The Prisoner of Holigon

The ISS Ferryman, brand new and exceeding her predecessors by a thousand times, came to a grinding halt in the middle of deep space on her maiden voyage. Dropping out of warp so suddenly made every sitting or standing person on the ship jerk forward for half of a terrifying second before the emergency thrusters kicked in and pillowed the break. The lights went out and one by one, the auxiliary power lit up the backlights and life support system, but nothing more.

The captain was the first to recover from the whiplash and register the environment.

“What’s happened? Why have we stopped?” Bridget asked as she rose from her chair. She managed her wild red hair with a few swipes of her hand. Her neck ached and her midsection ached where the seatbelt had pinned her to the chair, but she was otherwise fine. Others weren’t so lucky.

Her first mate, Cedar Manay, had his upper body sprawled across his console and seemed to be unconscious. Before the stop, they had been travelling at maximum warp speed which, for a new model like the Ferryman, was over fifty times the maximum warp of her predecessors. None of them had experienced that kind of speed before now and none of them had experienced that massive of a drop in speed either.

Miles Selanne, the chief of security, was in mid-stride across the bridge when the stop bucked him off his feet. He managed to brace himself against a chair in a manner that was only mildly painful.

Larken Holt had one hand to his bleeding hairline while he checked the stats on the console in front of him.

“We’ve lost power from the engines, Captain,” The pilot reported and cast a wary glance over the limp body of his superior, “It’s just- Stopped.” His wide eyes went to the captain when she appeared beside her first mate and put her fingers to his neck to check his pulse.

“He’s alive,” She said and reached over his body to open up communications in the ship, “Engineering? What’s your status? Do you copy?” Silence. She pressed a different button this time. “Medical bay, I need Nurse Watson at the bridge and Dr. Kripke-”

“Captain!” The distraught voice of the nurse rang clearly through the speakers, “The doctor is gone!”

“What?” Bridget’s eyes went to the screen overhead that displayed what path lay directly in front of the ship. The empty vacuum of space and a few distant and vaguely familiar stars stared stoically back at her.

“It’s the convicts- Their cells unlocked when the power went out!” Violet’s hysterics got worse, “They took the doctor! I don’t- I don’t know where the rest went. I’m in a closet-”

“Stay where you are,” Bridget told the younger woman firmly, “We’re coming for you.” She released the button and snapped her gaze to Larken.

“Are you okay? Can you focus?”

“Yes, m’am,” Larken said and peeled his bloody hand away from his scalp, “It’s only a bump. Stopped bleeding, I think.”

“Selanne,” The security officer straightened up, “You’re with me. Holt, you have the bridge until Manay wakes up.”


The mission for the ISS Ferryman was the same trip Bridget had been making for over ten years. Holigon was a space station specifically made to keep the galaxy’s worst convicts, the ones that were a threat not only to their planet, but to their solar system, galaxy, and possibly other galaxies. The convicts that went in there weren’t always human or even from any of the planets under the unified government. On this trip, the Ferryman was transporting four Offense Level 6, humans who have proved themselves to be capable of exterminating a solar system, and one Berserker, a lost genetically-engineered weapon of mass destruction in the form of a ten-foot-tall planet-leaping monster. It was loud and unsettling with its unearthly strength. The sedatives were able to keep it from moving during transport, but not keep it silenced.

“It’s too quiet,” Miles muttered as he tailed Bridget down the empty halls. Their plasma guns were out and armed, but pointed towards the ground. Nothing but the faint hum of the auxiliary power running through circuits and their footsteps on the hard ground sounded in the hall.

They began to pass the cells the prisoners were kept in. Thick, undefined metal doors dotted the walls of the hall. There were six in total in this hall, but only four of them were in use. Bridget stopped and checked the first one by typing in the passcode to unlock the door. The wall swallowed the door into the frame with the awful grinding of metal against metal echoing down the hall. Gun first, Bridget peered inside.

“It’s empty,” She breathed.

“How?”

Bridget shook her head and her wide eyes met his. “I have no idea.”

One by one, they checked the cells and each was emptier than the last. At least three of the prisoners were somewhere on the ship. Three psychotic and homicidal convicts of the worst kind were somewhere, undetected and unrestricted, on one of the most advanced voyaging ships in the galaxy. The only thing keeping the galaxy safe was the broken engine and Bridget’s life.

Breath bated, they approached the last door in the hall. Bridget pushed each digit on the keypad, pressing through her hesitancy, and unlocked the door. The metal scraped against the metal doorframe as it opened up and Bridget pointed her gun at the man sitting on the bunk.

Anthony put his hands up in surrender. “Whoa, hey. Nice to see you, Captain,” He drawled, grinning, “You too, Miles.”

“Captain, he’s unarmed,” Miles said, pointedly keeping his gun aimed at the ground, “And he’s still in his cell.”

“Yeah, Captain,” Anthony mocked, though it lacked his usual bravado, “He’s a good boy.” Anthony had more than one personality; It was impossible to tell who was talking sometimes since a majority of them had the same sense of snark Anthony did.

His eyes flicked to her face and the barrel of the gun- just once- but it was enough. He was scared. Bridget could sense that as well as her own fear. She took her gun off of him and he put his hands down.

“Can you tell us what happened?” She asked.

“If you don’t know what happened, then we got nothing new for you,” He said with a shrug, “Ship stopped, we got tossed out of bed, and the door opened up. The other three skipped out, but we hung back ‘cause it didn’t seem right, you know? It was too easy. And if we got out, then that berserker thing must’ve gotten loose too and we’re not gonna screw around with that bloody monster.”

“Do you know which way they went?”

“Eh, they said something about shaking up that doctor,” He shrugged again, “It’s, like, he’s a real ponce and some of us wouldn’t mind getting a piece of him too, but like we said… It didn’t seem right just hopping out of the cell just like that, you know?”

“Selanne, find Watson and take her to the bridge,” Bridget ordered, “I’m going to Engineering to see if I can get some answers.” Assuming the prisoners didn’t get there before she did.

“And you,” She rounded on Anthony, her fist squeezing around the handle of her weapon, “You stay in here. If the doors open again, you stay in here. Understood?”

A lazy grin spread across Anthony’s lips and made Bridget want to hit him.

“Aye-aye, Captain.”


Engineering was a disaster of flashing red lights, sirens, and the shattered remains of everything- papers, tools, odd shards of metal- on the ground. Bridget treaded carefully around the shrapnel with her plasma gun aimed at hip length. She ducked around the poorly placed pipes and bold chords of wires dangling from the ceiling. She didn’t see anyone, not the chief engineer or his assistant. As disorienting as the ship’s heart was, she thought she could hear the faint sound of a short circuit buzz in the direction of the warp core. It made sense that it would be in or around the warp core for a malfunction bad enough to stop the ship, but she still didn’t hear anything human. She didn’t dare call out for them either.

The entanglement of wires, cords and pipes got worse before it got better, then she was able to clearly step out to observe the cylinder that contained the warp core. The core typically glowed a bright light when it was active and functioning, but it was off and dim except for the few cut wires that continually spewed sparks onto the floor. It was misshapen, something was inside of it. At first, Bridget didn’t couldn’t comprehend what she was seeing, but it could only be the body of the Berserker lodged inside of the core.

Inexplicably, a cool wind wafted by her, but she blamed the chill on her own horror. The Berserker, as far as they knew, wasn’t so intelligent that it would know that the warp core was the only thing keeping the ship going. It would be more its style to cause carnage and chaotic destruction over this strategically planned move. That only present the question of not only why, but how the Berserker did this.

She whirled around, fully intending to report back to the bridge and stepped in something wet. It was the engineer, Mr. Nrew. She could only identify the smear on the ground because of the book, an old Kurt Vonnegut novel, that lay a short distance away from the worst of it, spattered in his blood. Mr. Nrew was reading it the last time she saw him.

The gore, though, that was more in the style of the Berserker, but it didn’t clarify anything. All she had was more questions. Among them, the state of Mr. Nrew’s assistant, Clovis Bernard.



Bridget set off on a jog through the ship to get back to the bridge.

“Captain!” Miles called from behind her. Bridget slowed down and looked over her shoulder to see the chief of security with the ship’s nurse, Violet, briskly moving down the hall towards her. The woman was petite, even more so against Miles’ grander stature. Her eyes were wide and restless like she was expecting danger to materialize out of the walls. The small woman shivered before Bridget felt the icy breeze pass between them. A chill ran down her spine. It wasn’t right. There was no wind in a ship that was in the vacuum of space.

“Quickly, now,” The captain ordered, “To the bridge. We’ll discuss there.”

Not another sound was made except for the urgent tempo their footsteps echoed through the hall.
The door to the bridge automatically parted as they approached and Violet gasped.

Cedar was gone. His chair was empty and the rest of the room was vacant except for Larken, who lay sprawled out in his chair with a sizzling hole in his chest.

“Oh, my-”

“Hush!” Bridget hissed, slicing her hand through the air. The shot was still fresh which meant that Cedar or whoever shot Larken was still nearby. Miles understood this immediately without Bridget having to explain and escorted Violet to the far corner of the room. Bridget carefully paced around the bridge, her eyes sweeping every shadow and hidden space for something menacing.

If the prisoners made it to the bridge, they could have killed Larken and taken Cedar like they did the doctor. But why? Cedar Manay never made contact with any of the convicts to warrant revenge like they wanted from the doctor. Or the captain. She and Manay knew each other since they met at the Academy. He promised to be her second hand when- not if, she became captain of a ship. They never imagined they would be shuttling bad guys to the End for a living.

She made it to Larken’s console and gingerly peered over his body for any clues. A small light flashed under the desk. Apparently, he knew the danger well enough ahead of time to send out a distress signal for any nearby vessel to pick up. There was no telling if anyone would pick it up in the uncolonized space they were in.

Bridget froze when she heard a human cry of pain- from the hall. She made eye contact with Miles. He heard it, too, judging by his wide-eyed expression. The cry sounded again and was followed by a harsh growl from something less than human. Bridget bolted out the door with footsteps behind her. She didn’t look, but hoped it was the security chief and not Nurse Watson.

Cedar struggled under the asphyxiating hold of Vaize Ozure, an alien with about a foot and hundred pounds more of strength on him. Vaize was human-looking, but his kind had spores down their spines that made the back of his shirt lumpy. Bridget and Miles fired, but Vaize saw them coming and ducked out of the way. Like lightning, he rushed her, giving her plasma bolt gun little time to recharge. She tensed and slid back into a defensive stance, preparing for impact and pain.

He was less than a meter away when he suddenly stopped.

He stood rigidly in the mid-step pose he was frozen in, as if someone had turned him into stone. Then, one by one, his muscles spasmed from his hands down his arms and shoulders. His whole body shuddered.

“Miles, go,” Bridget said as she edged away, never taking her eyes off the alien, “Take Violet to an escape pod and leave if I’m not there in ten minutes.” She didn’t hear him moving and risked a sharp glare over her shoulder. “That’s an order!” Miles didn’t hesitate after that.

A cold, raspy chuckle coming from Vaize brought Bridget’s attention back around him. His expression was empty was slack, but the sound rolling from his parted lips was nothing she ever heard from him before. His shoulders were slumped and his posture leaning heavily on one leg over the other like a misbalanced string puppet.

“Long time, no see.” Something about his voice didn’t sound right.

The gun chimed, indicating a full charge. She raised it to eye level and aimed it at his chest.

“You gonna kill me, cap’n?” She heard Vaize speak before and he never used contractions. “You gonna kill me ‘fore I kill you?”

“Stand down, Vaize-”

“He ain’t in right now,” He mocked, cocking his head stiffly to one side, “Wanna leave a message?”

Bridget stiffened at that. It couldn’t be… There was no way… “What are you going on about?”

Vaize rolled his eyes, an awkward movement on his otherwise still face. “Come on, cap’n. Don’t tell me you forgot all that fun we had just a few years ago.” He chortled. “You really thought you had when you ejected me out into deep space-”

“No,” Bridget gasped.

“-but omnipotence really does have its perks.” It was the immaterial, inexplicable and highly dangerous convict she encountered many years ago. It had no body and only claimed others as its host, like it did to Vaize. He wasn’t in control now and he wouldn’t be until the creature let him ago. Bridget assumed that if she killed the body it was hosting, it would die as well, but she was wrong. How could she be wrong? She saw it turn into ice and die with her own eyes. It was impossible. It couldn’t be right.

Bridget pulled the trigger and launched a plasma bolt into Vaize’s chest. The force of the blow knocked him dead off his feet, but she was already running away when his body hit the ground. If she didn’t kill the host, it would just kill it itself like it did the berserker. There was no stopping it from taking another host, though. Not unless she got everyone off the ship. It may be able to travel through space, but if it took years to catch up with her again after she had been traveling the same route to and from Holigon, she could at least buy herself some time until the next time they met. She wouldn’t forget this.

She rounded a corner and saw Miles standing in the doorframe of Anthony’s cell. He was breaking orders to save a half-baked convict, putting them all in danger- more danger than he could know right now.

“Idjit!” She shrieked and rushed him, “I told you to leave!” A wash of cold air ran by Bridget and she skidded to a halt. The body snatcher. It was moving, but where? She followed the direction of the breeze back to Miles. It was too late, she knew it was, but she ran for him again.

“I’m sorry, captain. I couldn’t leave him,” Miles confessed in a rush of words, misinterpreting her sprinting for him, “I never told you this, but Anthony’s my friend. We went to the Academy together before he snapped and-” Miles didn’t know it, he didn’t even feel it happen, but he raised his gun and aimed it at his childhood friend without looking. Anthony stared down the barrel, perplexed more than anything, and reeled back onto his cot when the bolt was released into his head.

Miles heard the gun go off and Bridget was close enough to see the shock and horror pass through his eyes before they went vacant.

“Ah, humans,” He purred, expression still and with a voice that wasn’t his, “So easy to slip into. Like a glove, yeah?”

“That’s a good man you’ve taken over,” Bridget spat, “And now you’ve made him murder.” Her gun wasn’t finished recharging. She had to buy herself time.

“Oh, don’t act like you weren’t going to abandon that one,” Miles gestured with a casual toss of the hand to the corpse in the cell, “I’d say I did you a favor, cap’n. I’d say I did all of humanity a favor by getting rid of that lunatic.” Miles curled his lips into a cheap, grimacing smile. “Above all, I’d say I did him a favor. There’s no telling what they’d do to him at Holigon.”

Bridget’s gun chimed. She took aim at Miles.

“A gun! What a twist!” He cried sarcastically, eyes rolling, “But really, after that heartfelt confession? Didn’t you see the look on his face when he realized what-”

Miles lurched back when the plasma bolt took him in the chest and crumpled against the wall. Bridget sprinted down the hall and dodged through the ship for the dock to the escape pod. There was only one, meant to fit the entire crew in the event of an emergency.

The air around her started to cool with a breeze coming from behind her.

“Damnit!” She roared, lashing out helplessly against the cold air, and sprinted harder. She closed in on the door to the escape pod’s dock and then cold vanished. She saw it as an opportunity and didn’t waste any time throwing herself at the keylock. Only an certified officer’s ID would open the lock, so as she dug hers out of her pocket, she peered through the small window in the door and choked.

Inside the dock, the two surviving convicts, former scientist, Geoff Bakely, and blue-skinned Raadian, Nanitol Kerkland, were holding Violet at gunpoint. There was a blood-spattered ID card in Geoff’s hand, no doubt the one that belonged to ship’s Dr. Kripke.

Bridget couldn’t hear anything they were saying with the door separating them, but she could see their mouths move and Violet weeping harder and harder with every word said. The door was thick and screeched against the doorframe like most of the doors in the ship. If she opened it, she would lose the element of surprise and Violet would be shot before she could be saved. She knew both of the men’s profiles, they were completely and utterly without mercy. If she stayed hidden, she damned Violet. If she opened the door, she damned them both.

The telling cold breeze returned and Bridget held her breath. It washed over her entirely, raising goosebumps along her skin and wrought a chill down her spine, but didn’t linger.

Through the window, Bridget saw the change happen. Geoff’s shoulder twitched when the force entered his body, but it happened so quickly, his partner and his victim didn’t notice. The time for a stressed heart to beat went by and Nanitol was on the ground with the scorch mark of a plasma bolt embedded in his chest. Violet was screaming and edging away, with tears streaming down her face, from Geoff and the corpse. Geoff and the thing inside him didn’t seem to hear her as he calmly stepped over the body and put his hand on the manual release latch.

Geoff looked to the window, at Bridget, and smiled. He said something to her, just a few words that were easy enough for her to read on his lips.

“You’re next, Cap’n.”

Geoff pulled the latch and set off the red, flashing warning lights inside and outside of the dock. The door leading from the dock to the escape pod slammed shut after a few seconds, precious seconds that could have been used to jump inside the pod, but no one did.

Bridget jerked away from the door when Violet’s face appeared in the window. She banged on it with her palms, weeping, screaming and pleading and Bridget could only stare back at her. There was no point. They were all lost.

The pod ejected from the dock, exposing everyone and everything inside to black, endless space with the hole left in its wake and sucked them out to the stars in a blink of an eye.

The captain stared out at the stars through the window and the empty dock. The foreign constellations winked back at her, but she saw no sympathy in their light nor comfort in their distance. All she saw was uncharted, uncolonized solar bodies hundreds, thousands, millions of miles away from where she drifted on the ship and felt the cold press of an old enemy on her body.

Her gun chimed, but she couldn’t bring herself to take her own life.

Paralysis slowly spread over her limbs. Darkness crept in around the edges of her vision. She knew now that even if she wanted to fire a bolt into her chest, it was too late. Her arms hung limply by her sides and every one of her muscles was forced to relax. Her face slackened and she rolled her neck, popping the joints, against her own accord.

Well, well, cap’n.

“Looks like it’s just you and me now,” It purred with her voice.