Divine Darkness

Within the Mess Hall, all the tables were crowded as many crewmembers were eating when the lights suddenly went out, leaving them to wonder what was happening.

***

In one of the Spire’s labs, Linda and Grant were working together with other scientists when the lights were killed and they all looked around in confusion.

***

Inside a vent high up above the Mess Hall, Sanguis lurked.

Through the grating, he looked down upon the crowds of confused people milling around below in the darkness.

Multiple enemies sighted
Chance of victory: High
Chance of zero damage sustained: Moderate
To maximise percentages, hostile morale must be lowered
Engaging intimidation mode…

A high pitched screech could be heard by all the people throughout the Mess Hall, causing them to tightly clasp their hands to their ears to protect themselves from the painful noise.

Sanguis then tore through the vent and landed in the Mess Hall below, its eyes emitting beams of intense light to frighten its victims.  It activated both circular saws on its upper arms and retractable blades shot out from both its lower forearms.

Some were still writing in pain from the constant screeching, some tried to run.  All were terrified.

Sanguis’ tentacles emerged from its back and it then went about butchering every person within the hall.  As Sanguis tore through human after human, it ventured near the kitchen.

A chef took a large knife from a shelf and charged at Sanguis’ exposed back.  He tried to strike but the knife just deflected off its metal exoskeleton, the only result being a few sparks.

Sanguis turned around and took hold of the chef’s throat with one upper arm, lifting him high off the ground before positioning its other upper arm in front of his face.  Sanguis took two very long and sharp fingers and shoved them through his eyes and deep into his brain.

After dropping the chef to the ground, it savagely finished off any that remained, letting neither flesh nor bone, nor even a will to survive stop it.

Once completed, Sanguis looked over the multitude of freshly dismembered corpses as new thoughts scrolled down its HUD.

Targets deleted
Opportunity for improvisation
Loading psychological warfare patch…

***

“Linda?” Grant asked her in the lab.  “What’s going on?”

“Must be a malfunction,” Linda said.  “Come with me.”

Grant and Linda half swam half crawled towards the door of their lab and opened it.  Once out, they travelled down the corridor and into a new room, the Spire technical station.

After entering, Linda floated over to a computer console and began to investigate.

“What the…?” she said.  “There’s no malfunction.  The primary lights have been deactivated.”

“Can you fix it from here?”

“No, the readout says it needs to be fixed at the generator.  Call for maintenance, will you?”

Grant hovered by an intercom on the wall and pressed a button before saying, “Is anyone there?”

***

Rob nervously walked along a darkened corridor as fast as he dared to remain quiet.  The corridor was littered with the cut up corpses of his crewmates.

“Mariella?” he hissed.  “Mariella?  Please…no more games…you need to come out right now.”

“Is anyone there?” Grant’s voice came through on his communicator.

Rob quickly grabbed it and said, “Yes?  Hello?”

“Rob, is that you?”

“Oh yes.  Grant, I’ve been trying to reach someone for ages.”

“The lights just went dead in the labs.”

“I know.  It’s like that all over Heaven.  It must’ve done it.”

“What ‘It’?”

“There’s this creature, it’s killing everyone…and it’s fast.  It’s seemed to have moved through most of the station already.  They’re all dead.”

“What?  What are you talking about?”

“If it disabled the lights, it must’ve already reached the generator.  I’m looking for Mariella right now but if I can turn the lights back on, it might make it easier.  Is Linda with you?”

“Yeah, she’s here.”

“OK, head to C-Deck and get on an escape pod.  I’ll get my own when I find my daughter.”

“What about Ridley?”

***

Grant floated by the intercom, stunned by the reply he’d gotten.

“Grant?” Linda said.

“Contact Earth.  Tell them what’s going on here.”

Linda typed at the keyboard for only a few seconds before saying, “It won’t let me.”

“What do you mean?”

“I don’t know.  It refuses to transmit off the station.  Says the controls are locked.”

“Forget it.  Let’s get out of here.”

Linda and Grant left the technical station and swam through the air towards their lab.  When Linda opened the door, they got to see it was filled with a cloud of blood and the floating corpses of scientists.

The door of an adjacent lab opened and the pair looked over in a panic just before a survivor pulled himself through.

“Help me!” he cried before Sanguis appeared through the door and sliced the man’s throat with one of its forearm mounted blades.  As the scientist bled out in the zero gravity, creating a fog of blood, Sanguis diverted its attention to Grant and Linda.

Linda and Grant did their best to crawl away while Sanguis passed through the blood cloud and followed them by expertly swimming through the air and using the walls as leverage.

Linda and Grant made it to one of the lifts while Sanguis was closing the distance between them.

Linda pushed the button and the lift doors closed.  Then, a sword-tipped tentacle pierced the lift’s exterior, narrowly missing Grant’s face.  The tentacle was forced to retract as the lift began to descend and Sanguis’ face could briefly be seen through the hole it had created before they escaped.