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Hidden Chapter 5

Darkness

Air rushed in as the room pressurized to match the air pressure in the ship. Immediately the sensors in my hud detected large amounts of methane. That meant one thing in this kind of situation, decomposition of organic matter or in layman's term, death. I could only imagine the kinds of smells that my suit was filtering, but that wasn't important right now, in front of me was a dark corridor that led into the bowels of a ship that had been left to marinate in whatever the hell had been released on this ship days ago. What we would see would scar us for life.

"47,653." The words of Colonel Mathews echoed through my head. Yes, we would experience hell, but I had no intention of staying any longer than I needed to.

"Go go go." I made a chopping motion with my right hand and scurried into the ship followed closely by the rest of my squad. Our suits immediately detected the low light levels and led lights that were mounted on our rifles lit up, illuminating the metal passage way. There was no sign of anything alive or dead at the moment, there was no reason for anyone to be here. We had entered through a maintenance shaft that ran along the edge of the ship, just under the hull. This maintenance shaft ran the entire length of the ship and would provide easy access to where we needed to get to.

"Radar's useless," Ivan commented as we jogged down what appeared to be an endless hallway. "We'll have to rely on visuals until the jammer is down." His accent was thick and heavy. I had to focus on each word to understand him.

"Copy that." I pulled up the schematic of the ship. The bridge didn't sit neatly on top of the ship like in many movies. It sat deep within the ship where it would be safe from most external threats. That meant that we would have to abandon the maintenance shaft eventually and go into the sectors that were, when all was fine, populated with people.

We came across the first body five minutes later. He was slumped up against the wall with his hands out to his side and his legs splayed out. He wore the orange jumpsuit of a maintenance worker that had an ID card pinned to the right breast pocket. It wasn't until I got closer that I saw that there was a small razor lying in a pool of blood that came from his wrists.

We approached the corpse slowly, our guns pointing in either direction in case something came up on us. Knowing that nothing was coming, I knelt down next to the man. His eyes were half open and staring at the opposite wall with a faint smile on his lips. I looked at his name card.

"Ryan Cunning," I said. "What drove you to do this?" I made sure that I wasn't broadcasting to the others. Our suits were airtight so no one on the outside could hear what any of us said unless we chose to let them here through a speaker that was in the breather.

"Sir." The voice of Sergeant Crane filled my helmet. "Look at the wall behind you." His voice was unsteady.

I turned around and was met with graffiti, except it was in blood. "They killed everyone. They're all gone." The message had been scrawled onto the wall by the man before he died.

"Oh fuck. We haven't been on this ship for ten minutes and... and it's already turning into a nightmare." This time it was Sergeant Millard. He sounded as if he was on the verge of panic. There was a reason why I didn't really know him. He was new and still green. Our low numbers forced NATO to recruit soldiers who might look good on paper, but had little actual experience. My guess was Sergeant Millard had scored high on aptitude tests and on physical tests, hell he had probably been deployed a few times but had never been in heavy combat and experience true fear that turned men into actual soldiers.

I got up, leaving the body and walked over to the shaking man who was facing the bloody wall. I couldn't see his face since our masks were heavily tinted, but I could imagine what it looked like. I set my hand on his shoulder which caused him to jump a bit. 'Relax, as long as I'm in charge, as long as I'm here, we'll be fine. I guarantee it, all I ask is that you keep it together."

He visibly relaxed and looked at me. "Y... Yes sir. I... I'll keep it together."

"Good." I patted his shoulder. "We've delayed long enough, let's keep moving."

We went on in silence until we reached a door that led into the ship. It seemed that power to the entire ship was out since there was no sign that the door had power. "Sergeant Millard, get this door open, we'll cover you." I hoped the team in the engine room would be able to get power restored or it would take a long time to finish the mission. Hopefully they would be smart enough to realize that they were the closest to the main reactor.

The sergeant wordlessly walked over to the door and pulled a torch out of a pack he was carrying. Each of us carried a pack that held specialized equipment. Sergeant Millard had worked in construction before joining so he had experience with different tools such as the torch he was now using to burn a hole through the door. Ivan had different computer slicing equipment and a military laptop. Sergeant Crane was a field medic so he had extra medical supplies in his bag. I carried all of our extra communication equipment which I would set up once we were on the bridge and the jammer was out.

"What do you think made him do it?" Ivan's voice interrupted the silence. It wasn't filled with any emotion.

"Maybe he just felt hopeless, his message did say that they killed everyone." Crane's voice didn't have that extra cheer in it. "He probably saw stuff that no civilian, or in fact anyone should ever see."

"Keep the chatter down you two." I didn't stop them because I disagreed, but for Sergeant Millard who had been burning through the door in a single place when Ivan started talking. "How much longer Sergeant Millard?"

The sergeant began to make progress again. "Two minutes sir." I thought I heard a bit of a sob, but I ignored it for the time being.

The light from the torch flickered off as Sergeant Millard finished. He pushed the now free block of metal that was once the center of the door and it came crashing down causing everyone to flinch and me to immediately aim into the blackness on the other side.

We simply stood there for a few seconds and when nothing came at us, I moved through first. I stood in a hallway that went three ways, to my right, left and directly forward. I looked down each way, but could only see the void, no bodies, blood, nothing. "Clear," I called and the others quickly filed in behind me, guns trained down the halls. I looked at the map on my hud for a moment before gesturing down the hall directly in front of us with my right hand and we all moved as one tight pack.

"Sir, something is wrong." Sergeant Millard spoke as we cautiously continued to move down the hall.

"Well no shit, Sherlock." Sergeant Crane's voice came up. His tone was sarcastic and I could imagine him rolling his eyes.

"Shut it Crane," I snapped and turned my attention to Sergeant Millard. "Millard, please elaborate."

After a moment of silence, Sergeant Millard continued. "This section of the ship would normally be filled with people, but we've only seen that one maintenance worker. There are no bodies or any sign that anyone has been here for some time. Where are all of the passengers?"

I thought about this for a moment. The timid sergeant was correct, this wasn't right. Now that we were going deeper into the ship, we should have run across something by now. "You correct sergeant and I don't know what's going on. Everything should become clear once we reach the bridge and the other teams begin to complete their objectives. Until then, we need to pick up the pace."

The pace quickened a bit and once again there was silence. Our trip through the ship was the same, it was as if the ship was abandoned. We came upon the double door shat led to the bridge swiftly. Just like before, Sergeant Millard began to cut into the door as the rest of us watched the halls for threats.

*Tap Tap*

"Gahhh, holy balls." Sergeant Millard dropped his torch and jumped back. "Some... Something is on the... the other side." My hud showed that his heart rate had nearly doubled to 140 bpm.

*Tap SCRATCH*

This time, the tap was followed by what could only be described as nails on a chalkboard. "Shit man, there is something there." Sergeant Crane moved closer to the door and pressed his helmet to it making a *clunk* noise. He just stood there and we patiently waited. "I don't hear anything anymore."

I was getting nervous. I didn't like it one bit. "Sergeant Millard continue working on the door. Ivan I want your gun trained on it at all times, I don't want any surprises." The sergeant picked up his torch with shaking hands and very slowly began to work again. I could hear him whispering prayers. Ivan turned and pointed his gun at the door and I watched the hall he had just been looking down.

After a very tense ten minutes, the torch died. Sergeant Millard turned and looked at me.

"Go ahead and open it sergeant, we've got you covered." I tried to get any uncertainty out of my voice.

He nodded at slowly began to get his fingers around the block of metal. He moved slowly as to not knock it down and create another incident. With his grasp secure, the sergeant slowly began to move the 3 foot slab of metal out of the way. I noticed that we all had our guns trained on the door now, the scratching noise still fresh in our minds.

The sergeant took a deep breath and paused when only the edge of the metal block was left in the hole he had created. I let him take his time, but the anticipation was killing me. He finally built up the courage and moved the block out of the way.

Not wanting to be jumped, I immediately charged forward and ducked as I went through. The others, not wanting me to go in alone and undefended, or simply not wanting to be left behind quickly followed. We all trained our guns around the large room that was the bridge.

One thing was clear, it was not clean like the halls before us, and we were not alone.