A progress bar inched along. Meanwhile, Raines and Royce gently propelled themselves around the bridge, checking corners. There were only three seats – the Halcyon had a smaller command crew than the Odyssey. Two of the seats were empty; only the corpse indicated the crew had not simply vanished into thin air.
Dr. Zhang remained by the body, quietly murmuring a respectful phrase in Chinese under his breath, a habit when faced with the dead. He examined the cracked visor and the dried blood inside the helmet where the crewman's nose had bled out. "Poor soul," Zhang said. "What happened to you all...?"
Royce's voice came through, taut and low. "I don't like this. We should sweep and get out. Feels like a tomb." His helmet light played across something on the floor – a scattering of bullet casings glinting faintly. "Guns were fired here."
Raines picked one up, floating near a console. "Mm, definitely. Looks like 9mm rounds. They had sidearms out. But who were they shooting at?"
No one answered. Reed swallowed, waiting as the data transfer finished with a ping. "I've got some of the log. Let's head down to the labs. That's likely where things went wrong if they were doing bio research."
They retraced their path, leaving the lonely corpse gently drifting in their wake. At the junction, the smear of dark blood led toward the crew quarters, but Reed decided labs first. Answers might lie there, and he didn't relish splitting the team to follow the blood trail just yet.
The door to the lab wing was ajar. The sign above it read Xenobiology Lab 2. As they entered, a sour, metallic odor filtered through Reed's suit's external sensors. "Anyone else smell that?" he muttered.
"Smells like rot," Zhang replied, nose wrinkling behind his faceplate. "Stale air and decay."
The lab was in shambles. Equipment floated in disarray. Glass sample tubes and containment pods were shattered. A chemical slick glistened in blobs across the ceiling and walls, as if flung by some explosion.
And then they saw the walls themselves – or what covered them. Organic matter clung in patches, an ugly growth like blackened coral or diseased mushroom caps spreading over the metal bulkheads. It twitched gently in the airflow of their passing.
"What in God's name..." Raines whispered. She lifted a gloved hand toward one patch, then thought better of it.
Dr. Zhang drifted nearer to a wall, shining a UV light from his kit. The substance had a faint sheen, deep indigo and oily black. Tendril-like veins snaked out from its central clumps. Inside one larger growth, something that might have been human tissue was visible – a fragment of a face? Zhang recoiled. It looked eerily as though a person had been half-absorbed into the ship's interior.
Royce's rifle cam swiveled left and right, expecting movement that didn't come. "This stuff is everywhere..."
Indeed, irregular splatters of the organic mass dotted the lab and the corridor beyond. In some spots it was concentrated, forming large bulbous sacs attached to the walls. One such sac hung near the ceiling, and as Reed's light fell on it, he saw something gleam inside – a human femur, stripped clean. A shudder crawled up his spine.
"Captain Voss, are you seeing our feed?" Reed said, forcing calm. He knew Voss was monitoring via their suit cameras back on the Odyssey.
There was a crackle, then Voss's voice, controlled but with an audible edge of horror: "I see it, Commander. Proceed with extreme caution. Do not touch any of that... growth."
"Understood." Reed motioned the team onward. "Let's grab what data we can and clear out. Dr. Zhang, can you collect a small sample? Sealed container."
The doctor carefully withdrew a sample vial and a scraping tool. With delicate motions, he approached a thinner patch of the organic matter. He scraped a sliver into the vial; it broke off with a sticky, tar-like string stretching briefly before snapping. The mass itself did not react.
"Sample secured," Zhang said, slipping the vial into a biohazard pouch at his belt.
As they prepared to leave, Raines's voice cut in sharply: "Commander, look." She pointed toward a back corner of the lab, partially obscured by a fallen shelving unit.
Reed kicked off gently and drifted over the obstacle, shining his light. A figure in a lab coat was curled against the wall, motionless. Another body. "We've got a casualty here," Reed announced. He landed and crouched by the form, carefully turning it over. The faceplate of this suit was shattered from the inside; behind it was a mummified face twisted in agony. The person's chest was ruptured – torn open as if something had burst out. Dried viscera clung to the inside of the suit and floated free as Reed moved the body.
Zhang hissed a curse under his breath. "It... it looks like he... exploded? Or was torn apart from within."
Royce took an involuntary step back. "Could've been a grenade or something? Or some chemical reaction?"
Raines shook her head slowly. "No scorch marks for a grenade. And a chemical... I doubt it."
Reed's heart pounded. He had seen combat carnage before, but this was different. "Whatever happened, we have what we came for. Bridge logs, a sample, and visual evidence. Time to head back and quarantine this ship. We'll let a full hazmat team handle it from Aurora Station."
No one objected.
They made their way out, moving more briskly now, backtracking toward the airlock. Passing the junction to crew quarters, Reed resisted the morbid urge to explore further. His beam caught a glimpse of more dark stains trailing down the ladder to the lower decks, and he quickly looked away. They had enough nightmares to report.
At the airlock, Raines helped slide the heavy door shut behind them. As they cycled through and re-entered the safety of the Blackbird shuttle, each person seemed to release a breath they'd been holding.
Royce removed his helmet first, wiping sweat from his brow. "That was a damned graveyard," he muttered, eyes haunted despite his tough tone.
Dr. Zhang secured the sample vial in a padded case. "I'll get this to the medbay as soon as we're back," he said, though he sounded relieved to have a solid barrier between him and the unknown substance now.
Reed patted Raines on the shoulder as she prepared the shuttle for undocking. "Good flying. Let's get back."
As the Blackbird peeled away from the Halcyon, Reed took one last look at the drifting vessel through a porthole. Its silhouette was now just an outline against the distant gleam of Saturn's rings. So silent, holding whatever horrors had befallen its crew.
On the Odyssey's bridge, Captain Voss watched the shuttle's return vector. Her knuckles were white as she gripped the rail, trying to control the chill that the images from the away team had sent through her.
"Nova," she said quietly to her comms officer, "prepare a tightbeam to Aurora Station. High priority. They need to know what we found."
Nova Mendes nodded, her face pale. "Yes, Captain."
Voss's eyes never left the viewscreen. She whispered to herself, "What did you find out there, Halcyon? What followed us home?"
It watches. It learns. A small piece of midnight clinging to metal and flesh, hidden from curious eyes. When the humans left the dead shell, it came with them – nestled in a fold of fabric, pressed beneath a boot, safe in the shadows.
Now, inside the warm humming walls of the new ship, it waits. It remembers the taste of fear and meat. These new hosts are many, bustling and unaware. It is patient. The black fragment of life pulses once in quiet anticipation, and spreads its first tendril into the foreign metal around it.
Soon, it thinks, with no voice but with certainty. Soon…