“Somebody cut his damn legs off as he was trying to claw his way through the door! Please Ryann, I don’t think we should go any further!”
“We don’t have any choice,” said Ryann, taking hold of the hatch once more. “We’ll be careful — first signs of anybody hostile we’ll make a run for it — I promise.” He heaved at the door again; it came free, springing open suddenly, and Ryann staggered, dropping his flashlight into the corridor beyond.
Angelique cried out in horror, standing stock-still, paralysed with fear.
“Oh my god, Ryann, what the hell is this?” she croaked letting her flashlight play over the grisly scene.
Sprays of blood ran up the walls, glinting in the stark light, turned to ice in the vacuum.
But spread out across the floor of the corridor was a trail of dark shapes, scorched fragments of bodies. Here lay a twisted torso, and beside it a severed hand, and a little way off, more grisly body parts, harder to identify. Each piece was covered in a thick layer of frost that sparkled with an unsettling beauty.
“There must be five or six people here,” breathed Ryann in disbelief, unable to tear his gaze away. He heard Angelique slump against the wall behind him.
“I think I’m going to throw up,” he heard her whimper, and he turned, catching her as she slid shaking to the floor.
“Just breathe slowly, try to stay calm,” said Ryann, his hands holding her helmet so that she couldn’t turn away from him. He could see her eyes wild and staring through the grimy glass of her visor.
“Oh god Ryann! What the hell is this — look at them! Oh god!”
“Hey! Look at me!” urged Ryann, his face up close to hers. He held her tightly as she tried to turn back to the macabre scene. “Look at me Angelique. Just stay calm. Breathe, breathe.”
“I can’t breathe in this damn helmet! I can’t!” She writhed and kicked out, lost in her fear as she tried to tug at the locking catch on her collar.
“Angelique! It’s okay, it’s okay!” called out Ryann, and he held her tightly to his chest.
Eventually he felt her go limp, her sobs ebbing away to brief shudders.
“It’s okay,” he soothed, rocking her gently in his arms.
“Who the hell could have done that to them?” he heard her whisper at last, and he sat back, staring into her eyes.
She must have caught the field-dressing on the inside of her helmet, because a thin trail of blood ran down her forehead. She looked pale and gaunt in the haze of his flashlight.
“I don’t know,” he replied absently, looking back over the trail of body parts.
“We should get back to the Raven,” stuttered Angelique through clenched teeth. She kept her head pointing away from the scene as though refusing to acknowledge it.
“We can’t. We need this ship. We’ll get to the bridge and see if we can get a clue as to what happened.”
“What happened? Isn’t it obvious? Some psycho is running through the ship chopping everyone into little bits!” Angelique’s voice descended back into sobs.
“Here, look there are some guns,” said Ryann brightly, reaching over and pulling a rifle from beneath one of the bodies. He brushed the ice from it, checking the ammunition levels. “There, things are looking better already,” he said with a grin.
“Are you serious?” exclaimed Angelique. “Look!” She held up her flashlight, letting it play over the walls and ceiling; Ryann could see the beam of light shaking.
It took him a moment, but then he began to make out the signs of blast marks and bullet holes amongst the pipes and cables.
“They loosed off all these shots and hit nothing!” croaked Angelique.
“Maybe exo-armour, mil-spec or something?” muttered Ryann to himself, examining the bullet holes. “Maybe whoever they were fighting took the bodies of their dead? I don’t know.”
“Ryann, I want to go back to the Raven.”
“The Raven’s dead!” spat Ryann in frustration making Angelique jump. “Get it into your head dammit! We go on or we die!”
Angelique stared at him aghast, shocked by his outburst. After a moment’s impasse she seemed to visibly deflate, her shoulders slumping.
“I’m sorry,” he mumbled. “Just, you said yourself — the Raven’s not going anywhere, and —”
“It’s okay,” she cut in, pulling herself to her feet. “You’re right — I just lost it a bit there.” She stood in the shadows, her back to the trail of corpses.
“No, it was my fault, I didn’t mean it to come out like that,” said Ryann awkwardly.
“No, it’s okay,” she said softly, taking a deep breath and turning around. “You know, I’ve seen plenty of dead bodies before — who hasn’t with this war against the Lumina? But —” Her voice faltered as she held back her tears. “But I’ve never seen anything like this. Nothing. This, this inhuman. What do you think they used to cut them like this?”
She took a step towards the scene, forcing herself to examine the bodies more closely.
“You don’t need to —”
“I’m okay,” she muttered distantly, her composure gradually returning. “It was more the shock I think — I’m okay now.” She peered down at the nearest bodies, swallowing hard as she examined them. “Looks like the wounds have been cauterised — a clean cut — an arc laser?”
“Probably the same thing that they cut the hatches with — here, take this.” Ryann stooped down and prised another rifle from the frozen hands of one of the corpses.
“But why chop them up like this?” she breathed, her voice still shaking.
“Here,” repeated Ryann, holding out the rifle; she took it with a sigh, checking it over. “For what it’s worth,” he said with a grim smile.
“For what it’s worth,” she echoed, and they stepped carefully between the body parts, heading off into the shadows.
CHAPTER TEN
LIFE-SIGNS
By the time they reached the silent bridge of the Ibis, Ryann and Angelique had come across the bodies of five more crew-members.
Each of them had been terribly mutilated like the
