Horror Story 2955 - Cursed Beacon

Today is the Day of Vara, a holiday for families to gather and share horror stories. I’ve never liked horror stories. I’m tracking a faint rescue beacon even on the holiday. I still need some money for this month’s ship loan, so the beacon’s prize matters more than the holiday.

The beacon points to Hades II, a bad place. The Day of Vara began with an exploration ship that vanished there: the Vara. Of course, this made-up horror story wouldn’t scare me off. I kept quantum traveling to that beacon.​

Still a ways from the beacon, my ship was yanked out of quantum travel by a violent spatial disturbance. Intense G-forces nearly knocked me out. Outside, there’s an ancient ship, no transponder, no life signs, it’s just floating there like a tomb.​

The name Vara popped into my head.​

Weirdly, my MFD now showed the once-distant beacon was right ahead, on that ship. Hard to believe, but for the prize, I tried docking.

Docking was suspiciously smooth. I put on armor, checked my P4AR rifle, grabbed medpens, ammo, and grenades, then stepped inside.​

The beacon guided me to the cargo hold—there stood an ATLS IKTI RAD exosuit. Impossible: ATLS suits are only around a decade old, but the Vara vanished over 400 years ago. It didn’t belong here.

Suddenly, a crash came from the stern, and an unfamiliar radiation hit me, almost piercing my armor’s rad-shielding. I dived for cover, then I heard footsteps—survivors? I lit my helmet light excitedly, but my heart dropped the moment I saw what the person looked like.

They look human, but with hollow eyes and cracked, dried skin. They charged at me with crude weapons the moment they saw me. I fired back, but there were too many; my ammo would run out quickly.​

I had no choice—I got into the ATLS. Its MFD seemed to malfunction, flickered with disorienting blue light, and the cockpit reeked of ozone and the tang of dried blood. I had no time to worry about those and began firing back with the laser Gatling. As enemies fell one by one, I grew increasingly excited. Strange, was I really such a bloodthirsty person?​

The ATLS IKTI packed a punch, and this RAD variant by ASD let me ignore radiation to crush enemies. During the fight, a dried Vanduul lunged at me with a spear, piercing my leg armor and gashing me. I grit my teeth, fought on, and took down all enemies in minutes.

After the battle, I leave the exosuit, take out a medpen, and prepare to treat my wound. But a jolt made me fall. The medpen slid into the crack on the ATLS’s armor.

What happens next almost makes me freeze—the medicine inside medpen didn’t spill; the exosuit absorbed it. Then the crack healed, like a real wound.​

Before I reacted, the suit's lights began to flicker blue like the ones I saw in the cockpit. The blue light pulled my consciousness into an ocean. There, I saw a vanduul break into the ship, saw him slaughter Vara's crew, saw his consciousness leave his body after being exposed to radiation released by the crew, and saw the entire crew transformed by radiation into soulless walking corpses. After wandering for several years, the vanduul entered this ATLS that appeared out of nowhere.

Suddenly, a Vanduul voice roared in my head: “Mine! Mine!”​

Seems like I’d woken whatever this is, now its target is me.​

I screamed, broke free of the illusion, ran to the airlock, and fled back to my ship. The quantum drive wouldn’t spool in this disturbance, so I switch to flight mode and flee. Only after a few hundred kilometers did I dare look back.

Nothing. The scope was empty, that ship vanished again, just like 400 years ago.

I breathed a sigh of relief and prepared to use the ship's med-bed to treat myself. I stood up, boots hitting the deck, then heard it:

Thump… thump…

Heavy, unfamiliar footsteps. Sounds like my footsteps, but more like metal hitting metal.

Suddenly, in the clean, circulating air on the ship, I smelled a faint, almost imagined scent.

It was ozone, and the tang of dried blood.