Horror Story 2955: Legacy of the Lost

The Hades system was silent. The ruins of its long-dead civilization loomed like broken teeth across the barren planet, jagged silhouettes casting eerie shadows across Echo Kastrel’s scanner screen.

She should have ignored the anomaly. Just another ghost in a system full of them. But the faint transponder ping was old, centuries old, and her salvager’s instincts would not let it go.

Echo adjusted the Silver Lining’s course, her Vulture groaning as it threaded through the debris field. Her radar struggled to parse the signals, flickering between asteroids and space dust. Then it caught a signature, and she gasped.

UEES Vara. Status: Lost. Last Contact: 27 October 2557.

Echo’s knuckles whitened on the flight controls. Everyone knew the story. The Vara had been the first exploration ship to reach Hades. Its captain’s final message described the alien ruins before the vessel went silent. For centuries the UEE declared it missing, the mystery fueling ghost stories. No one had ever found a trace. Until now.

She throttled back and prepped for EVA.

The Vara hung in silence, her hull torn like a carcass picked clean. Her nameplate was still legible, half-buried in twisted plating. Echo drifted in through a jagged breach, her light sweeping across desiccated corridors. No power, no atmosphere, no gravity.

She passed shattered terminals, collapsed bulkheads, and blackened walls scarred by fire. Then, in the mess hall, she saw them: skeletal remains scattered across the deck. In pieces. The Vara’s crew. A faint scratching sound drifted from the dark corridor behind her. She froze, straining to listen, but it stopped as suddenly as it began

She pressed on, deeper into the ship and found the bridge. The data drives were intact, a salvager’s dream. With trembling hands, she plugged in a battery and portable extractor, her eyes flicking between the progress bar and the corridor beyond. The silence pressed heavier with every passing second as Echo pulled fragments of corrupted logs. The voices were distorted but chillingly clear:

> “…ruins… movement in the shadows…”

> “…containment breached, seal the medbay!”

> “…Heptane to bridge, hold them ba—”

The recordings cut to static. Echo stared at the flickering console. Whatever the Vara had encountered in Hades, it had not been ruins alone. Then came the noise again. A faint scrape, deliberate. Her breath fogged the inside of her helmet. She killed her light and crouched behind a console, her pulse hammering in her ears. The scraping grew louder, then stopped. She dared to peek. Nothing. “Must be the ship settling,” she whispered, her voice trembling.

The progress bar blinked green with a beep. Echo yanked the extractor free, relief flooding her for a brief, fleeting moment. Then a faint, rasping breath filled her ears, and her suit’s temperature plummeted. Impossible. No atmosphere. She spun around, torch raised, and froze. In the corridor something moved.

It was humanoid, but impossibly wrong. Elongated limbs bent at unnatural angles, its muscular skin glistening faintly in the dim starlight, glowing blue veins crisscrossing its body. Its face a smooth, featureless mask, save for a vertical slit in the center. It tilted its head as if studying her. Her voice was a whisper. “What the hell are you?”

Echo bolted. Behind her, the scraping sounds grew, a metallic rasp that clawed at her nerves. Her ship was close. She could see the faint glow ahead, a beacon of hope. The scraping stopped. She slowed, her breath ragged. Her light trembled as she swung around. Nothing. Echo rushed to the breach in the wrecks side. The Vulture’s door hissed open, and she threw herself inside, collapsing against the bulkhead as it sealed shut.Then she saw it, a shadow, watching her from outside the Silver Linings window. Slowly, it raised one clawed appendage, dragging it across the hull with a deliberate, grating scrape.

Slowly, the door began to open.