicked into place later and she was opening the round door into the circle tunnel connector. She felt gravity fall away as she entered the circular connecting chamber between sections, between eggs. She had jokingly called it the umbilical cord since it linked all life systems from section 1 to 2. 2 relied on 1 for all power and critical system support. It was the only part of the ship without any gravity.

She flowed around to the right until she reached the door and slid in. She regained balance once inside and took the radiation suit off. As soon as she emerged from the helmet she smelled something. A kind of rot she had not smelled for a long time. Very faint but distinct all the same and her heart dropped, her stomach turned and fear flew into her entire being.

She hurried to the door to the sector 2 main room which was the control room in section 1, here was a kind of communal sitting room. She walked in slowly and the smell grew. It was still faint but notably stronger.

"Conner? Hermy? She called out into her local voice communication system on her wrist. No response.

That smell is death. Decomposing organic tissue. What tragic accident occurred over here? Are both dead? Is one alive but in grave danger? Panic wanted to set in but before it had a chance a small pinch tonger wrist as a perfectly calculated dose of a neural calming agent was passed into the bloodstream. The panic subsided enough for logical thoughts to take turn. Regardless of what had happened she needed to find them.

The sector was large, twice the size of sector 1 and that sector is roughly the size of a one city block sized ten story building. She knew she would need to be methodical. First starting at the panel in question then inner hull to outer.

She started towards the door on the right and cleared her mind of any negative thoughts. She only had one more shot of neural stabilizer and she wanted to save it for whatever she found, not waste it now.

She walked in what felt like circles as she made her way to the hallway that contained the panel. Door after door. The smell constantly in her mind. It didn't get stronger or weaker. The air circulation system would ensure equal distribution to the ship, but that means it would of been present for some time. It had only been 8 days right?

She shook her head and continued. Keeping an eye out for anything out of place. The neural stabilizing shot continued to work, allowing calculated thought.

Conner had gone over before Hermes. He had been on that side when they re-orbited. He had been on the opposite side in case the sectors disconnected and he would need to pilot sector 2 in a emergency fashion. He had sent for Hermes. After three weeks of being on this side alone. So he was alive 8 days ago.

She entered the hallway leading to the panel and saw the first sign of anything out of the ordinary. The panel in question was removed, wires in every which way. Tools magnetized to the wall, tape and melting plyers as well. A small box connected to a red wire hung down. Camile examined the curious black box. She then noticed, tucked up in the wall, green and blue wires connected to a different small box, this one white. She had never seen anything like them before.

She knew she would get nowhere by examining this mess of wire, so she took a quick picture from the small camera sensor on her wrist and walked down the hall opposite of where she came from. She felt the hairs begin to stand on the back of her neck.

She opened the door and walked in and immediately saw a scene she never expected to see. She nearly fainted but felt a shot of stimulant and neurological balancing agent fill her bloodstream. No. She had to be conscious and cognitive. As the darkness faded back into her subconscious she took in every detail of the small room.

Blood was on the walls and ceilings. The smell of death was like a blanket of sour rotten bitter indescribable hell. The smell that would stick with you long after departing from your senses only to be recalled upon when least wanted. The kind of smell when encountered again was impossible to mistake for anything else. She had once smelled it during her training course on a moon base years prior, a recruit had suffered a heart attack while remote training and she found him first on patrol.

The blood spelled out a message on one of the walls in a hand painted paragraph.

"They can't decide who God is. They can't decide this then act as puppet masters to send us to our demise for their glorified expansionist purposes. God left us long ago when we defiled the first new planet with fake life. Bioengineered blasphemy. He talked to me and showed me the way. He won't stand for this lizard brain lust for more. More MORE! More what? Land to defile? We are living in a universe that does not need or want us. We are the virus, and God has chosen me to cleanse it."

Camile read it three times. She could still not contemplate the message. A door to her right opened and with a thud, the mangled corpse of Conner fell to the ground. Black fluid leaked from his mouth eyes and ears and it was evident he had been brutally murdered and then his body defiled. A new wave of stench overwhelmed the room and instinctively Camile clasped her hand to her mouth. The local communicator clicked to life on her wrist.

"He told me you would come. The last harbinger of the apocalypse. Camile," Hermes voice came over her wristband in a haunting disgusting drawl of a monster. "You, the woman of the hand sent to desecrate a new planet. The fertile being to spread this curse of humanity even further into the cosmos."

Camile was too stunned to talk.

"You will die soon enough, oh yes. You will die. But not before being sent on your course."

The entire sector shifted with a slight tremor. The vitals started to read red on Camille's wrist as her heart rate increased along with her blood pressure.

"You won't leave that room, you and that puppet of a man. The driving force to spread destruction ends here."

"Hermy, why? What are you doing?" Camile said, tears falling from her eyes. She pieced together the deception while Hermes ranted. He had somehow killed Connor weeks earlier and had been planning this, whatever this was.

"DONT HERMY ME CAMILE. I'M NOT A MAN ANYMORE." His voice boomed across the voice channel. "Look at your position." Camile looked at her wrist mounted map. She was in Sector 2 but Sector 1 was gone. She had been disconnected.

"What are you doing?"

"Better question, yes. It doesn't hurt to tell you now. I'll be quick, you don't have the luxury of time." With a sudden gasp she realizes what was gone. The white noise of the circulatory system was gone. The back up system was not on. She was floating away in the elongated large egg alone, and destined to suffocate.

"You have enough oxygen for a few minutes, I took it upon myself to rid you of any extra moment of needless struggle. You will die and the man made death machine you sit in will be hurled towards those fuckers on moon base Delta. I, I will navigate back to HQ. I will tell of how the plan failed and both you and Conner tragically died while attempting to save the ship. I then will unleash the second step of my plan, I will divert all stations to do the same until all it is wiped clean."

"You are crazy that can't work, how can you control the entire fleet? You will do this one act of defiance and fail Hermes, why even try?

"Oh no. No no no no you don't see it. You don't know what I've been doing no no. They monitor us like we are children at school. They don't trust us. The only smart thing about them. I disconnected their communications months ago, black hole causing lapse in communication? Please. I can't believe you and Conner believed that. Then when he grew suspicious of my work, you believed he went to check the panel? The life systems engineer to fix a simple lighting panel? No. He wanted to send a message out, he saw I was working on more than terraforming plans. But you. You fool. You didn't suspect me. And I only needed a few weeks so I took car if the little fuck. It was fun. He cried for his mother you know? But I need to get through this before you pass out. I've found a remote function in all ships. In case the main console fails I suspect. I will guide all ships. And HQ won't know why and how we have been floating in space for so long without communication. I'll explain my piece in a few hours once I'm heading back and you are dead. They will take me in after a years time of travel, and I will be given access as soon as I land. It done"

"What happened?" Camile said, he last breaths fighting for words. Her brain fogged.

"I woke up."

The communicator on her wrist turned off and fell off. She fell to her knees and then onto her chest. She was tired. Keeping her eyes open was impossible. She closed them and felt the movement of the ship shift as the madman's plan was put underway.

She felt the sticky drying blood on her cheek as she tried to remember her childhood. She saw the chair she sat on with her grandmother, she was there again. Reading about the bird who flew too high. The bird wanted to lay on a cloud, it sounded so nice. It was a young bird who didn't know clouds were water and far out of reach. Time after time again the bird tried to fly high enough, each time failing after getting too tired. The mother bird sat the child down to explain that it was not meant to be, the cloud was too high and made of ice and water. There was no fluffy pillow for rest. The little bird learned this but never stopped dreaming. What a shitty story, Camile always thought. To never dream of more?