Corruption

This piece is a short story I wrote for my science-fiction english class, I decided to post it in all it's rough glory as a type of hype for another piece I am working on that is much longer and much more well-written.  In the meantime, I hope that those who read this enjoy it, I know I enjoyed writing it.



The U.S.F. Olympus was mostly silent. Its crew was deep in cryosleep, the ship’s onboard A.I. had control over a vast majority of the ship’s base functions. Normally, the A.I. would remain on the bridge overseeing the safe return of the crew. However, a strange anomaly had been caught on the ship’s sensors.

Briefly, the A.I. scanned the database on U.S.F. protocol before beginning any actions. The first priority went into waking the Admiral. Next, U.S.F. headquarters had to be notified. The final procedure was to wake the rest of the crew if the Admiral saw it fitting to the situation at hand.

The life-support systems of Admiral James “Ares” Smith slowly powered down as the lid to his stasis pod opened. He opened his eyes quickly before rolling onto the floor with a dull thud. He immediately began to vomit, his throat trying to force the cryofeed out.

During cryosleep, the inhabitants of the pods would have a protein-mineral substance directly injected down their esophagus. The substance would replace all the vitamins, minerals, and proteins lost during cryo. The problem is the relative viscosity of the substance. The substance tends to stick to the subject’s tongue and uvula during the process, which, in turn causes vomiting of the substance in most patients.

“Why do you humans seem to have such a difficult time swallowing the cryofeed?” questioned the A.I., affectionately referred to as Glitch.

Ares looked up at the A.I. Normally, an A.I. would use its chosen holographic appearance. However, on most battleships and dreadnaughts, the only holographic generator is on the bridge.  Because of this, A.I. tend to use a small can shaped system, no larger than twelve inches, that runs on a single rail that covers every part of the ship, but inside private quarters. They enjoy having the freedom to traverse throughout a majority of the ship under their own freedom.

Glitch had decided to give his unit a bit more personality. It was hot pink, with a pair of oversized rotating eyes, a pair of undersized needle-thin arms, and Groucho Marx eyebrows that helped emulate emotions. Altogether, they made for a highly amusing sight.

“It probably has something to do with the cat piss taste!” growled

Ares in retort.

Glitch seemed to ponder this, “Possibly.”

Ares pushed himself up, took two steps back and stretched. He pulled the cryosuit off and tossed it to the floor as he walked towards his quarters.

“Wake the others. Send them up to the mess hall after they’ve gotten dressed and give them double rations.”

“Aye, aye sir.”

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Ten minutes later, Ares walked out of his quarters. He was dressed in a black tank top, urban army fatigues, and black combat boots.

He reached the outside of the mess hall within a few, short minutes, given the relatively small size of the cruiser. The mess hall was as raucous as always. It was roughly thirty feet wide by thirty feet long and it was always full of a majority of the crew. Besides the cryo-deck, the mess hall was the largest room on the ship. It was for this very reason that it was also the place were most of the crew spent their down time.

Hephaestus and Zeus were engaged in a heated arm-wrestling competition in the center of the room. Athene stood beside Hephaestus, her arms folded over her chest. Poseidon stood opposite her, his arms hanging loose, save for his thumbs hooked into his pants pockets. Hades and Hermes sat at the far end of the room, closest to the kitchen. They were locked in a game of chess.

Zeus was the first to notice his CO’s presence. He quickly let go of Hephaestus’s hand and snapped a salute.

“Admiral on deck!” he shouted to the rest of the room.

Quickly the remainder of the room did likewise, save Hephaestus. Hephaestus gave Zeus a dirty look before pushing himself up and saluting Ares.

“At ease, men.”

Hephaestus slugged Zeus in the arm, “You knew you were gonna lose!” he boomed. This started the usual childish game the two shared, one would say, “Was not.” and the other would reply, “Were too.” it would continue like that for several minutes. Athene laughed loudly as they finished their antics, she sat down and raised her arm to Hephaestus in challenge. It was a fairly amusing sight, the 5’0 Hispanic sniper arm-wrestling the 6’11 African gunner and winning. Ares grinned and walked off towards the kitchen.

_______________________________________________________________

“Alright men, fall in.” shouted Ares from the center of the room, near Athene and Hephaestus. “Glitch has informed me that we were woken up to examine a ruined U.S.F. freighter, the Lancelot. Apparently the ship is a mobile laboratory, designed to research things too dangerous to be researched on a planet. The ship is supposed to dock once every year to refuel, fill the oxygen tanks, and to collect supplies, but the ship has been heard from in three years. Our job is to get in, find out what happened, and get out. Glitch will fill HQ in on whatever we find. Understood?”

“Sir, yes, sir!” sounded the squad in unison.

“Alright then, saddle up, rifles and sidearms, no more than three clips apiece. Medium armor, Glitch thinks there is a hole somewhere on the ship so we’ll be carrying O2 tanks. Suit up!”

________________________________________________________________

Ares and his squad stood in the hanger of the Olympus, they were dressed in full armor. They resembled Greek gods ready for battle

“Helmets on, we’ll use the com link to communicate, roger?” questioned Ares.

“Roger that ,sir.” replied Hephaestus.

“Hephaestus, you’re in charge of beta team with Athene and Poseidon. I’ll take Alpha with Hades and Zeus. Hermes, you guard the door and cover our six until we’re out of sight.” said Ares before opening the hanger doors. He moved in first, his team followed.

Inside the Lancelot’s hanger, it was for lack of a better word, a ghost town. It was dead silent and as black and lightless as space itself.

“Lights.” growled Ares, flicking on the light mounted to the muzzle of his rifle. Hades and Zeus did likewise as they moved forward. Hephaestus and his team followed in after. The doors shut behind them. Soon, six rays of light penetrated the darkness.

The hanger of the Lancelot was large enough to fit all of the Olympus inside and still have enough room for a couple dozen fighters. Numerous shuttles and pods were scattered throughout the hanger in various states of disrepair.

“What do you make of this, sir?” questioned Zeus.

Ares shook his head, “Looks like this was done intentionally, probably sabotage.”

They continued down the hanger, finding an ever increasing number of broken ships. At the end of the hanger was a crashed exploration ship. It was lodged between a pair of thick doors, designed to seal off the hanger in case of a breach.

“Zeus, Hades, check it out.” said Ares, raising his rifle.

The two walked towards the craft, they forked as they neared it and flanked the cockpit. “We’ve got a body.” said Hades motioning for them to come over. Inside the ship was a single dried out corpse of a man, a pair of three inch holes in his chest and two massive slash marks seemed to be the cause of death.

“Time of death?” Ares asked Hades.

“Impossible to tell, the dramatic temperature lost by the vacuum of space means that he could have died anywhere between ten minutes ago and a year ago. There is something odd though. Normally a body exposed to space would have massive blood loss as the oxygen in the body would tear it apart from the inside out. This guy seems to have died from some type of wound. Also, the body would be covered in ice due to the large amount of water in our bodies, he seems to be dried out. This leads me to believe that he may have been killed while inside this shuttle, the problem is that someone let the body dry out before opening the lid, I would have to assume that he died over a year ago.”

Ares seemed to ponder this before speaking, “Any hope of getting past this?”

Hephaestus was the one that spoke up, “I’d say that hole past the lid of the shuttle is just wide enough for us to fit Athene through.”

“And what will that accomplish?” questioned Ares.

“There should be another access pad on the other side of the doors, if she could get through and press it the doors may open up just enough.”

“Alright, looks like we’ve got no choice.”

Hephaestus lifted up Athene, she quickly crawled through the opening. They heard a loud thud as she landed.

“Did you find it?” questioned Ares.

“Yeah, and you’re not gonna believe what else. Hang on, I’ll open the doors.”

The doors opened with an unbearably loud screech causing Ares to grit his teeth. He shook it off and motioned for them to join up with Athene.

“What did you find?”

She held up a large pale object, it was roughly a foot long and about five inches wide, it was coated in a viscous substance that reminded Ares of the cryofeed. He held the light on his rifle to it, and watched as the thing squirmed and burst open, an organism splattered out and hit the floor. It gave a cry before it stopped moving. Ares lowered his light to it and watched as the three inch corpse burned up.

“What in god’s name is that?” asked Ares.

“No idea but there are about a thousand more of these things all over the walls and ceiling.” she motioned toward the left half of the room. Ares swung his light around and saw what she meant. Hundreds of pale white eggs clung to the ceiling and walls. Whenever the light hit one of them, they burst open, the inhabitant of the egg hitting the floor and dying.

“Whatever they are, they’re sensitive to light.” said Zeus.

A terrifying loud sound echoed throughout the ship, it sounded like the scream of a wild animal, filled with primal fury.

“For some reason, I don’t think we’re along here.” said Hades.

“Fall back, back to the hanger!” shouted Ares.

The soldiers ran back through the double doors of the hanger, Hades and Ares covered their six until they were all in the hanger.

Glitch’s voice came in on the com link, “Sir, I believe I have found what caused the damage to this vessel.”

“How?”

“I hacked into the system mainframe and found a rather helpful CPU that gave me a video feed of what happened, I’m patching it through to your HUDs’ now.”

A crystal clear image opened up on the inner layer of the helmet, a scientist stood in front of the camera, blood covered his coat, it was coming from a massive wound on his shoulder.

“God help whoever find us. Get as far away from here as possible. Three days ago, we found a strange life form floating on an asteroid. We discovered it was a symbiotic organism, an alien life form that could fuse with any life form it came into contact with. We soon discovered that it had a dramatically vast intellect, apparently it has lived for thousands of years, collecting hosts and colonizing the hosts’ planets to further its own species growth. It managed to break through all the quarantine barricades and took over William’s body. It is incredibly dangerous, it causes massive mutations depending on its host. Please, get out of here while you still can and destroy the ship--.”

“That is where the transmission ends.” said Glitch.

“Hermes, open the door.” said Ares. They waited for a few minutes before Ares tried again, “Hermes, open the goddamn door now, that’s an order!”

Still no answer.

“Glitch! Open the doors.”

“I am afraid I can’t do that….” said the A.I. coldly.

“What do you mean you can’t open the door?”

“Headquarters has given me strict orders that I am not to open the doors until the symbiote has bonded with one of you.”

“What! You can’t be serious, didn’t HQ just watch that clip?”

“Yes, and they believe that they know what went wrong and can fix the problem, you should feel honored.”

“Son of a bitch!” screamed Ares.

The scream came back again, this time it was far louder and closer. Dull thuds could be heard from the room with the eggs, followed by another one of those awful screams. A crash was heard and the shattered shuttle skidded to a stop in front of Hades. A massive form lumbered into view. It was easily eight feet tall, it was grotesquely asymmetrical, the left arm had grown and contorted into a massive sinewy hand; three massive talons jutted from the hand, two were over a foot long, the third was roughly six inches. A massive eyeball the size of a dinner plate rotated in a socket on the left shoulder. Its left arm was vaguely human, save for the spots where the flesh tore from the bulging muscle. Where there should have been a head was a massive rectangle shaped protrusion, a pair of small red eyes rested above a malformed mouth full of crooked and jagged teeth. The most grotesque part of the creature came from the realization that it had once been human. A head was sunk halfway into the lower right part of the torso, it had sickly colored skin and greasy hair, its eyes kept rolling into the back of its head as it sputtered and mumbled inane babble.

“Surround it!” shouted Ares, firing off a few rounds into it. The beast barely reacted to the bullets, its massive eye watched Athene and Hephaestus circle to its left while the eyes in its boxy head watched Poseidon and Zeus circle to the right. It turned to face Zeus, swinging its left claw around.

“Hades, covering fire!” shouted Ares as he sprayed the beast with a clip’s worth of bullets fired in three round bursts. Hades quickly joined him, it caught the beast’s attention but it didn’t turn to face them. A second massive eye glared at Ares and Hades from its back.

It moved suddenly, with a speed that seemed impossible given its size. The massive left claw came up and bisected Poseidon neatly in two. In the same motion it pierced Zeus through the chest with its claw. He flailed around wildly as it raised him up into the air and slammed him to the floor.

“Goddamn it!” shouted Hades.

“Son of a bitch!” screamed Ares as he laid bullets into that massive eye. The creature let out a bloodcurdling scream as it flailed about madly. Hephaestus got caught in the frenzy and was neatly decapitated. Athene quickly ran over to Hades and Ares and the three opened fire. The creature snarled and charged at them. Athene and Ares dove for cover, narrowly avoiding its claw. Hades wasn’t so lucky. The claw pierced through his torso and his spine, killing him instantly. It bashed his body against the double doors, bending them inward toward the hanger of the Olympus.

“Athene! Aim for the eye on the shoulder!”

“Got it!”

The two fired at the eye, rupturing it. That didn’t stop the beast though, it came charging at the two of them. Ares gritted his teeth and fired at its boxy head, hitting its left eye as bits of tooth and flesh flew everywhere.

Athene slammed into Ares, knocking him off balance and onto the floor. The creature raised its claw and pierced through her torso, killing her much like Zeus.

“Athene!”

Ares flew into a rage, he leapt onto the back of the downed creature and began firing wildly, at any part of it that looked vulnerable. It snarled and knocked him off with its flailing. He pushed himself up only to be grabbed by the throat. The beast hefted him up and snarled. It raised its left hand and extended its palm to him. A small opening no larger than a human fist appeared at the center of its palm.

“No! No!” screamed Ares as a thick tendril extended from the palm and slithered down his throat.

_____________________________________________________________

It pushed itself up, adjusting to this new body. Its old body lay only a few feet away, lifeless and dissolving. The doors to the other ship slid open, allowing it passage inside. Immediately it began smashing lights. If its kind did not have a host, they were almost immediately killed by exposure to light. As soon as the lights were destroyed it began gathering together its eggs. It placed them along the walls and ceiling, sticking them there by a thick viscous slime exuding from its pores. As soon as it was finished the ship closed the doors and left its old home.

It could hardly wait for this new planet, full of virile hosts. It was hungry, and so were its children. Yes, very hungry.