Empyrean Iris Story Collection

The Infection

He jolted upright frantically feeling around in the darkness for a light, anything, anything at all to stave off the feeling of dread. His frantic sweat-slicked fingers fumbled with the comm light on the wall before finally flicking on the interior bulbs bathing the room in a delicate blue glow. He sat up on the edge of the bed and took a long, shaky breath dropping his head into his hands. A soft whimper accompanied him, and he reached out with a hand to stroke the dog's ears. Waffles sat on the bed beside him head lowered and cocked to the side making sure he was okay.

He couldn't have been sure, maybe he was and maybe he wasn't. His PTSD wasn't so bad as it once had been, but every now and then, the dreams still plagued him. Though he could not remember the content he was still aware of the feelings of dread that had washed over him. An impending sense of doom. He took another deep breath and reached down to strap on his prosthetic. Perhaps a walk would calm him down, it was unlikely he would be getting to sleep again tonight.

***

Out in the hallway, the ships internal lights had been dimmed to simulate dusk in synchronicity with the circadian rhythms of the average human. The ship was still, despite the undoubted movement of the graveyard crew working to keep the ship through the night. He was unlikely to meet any of them at this hour as graveyard shift would consist of the operational minimum of crew members required to run the ship. As a class D-6 Battle Cruiser with a Warp Capable Alpha 1 engine the Harbinger required a two man bridge crew, five auxiliary and a twenty member team of engineers to operate.... A surprisingly low number truth be told as the crew numbers could level out well over 100.

By way of his late night wandering, he found himself down in the crew quarters..... He momentarily played with the idea of waking Sunny for the company against his still uneasy mind, but he quickly dismissed it. He couldn't do that, perhaps he would find Krill, the Vrul had no need of sleep, though he wasn't exactly psychologically supportive. Sure he would try to help, but he only knew what he read from textbooks, he wasn't exactly intuitive. He sighed and backed himself against the wall. Waffles sat at his feet leaning her head against his human leg as he stared into space. Inside his stomach churned, butterflies rode up and down his throat, and he absently rocked from side to side trying to stave off the nervousness.

He tried to think of something else to distract himself from the fear. His thoughts crossing to the starborn Conn, so "lovingly' known as convict. They had recently made efforts to bring him aboard the ship. The further they went out into unknown territory the more extreme and dangerous their work became, and despite Conn's ability to survive in the most extreme of conditions, the vacuum of space, it was becoming increasingly dangerous, so the ingenious mechanics crew had rigged together a portable gravity field generator to fix the one problem that prohibited the starborn to enter the ship: the fact that his neck would likely snap and his own weight would crush his internal structures under the weight of gravity.

Someone had even managed to rig together a set of translation gloves, the kid that used to be used for translating sign language. It was relieving to know that soon he wouldn't be the only one that Conn could incessantly annoy.

His stomach churned again, and with annoyance, he pushed himself away from the wall. Something felt so wrong, and of course deep down he knew that it was nothing, but that didn't make the feeling any less real. WIth waffles at his heels, he continued his walk down the length of the ship staring up at the ceiling and just.... Thinking.

He turned a corner startled out of his revery as waffles began to growl. He turned to look at her with confusion and sudden worry. Waffles NEVER growled..... At least not on a silent ship in the dead of the night when there was nothing there.

They are here.

Commander Vir nearly leapt out of his skin spinning in a tight circle as the whispered voice seemed to come from nowhere and everywhere all at once. Eyes moving wildly, his heart pounded in his chest, as he turned towards one of the dark service tunnels leading into the inner bowls of the ship, and there he saw it, ghostly white ribbons fluttering and scattering on a backdrop of darkness waving behind the skeletal white face and reflective black eyes. The starborn drifted from the darkness, his skeletal body so similar to a human but disproportionate enough to add an itching sense of horror.