Unexpected Encounter 20
21 May 2016Rebecca Hail
Ria was bored to death.She'd waited hours on the entry ramp and in the hangar of the ship for Rebecca to return. Countless times she walked up and down the entry ramp, searching for something mildly interesting to do. But all there was, was the forest, mossy ground and the screeches of something far away.
Sighing because she didn't found something interesting, she closed the door of the cabinet on the backwall of the hangar and walked to the next. She opened it and saw ... even more toolboxes and two books.
She pulled them out of their straps in the shelf and blew the dust of them.
"F-63 Condor. Pilot's manual.", she read out loud before she opened it up.
"The F-63 Condor is a federal space superiority fighter produced in the shipyards of Core Dynamics. It's speed and agility make it to ..."
Ria looked around, already bored. That had to be that huge covered something using most of the space in the hangar. She lifted the plane and looked underneath it. What she could see, hinted that it was the same model of a fighter as in the book.
The second book had the title: "Surface Reconnaissance Vehicle Scarab, a guide to driving".
Ria chuckled and thought: "No way! She can fly this huge spaceship, but she can't drive a car?" Then, she opened the book and started reading the first few pages, still chuckling.
A noise behind the covered fighter in the hangar startled her.
"Rebecca? Is that you?", she asked, putting the book back and walking around the Condor.
The person standing on the entry ramp was definitely not Rebecca. She wasn't as tall as Rebecca and, had not her athletic build, was way older and her whole body was covered from head to toe in a greenish mud, leaving a trail on the entry ramp. Her dark brown, almost blackish eyes were hollow and had a mean, slightly insane look. Those eyes focused now on Ria and she started grinning, as she slowly pulled an incredibly worn and rusty army knife from her lacerated, threadbare pilot’s suit. Ria noticed that some of the worse damages to the suit had been repaired with pieces of a strange woodlike material and brown fibres coming from it, as she followed the movement of the woman drawing her knife.
Then her brain realized the immediate danger she was in. Ria screamed, turned around and sprinted for the bulkhead a few meters behind her, which led into the main floor behind the hangar. As she frantically mashed the button to open it, she risked a look behind her and saw the woman running towards her, holding the knife in a backward position.
Driven by pure panic, she grabbed the long metal wrench strapped next to the bulkhead. Normally it was used to open the door, when the electronics didn't work, but with a length of almost 60 cms, it made a pretty good baton, too.
Ria grabbed it, turned around, aimed with a big swing for the woman and threw the wrench after her. The woman didn't expect a throw and had both her arms at head height ready to parry the downward blow she expected. She managed to deflect the wrench with her knife, but the momentum of the heavy tool made her stop for a moment.
Enough time for Ria to slip through the vertical gap between the two leafes bulkhead and run towards the next open bulkhead in the floor.
She only needed a few seconds to get there, but as she activated the console to close it, she saw the woman following her through the now-wider gap of the bulkhead.
Quickly, she hit the 'Close bulkhead'-button. Nothing happened. Instead, a warning message in a bright red window popped up:
"Warning. Bulkhead 33 malfunctioned. Please check the pressure release valves."
The woman was now through the bulkhead to the hangar and running towards her again.
Ria looked to the pressure release valve with the metal bar she'd used to close it before the reentry. She grabbed the bar and teared it down with all her might.
The woman jumped forwards, the arm with the knife stretched out towards Ria, as the valve with the bar moved down.
The bulkhead slammed down into its frame and the horrific noise of breaking bones and ripping flesh sounded through the hallway.
Turning her head away in horror, Ria stumbled backwards as the warm liquid splashed in her face. With closed eyes she fell down on her butt, while trying to wipe the thick, metallic smelling fluid out of her eyes.
As she opened them again, she sat in a huge puddle of blood. She looked over the blood scattered walls to the blood smeared bulkhead. The arm with the knife had managed it past the closed bulkhead but the shoulder, neck and head hadn't made it through the door. Ria started realizing what happened when a small white ball rolled between her legs. She took it, only to realize what she held in her hand. The eyeball of her persecutor. She let go of it immediately and felt how her stomach acid was slowly moving up her gullet, then she turned around and vomited on the floor. As she tried to get back on her feet again, a stinging pain shot through her side.
Ria looked down and saw a long cut in the side of her pilotssuit, where the knife of her persecutor managed it to reach her as she opened the valve. Blood poured out and she finally noticed that not all of the blood on the floor belonged to the corpse under the bulkhead.
She tried to get a better look onto the wound and screamed up in pain. The cut in her side was deep, long and bleeding like hell. Knowing that she wouldn't survive a wound like that without treatment, she pulled herself through the puddle of blood towards the elevator.
Her vision blacked out as she tried to reach the button for the second level of the ship.
The last thing she did before she lost her consciousness, was to say: "Ship, seal all bulkheads..." then her head fell down onto the hard, cold metal floor.