They boarded Aries and were kicked out of their own ship. Torres got the power on again and they found a Sergeant Murphy locked in medical bay. Her Captain is a man by the name of Dixon and Murphy is convinced that they need Charlie's crew's help.
They were able to track Valhalla's engine radiation output towards two unknown planets somewhere off in the distance. But they had Vanguard science research station to get to. So they did and found two more survivors, a scientist by the name of Collins and a test subject named Michael Kelly.
The crew searched the rest of Vanguard and have found two rooms of several people locked in cages, dead, bearing similar markings to Kelly. And now, I shall present you with an excerpt from a point just after this.
Hunter and McCallister shared a look before Hunter unlocked
the door and pushed it open, entering first. McCallister followed behind,
swinging his gun through the door and into the room. He stopped two steps in,
turned his head away and swung on arm over his face. “Fuck!” Hunter shouted.
“Holy shit!”
Torres muttered as he entered the black room. The smell was horrific. Burnt
flesh and blood. The smells combined created a sense of decay within the room.
“Okay,”
McCallister said, “Everyone out.” He swung his torch over the room a few times
as he became the last to leave, wanting to get a good view of what had
happened. His gun worked its way over the ceiling and walls to check what was
on his mind.
Soon the door was locked again and everybody
was out in the corridor, lights shining over each other and the door, searching
each other for answers. Eventually all
eyes and torches found McCallister and Hunter. They shared a look and Hunter
kept her gaze hopeful for an answer. McCallister sighed and dropped his eyes to
the floor, finding a single drop of blood mighty important. “Mass extermination
through fire.” He let that set in for a few quiet and awkward seconds before he
lifted his eyes and looked to the other four people. “I’ve seen it happen
before. When conducting research into viruses or biological weapons, the test
subjects, human or animal, can turn on the scientist. As a defence the room the
subjects are locked in hold incineration procedures. From several points in the
walls and ceilings a gas is forced into the room. Then it’s lit.”
Silence followed
his admittance. McCallister kept his gaze steady and free of any emotion, eyes
focused on a point in the darkness behind Eliot. Torres was the one to ask the
worrying question, “What were the test subjects?”
Everybody, from
having seen the other rooms, knew what the answer was going to be but they
hoped in all hell that it wasn’t true. McCallister only nodded in way of
answering and he watched as Torres’ face paled and he looked a little uneasy on
his feet. McCallister patted his shoulder and pushed the man along. “Come on.
Let’s go find some computers for you to play with.”
“Just,” he moved
away from the man’s hand to lean against the wall. “Give me a minute.”
McCallister lifted
his arm to wipe at his face, to wipe a growing line of sweat from his forehead
away, and smelt the faint hint of burning decay on his clothes. It was
minuscule but it was enough to make him close his eyes and swallow the awkward
lump in his throat.
Then he heard
Torres vomit. He turned to the man and patted him on the shoulder, “Get it
out.”
Hunter added her
own input then, “Always knew you had a weak stomach.”
Torres frowned,
glared at her and groaned out a painful, “Screw you,” to the Sergeant.
Garrison chuckled
and said, “You already have.”
“Screw you too,”
Torres managed before he threw another load of his stomach’s contents across
the floor.
“Alright,”
McCallister said, “Knock it off. We’re still on a job and we still don’t know
what the fuck is going on. Focus on getting the damn power back on.”
That stopped any
further arguments and McCallister ordered Garrison and Hunter to take the lead
with Eliot behind them. He stayed behind with Torres to allow the man to regain
his composure, grab his water bottle, take a swig and spit it out several times
before he took a swig to swallow. McCallister kept his gun high, trained on the
shadows they left behind and heard Hunter throw a punch to Garrison’s arm
before she said, “Fuck you with that bullshit. I mean it.”
He shook his head
and kept going, Torres finally joining him in watching their backs. They
reached the main room with no trouble and both Torres and Eliot went to the computers
within it. They did a quick check of each one before shaking their heads. Eliot
spoke, “This is a secondary office. The main bridge with the means to turn the
power on must be somewhere else.”
Garrison flicked
his rifle up and down to a door he was facing, “We didn’t come through there
did we?”
Everyone turned
and shook their heads. Hunter said, “Think the main bridge is through there?”
McCallister
stepped forward and within seconds everyone was falling back into the same
formation as before. He pushed through the door first, Torres following him
through with Hunter on his heels. Eliot and Garrison slipped through afterwards
and they paused to get their bearings. The corridor they were now in veered off
in two directions. Forward and left. Forward led to a door and left to an
unknown space.
They came to the
divide and he gestured to the door, “Hunter, Eliot and Garrison that way.
Torres with me.” He moved left and heard Torres behind him, still covering
their ass. The corridor carried on a few yards before it came to a door on the
right. McCallister peered through the windows in the double doors to see a
small set of stairs that went up eight steps before coming to a control room of
some kind.
He pushed on the
door and found that it was open. He nodded to Torres, who nodded back, and
ventured through, swinging his gun across the expanse of the room before moving
up the stairs. They were alone in this room, but what stretched across the
entire right hand wall was a window. He moved to stand in front of it and saw
three beams of light moving across the floor. Red smears made themselves
apparent in the quick flashes of light.
Behind him Torres
moved around, searching the room for several seconds before he said in triumph,
“Power switch!” There was a loud click and lights began to click themselves on.
McCallister’s eyes widened at the sight before him. The room that the other
three had entered resembled a combat arena.
It was a large room that was decorated in blood smears and even some
entrails that had been left strewn across the floor. “Holy shit!”
“Holy shit
indeed,” McCallister said.
Through the window
he watched as the other three noticed them in the window and looked up, waving
their arms and guns in reply. Hunter’s voice came through the radio, “It
looks worse from up close.”
“What the hell
were they working on up here?” Eliot asked. McCallister watched as the man
flicked his gun back down to follow his steps around the room.
“Something crazy as shit,” Torres said.
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