Beacon
By C. Charles Falconer
Carmine hunched forward in the captain's chair of the Goodship Fortitude, his jaw and fists tightly
clenched, his forehead wrinkled in a deep, impenetrable scowl. The small ship was crewed by a dozen
security operatives. Usually, the deck would be a roaring cacophony of noisy chatter and foul-mouthed
tirades. But now, the static buzzing of electrical equipment was all that could be heard, smothering the
deck in an eerie, ominous, near silence that was far too loud and suffocatingly silent in equal measure.
Carmine looked around at his crew. Adi, his second in command, was expressive as usual. He wore the fear
on his face. The other members of the crew exchanged shifty side-eyed glances, but no one could fully
tear their eyes from the image displayed on the monitor.
Ship after ship—as far as the eye could see. A desolate graveyard spanning the entire length and breadth
of the Goodship Fortitude’s monitor.
“There must be dozens,” Adi broke the silence.
“Maybe hundreds,” Carmine said, sitting up and sighing. “Everyone, keep your wits about you. Those are
civilian ships out there. Whoever's been preying on them won’t be used to going up against
professionals, but that doesn’t mean we can get sloppy. I don’t want anyone else getting hurt.”
“Should we open communications with the emergency response vessel?” asked Adi.
Carmine didn’t reply, lost in thought. They were responding to a distress call from an emergency
response vessel, which itself had been responding to a distress call, and so on, and so forth, ad
nauseam. After a moment Carmine shook his head.
“No.” he said.
“But it’s protocol,” Adi replied. Moments went by. Adi was not sure if Carmine could hear him. He
cleared his throat. “Sir?” he pressed.
Without his gaze ever shifting from the monitor, Carmine spoke.
“I’m not risking letting whoever did this know we’re coming. We five go in,” Carmine pointed to Adi and
three others. “The others stay here, in case someone tries to get the jump on us.”
The crew agreed. Their ship may be small, but it was fast, with state-of-the-art automated turrets,
shields, and scanners. It would see an ambush coming well in advance. They moved the ship alongside
their quarry, initiated docking, and the five operatives silently slipped aboard.
Carmine and his team entered pitch darkness. The ship was almost entirely without power, but for the
backup generators keeping the life support running. Each team member activated the torches that were
mounted to the bottom of the barrel of their thermal rifles, and while remaining close together in
steady formation, walked silently through the hallways of the rescue ship.
“It’s a mess in here,” whispered Adi. “Is that blood?” Carmine shone his light onto the wall. A red,
glistening substance had been smeared chaotically, by hand, on the walls and floor of the long, narrow
corridor.
As the team tread carefully in the darkness, their boots would crunch on broken glass and squelch in
unknown puddles. Strange noises could be heard in the dark. Electrical buzzing, metal clanking, and what
sounded like human groans, coming from somewhere that none of them could identify.
They quickly rounded a corner and were immediately assailed by a putrid stench of burning hair and
fabric that stuck in their throat and set them coughing.
“Up this way,” Carmine said illuminating a dark set of stairs with his torchlight. “These stairs go up
to the main deck. Stay alert, we’ll secure up there first, then come back down and check each section of
the ship.” The team nodded and headed upstairs.
The doors to the main deck lay open, to greet them. Almost as though they were expected. Inside, the
command deck was pristine and seemed to be completely untouched by the violence that had plagued the
rest of the ship. A huge monitor stretched across the full length of the wall ahead of them, which would
have been used to display the vast majesty of space in usual times, but now was off, powerless, just
like the rest of the ship.
In the middle of the room was a round console with a swivel chair attached to the floor. It was
occupied. With their guns trained on the person in the chair they approached. Carmine slowly put out his
hand and turned the chair around as gently as he could. The sickly stench of death assailed Carmine’s
nostrils, he took a step back, covering his nose and mouth.
It was a man, stiff with rigor mortis, but his eyes were wide open, nearly bulging out of his head, and
he had engraved on his face a huge smile as though they had died abruptly in a fit of exquisite
laughter. Though he didn’t seem to have any physical injuries—heart attack? Carmine wondered.
“It’s the captain,” Carmine said, shining a light on the badge on the man’s lapel. His eyes darted over
to a small, red, flashing light on the captain's console still clinging to life with the last of the
backup power “He was recording something.”
“An S.O.S, maybe?” asked Adi. Carmine shrugged and stopped the recording.
Then he pressed play.
“This is the captain speaking.” The recording began with the lilting voice of the captain speaking in a serious, formal manner. “Those who come next need to know what happened here. I will do my best to recount the events exactly as I recall them. Less than thirty hours ago by my time we discovered a distress beacon. Some ship out there in space had been broadcasting for help for who knows how long.” “We of the Goodship Altruis heeded the call and fled at full speed here. To this place: a graveyard of spaceships. You need not imagine our horror as we beheld that which you have already beheld yourselves. I remember it now. I looked out to the corpses among the stars, and my second in command, Diter, asked me ‘What do we do captain? Should we go aboard?’” “I said: ‘No. No one goes aboard. This isn’t right. We follow protocol and call for backup. Lock everything down. No one gets aboard, no one leaves.’ We then made a detailed distress call direct to the Volirion emergency services emphasising the need for an immediate armed response. Knowing that we’d be stuck here for a fair few hours I decided to go stretch my legs. I told Diter to monitor the situation with Alidra, our navigator, while I went on a walk-around to ensure that the crew were briefed.” “At least that’s what I told them. The truth is that I had recently become privy to the fact that Diter and Alidra had recently begun an entanglement of the romantic nature. Despite there being no rules against such a relationship and no one on board caring one way or another they decided, for whatever reason, to try to hide it. Of course, it’s not possible to hide secrets in such a small ship as this one, and it created an... atmosphere whenever they were together.” “Anyway, as I said before: It’s a small ship. There’s just the seven of us in total, and now since there was nothing to do but wait, I figured I’d rather walk around the ship, or drink paint, or do just about anything else rather than being forced into the role of the awkward third wheel.” “I headed down the stairs, turned hitherto thereabouts, and made my way to the engine bay to see Angus, our chief, and only, engineer. He’s a good sort, is Angus, always good for a bit of craic.” “As I was heading up the hallway, I sighed audibly, as our biologist, Angela Innes, came tearing around the corner, and started marching anxiously towards me.” “‘Captain, what’s going on outside? Have you seen what's out there? I’ve just seen it on the monitors in the canteen,’ she exclaimed in a nervous tizzy verging on a full-blown panic. Angela is one of those religious types, a Reformationist, or some such other nonsense.” “I’ve never believed in deities, and honestly, I can’t help but feel a little less of someone, especially someone who claims to be a scientist, for doing so. Still, belief in God or no, we all have a right to believe in what we want. That isn’t the reason I find Angela so unbearable, and I do... Find her unbearable that is... Oh yes, incredibly unbearable... There’s something off about her. Something truly awful. I admit to feeling a mild semblance of shame at the fact that it's probably just because she is far too nice.” “‘Yes, Angela, I’ve seen outside. I am the captain after all. Just sit tight, and backup will be here in a few hours,’ I said, perhaps a touch more curtly than I had intended, and walked right past her. Ignoring her gaping mouth, and hand reaching into the air, as though she was about to say something else then quickly gave up on the notion. Good, thought I. Then I continued on my way to the engine room.” “As I was passing by the medical bay, the good doctor Bramford, who must have heard me stomping up the hall, popped his head out. ‘Ah! Captain, I thought I heard you! Can I interest you in joining us in our quarters for dinner tonight? Claire’s cooking up a storm. It’s our anniversary and...’ He trailed off anxiously so.” “The doctors Claire and Joel Bramford are a fascinating couple. They work together, they live together, they’re in their sixties, and have been married for thirty-eight years, and yet, despite this, apparently could not bear to be alone in each other's company—even on their anniversary.” “It was very odd, because as far as I could tell, they got along famously—at least professionally. Personally, I think they just ran out of things to talk about outside of work.” “‘Of course, doctor, I’d love to. I’ll see you then!’ I shouted to him as I kept walking, he smiled and dipped his head back into the medical bay as I turned another corner and began descending the stairs to the engine bay.” “It's funny, but a sudden, rather queer feeling overcame me as I reached the bottom of the stairs. I found myself staring dismally straight ahead into space as first minutes, then hours, seemed to pass by. I felt wholly caught in a trance, a daze, an impenetrable reverie overtook me, and I moved not a muscle nor twitched not a whisker. Not until I heard the screaming coming from down the hall and the smell of burning flesh.” “When I came to there was no power. The lights were off apart from the strip lights that ran across the sides of the flooring. I descended the hallway gaily until I came to the engine room and the source of the screams and the smells.” “I beheld on the floor, my chief engineer Angus, screaming in agony as he tried desperately to weld himself onto the floor on the ship, laboriously searing his flesh against the red-hot metal of the floor. ‘Angus, what on earth are you doing?’ I asked him. ‘Captain, help me, please, I must become one with the ship, please captain, please help me, help me to become one with the ship.’ I could scarce believe what mine own two eyes beheld.” “‘Angus you fool. You don’t want to merge with the floor, the crew would walk all over you, and besides, they say walls have ears you know.’ Angus’ little face lit up with delight. ‘Oh, you are right captain, of course, please help me won’t you please?’ So of course, I helped my dear friend to his feet and took some metal pipes that were laid thereabouts and used them to weld him to the wall of the engine room.” “He screamed, oh he screamed, but in time I had managed to weld his arms and legs and neck to the walls, and he screamed no longer because he was one with the ship and I laughed and skipped back the way I had come. I took in the full majesty of the ship on my way back. It was as though something had awakened in me, and I was finally able to appreciate the beauty that I’d been overlooking all this time. The colours: opulent greys, majestic blacks, incandescent browns. The shapes: excruciating parallelograms, windswept and interesting trapezoids, judgemental rhombuses—they think they’re better than me.” “On my way back to my charge in the main deck, the good doctor Bramford shouted out to me. ‘Captain, oh is that you? Captain?’ I could see him in the doorway to his quarters, though it was across the other side of the ship, so I skipped towards him, and he must have heard me coming because he sulkily wandered into his quarters. I got to the door and looked in. His back was turned to me.” “‘Oh, captain, I’m so glad you’re joining us for dinner. I can always hear you coming before I see you, captain,’ Doctor Bramford said. Oh, to hell with my fat feet, thought I! ‘So happy to be joining you for dinner doctors!’ I laughed with the merriment befitting one of my station as I twirled flamboyantly into their quarters. And as the good doctor turned around, I noticed he had gouged out his eyeballs. Darkened, hollowed holes remained where the windows to his soul once perched, and blood had dried into his face and dribbled down his chin.” “I beheld the entirety of the room now and noticed that his wife Claire was lying on the table dead, she had been surgically cut open, and her intestines were spilling out over the table. The good doctor had been hungrily gnawing on her liver before I had entered. I sat down at the dinner table. The room was warmly lit by candlelight. Shadows flickered across the dinner table. The smell of blood and viscera danced lovingly into my nostrils.” “The doctor passed me a steel mug filled with a rich vermillion libation, which I gulped down greedily. The metallic taste of blood filled my mouth, thick slime seeped its way down my throat, and I gagged and vomited immediately. The doctor spake thusly: ‘We’re so glad you could join us tonight, captain, my wife always cooks so much food, and we’d hate for it to go to waste. I've no stomach for it anymore, no stomach anymore.’” “The doctor and I chatted for a few minutes, though Claire was unduly silent. Then all at once, without warning, the good doctor's visage darkened, and he threw his face into his hands and shoulder-wept with such ferocity. ‘What has become of us captain, what has become of us,’ the good doctor planted his face into the table and appeared to go quietly limp—how rude—‘How rude!’ I spat the words with such ferocious venom, raised my haunches and tore out of there in righteous indignation.” “‘He-e-e-e-e-l-lp! He-e-e-e-e-l-lp!’ someone was screaming, thought I, and it was coming from the direction of the lab. I danced a jig in that general direction. I dragged myself in, sluggishly, the weariness of years pulling me down like so much gravity. I jovially tap-danced over to the containment cell and peered through the glass.” “It was Angela. And upon seeing my own countenance did her eyes widen with terror ‘Oh no, not you too captain, please God, not you too!’ I cackled like a mad witch ‘When you sleep next, I’ll come for you.’ I whispered with the blood of Claire’s meal still staining my mouth, I crooned and preened, I frothed at the mouth while I bashed on the glass with both fists. Angela screamed and curled up in a ball in the corner. I must have been quite the sight. If only I could have gotten inside, but she’d locked the cell door tight. I left and continued on my way, a great dashing duke of the night.” “As I got back to stairs leading up to the flight deck, I heard a dull thudding sound. I perused the area and could see over in the darkness lay my good friend Diter. And Alidra seemed to straddle him curiously. My dark visage floated across the room, no doubt leaving a snail trail of corruption in its wake.” “‘I say. Diter, Alidra, what are you doing?’ Alidra looked up at me, glistening in the darkness, only partially lit by the strip lights. ‘Why, captain, I’m navigating of course,’ she motioned to my second in command whose skull had been cracked open, and his brain had been haphazardly smeared all over the floor. ‘Not haphazardly captain with purpose’ did she read my mind, or had I been speaking aloud? ‘Look inside the brains look at the cosmos within, there’s a whole universe in there, I can guide us to within and show us to our destination! We must light the beacon ourselves Captain. We must!’” “With my hands on my belly, I threw my head back and laughed with all my might. ‘Idiot child, do you not see we’ll never make it ourselves!’ I screamed, and turned tail, and fled, as she wept.” “And there it is. I ran upstairs, sat in my chair, and decided I must—I simply must—record a message for posterity. You see, now I stare outside at the monitors, which no longer work, and yet now work, with true purpose, to show me the reality that was always kept hidden. Those who come after must light the beacon, the distressing beacon, the beacon of distress! Ah-ha-ha-haa.”
The rest of the recording seemed to just be the captain laughing. The security operatives exchanged uneasy glances. “It probably goes on like this for hours,” said Carmine as he switched the recording off. “So what? Everyone went crazy for some reason and that’s why all the ships—” Adi started to say, then Carmine interrupted him. “I’m not taking this guy at his word as far as I can tell he went crazy and butchered his crew it's not unheard of,” except Carmine had never heard of anything like it. He also knew that as an explanation it was painfully insufficient and never even began to account for exactly why all the ships were stuck here. He also knew they couldn’t get into any of that right now. “Come in, Goodship Fortitude,” Carmine radioed his ship “we’ve found dead on board evidence seems to point to the captain having some psychological break. Everything OK on board?” a few moments passed by as the guards nervously shuffled their feet and kept their weapons at the ready. Eventually, a crackling emanated from the radio, and the raspy voice of their pilot spoke. “Understood sir, you need us to send backup?” “No, the captain’s dead. We’re gonna quickly sweep for survivors,” Carmine hesitated for a moment, “stay on your guard, please.” “Aye, captain!” rasped the pilot. Carmine looked around to his operatives who couldn’t quite hide the worry on their faces. They were inexperienced, well-trained, but inexperienced. Carmine had been doing this for years, and even he had never seen anything quite like this. For a moment, he wished he’d wake up back in his bed. But quickly snapped himself out of it. They had work to do. “Not that I take anything this madman said at face value, but he did say there was someone down in the lab in a glass cell. We should head there and see,” the crew murmured their agreement and headed downstairs. They were conscious of the fact that if the recording was factual then there should be a body or at least brains smeared nearby. Adi shone his light in that direction and said: “There. Two.” The team beheld a dead body covered in blood with its head smashed in so much it looked to be decapitated. As they shone their torches on the second body, they found the corpse of a woman who was lying face down in the foetal position in a pool of blood. She seemed to have had her head smashed into the ground until she died—did the captain do it? Carmine wondered. He ordered the team to head to the labs as quickly as they could. A growing feeling of unease was hanging over them as they grappled with the captain’s recorded words. Two operatives entered the lab back-to-back, guns up, searching for activity. Then the other two, then Carmine strolled in, almost casually, and walked straight to the large glass cell. He frowned as he looked down and beheld a woman curled into a ball, apparently sleeping. After a brief pause Carmine hit the glass with his gun more thuggishly than he had intended. The woman screamed as she jumped awake and peered at them in abject horror. “Don’t worry, you’re safe now. We’re the security team that was called. Can you open the door? We’ll escort you to the ship.” Carmine pointed to the thick glass door that she had locked from her side. The woman hesitated. “My name’s Carmine. What’s yours?” “Angela,” she told him, to a barely muffled murmur from the crew, which Carmine tried his best to ignore. “Angela, we found a recording. The captains dead. You’re safe now.” “No, it wasn’t just the captain. It was all of them, all of them. They’ve all gone mad! How can I be sure you haven’t gone mad too!?” she screamed and sobbed hysterically. The hairs on the back of Carmine’s neck stood up as the anxiety that had been steadily simmering in his team had reached boiling point. “Captain, this is bad. There’s something wrong here. Seriously wrong. We have to leave, now!” said one of the operatives, panicked, Carmine suppressed his anger as best he could and was about to scold the operative when his second-in-command, Adi, spoke up instead. “We can’t leave yet” Adi said flatly “we’ve not lit the beacon.” Carmine hadn’t realised that he’d been slouching slightly. He immediately stood bolt upright. Turning slowly to face his second-in-command, he looked at him and his heart filled with a dark and malign terror as he beheld his comrades face. Adi’s lips were contorted unnaturally in a huge ear to ear grin, his eyes bulged maniacally from his face. “We’ve not yet lit the beacon!” Adi screamed as he lunged at Carmine, smashing him into the glass of the containment cell. For the next few moments, the team all grabbed at Adi, trying to pull him off Carmine. Then a panicked furore broke out. Some started to scream like banshees. Adi threw Carmine to the floor. He drew his sidearm, a handheld ballistic shotgun, and with an ear shattering blast, he shot Carmine in the stomach. Carmine's consciousness seemed to be overtaken with red. It was all he could see, think, almost all he could feel. The pain overtook him completely. He tried to breathe, but he had been winded by the blast. All he could do was gasp and choke as at least one of his lungs collapsed. Gunfire rang out for what seemed like an eternity and all the while there was a constant noise, it only occurred to Carmine a few minutes later, once the fighting had died down, that it was the sound of Angela’s screams. It took every last ounce of willpower he had to pull himself up to his feet. Honestly, he didn’t know how he found the strength. Pain racked his body. Buckshot had pierced his stomach, and the acid leaking out of him felt like a continuous knife stabbing his guts that forced a scream out of him every few moments. He surveyed the room and could see that everyone was dead apart from one of his team. He couldn’t tell who it was, they were sitting with their back to him, knees in their arms, rocking back and forth, whispering furiously. Carmine tried crawling over to them, screaming in agony and choking on his own blood. He slowly dragged himself over, and reached out his hand. The operative stopped rocking, stopped whispering, turned their head slightly and seemed to speak to Carmine over their shoulder. “Light the beacon,” they whispered then took their sidearm and blew their brains out to the sound of Carmine screaming “No!”. Carmine collapsed onto the floor, shuddering in agony. Every shallow, painful breath took a massive toll on him. He started to drift in and out of consciousness when a hand gripped tight his arm. He flinched and looked up. It was Angela. “Get up,” she said with an air of determination that took Carmine by surprise. He couldn’t help but feel some relief, he asked himself why this could be happening, was it real? He found himself—not for the first time—wishing he would wake up in his warm, safe bed and be done with this nightmare. He had to focus. He put his arm around Angela, and with unbearable pain in every step, every breath, he let her lead them out of the lab. The pair limped through the dark hallways, heading back to the shuttle bay, when Carmine realised they were not alone. He had backup in the ship they had arrived in. He radioed ahead. “Come in Fortitude, come in.” “y-y-y-e-e-e-s-s-s?” came the reply in a long and drawn-out manner of someone who is quite distracted. “Everyone's dead. Stay in the ship. I’m coming back, with a crew member from the ship. I’m hurt bad. Everyone just went... Crazy.” “Understood captain.” came the reply. Though slow-going, Angela and Carmine limped nearly the whole way back. As they passed the stairs going up to the pilot deck something made Carmine look back. He didn’t know why he looked back, but he did. There, at the foot of the stairs, he could swear he saw the captain. Standing there, motionless, grinning. That awful grin. It couldn’t have been him. It couldn’t have been real. He decided the pain and blood loss was making him see things and focused on his feet, one step at a time. The agony, unbearable. He could hear the sound of rapturous applause coming from somewhere behind them closer and closer it followed. They arrived at last, to the large metal door of the ship and Carmine radioed ahead to let them in. A loud slamming sound emanated from the door, and it started to open with a whir. Angela gasped and Carmine fumbled for his gun as the pilot walked out, completely naked, and covered head to toe in blood. He wore intestines as a necktie, but Carmine wondered—why wear a necktie with no shirt on? An odd observation to make at this moment, had he started to go mad too? Or was it the loss of blood? “I-I-I have a diorama captain,” the pilot stuttered excitedly “C-c-come inside, and I’ll show you. I have it all lined up. The planets. The moons. All inside a-a-a-all in there. All inside, we can go, we can go to the destination.” he kept rambling as he walked up to the pair. Angela dropped Carmine and bolted down the hallway, away from the immediate threat. Carmine groaned loudly as he hit the ground with a thud and stupidly dropped his gun. The pilot was on him. Ranting, rambling, spitting with furious excitement. Before long the pilot’s fingers were wrapped around Carmine's neck and with the strength of a bull he squeezed Carmine's windpipe. He knew he couldn’t fight him off. He simply didn’t have the strength; he was as easy to kill as a newborn kitten. Oxygen cut off. His face started to turn purple. He spluttered, choked, and just before he lost consciousness, something in the very back of his mind pushed him to fight. His fingers fumbled around the floor until they reached his sidearm which he brought up into the pilot’s ribcage and pulled the trigger. Blood sprayed all over the wall, and the pilot fell back screaming. Carmine rubbed his neck, coughing and gagging; he spat up blood. The sounds of the pilot writhing in agony filled the air. He sensed Angela before he felt her hand on his arm. She helped him up. They walked over to the ship and stopped. Carmine pointed the gun at the pilot and pulled the trigger, putting him out of his misery. He wished someone would do the same for him. They got into the ship and looked around. The bodies of the crew lay all over the floor. Limbs detached, heads and eyes arranged to look like a solar system. The pilot's diorama. Carmine collapsed pitifully to the ground and Angela helped him sit up against the wall, and off she went to the cockpit. “Can you fly?” he asked between laboured breaths. “Fly? No. No, but I can light the beacon.” Carmine’s eyes widened and he forced himself to his feet. He hurried past the dead, slipping on viscera, he reached the cockpit and placed a hand on Angela's shoulder. She turned and looked at him; she looked sane. “Did you know!?” he screamed. “Ten years I’ve been coming back. Lighting the beacon. It crawls inside of you, so you pass it on. I personally think its alien, of course. It affects us all differently. Some are drawn here time and again, we light beacons. Someday someone will understand. They need help, we must light the beacons.” Disbelief, panic, confusion, then horror all swept over him. He thought about shooting her, or perhaps himself. His mind became a swirling medley of emotion intersecting into vivid patterns, the stars that shone ahead of him. He collapsed into the copilot's chair, and his eyes widened in wonder. A great tapestry lay before him, the story of the universe, a code in the stars that spoke only to him. “Do it,” he whispered as his consciousness faded. “The beacon must be lit.”
“This is the captain speaking.” The recording began with the lilting voice of the captain speaking in a serious, formal manner. “Those who come next need to know what happened here. I will do my best to recount the events exactly as I recall them. Less than thirty hours ago by my time we discovered a distress beacon. Some ship out there in space had been broadcasting for help for who knows how long.” “We of the Goodship Altruis heeded the call and fled at full speed here. To this place: a graveyard of spaceships. You need not imagine our horror as we beheld that which you have already beheld yourselves. I remember it now. I looked out to the corpses among the stars, and my second in command, Diter, asked me ‘What do we do captain? Should we go aboard?’” “I said: ‘No. No one goes aboard. This isn’t right. We follow protocol and call for backup. Lock everything down. No one gets aboard, no one leaves.’ We then made a detailed distress call direct to the Volirion emergency services emphasising the need for an immediate armed response. Knowing that we’d be stuck here for a fair few hours I decided to go stretch my legs. I told Diter to monitor the situation with Alidra, our navigator, while I went on a walk-around to ensure that the crew were briefed.” “At least that’s what I told them. The truth is that I had recently become privy to the fact that Diter and Alidra had recently begun an entanglement of the romantic nature. Despite there being no rules against such a relationship and no one on board caring one way or another they decided, for whatever reason, to try to hide it. Of course, it’s not possible to hide secrets in such a small ship as this one, and it created an... atmosphere whenever they were together.” “Anyway, as I said before: It’s a small ship. There’s just the seven of us in total, and now since there was nothing to do but wait, I figured I’d rather walk around the ship, or drink paint, or do just about anything else rather than being forced into the role of the awkward third wheel.” “I headed down the stairs, turned hitherto thereabouts, and made my way to the engine bay to see Angus, our chief, and only, engineer. He’s a good sort, is Angus, always good for a bit of craic.” “As I was heading up the hallway, I sighed audibly, as our biologist, Angela Innes, came tearing around the corner, and started marching anxiously towards me.” “‘Captain, what’s going on outside? Have you seen what's out there? I’ve just seen it on the monitors in the canteen,’ she exclaimed in a nervous tizzy verging on a full-blown panic. Angela is one of those religious types, a Reformationist, or some such other nonsense.” “I’ve never believed in deities, and honestly, I can’t help but feel a little less of someone, especially someone who claims to be a scientist, for doing so. Still, belief in God or no, we all have a right to believe in what we want. That isn’t the reason I find Angela so unbearable, and I do... Find her unbearable that is... Oh yes, incredibly unbearable... There’s something off about her. Something truly awful. I admit to feeling a mild semblance of shame at the fact that it's probably just because she is far too nice.” “‘Yes, Angela, I’ve seen outside. I am the captain after all. Just sit tight, and backup will be here in a few hours,’ I said, perhaps a touch more curtly than I had intended, and walked right past her. Ignoring her gaping mouth, and hand reaching into the air, as though she was about to say something else then quickly gave up on the notion. Good, thought I. Then I continued on my way to the engine room.” “As I was passing by the medical bay, the good doctor Bramford, who must have heard me stomping up the hall, popped his head out. ‘Ah! Captain, I thought I heard you! Can I interest you in joining us in our quarters for dinner tonight? Claire’s cooking up a storm. It’s our anniversary and...’ He trailed off anxiously so.” “The doctors Claire and Joel Bramford are a fascinating couple. They work together, they live together, they’re in their sixties, and have been married for thirty-eight years, and yet, despite this, apparently could not bear to be alone in each other's company—even on their anniversary.” “It was very odd, because as far as I could tell, they got along famously—at least professionally. Personally, I think they just ran out of things to talk about outside of work.” “‘Of course, doctor, I’d love to. I’ll see you then!’ I shouted to him as I kept walking, he smiled and dipped his head back into the medical bay as I turned another corner and began descending the stairs to the engine bay.” “It's funny, but a sudden, rather queer feeling overcame me as I reached the bottom of the stairs. I found myself staring dismally straight ahead into space as first minutes, then hours, seemed to pass by. I felt wholly caught in a trance, a daze, an impenetrable reverie overtook me, and I moved not a muscle nor twitched not a whisker. Not until I heard the screaming coming from down the hall and the smell of burning flesh.” “When I came to there was no power. The lights were off apart from the strip lights that ran across the sides of the flooring. I descended the hallway gaily until I came to the engine room and the source of the screams and the smells.” “I beheld on the floor, my chief engineer Angus, screaming in agony as he tried desperately to weld himself onto the floor on the ship, laboriously searing his flesh against the red-hot metal of the floor. ‘Angus, what on earth are you doing?’ I asked him. ‘Captain, help me, please, I must become one with the ship, please captain, please help me, help me to become one with the ship.’ I could scarce believe what mine own two eyes beheld.” “‘Angus you fool. You don’t want to merge with the floor, the crew would walk all over you, and besides, they say walls have ears you know.’ Angus’ little face lit up with delight. ‘Oh, you are right captain, of course, please help me won’t you please?’ So of course, I helped my dear friend to his feet and took some metal pipes that were laid thereabouts and used them to weld him to the wall of the engine room.” “He screamed, oh he screamed, but in time I had managed to weld his arms and legs and neck to the walls, and he screamed no longer because he was one with the ship and I laughed and skipped back the way I had come. I took in the full majesty of the ship on my way back. It was as though something had awakened in me, and I was finally able to appreciate the beauty that I’d been overlooking all this time. The colours: opulent greys, majestic blacks, incandescent browns. The shapes: excruciating parallelograms, windswept and interesting trapezoids, judgemental rhombuses—they think they’re better than me.” “On my way back to my charge in the main deck, the good doctor Bramford shouted out to me. ‘Captain, oh is that you? Captain?’ I could see him in the doorway to his quarters, though it was across the other side of the ship, so I skipped towards him, and he must have heard me coming because he sulkily wandered into his quarters. I got to the door and looked in. His back was turned to me.” “‘Oh, captain, I’m so glad you’re joining us for dinner. I can always hear you coming before I see you, captain,’ Doctor Bramford said. Oh, to hell with my fat feet, thought I! ‘So happy to be joining you for dinner doctors!’ I laughed with the merriment befitting one of my station as I twirled flamboyantly into their quarters. And as the good doctor turned around, I noticed he had gouged out his eyeballs. Darkened, hollowed holes remained where the windows to his soul once perched, and blood had dried into his face and dribbled down his chin.” “I beheld the entirety of the room now and noticed that his wife Claire was lying on the table dead, she had been surgically cut open, and her intestines were spilling out over the table. The good doctor had been hungrily gnawing on her liver before I had entered. I sat down at the dinner table. The room was warmly lit by candlelight. Shadows flickered across the dinner table. The smell of blood and viscera danced lovingly into my nostrils.” “The doctor passed me a steel mug filled with a rich vermillion libation, which I gulped down greedily. The metallic taste of blood filled my mouth, thick slime seeped its way down my throat, and I gagged and vomited immediately. The doctor spake thusly: ‘We’re so glad you could join us tonight, captain, my wife always cooks so much food, and we’d hate for it to go to waste. I've no stomach for it anymore, no stomach anymore.’” “The doctor and I chatted for a few minutes, though Claire was unduly silent. Then all at once, without warning, the good doctor's visage darkened, and he threw his face into his hands and shoulder-wept with such ferocity. ‘What has become of us captain, what has become of us,’ the good doctor planted his face into the table and appeared to go quietly limp—how rude—‘How rude!’ I spat the words with such ferocious venom, raised my haunches and tore out of there in righteous indignation.” “‘He-e-e-e-e-l-lp! He-e-e-e-e-l-lp!’ someone was screaming, thought I, and it was coming from the direction of the lab. I danced a jig in that general direction. I dragged myself in, sluggishly, the weariness of years pulling me down like so much gravity. I jovially tap-danced over to the containment cell and peered through the glass.” “It was Angela. And upon seeing my own countenance did her eyes widen with terror ‘Oh no, not you too captain, please God, not you too!’ I cackled like a mad witch ‘When you sleep next, I’ll come for you.’ I whispered with the blood of Claire’s meal still staining my mouth, I crooned and preened, I frothed at the mouth while I bashed on the glass with both fists. Angela screamed and curled up in a ball in the corner. I must have been quite the sight. If only I could have gotten inside, but she’d locked the cell door tight. I left and continued on my way, a great dashing duke of the night.” “As I got back to stairs leading up to the flight deck, I heard a dull thudding sound. I perused the area and could see over in the darkness lay my good friend Diter. And Alidra seemed to straddle him curiously. My dark visage floated across the room, no doubt leaving a snail trail of corruption in its wake.” “‘I say. Diter, Alidra, what are you doing?’ Alidra looked up at me, glistening in the darkness, only partially lit by the strip lights. ‘Why, captain, I’m navigating of course,’ she motioned to my second in command whose skull had been cracked open, and his brain had been haphazardly smeared all over the floor. ‘Not haphazardly captain with purpose’ did she read my mind, or had I been speaking aloud? ‘Look inside the brains look at the cosmos within, there’s a whole universe in there, I can guide us to within and show us to our destination! We must light the beacon ourselves Captain. We must!’” “With my hands on my belly, I threw my head back and laughed with all my might. ‘Idiot child, do you not see we’ll never make it ourselves!’ I screamed, and turned tail, and fled, as she wept.” “And there it is. I ran upstairs, sat in my chair, and decided I must—I simply must—record a message for posterity. You see, now I stare outside at the monitors, which no longer work, and yet now work, with true purpose, to show me the reality that was always kept hidden. Those who come after must light the beacon, the distressing beacon, the beacon of distress! Ah-ha-ha-haa.”
The rest of the recording seemed to just be the captain laughing. The security operatives exchanged uneasy glances. “It probably goes on like this for hours,” said Carmine as he switched the recording off. “So what? Everyone went crazy for some reason and that’s why all the ships—” Adi started to say, then Carmine interrupted him. “I’m not taking this guy at his word as far as I can tell he went crazy and butchered his crew it's not unheard of,” except Carmine had never heard of anything like it. He also knew that as an explanation it was painfully insufficient and never even began to account for exactly why all the ships were stuck here. He also knew they couldn’t get into any of that right now. “Come in, Goodship Fortitude,” Carmine radioed his ship “we’ve found dead on board evidence seems to point to the captain having some psychological break. Everything OK on board?” a few moments passed by as the guards nervously shuffled their feet and kept their weapons at the ready. Eventually, a crackling emanated from the radio, and the raspy voice of their pilot spoke. “Understood sir, you need us to send backup?” “No, the captain’s dead. We’re gonna quickly sweep for survivors,” Carmine hesitated for a moment, “stay on your guard, please.” “Aye, captain!” rasped the pilot. Carmine looked around to his operatives who couldn’t quite hide the worry on their faces. They were inexperienced, well-trained, but inexperienced. Carmine had been doing this for years, and even he had never seen anything quite like this. For a moment, he wished he’d wake up back in his bed. But quickly snapped himself out of it. They had work to do. “Not that I take anything this madman said at face value, but he did say there was someone down in the lab in a glass cell. We should head there and see,” the crew murmured their agreement and headed downstairs. They were conscious of the fact that if the recording was factual then there should be a body or at least brains smeared nearby. Adi shone his light in that direction and said: “There. Two.” The team beheld a dead body covered in blood with its head smashed in so much it looked to be decapitated. As they shone their torches on the second body, they found the corpse of a woman who was lying face down in the foetal position in a pool of blood. She seemed to have had her head smashed into the ground until she died—did the captain do it? Carmine wondered. He ordered the team to head to the labs as quickly as they could. A growing feeling of unease was hanging over them as they grappled with the captain’s recorded words. Two operatives entered the lab back-to-back, guns up, searching for activity. Then the other two, then Carmine strolled in, almost casually, and walked straight to the large glass cell. He frowned as he looked down and beheld a woman curled into a ball, apparently sleeping. After a brief pause Carmine hit the glass with his gun more thuggishly than he had intended. The woman screamed as she jumped awake and peered at them in abject horror. “Don’t worry, you’re safe now. We’re the security team that was called. Can you open the door? We’ll escort you to the ship.” Carmine pointed to the thick glass door that she had locked from her side. The woman hesitated. “My name’s Carmine. What’s yours?” “Angela,” she told him, to a barely muffled murmur from the crew, which Carmine tried his best to ignore. “Angela, we found a recording. The captains dead. You’re safe now.” “No, it wasn’t just the captain. It was all of them, all of them. They’ve all gone mad! How can I be sure you haven’t gone mad too!?” she screamed and sobbed hysterically. The hairs on the back of Carmine’s neck stood up as the anxiety that had been steadily simmering in his team had reached boiling point. “Captain, this is bad. There’s something wrong here. Seriously wrong. We have to leave, now!” said one of the operatives, panicked, Carmine suppressed his anger as best he could and was about to scold the operative when his second-in-command, Adi, spoke up instead. “We can’t leave yet” Adi said flatly “we’ve not lit the beacon.” Carmine hadn’t realised that he’d been slouching slightly. He immediately stood bolt upright. Turning slowly to face his second-in-command, he looked at him and his heart filled with a dark and malign terror as he beheld his comrades face. Adi’s lips were contorted unnaturally in a huge ear to ear grin, his eyes bulged maniacally from his face. “We’ve not yet lit the beacon!” Adi screamed as he lunged at Carmine, smashing him into the glass of the containment cell. For the next few moments, the team all grabbed at Adi, trying to pull him off Carmine. Then a panicked furore broke out. Some started to scream like banshees. Adi threw Carmine to the floor. He drew his sidearm, a handheld ballistic shotgun, and with an ear shattering blast, he shot Carmine in the stomach. Carmine's consciousness seemed to be overtaken with red. It was all he could see, think, almost all he could feel. The pain overtook him completely. He tried to breathe, but he had been winded by the blast. All he could do was gasp and choke as at least one of his lungs collapsed. Gunfire rang out for what seemed like an eternity and all the while there was a constant noise, it only occurred to Carmine a few minutes later, once the fighting had died down, that it was the sound of Angela’s screams. It took every last ounce of willpower he had to pull himself up to his feet. Honestly, he didn’t know how he found the strength. Pain racked his body. Buckshot had pierced his stomach, and the acid leaking out of him felt like a continuous knife stabbing his guts that forced a scream out of him every few moments. He surveyed the room and could see that everyone was dead apart from one of his team. He couldn’t tell who it was, they were sitting with their back to him, knees in their arms, rocking back and forth, whispering furiously. Carmine tried crawling over to them, screaming in agony and choking on his own blood. He slowly dragged himself over, and reached out his hand. The operative stopped rocking, stopped whispering, turned their head slightly and seemed to speak to Carmine over their shoulder. “Light the beacon,” they whispered then took their sidearm and blew their brains out to the sound of Carmine screaming “No!”. Carmine collapsed onto the floor, shuddering in agony. Every shallow, painful breath took a massive toll on him. He started to drift in and out of consciousness when a hand gripped tight his arm. He flinched and looked up. It was Angela. “Get up,” she said with an air of determination that took Carmine by surprise. He couldn’t help but feel some relief, he asked himself why this could be happening, was it real? He found himself—not for the first time—wishing he would wake up in his warm, safe bed and be done with this nightmare. He had to focus. He put his arm around Angela, and with unbearable pain in every step, every breath, he let her lead them out of the lab. The pair limped through the dark hallways, heading back to the shuttle bay, when Carmine realised they were not alone. He had backup in the ship they had arrived in. He radioed ahead. “Come in Fortitude, come in.” “y-y-y-e-e-e-s-s-s?” came the reply in a long and drawn-out manner of someone who is quite distracted. “Everyone's dead. Stay in the ship. I’m coming back, with a crew member from the ship. I’m hurt bad. Everyone just went... Crazy.” “Understood captain.” came the reply. Though slow-going, Angela and Carmine limped nearly the whole way back. As they passed the stairs going up to the pilot deck something made Carmine look back. He didn’t know why he looked back, but he did. There, at the foot of the stairs, he could swear he saw the captain. Standing there, motionless, grinning. That awful grin. It couldn’t have been him. It couldn’t have been real. He decided the pain and blood loss was making him see things and focused on his feet, one step at a time. The agony, unbearable. He could hear the sound of rapturous applause coming from somewhere behind them closer and closer it followed. They arrived at last, to the large metal door of the ship and Carmine radioed ahead to let them in. A loud slamming sound emanated from the door, and it started to open with a whir. Angela gasped and Carmine fumbled for his gun as the pilot walked out, completely naked, and covered head to toe in blood. He wore intestines as a necktie, but Carmine wondered—why wear a necktie with no shirt on? An odd observation to make at this moment, had he started to go mad too? Or was it the loss of blood? “I-I-I have a diorama captain,” the pilot stuttered excitedly “C-c-come inside, and I’ll show you. I have it all lined up. The planets. The moons. All inside a-a-a-all in there. All inside, we can go, we can go to the destination.” he kept rambling as he walked up to the pair. Angela dropped Carmine and bolted down the hallway, away from the immediate threat. Carmine groaned loudly as he hit the ground with a thud and stupidly dropped his gun. The pilot was on him. Ranting, rambling, spitting with furious excitement. Before long the pilot’s fingers were wrapped around Carmine's neck and with the strength of a bull he squeezed Carmine's windpipe. He knew he couldn’t fight him off. He simply didn’t have the strength; he was as easy to kill as a newborn kitten. Oxygen cut off. His face started to turn purple. He spluttered, choked, and just before he lost consciousness, something in the very back of his mind pushed him to fight. His fingers fumbled around the floor until they reached his sidearm which he brought up into the pilot’s ribcage and pulled the trigger. Blood sprayed all over the wall, and the pilot fell back screaming. Carmine rubbed his neck, coughing and gagging; he spat up blood. The sounds of the pilot writhing in agony filled the air. He sensed Angela before he felt her hand on his arm. She helped him up. They walked over to the ship and stopped. Carmine pointed the gun at the pilot and pulled the trigger, putting him out of his misery. He wished someone would do the same for him. They got into the ship and looked around. The bodies of the crew lay all over the floor. Limbs detached, heads and eyes arranged to look like a solar system. The pilot's diorama. Carmine collapsed pitifully to the ground and Angela helped him sit up against the wall, and off she went to the cockpit. “Can you fly?” he asked between laboured breaths. “Fly? No. No, but I can light the beacon.” Carmine’s eyes widened and he forced himself to his feet. He hurried past the dead, slipping on viscera, he reached the cockpit and placed a hand on Angela's shoulder. She turned and looked at him; she looked sane. “Did you know!?” he screamed. “Ten years I’ve been coming back. Lighting the beacon. It crawls inside of you, so you pass it on. I personally think its alien, of course. It affects us all differently. Some are drawn here time and again, we light beacons. Someday someone will understand. They need help, we must light the beacons.” Disbelief, panic, confusion, then horror all swept over him. He thought about shooting her, or perhaps himself. His mind became a swirling medley of emotion intersecting into vivid patterns, the stars that shone ahead of him. He collapsed into the copilot's chair, and his eyes widened in wonder. A great tapestry lay before him, the story of the universe, a code in the stars that spoke only to him. “Do it,” he whispered as his consciousness faded. “The beacon must be lit.”