Following the trail of Crimson Veil from two static-ridden transmissions, Civil Servant and the Falkenhorst cruiser found themselves deep in an uncharted red nebula located in the Omega Cluster. Fortunately, they had found their sister in arms before the Corsairs or the aliens did. She had indeed found something of interest: a disabled Coalition cruiser, hanging in space like a large tombstone. CV and her small crew had already boarded the vessel, attempting to repair the hull, engines and life support systems. Although they had managed to reseal the hull, the Typhoon was still largely without power. While Crimson Veil works to restore power, maintaining remote communication with Civil Servant and Chevalier, who had landed from the Falkenhorst, the latter two work to open the sealed doors and search for evidence that fits together to form a mosaic of the cruiser's final days.
Having entered the ship through the hangar doors, Civil Servant and Chevalier, passing a couple of Crimson Veil's crew members, found themselves in a cargo bay in complete chaos. Scattered items, weapons, and the bodies of the ship's previous crew. The Coalition men had perished in the confrontation, their bodies riddled with wounds. Following a trail of blood, CS and Chevalier found themselves next to a sealed door. Managing to get rid of the door with a gas torch and a bit of brute force, they entered a small maintenance room. There they came across the body of a Coalition soldier. In his hand was a personal device; damaged, but some recordings survived: it was mentioned that after the skirmish with the Corsairs, in an attempt to avoid further clashing with their reinforcements, the cruiser made a jump through an unknown hyperspace hole. The last audio recording was also preserved:
"Damn... Bastards..."
A cough.
"I know it was one of them... I should have gotten rid of them. Damn this wound... I'm fucked, it seems. I won't see Sveta and the kids anymore. Well, at least I got even with those creatures one last time... If anyone finds this, tell Sveta Ryabinova that I died in battle like a man... And watch your damn backs. I don't know if that thing really died."
Meanwhile, while trying to restore power, Crimson Veil alerted her friends that the elevator leading to the cockpit had gone offline. Now their only way forward was up the stairs, leading to a larger technical area. Where Crimson Veil herself would be.
ShellSys01: HelmetCamera.Prog
> Personal Recall
> Visual and audio archiving...
> Begin recording
> ▓
Checking the hanger bay maintenance room for anything useful, key cards, crew manifests, or any other portable terminal with information about the ship. Footsteps with hardly a vibration through the floor, and thankfully in a depressurized environment, silent as ever. Clearing the rest of the room by looking under desks, within cabinets and behind air vents. His mind went through a checklist as he trusted Chevalier to check the corpse, but shifted his head around from time to time to watch her back, but as soon as that recording device went off, the sudden break in silence cued him to grab that weapon...
He gave one sigh of relief seeing the voice come from the identifiable device, slowly approaching Chevalier who held it in her hands... The audio signal being relayed through their sensors scanners. "Using the word 'Creatures' and 'Thing' usually don't spell good fortune for us..." He said at Chevalier. "Maybe you should break the news to her... I'll see if we can get any guidance around this shell."
Chevalier standing besides the corpse at this point, holding the PDA in her hands. She listened to the recording while her eyes wandered and scanned the room and especially the entrance. Once it was over, she huffed out.
"Mhm." All she really said to answer CS in this moment. Reaching for the comms, she contacted Crimson Veil. "Emilia. I was somewhat right. There is something on this ship. Creature? Thing? It has kidnapped people on the ship. It might be dead. Might. But we need to act as if it isn't. Stefanie? Are you on the line?" Chevalier asked, using Falke's actual name. "Falke here, I heard you. I am sending some more people over to help with the search. Over."
It didn't take long for the reinforcements consisting of four additional marines to arrive on the ship. Chevalier looked at CS. "We need to get to the CIC."
After a brief burst of static, Crimson Veil answered Chevalier over the PA in the cargo bay. Her voice was cheerful enough, without a hint of fear:
"Mm. Well... There are plenty of places to hide on this ship, I suppose. I'll try to get our power back up as quickly as possible. In the meantime, you can take the stairs if you want to get to the CIC. Once you're past the maintenance floor, you'll go up to the living quarters. From there, you can go up to the CIC. And... I could try to power the elevator, but... I wouldn't risk it. Safer to just walk!"
CS stepped out towards the maintenance room and back into the cargo bay, his nature of searching has changed from when he first came aboard, he was now checking air vents, bulkhead ceilings, in between cargo containers... His mind raced with the combined fear of facing an unknown entity, and the mind on the hunt with a conditioned response and survival within the mission.
"Stairs... Why is it always stairs?" He said to himself, being on board a dormant wreck in hostile space, it was already adapting his mind mentally into programmed trauma... Thankfully masked under helmet and armour.
"Stairs to the living quarters is down this way..." He held a light-bearing-rifle out down an adjacent corridor, another hand reading some suit-sensor information on a wrist mounted terminal.
Chevalier grabbed her rifle tightly. Her eyes scanning the area slowly. The two men she came with assisted her.
"Emilia, please be careful and stay on comms. If you see something, tell us in an instant. We need to search the entire ship after we turned the power back on. Possible that I can make the internal sensors work again."
She looked at CS for a moment before she stepped out of the room. She pushed some buttons on her wrist-mounted terminal. She grabbed her rifle in combat-stance, turning on the tac-light on it and made sure that monitor was visible for her eyes. She took point, slowly walking into the corridor and scanning it with her light. The two men took point behind in a V-shape. They kept securing the sides and back.
"We should go slowly. If there is a door anywhere, we halt and check it. We can't risk having something behind us."
Emilia giggled over the loudspeaker in response to Chevalier's words:
"You're the ones who need to be careful... I'm behind a closed door. I'll try to redirect what little energy there is to the CIC."
Even though their search of the various corners of the cargo bay hadn't revealed any danger, everyone present could feel a slow, oppressive feeling of tension building. The more they focused on staying alert, the more they felt like they were about to be ambushed.
They made it to the technical floor without any problems (the floors were separated by horizontal doors, but they were open), and found that, unlike the previous one, it was... Fairly clean. No bodies, no blood, not even much of a mess. At least from what they could see from the stairs. There was only one notable detail: not far from the stairs there was a window overlooking the cargo hold, which would have opened up an excellent view of the carnage that had taken place there... If only there had been light on the ship.
In addition, on the technical floor there was a large closed door to the generator room - where, apparently, Emilia was - and a couple of technical rooms, the doors to which were open. It seemed that the conversations of other members of Emilia's group could be heard from there, as well as the light of their flashlights.
Civil Servant, climbing further, despite the distance, clearly heard a fragment of a dialogue between two men from Emilia's team. Or rather, one phrase:
"... I'm not sure that you can trust someone who never shows his face. Who knows who he really is. Don't think anyone trusts him, really."
When the group climbed the stairs to the residential floor, coming out into the dining room, they could again see a not very pleasant picture: several shot dead bodies. This time, however, all the dead were near the table. One of them fell forward, sprawled across the table; another fell from his chair. It seemed they had no time to react to the threat. Or perhaps they hadn't tried?
There were several doors around, the majority of which were open: to the bedrooms, to the toilet, another technical room. There was one sealed door, leading, judging by the sign, to the medical bay. Next to the sealed door, on the wall, there was blood smeared.
![[Image: Zlx3b-Ix.png]](https://i.postimg.cc/m2cdX4NN/Zlx3b-Ix.png)
![[Image: image1.png]](https://i.ibb.co/MDkkQ9dZ/image1.png)