KVAT 379-A2

I still wake up in a cold sweat most nights. It's like a movie that never truly ends. The images have gotten less vivid sure, but in some ways that only makes it worse...

I had received the case from the company KVAT back then they were a small start up from Dedoria. I remember them always being anxious about whether one of their employees would go AWOL and steal a ship, I suppose a single lost ship could have been enough to send them spiraling down into bankruptcy in the early days, unlike now where they couldn't give a toss about whether you were planning on stealing one of their ships or stranded in the depths of space with no chance of survival. My best guess is that the price of a single ship doesn't really matter when you've gotten money to burn, and lots of it. In fact right through 2301 to 2305 (the year this story takes place) most of my cases detailed a missing ship, usually I found 3 or 4 rookies who had broken off their communications receiver during a dicey launch or entry into a particularly dense atmosphere. I remember finding one crew (this must of been back in 2289) that had just forgotten to reply to HQ's barrage of messages (I sometimes catch myself grinning childishly at the thought of 3 scrawny teenagers stumbling over their words as they try to explain their lapse in judgement).

The ship was last seen 2km from the mapped border, however by the time I found them they had drifted another 3km. I eventually saw it just west of a gaseous planet and slowly began my approach. Approaching a missing ship had always been the most revealing part of any case in my experience, usually you could tell from 200m away what you'd be dealing with. In my time as a Private Investigator I'd come to learn the tell tale signs of a crew's condition, most the time I would fly in and see the ship without a scratch containing a fully alive and well crew, on the other hand it was also pretty obvious when everything wasn't so sunshine and rainbows. Before the events of the story I will soon continue I had only ever seen 2 crews that had unfortunately been claimed by the blackness of space and both times it was more than obvious as to the state of the crew from the outside. I wouldn't have that luxury with the 379-A2. I approached what from first glance looked like a fully functional ship. The cold blue lights seeped from out the vessels small oval windows and joined the ever present darkness of the vacuum. The hull didn't look any different from a ship that had just floated off the factory floor. Only the Coms receiver seemed slightly damaged.

A few minutes later I was at the main hatch of the ship. My space suit hung heavy on my shoulders and my breaths were deep and deliberate to save oxygen. The hatch was unsurprisingly locked it would've been a warning flag if it wasn't, usually I would tell them to unlock it over the radio or at least give me a sign that they were well, but in this particular case that wasn't an option since the Coms receiver was out of wack. I slammed my foot down hard on the hatch to get their attention although I was surprised that the rumbling of my engines behind them didn't already achieve that. 'Bang'...'Bang'...'BANG'. Still no answer, that was the first time I suspected something was awry. The feeling washed over me almost suffocating me, it was the same feeling a school boy might have when they're called into the head teacher's office, a deep persisting dread that choked me from the inside. I crossed back to my ship with an intense case of cotton mouth, images of the other two dead crews I had previously encountered flashed through my mind. I grabbed my blow torch and floated back to the locked hatch. Methodically I traced the outer rim of the entrance until the metal was soft enough to no longer withstand my stomping. With a crash the hatch fell through, the crew still hadn't made any attempt at making contact.

I slipped through the now open hole into the ship. Still there was no signs of anything out of the ordinary, yet the feeling of doom still hung over me like a shadow. I entered the air lock and stripped off my suit. I opened the interior door. The first thing to hit me was the intense heat, I could only walk a handful of steps before I felt my forehead become glazed with a thin veil of perspiration. The next thing to hit was the smell, it was heavy in the air and strong enough that you could taste it on the tip of your tongue, it was a mixture of feces and the smell of garbage the type you'd find in a damp ditch or floating on the surface of a long forgotten canal. It burnt my nostrils to inhale it and coated the back of my throat every time I swallowed  I remember getting as far as the main lobby before heaving my guts up due to it. I then noticed the sound or absence of it the whole ship was eerily quiet. Quiet enough  that I could here the blood rushing around my body as well as the pounding of my heart beneath my rib cage. I hesitated I could turn back I thought to myself I could tell KVAT that their crew was MIA and the ship was unsalvageable. The thought bounced back and to off the walls of my consciousness, I stood frozen in the furnace like corridor contemplating my idea, I was fighting a war with myself between my sense of dread and fear and the microscopic chance that the crew or at least some portion of it could be hanging on to the last threads of survival. If I left now I would save myself the weeks worth of horrific nightmares that the other dead crews had given me, but I could also be a young space explorer's last hope of rescue. I wouldn't be able to live with myself if I had chosen the former so I trudged on through the thick, syrup like silence.

Eventually I made it to the main lobby/control room of the ship if you can recall that's when I spilled my guts all over the white aluminum floor. Still doubled over desperate to retreat to my ship I meekly called out into the emptiness "Hello is any one there I've been sent by-" I distinctly remember my voice breaking here and my facade of a brave commandeering voice being shattered into dagger like splinters. I retched, the smell once again forcing a small amount of puke into my mouth. I tried calling out again before my voice trailed off. By that time I knew that the crew was dead it was now just a task of locating the bodies. At this point sweat was pouring down my face the stench of my own B.O adding to the smell of excrement and rotting. I walked towards the control module, my knees weak beneath me, swiping through the menus I quickly found the crew's records.

21/01/2305
Entry By Pilot Renalds

We have been hit by what we assume was a small piece of debris we do not yet know the extent of the damage however the system diagnostics show damage to the central heating system, Fuel tanks and Coms receiver. We will try to signal for help to any passing ships by using our light system.

Another entry was written three days later:

24/01.2305
Entry By Pilot Renalds

The damage to our ship has now become apparent. The damage to the heating system has caused our heaters to overload increasing the temperature of the ship's interior significantly, as well as this the fuel tank must have had a leak as all remaining fuel has depleted.

26/01/2305
Entry By Pilot Renalds

Water supply has run out and the ship doesn't seem to be getting any cooler. We are still holding out for a passing ship but hope is dwindling

27/01/2305
Entry By Pilot Renalds

We have found the coolest part of the ship (the bathroom) and are currently holding up in there

28/01/2305
Entry By Engineer Falson

Pilot Renalds has succumb to dehydration and as for the rest of us I don't believe we have long left.

That was the last entry it had been two months since that had been written. I inhaled slightly preparing myself for the sights I was about to see. Who knows what two months of decomposition can do to the body especially in this sort of heat. Looking over the ship layout it seemed that the bathroom was at the end of the left corridor. I once again began walking.

Peering down the hallway I saw the floor stained brown with an unknown substance. The smell grew stronger. The bathroom door was slightly ajar and through the crack I could see part of a KVAT uniform. I approached until I was an arms length away from the sliding, metallic door. At this point the air felt thick and the oxygen difficult to breath. I pushed the door open. The scene on the other side still haunts me.

It was 4 bodies each of them more rotten and decomposed than the last. Many of them were unrecognizable with almost no facial features present other than the deep gouges for eye sockets and dark abysses that resembled mouths. The heat had turned their skin a sickly drab brown colour. There limbs had more or less rotted away just leaving an agonizing maze of bone that twisted around each other painfully. Their torsos had been turned into a black viscous glue like mixture that clung to the floor of the ship like mucus bit by bit strings of it had peeled away from the mangled corpses and lay on the ground beneath them like worms. One carcass in particular was leaned up against the left most wall, its jaw hanging open precariously close to ripping off completely, whereas another body's jaw was half torn away from them leaving it hanging vertically from the left side of its mouth. All of the corpses shared the same stained, spindly fingers that were contorted into unnatural webs of bones and joints, all muscle had been melted away I imagine at a snail's pace. Liquid like feces swamped the room as well as other bodily fluids that had most likely been excreted during rigor mortis.

I stumbled backwards out of the room horrified by what I had saw I remember vomiting again before staggering back to my ship. I sat there for a good hour or so trying to digest what I had just seen the images flickering through my mind constantly. I quickly flew back to mapped territories before reporting my discovery to KVAT they told me they planned on recovering the ship and cremating the bodies. I warned them profusely to leave the ship and not have to experience the atrocity that was contained on the vessel. Of course they wouldn't listen, they probably just thought that I had been exaggerating or had finally lost the plot. That ended up being my last case I never went back to that profession. I don't think I will ever be able to forget what I saw there and I often ponder whether I will ever be able to sleep soundly again.

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Thanks for reading this more horror based tale. It was a bit longer than the others but I hope you still enjoyed ~ Luigi77