Dormant Planet: Chapter 1
Smoke and shadows launch a space horror story
Content Warning: This is a space horror, so there’s gore and some scary stuff. I’d rate it PG-13.
Elka heard them come into the docking bay.
The sound of the great doors echoed in the cavernous chamber as they slid apart. After that, Elka could not hear whoever had entered. She listened with every nerve in her body. One of her eyelids twitched. Elka lay down quietly on the frigid floor of the escape shuttle to calm her body as she realized her breathing had quickened and shortened.
The hiss of air and the sound of a comm panel opening somewhere startled her. She couldn’t distinguish the origin. Her bare neck felt like someone had put a wet block of ice on it as she broke into a cold sweat. Elka listened as the cycle for the air filters quieted, and the sound of heavy steps filled the echo chamber of the large shuttle hangar. A clatter outside the shuttle, but still inside the hangar, shook Elka’s resolve as an intruder toppled something over with unexpected violence that cracked the quiet. Her body shivered in uncontrollable fear.
A shadow hovered over the windshield of the shuttle, and Elka could hear the faint sound of beeping communication. She knew the sound. Silver soldiers. The hunter stood by the windshield for what felt like an eternity. As slowly and quietly as she could, Elka pulled her jacket up over her head as she tried to hide her bright purple hair.
The shadow moved and then went away. Elka let herself breathe. She realized how hard her heart was pounding, and the amount of adrenaline that pumped through her veins. She unclenched her fists and her jaw, and tried to think of something to distract herself. She couldn’t think of anything. Her throat felt like it was going to close, so she tried to swallow. Goosebumps prickled all over her flesh.
Elka thought of water, and felt thirsty suddenly. Her lips were dry, so she licked them. That only made the inside of her mouth taste drier, like leftover cigarettes. She wished she had a drink, and knew she’d been a fool not to bring at least a flask when she had hidden herself.
There was another violent and heavy clanging noise that shocked Elka out of her thoughts and reminded her that she was in immediate danger. She flinched. Her heart hammered in her chest. She dared not entertain her imaginative thoughts about the Silver Soldiers who had boarded the ship.
She lay still on the floor and listened as hard as she could. Time passed in near silence until she heard the loud whoosh of air around the hangar’s main doors again. The robotic killers had left, though Elka didn’t know why they were on the ship, so far from Mars and Earth. Elka could only guess that they'd killed everyone and now hunted the rest. She shuddered involuntarily. Elka let go of her jacket and sat up. It was a standard issue, suitable for keeping its owner insulated and comfortable in the cool artificial climates in space. Every colonist aboard a transport vessel was offered the opportunity to purchase one at a discounted price, thanks to the sponsors of the New Colonies on New Worlds (NCNW) project. Though the discount had been helpful, Elka didn’t feel comforted by the jacket now.
The aisle was narrow, and Elka felt suffocated. The sound of the air filters’ cycle started again in the docking bay. This time Elka was glad for the sound cover—just in case anyone was still watching or listening outside the shuttle where she hid.
Elka moved to the back corner. She could see through the windshield ahead. The cool steel walls of the hangar were all the view the windshield had to offer, past the captain and the co-pilot's chairs, past the rows of passenger chairs bolted to the ground.
There were blue warning lights, rhythmically flashing on and off, that reflected off the walls. Elka watched the lights, listened to the creaks and engine cycles of the ship in the docking bay, and wondered how long she should wait. The risk was probably death, or something possibly worse. She didn’t know, but it was enough to keep her still for a long while.
Gradually, Elka felt nearly mad. So help her if she stayed in the shuttle for one more moment. She had no idea how much time had passed since her entry into the massive hangar bay. The woman only knew that she had come there for a smoke just after she'd had lunch and a beer in the cafeteria.
But that was hours ago.
Silence had now overtaken the ship after the initial sound of the invasion. The clanging noise had been thunderous and overwhelming, difficult to misconstrue. That heinous noise of crunching steel on steel as the heavy hull of the colony ship took the blow would give her nightmares later. As far as she knew, the civilian colony ship was in the middle of nowhere. The death knell of the colliding vessels had been enough to send Elka scurrying to one of the escape shuttles to. And that was before she had heard the screams of the other passengers.
Elka now felt justified in checking out the docking bay, though she had no weapon of any kind nor a way to see if someone lurked outside the shuttle. The woman rose from the passenger chair, her legs stiff. She stumbled down the aisle to the cockpit of the shuttle.
Elka shook her foot and tried to get the numb feeling out of her ankle. She pushed her purple bangs out of her eyes and pulled the handle that sat on the inner part of the door. It clicked into place, and the door pushed outward with a light hum. Elka peeked out through the opening. She saw no one, and in the flashing lights of the enormous hangar, there were many shadows. It cooled as she stepped into the cavernous space.
Elka reached down and pulled her jacket together, fastening a few buttons. The silver steel gleamed in the light. The door to the docking bay was closed, and as far as she could see, it was empty. Elka grabbed her clove cigarettes from her jacket. She listened for movement outside the bay doors as she opened the top of the cigarette pack and took one out. She put the clove to her lips. The sweet cherry flavor of the cigarette tasted familiar and comforting.
A little of this, she thought, and clicked open a lighter with a flat, scorching hot red surface. Elka lit it. The first drag of the syrupy, almost medicinal taste, gave her a relief she pretended to be unaware of. She closed her eyes for a moment, knowing that whatever she headed towards was going to be ugly.
After her smoking ritual, Elka felt prepared to face whatever was on the other side of the door. She opened the door and stepped into the hall. Most of the ship seemed quiet. No more distant banging, shots, or screams echoed in the air. There were no more steel-on-steel sounds to set her teeth on edge, and send goosebumps running up her spine. Just the white noise every passenger was used to: a low sound of air as it was distributed through all the vents.
Elka turned towards the elevator. The docking bay was where the shuttles could easily depart, on the lower floors. She would have to take the elevator to get to the residential decks. Dread settled in her stomach, but she continued.
Each gradual turn of the round hallway frustrated Elka. Round walls made it hard to look for anyone before turning a corner because there were no real corners. Soon enough she saw a familiar sign for the elevators, and she quickened her cautious pace. A moment later, the smell hit her.
The stink of rank, burnt meat assaulted Elka’s nostrils so fast it made her stomach turn before she realized what she was smelling.
She stopped.
She gagged. She heaved.
No, no, no, no, Elka told herself, and she tried to swallow. But the smell had become a taste in her mouth, and she felt her throat closing again in anxiety.
Keep going, she urged, You don’t hear anything, they’re probably all dead. So Elka stood up straight, and walked forward.
The hallway gently opened into the elevator area, a space big enough to showcase the four elevator doors in the wall and hold a couple of benches for waiting passengers. Elka saw the bodies.
Quick to count, there were six of them. Four of them were still dressed in green crew flight suits. One body was severed in half, though Elka dared not look around for its legs. She had already begun to feel ill. Elka swallowed, and her throat felt thick as if with cotton. She choked on a parched throat.
She vaguely wondered how long it took a dead person to become a putrid meal for flies. That thought was in the back of her mind, as the sight before her consumed most of her focus. The woman saw the blaster wounds where the red-hot laser had cut past the skin, past the muscles, through the bone to leave a hole that went clear through the body. The wounds were an almost clinical, sterile shot through the body. Black, burnt flesh that reeked of acrid chemicals framed the killing wounds.
Elka gently frisked the bodies, checking for pockets and the valuables within. She held her breath when she crouched down to do so, trying hard not to taste the chemical burn that felt thick and pungent in her mouth.
She focused on the potential prizes instead. The sight of laser wounds, the odor of the rank atmosphere, and the cut flesh made her stomach churn. Elka shoved the feeling away while she pawed through the pockets. Mind over matter, she thought. She moved towards one of the bodies, something that had once been a person. She heaved again but held it back. The bile rose in her throat, and a wave of inevitable heat flashed through her veins. Elka doubled over, and vomited.
Some of it splashed on the dead man’s torso, and Elka felt humiliated, and then stupid for feeling embarrassed in front of a dead body. His face was frozen in fear, his eyes wide, shocked, two laser shots through his neck and one through the heart. He had dark hair, and there was a faint smell of cologne on him.
Elka met his eyes, but that was too much. She heaved, and nothing came up. Heat flushed through her, and she stripped off her own jacket. With a quick intake of breath, she pinched her nose with one hand and reached down to close the man’s eyelids. They felt hard to the touch, like they were no longer flesh. Elka recoiled.
“Fuck!” She said, and gagged once more. After a few deep breaths, Elka resumed checking the dead man’s pockets as best she could. In the cool of the open foyer, the hairs on her skin rose up and gooseflesh peppered her arms. She grabbed her jacket off the floor, and put it back on, and cursed her body’s inability to control its temperature when in distress.
Elka crouched down by the man with the mushy eyelids. He only had a torso now. He was still wearing a jacket, which was clean other than the flecks of Elka’s vomit. Inside the jacket, around the neck of the dead man Elka found a keycard, which she removed. His head thunked back against the bench when she slipped the lanyard from his skull. Elka winced.
His pockets had various things in them; cigarettes, a lighter, a wallet with no cash and a few ID cards, a picture of a little girl with a blue bow in her hair; nothing useful. Elka felt like she’d wasted her time and lost her guts over nothing but an access card. She kicked the torso in a weak effort to steel herself against the gore. And the fact that the torso had been a father.
She looked around again and looted a couple of other bodies, but there was nothing valuable. Elka shook her head as she stood up from her crouched position.
“Poor colonists. Literally.” Elka lit a cherry clove to harden the callous resolve she had cultivated for years, and to hide the awful stench. She looked across the room at the beckoning elevators. A gray cloud blew out of her nostrils, and she sneezed afterward. “Oh, shut up,” she chided her own lungs.
Elka examined the elevators again. Four lights above them blinked a faithful orange, undisturbed by the horrific scene before them. She wandered up to the first elevator panel and pressed the up button, hitting her cigarette again. There was a low rumble, and a hum of mechanisms beyond the doors of the elevator. She took one last drag from her cigarette and then dropped it. A quick stomp of her boot put it out.
Elka ran a hand through her thick bob and down her neck, almost as if she were making sure her body was still with her. She reached her arms up into the air, put her hands together, and pulled until she heard a light crack and felt her spine adjust.
She sighed. There was nothing worse than waiting. She put her hands in her pockets, tipped her head back, and looked up at the smooth ceiling of the hallway. She already felt nervous, energetic, hyper-aware, as a cigarette always made her feel.
The elevator continued its noisy business as she waited.
She heard a click-click-click sound and saw a green light on her elevator panel. The elevator locked into place and the doors split apart cleanly. She popped inside impatiently.
A digital panel on the elevator wall said, "Proceed to evacuation route. Evacuation route is on this level."
“Not yet,” Elka replied to the elevator. She pressed the panel, hoping it would do something else. “Okay, show me ship levels,” said Elka, but the machine did not respond to audio commands. The elevator doors remained open.
Suddenly, she desperately wanted to close the doors and get away from the father that was just a dead torso with horribly rigid eyelids now. And the other dead bodies she had tried so very hard not to see as people anymore.
The screen flashed a blue arrow and then repeated its message.
In her peripheral vision, Elka could see four of the six dead bodies.
She focused and studied the screen intently. In the bottom right corner, she saw a tiny "x" inside a square box that looked like it might close the emergency window. She tapped it, and a warning dialogue opened.
"Are you sure you want to disable evacuation instructions?" said the window. Elka rolled her eyes, tapped her foot, and pressed the "Continue" button, and another window popped up on the small screen.
"Evacuation Instructions disabled," said the window, and Elka closed that one also.
Finally. Elka searched the grid for the shopping level, which was several floors away. That’s where provisions would be, albeit likely amongst more colonist bodies.
There aren’t going to be enough cigarettes to get through this, she thought.
The button wasn't hard to find. In no time the doors shut, and the elevator rose through the Prosperity’s decks. Elka held the bars on the side of the shiny metal box and anticipated her looting trip.
She thought of her predicament and what she might find on the shopping deck. It was possible that she was the only person alive on the ship. No single person could pilot a colonial cruiser this size, and certainly not someone like Elka with limited space flight experience. The escape shuttles were entirely usable, and she could potentially return to the ship and loot it periodically from a base on the planet.
Elka touched the side of the elevator. She thought of the red planet below, and how close she and all the other colonists had been to getting what they wanted. She thought of how now there was no law, no one to disturb her plans, no one to get in her way.
No hierarchy. Fuck, no capitalism. She could live however she chose on an alien planet.
As Elka finished her thought, the elevator slowed. She looked at the panel, and a small orange square on the level grid flashed. Someone else was calling for transportation. She felt a sense of annoyance at first, a thought that she was not alone. The second, rapid thought that it could still be the invaders was more dire, and Elka was suddenly bone-chillingly aware that she had no weapon.
Chapter two coming soon! I hope you felt a little freaked out! 😀😂
Much love always,
Alexandra