My eyes cracked open, pupils contracting painfully against the harsh artificial light streaming through the reinforced viewport. Fuck. Even after three hundred and twelve days up here, I still forgot we were in space. The familiar disorientation of zero-gravity sleep made my stomach lurch as I pushed myself upright, joints cracking like brittle ice. My fingers found their way to the bridge of my nose, pinching hard enough to hurt, before running through my greasy hair. When was the last time I'd showered? The days had started bleeding together weeks ago.
The carbon-fiber weave of my regulation uniform felt cold against my skin as I pulled it on, each movement deliberate in the artificial gravity. The ship's environmental systems hummed their endless song—a sound that used to drive me crazy but had become as natural as breathing. I approached the pressurized door leading to the cockpit, fishing my clearance card from my breast pocket. The scanner chirped its approval on the first swipe, for once.
My magnetized boots clicked against the polished titanium flooring—a multi-million dollar radiation shield disguised as basic decking. The cockpit spread before me, and despite my jaded familiarity with the view, my breath caught in my throat. The Moon dominated the viewport, a colossal grey sentinel hanging in the void. Beautiful wasn't the right word. Terrifying, maybe. Humbling, definitely.
Through the starboard viewports, I could see my crewmates' EVA suits glinting in the unfiltered sunlight. Their movements were precise, practiced—blowtorches flaring as they patched the constellation of micrometeorite impacts that pockmarked our hull. Even our state-of-the-art alloys couldn't shrug off everything the cosmos threw at us. Tomorrow would be Christmas. Another holiday spent in the endless night, but the hazard pay made sure my family back home lived like royalty. Most days, that was enough.
The cockpit embraced me in its electronic glow, interfaces casting everything in that clinical blue light that made you feel like you were inside a computer. The quantum processors that kept us alive chirped their constant status updates, each green indicator light a tiny prayer answered. This was home now.
My fingers danced across the holographic controls, muscle memory taking over as I initiated the airlock sequence. Below, the cargo bay doors parted with a bass rumble I felt in my bones. One by one, the crew cycled through decontamination. Brad, our engineer, was first through the inner doors, immediately draping his bulk across my captain's chair like he owned the place. "BRAD!" I barked, but couldn't keep the grin from my face. Kim, our xenobiologist, rolled her eyes at his antics, while Grey, our medic, just shook his head. Their laughter echoed off the metal walls, and for a moment, everything felt normal.
Later that night—or what passed for night in eternal orbit—I jolted awake in my chair, chest heaving, shirt soaked through with cold sweat. The nightmare clung to me like oil, refusing to fade. My hands wouldn't stop shaking as I stumbled to the galley, fumbling with a water packet until I could tear the seal open. The liquid was room temperature and tasted like plastic, but it helped.
"Rough night, cowboy?"
I choked on the water, spinning to find Kim leaning against the doorframe. The emergency lighting caught her just right, highlighting the curves that her uniform couldn't quite hide. Her black hair was loose around her shoulders, and those dark eyes saw right through my bullshit.
"Y-yeah, just, uh, doing some late-night captain stuff," I managed, trying to ignore how my heart rate doubled when she smiled.
She studied me for a long moment, lips pursed. "Sure you are." Then she was gone, hips swaying as she disappeared down the corridor. I released a breath I hadn't realized I was holding, cursing myself for acting like a teenager.
The walk back to the cockpit felt... wrong. The hair on the back of my neck stood up, some primitive part of my brain screaming danger before I consciously registered what I was seeing. When I turned, my world imploded.
It nearly brushed the ceiling—three meters of obsidian horror. Its skin rippled like oil on water, and its teeth... Christ, its teeth looked sharp enough to shear through the hull plating. My hands found something solid—a fire extinguisher—as my legs turned to water. The thing moved like lightning.
The crack of a plasma discharge split the air. The creature screamed—a sound that would haunt my dreams if I lived long enough to have any—and collapsed. Kim stood in the doorway, service pistol steady in her hands. "Captain, you alright?" Her voice shook, but only slightly. "We need to turn this ship around, we're heading back to E—"
Time stopped. That's the only way I can describe it. One moment Kim was there, the next... red mist where her head had been. Her body swayed for a heartbeat before collapsing, her severed head bouncing once before rolling to a stop, eyes still wide with surprise.
The creature rose, impossibly fast, impossibly alive. I ran. Pressure doors slammed shut behind me as the ship's AI tried to contain the threat. The emergency klaxons were deafening, red emergency lights painting everything in blood. Metal screamed as the creature tore through bulkhead after bulkhead like they were paper.
My last thought, as the hull breach alarms began to wail, was absurdly mundane: I'd never even held a girl's hand.
The explosion ripped reality apart, and darkness swallowed me whole.
# End of Chapter 1