Ghost Legacy, Part 1

I've grown tired of writing introspective bits and parts that really fail to live up to the emotions that I am trying to express. Therefore, let's do something different. This is the first half of a short story based on a dream I had recently.

Ahead of me the room stretched wide, dim, dreadful, like a murky cave. Some vague blue-green light transpired from the glowplates on the walls, adjacent to the ceiling. We crept slowly along the raised edges of the room, eyes straining through goggles, feet not contacting the metal deck through the soles of jumpsuits. Every room had felt this way, though some were larger, some smaller, some filled with strange instruments, some empty and vast. The ship was a series of innumerable caverns within a massive hull. Unseen beyond that hull was the void of deep space. We were lost.

It must be close. In my gut I knew that it was surely nearby, stalking us as it had been for some days now. We knew not its form, but it made its presence felt by the disappearance of several of our team, along with several flooded chambers that we dared not enter. There was no chance of succeeding in our original mission, the rescue of a previous team sent to investigate. We knew they had arrived, yet beyond that there was nothing but whispers. There was now only the thought of escape.

ES0014-J6, crouching next to me in the dimness, turned her head toward me. She motioned up above her, at the metal walls, to the space between two glow panels. In the faint light I could see a thin rubber streak, grayish-blue, a residue similar in color to the tread underneath our feet on the sole of the jumpsuits.

"Deliberate." ES0013-C1's voice breathed into my headset. He was crouched opposite us, also looking at the wall. We had not been to this room before, probably, and even if we had, surely we had left no such smear. I looked at J6, and then to the others. J6 nodded. ES0015-S5 came over from around J6, and I stood upon his shoulders to examine the wall. It seemed to be perfectly smooth, but I detected upon contact a slight crease. I turned to my right, and looked down to ES0015-R9, who passed me the appropriate tool. The crease became a cleft, and the cleft became an opening wide enough for a man to crawl through on his knees. The opening continued into a similar passageway that faded until it turned abruptly left some distance away. I got back down off from S5's shoulders.

A sudden thick vibrating coursed through the floor and the walls. It was a powerful tremor without noise which erased all other sensation momentarily. The room remained silent. My palms and back abruptly felt cold as I began to sweat. R9 looked over his shoulder. It was coming.

I motioned for R9 to climb up into the opening in the wall, offering him a boost. He looked at C1, who nodded quickly, and started across the room toward us, followed by the others who had crouched with him on the opposite side. Their movements were quick. I pushed R9's feet up and he disappeared into the hole. J6 was next. The floor rumbled again. J6 was pulling herself up, her right foot in my hands, her arms reaching into the opening, S5 supporting her left foot. Their movements were sharp, deliberate. She went up, pulled through by R9.

Sprinting, C1 and the others were more than halfway across the room now. The walls shook, more intensely now, for a longer time. I pushed S5 up, and his feet came off my shoulders as he slipped into the gap. I was alone on my side now.

I looked up to see J6's face and hand appear. I leapt up, but her hand was still at least an arm's length out of reach. She frowned and disappeared into the hole. It was too high. The ground shook again.

I looked around for something, anything that I could stand on. There was nothing but the metal panel that I had removed to expose the opening. I went through a mental checklist of all the objects in my pack: data master, toolkit, compressor, dehydrator, catalytic, powerpacks... nothing that would move me upwards. I looked toward C1. He was almost here, maybe fifteen paces away.

Something knocked against the side of my head. I jumped back reflexively, but saw only a metal cable dangling. I looked up to see J6 waving for me to climb up. The cable seemed thick, capable of sustaining my weight. The ground shuddered, violently, and my vision was blurry from the vibrations. I climbed.

I turned back as I clambered into the narrow space to see C1 reach the wall. He immediately grabbed the cable and thrust it into the hand of ES0010-ZX2, then crouched. I pulled her up.

Just as she reached top, a massive vibration tore through the room. It continued, increasing in amplitude until suddenly C1 and the two others with him began to glow with a dull light. C1 looked up at me, his mouth opened to say something, and then all three abruptly vanished. I pulled vigorously on ZX2, and we fell backward into the passage. The vibrations continued. "Go, go, go!" R9 called from ahead. We went.