Deep Space Death Trap

The Void Drifter struck the planet hard enough to bury its forward drill beneath the red plain.

Mara Kestrel came awake upside down, strapped into her crash couch while the cabin burned around her. Warning lights pulsed through the smoke. Somewhere below, metal screamed as the ship settled into the ground, and something heavy rolled across the ceiling that had become the floor.

“Cut the restraints!” Jalen Voss shouted.

Mara clawed at the buckle. Her gloves slipped on blood - not hers, she thought, until pain began spreading across her forehead. The latch released. She dropped onto the angled deck and struck her shoulder against a console.

The air tasted of scorched insulation. Behind her, a fire crawled along the emergency lockers.

“Where’s the rest of them?”

Jalen was hanging from his harness near the communications pit, his face gray beneath the blood running from his nose. He kicked free and landed badly, folding around one leg.

“Jalen.”

“I’m moving.”

“You’re limping.”

“I said I’m moving.”

The ship lurched. A wall split open with a gunshot crack. Through the torn plating Mara saw a sky the color of old bruises, thick clouds dragging across a pale sun. Black smoke poured upward from the wreck and flattened beneath the wind.

Then something screamed outside.

It was not an animal sound. It began as a thin metallic whine and broke into a wet, pulsing shriek that made the bones behind Mara’s ears ache.

Jalen stared at the breach. “That wasn’t the ship.”

“No.” Mara grabbed the emergency case from its brackets. “We get to the beacon.”

“The emergency systems are aft.”

“Then we go aft.”

“What about Sera? Dax?”

“Find them on the way.”

“And Captain Orin?”

Mara looked toward the sealed cockpit. The forward section had folded into the earth. A dark line of fluid ran beneath the door.

“We don’t have time to open it.”

Jalen’s jaw tightened. He dragged himself toward the aft passage. Mara pulled the emergency case free and followed, one hand pressed to her brow. Every step sent a hot pulse through her skull.

The main corridor had become a sloping metal throat. Loose tools and broken panels slid toward the breach at the rear. Steam hissed from the walls. Jalen climbed over a buckled support and stopped at the hatch.

Beyond it, the mining deck burned.

A body lay in the passage, half covered by shattered insulation. Dax Rell’s orange suit was torn open from collar to hip. His helmet had rolled against the opposite wall, visor turned toward them. His eyes were still open.

Jalen made a sound low in his throat.

Mara caught his arm. “Don’t.”

“He was behind us.”

“He didn’t make it.”

“He was behind us.”

Another shriek rose from outside, closer now. Something struck the hull. The metal bowed inward, then sprang back.

Jalen looked at Dax’s body. “We leave him?”

“We leave everything.”

They pushed through the hatch.

The aft cargo bay had split open during the crash. One side of the ship was exposed to the planet, and red dust poured through the torn frame in sheets. The cargo containers had broken loose, forming a jagged maze around the emergency beacon housing.

Sera Vale stumbled from behind a crate, clutching her left arm. Her suit was blackened, and one of her eyes had swollen shut.

“Mara!” she called. “Where’s Dax?”

Mara saw the answer reach her before the words did.

“He’s dead,” Jalen said.

Sera’s face collapsed. “No.”

“We need the beacon,” Mara said. “Can you walk?”

Sera pressed her hand over the split in her sleeve. Blood seeped between her fingers. “I can walk.”

A shape moved beyond the torn hull.

Mara raised the flare pistol.

The thing stood low against the dust, all angles and jointed limbs. It had no visible eyes. A pale membrane stretched over the front of its skull, rippling as if something beneath it were tasting the air. Its forelimbs rested against the wreckage, each ending in a fan of narrow black hooks.

For one second, it did not move.

Then it vanished into the dust.

“Run,” Mara said.

They ran.

The cargo bay narrowed toward the beacon compartment, but the wreck had created a funnel. Containers leaned inward on both sides, leaving a corridor no wider than a man’s shoulders. Dust whipped through it, turning the world red. Sera’s boots slipped on the slanted deck.

Behind them, metal clanged.

Jalen fired his sidearm. The shot flashed white in the dust and struck nothing.

“Save the ammunition!” Mara shouted.

“For what?”

“For whatever comes next!”

A shriek burst from the left wall. The alien dropped between the containers, striking Sera across the chest. She hit the deck hard enough to crack her helmet against the metal.

Mara fired the flare pistol.

The flare punched into the creature’s side and erupted in green fire. It recoiled, limbs folding inward, the membrane over its skull boiling and splitting. A smell like burned meat filled the passage.

Sera rolled away. Jalen seized her good arm and hauled her up.

“Move!” Mara screamed.

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