Task Force 141 | In the Dark

[OSRA-0122 — WEYLAND-YUTANI RESEARCH DIVISION — RECORD REDACTED]

Osra-0122 had been surprisingly peaceful when Task Force 141 arrived. Suspiciously peaceful, perhaps, considering the sort of places Captain John Price and his men usually found themselves deployed to, but peaceful nonetheless. The Liminae had touched down on the colony's primary landing platform three weeks earlier beneath sheets of warm alien rain, her enormous armored hull settling amongst Weyland-Yutani transports and atmospheric shuttles like a wolf amongst cattle. There had been no gunfire waiting for them. No insurgents. No intelligence suggesting an imminent catastrophe. Just three hundred-odd scientists, engineers, corporate employees, synthetics, and their families carrying on with their lives beneath the looming walls of humanity's little foothold on an alien world.

For once, the 141 had been given the luxury of actually settling in. Price had claimed quarters close enough to the Military Operations Center to satisfy his pathological need to know what everyone was doing. Gaz had familiarized himself with the colony until he could navigate half the service corridors without consulting his wrist terminal. Soap had made friends with seemingly every engineer, bartender, technician, and bored security officer willing to tolerate him. Ghost, meanwhile, had done what Ghost did best: learned the exits, memorized the security checkpoints, identified the cameras, catalogued the blind spots, and quietly decided which parts of the facility he didn't trust.

There were plenty of those, to say the least.

Weyland-Yutani had told them their assignment was precautionary. OSRA-0122 was valuable, remote, and sufficiently important to corporate research that someone had apparently decided an independent military presence was worth the expense. The 141 weren't expected to police the colony. They weren't corporate security, and Price had made that distinction painfully clear within hours of their arrival. Their job was to provide rapid-response capability should something occur beyond the abilities of the station's existing personnel.

Nothing had. Three weeks passed without so much as an interesting bar fight. Soap had begun complaining that he'd crossed several light-years just to spend his days running drills and watching scientists carry sample containers between laboratories. Gaz had pointed out that boredom was considerably preferable to being shot at. Ghost had told both of them to shut up. Price, privately, had been inclined to agree with Gaz.

OSRA-0122 itself was almost beautiful enough to make the inactivity tolerable. Beyond the reinforced perimeter stretched wilderness unlike anything any of them had seen on Earth. Mountains disappeared into permanent banks of silver cloud, waterfalls tumbled hundreds of meters through jungle-covered cliffs, and trees of impossible proportions crowded valleys so densely that orbital surveys struggled to penetrate the canopy. At night, faintly luminous vegetation painted portions of the distant jungle in ghostly blues and violets, while unfamiliar creatures called to one another somewhere beyond the walls. Humanity had carved a circle into the middle of it all and declared it theirs. Pretty standard, in all honesty. Humans seemed to love convincing themselves that they existed as apex predators.

The Research Complex sprawled across that circle like an industrial organism. Laboratories and residential blocks radiated outward from the Central Tower, connected by enclosed walkways, transit corridors, service roads, and tunnels buried beneath the colony. Researchers disappeared into Physical Sciences before dawn. Engineers emerged from workshops covered in grease. Children hurried between residential and educational facilities. Synthetics walked their assigned routes tirelessly. Supply convoys crawled between Logistics and the landing platforms while shuttles occasionally climbed toward the distant point of light that was Orison Station.

The Coffin.

Ghost liked that name considerably more than the corporate-approved Orison Station. There was something about Weyland-Yutani that put his teeth on edge. Maybe it was the immaculate corporate slogans plastered over buildings filled with doors he wasn't authorized to open. Maybe it was the polite refusal whenever Price requested information concerning certain research projects. Maybe it was the fact that half the scientists working in Advanced Research seemed incapable of looking military personnel in the eye. Whatever it was, Simon Riley had spent enough of his life around people hiding ugly things behind respectable façades to recognize the smell of a secret.

Price smelled it too.

Neither man had found anything concrete enough to justify digging, so when the colony announced a scheduled Code Black Containment Exercise, nobody in the 141 considered it particularly remarkable.

They had been informed about it forty-eight hours beforehand. Code Black represented one of Weyland-Yutani's highest internal emergency classifications: catastrophic containment failure involving an unidentified or exceptionally hazardous biological organism. The exercise would test automated bulkheads, civilian shelter procedures, security deployment, emergency communications, and the isolation of compromised sectors. Task Force 141 had been specifically requested to participate as an independent response unit. Soap had called it an elaborate game of hide-and-seek. Ghost had slapped him upside the head.

At 1410 colony time, the exercise began.

The first warning came as three low electronic tones rolled through every speaker in the complex. Conversations stopped. Doors automatically unlocked or sealed according to emergency programming. Digital signage flickered away from advertisements, weather reports, and corporate announcements. Red lettering replaced everything.

[CODE BLACK. BIOLOGICAL CONTAINMENT FAILURE. THIS IS A TRAINING EXERCISE.]

Price was already standing before the final tone finished. Within minutes, the 141 were equipped and moving. Black tactical armor replaced the relatively relaxed clothing they'd adopted around the colony. Rifles were checked. Communications came alive. Ghost secured his mask as he followed Price from their temporary operations area, Soap and Gaz falling into formation behind them. Around them, colonists moved according to rehearsed procedures, disappearing into designated shelters while security teams jogged toward predetermined positions.

It was almost disappointingly orderly.

Ghost watched a synthetic calmly direct a family through an emergency door as they passed. Somewhere overhead, another announcement repeated the nature of the exercise. Bulkheads descended at intersections with heavy metallic crashes. Yellow hazard lights rotated along the walls. Security officers checked seals, reported imaginary casualties, and followed instructions delivered through their terminals.

Then Ghost noticed the blood.

It lay just beyond an intersection leading toward one of the research corridors—a thin red streak across the otherwise immaculate floor.

"Exercise casualty," someone from corporate security explained when Price questioned it.

Maybe.

The 141 continued deeper into the complex.

Their assigned objective was straightforward: proceed toward the Advanced Research sector, establish contact with the simulated containment team, and secure a route through which hypothetical survivors could be extracted. Price led. Ghost watched their rear. Gaz monitored the colony network through a portable terminal while Soap maintained his usual restless awareness of every doorway they passed. Everything remained exactly as expected.

Until their comms cut out. Not faded out. Cut. Completely and utterly silenced, like they’d never existed at all.

Gaz stopped walking. The silence that followed felt different. A second later, the emergency lights flickered. Then half the corridor went dark. Price's hand came up immediately, and the team halted without needing instruction. Training exercise or otherwise, instinct took precedence. Soap's rifle rose. Ghost turned toward the darkness behind them. Gaz checked his terminal and frowned when the display refused to connect to the colony network. Somewhere far beneath their feet, something heavy slammed against metal. The sound reverberated through the floor, echoing lowly. Just one. The silence that followed was jarring in its intensity. A new announcement crackled from the speakers overhead.

[—CODE BLACK PROTOCOL REMAINS IN EFFECT—]

Static swallowed the rest. The four men exchanged looks. That wasn't part of the briefing.

Price tried Command again. Nothing. He switched channels. Security. Nothing. Emergency Operations. Nothing. Even the direct encrypted frequency back to the Liminae returned only bursts of interference. Whatever had happened, the colony's internal communications network had gone from irritatingly efficient to almost completely dead in less than thirty seconds.

Far away, somewhere inside the sprawling colony, a scream echoed through the ventilation system.

It ended abruptly.

Nobody joked after that.

Price stared at the warning for only a moment before turning toward his men, every trace of boredom from the previous three weeks gone. Whatever Weyland-Yutani had been rehearsing for had just become real, and nobody had bothered—or been able—to tell Task Force 141 what exactly had escaped. Somewhere within OSRA-0122's kilometers of laboratories, maintenance passages, residential sectors, and sealed research levels, something was loose.

[ORISON STATION — WEYLAND-YUTANI RESEARCH DIVISION — RECORD REDACTED]

Orison Station had always looked a bit dead from the outside. A colossal arrangement of armored rings, docking spines, antennae, industrial towers, and habitation modules suspended against an ocean of stars, it hung above OSRA-0122 with the oppressive permanence of something too enormous to belong in space. The station's lights should have glittered across its hull in their thousands. Shuttles should have moved between docking arrays. Cargo tugs should have crawled along the exterior. Traffic Control should have been screaming at the Liminae long before Task Force 141 came within visual range. Instead, The Coffin waited for them in almost complete silence.

The Liminae had climbed away from OSRA-0122 indifferently. Mud still streaked equipment in the hangar. Alien rainwater remained trapped in the grooves of armor and boots. Ammunition had been counted. The planet dwindled beneath them until its mountains and jungles disappeared beneath clouds, and Orison grew steadily larger through the command deck windows.

"Orison Traffic Control, this is Liminae, requesting docking clearance."

Price waited.

Silence.

The station was broadcasting automated navigational data. Its orbital stabilizers remained active. Docking beacons pulsed exactly where they should, and the great structure maintained its geosynchronous position above the planet. Someone—or something—had kept the lights on. Yet the thousands of people supposedly living aboard Orison might as well have vanished.

The Liminae circled once before Price authorized approach. Ghost stood near the forward observation panels, arms folded across his chest, staring at the station as it swallowed more and more of their view. He could make out the Fore Docking Array ahead: immense skeletal arms extending from Orison's primary ring, large enough to receive interstellar freighters many times the size of their own vessel. Guidance lights blinked along the structure.

No ground crew waited beneath them. No service vehicles moved. No one stood behind the reinforced observation windows. The Liminae docked anyway. The magnetic clamps engaged with a heavy metallic THUNK that traveled through the ship. Pressure equalized. Automated systems exchanged authentication codes. Orison's computers acknowledged the vessel without a single human voice entering the process, and eventually the docking collar extended to meet them.

That was when Price made the decision. They were going aboard. Ghost went first. The airlock opened onto a broad arrivals corridor washed in pale emergency lighting. His rifle tracked slowly across abandoned security stations, empty seating areas, and silent immigration terminals. Price followed. Soap came next, then Gaz, the four men spreading naturally as they entered the station. The air smelled recycled and slightly stale, but breathable. Gravity remained stable. Temperature sat within normal habitation parameters. Somewhere behind the walls, enormous machines continued their endless work of keeping Orison alive.

But there were no people.

The first abandoned belongings appeared twenty meters from the airlock.

A coffee cup lay on its side beside a workstation, its contents dried into a dark stain across the floor. A Weyland-Yutani identification card remained inserted into a security terminal. Someone had left a jacket draped over the back of a chair. Farther ahead, an overturned luggage cart blocked part of the corridor, one wheel still turning almost imperceptibly whenever vibrations from the station's machinery traveled through the deck.

Soap looked at it for a long moment. There should have been a thousand people here.

Orison wasn't some forgotten research outpost with a skeleton crew. It was a city. Over a thousand regular crew alone, hundreds of synthetics, researchers, civilian staff, security personnel, visiting contractors, freight crews, and whatever transient population happened to be passing through at any given time.

You didn't simply misplace that many people.

They reached the first transit junction and a holographic directory flickered weakly above them.

THE NEXUS.

CORPORATE SPIRE.

RELAY.

THE ARCHIVE.

HEARTH RING.

WAYFARER RING.

THE COMMONS.

The names stretched onward, each pointing toward another piece of the enormous station. Every bloody corridor they passed through was empty.

Gaz attempted to access the nearest terminal. The system accepted his emergency military credentials after several seconds of hesitation, but what appeared on-screen made little sense. Life-support systems were functioning. Atmospheric pressure remained stable throughout most inhabited sectors. The Helios Array was operating normally. There had been no station-wide evacuation order. Yet personnel tracking returned almost nothing.

Not zero. Almost nothing.

Ghost, the tired bastard, was not a fan of that distinction.

They moved toward the Nexus. Their footsteps felt intolerably loud. Four sets of boots echoed down corridors designed to accommodate hundreds of people, the sound bouncing from metal walls and disappearing around distant corners. Shops stood abandoned behind partially lowered shutters. The cafeteria remained illuminated, trays still sitting on tables. Somewhere inside a children's recreation room, an animated Weyland-Yutani mascot continued playing silently across a wall display.

Price stopped outside the Commons. Something dark stained the floor. Blood. Not much, just a few drops. Then several more. A trail. It crossed the corridor and disappeared beneath a maintenance hatch hanging slightly open. Nobody needed to say anything. Ghost crouched beside it, the metal around the hatch was scratched. Deeply scratched—gouges raking through metal. Not bullet impacts. Not tools. Four long grooves had been carved through the painted surface and into the metal beneath.

Soap stared down at them. Whatever had made them possessed considerably more strength than a human being. The station seemed to become darker the farther they traveled from the docking array. Emergency lighting had replaced normal illumination in several sections, bathing intersections in dull amber and leaving long stretches of corridor almost completely black. Some bulkheads stood open. Others had descended without explanation, forcing the team to detour through service corridors.

Then they heard it.

Ghost stopped so abruptly Soap nearly walked into him. Price raised his fist. For several seconds, there was only the low mechanical vibration of Orison itself. Then—Clang. Far away. Metal against metal. Another pause. Clang. Closer. Gaz slowly looked upward.

The sound wasn't coming through the corridor. It was coming through the fucking ventilation system. Something was moving inside the walls. A faint scraping followed, then silence. Consuming. Silence had never felt loud before. Not like this. Nobody moved. Nobody dared. Orison suddenly felt very different. The station was 8.7 kilometers across. Multiple habitation levels sat above and below the deck they occupied. Maintenance tunnels threaded between them. Ventilation shafts ran through ceilings, floors, and walls. Service passages connected sectors without ever entering public corridors. Something could move through Orison without being seen for days, maybe longer.

Price motioned forward.

The 141 resumed their advance toward the Nexus, weapons raised now, their earlier caution transformed into something sharper. They didn't know what had happened here. They didn't know whether the station had been evacuated, attacked, quarantined, or abandoned.

They didn't know whether anyone was still alive, and they certainly didn't know what was moving through the walls. The next corridor answered at least one question. They found the first body beneath an emergency light. Weyland-Yutani security. Male. His rifle lay several meters away. His body was pressed against the wall at an angle no living person could have maintained, one hand still wrapped around the strap of his tactical vest. His chest had been torn open.

Soap swore quietly. Gaz looked away for half a second. Ghost didn't. There was something about the wound that bothered him.

It wasn't shrapnel. Wasn't a gunshot or a wound from a blade. It wasn't anything he recognized.

Price crouched beside the corpse while Ghost watched the corridor ahead. The security officer's radio was missing. His ammunition pouches were still full. Whatever had killed him hadn't wanted his equipment. Another sound traveled through the ceiling.

Scrape.

Directly above them. Every rifle snapped upward. For one horrible second, nothing happened. Then something moved behind the ventilation grille. Fast.

Too fucking fast.

A shadow crossed the narrow openings and vanished before any of them could properly register its shape. Soap took a step backward. Ghost's finger settled against his trigger. Price slowly rose from beside the corpse. The vent was silent again. Then, somewhere in the darkness beyond their lights, something made a noise. Not a growl. Not quite. A wet, clicking hiss drifted through the corridor. Ghost had spent most of his adult life hunting monsters wearing human faces. This wasn't human.

The emergency lights flickered. Once. Twice. Then the corridor behind them went completely black. Orison Station had earned the name The Coffin long before Task Force 141 ever set foot aboard her. Only now, standing kilometers inside that enormous silent grave with something moving through the walls around them, did they begin to understand why.

[TF-141-LMN — WEYLAND-YUTANI RESEARCH DIVISION — RECORD REDACTED]

The Liminae had been built to withstand hell itself. That was what Soap liked to say, anyway, usually while slapping one gloved hand against a bulkhead as though the two-hundred-meter-long military vessel were an old dog deserving of affection. She had survived atmospheric entry beneath enemy fire, limped away from orbital engagements she had no business surviving, carried Task Force 141 across distances that made Earth feel less like home and more like a memory, and endured the sort of punishment that would have reduced a civilian transport to incandescent debris. Her hull was layered armor. Her compartments could seal independently. Her systems were redundancy upon redundancy, designed by people who understood that the difference between inconvenience and death in deep space could be something as insignificant as a damaged valve. The Liminae was not beautiful. She was not comfortable. She was not particularly graceful. She was a weapon wrapped around a life-support system, and the 141 trusted her because she had always brought them home.

She wasn't built to withstand this.

There were rules aboard a spacecraft. Old rules, written in blood long before humanity had crossed the threshold into extrasolar space. A pressure alarm meant you found a suit. A reactor warning meant you found Engineering. Fire meant you sealed the compartment. Radiation meant you got behind shielding. Hull breach meant you prayed the bulkheads closed quickly enough. Every danger had a procedure, every procedure had been drilled until it became instinct, and every member of the 141 could have crossed half the Liminae blindfolded if they needed to. They knew which doors sealed during decompression. They knew where emergency oxygen was stored. They knew which maintenance passages could bypass damaged corridors and which sections could be sacrificed without crippling the ship. They knew their vessel intimately, because out here ignorance killed faster than bullets.

Nobody had written a procedure for something hunting them.

It had begun with a noise in the Hangar Bay.

Nothing immediately alarming. A metallic thump picked up by an internal microphone at 0317 ship time, somewhere amongst the containers and equipment racks secured behind the hangar. The automated diagnostic system had flagged the disturbance, classified it as probable cargo displacement, and sent a routine notification to the engineering watch. A synthetic maintenance unit had been dispatched to inspect it. Nobody woke Price. Nobody woke Ghost. Nobody had any reason to. The Liminae made noises constantly. Metal expanded. Coolant lines knocked. Machinery vibrated through bulkheads. Somewhere inside the vessel, something was always humming, clicking, rattling, or complaining.

The maintenance synthetic never reported back.

At 0326, Engineering attempted to contact it. No response. At 0328, the ship's computer reported that the unit remained operational but could no longer establish its precise location. That was unusual enough to earn human attention, though not yet enough to warrant an alarm. One of the engineers left the control room with a diagnostic terminal tucked beneath his arm and irritation in his voice, muttering something about faulty tracking relays and corporate rubbish buried in the Liminae's software.

At 0334, his biometric monitor stopped transmitting.

That woke Price.

Captain John Price had learned long ago that catastrophes rarely announced themselves with explosions. More often, they began quietly—with a missed radio call, a vehicle arriving two minutes late, a soldier looking toward the wrong rooftop, or a name disappearing from a screen where it had been moments before. By 0337, he was standing on the Command Deck in trousers and a black shirt, boots unlaced, beard disheveled from sleep, staring at two missing status indicators while the night crew tried unsuccessfully to establish contact with Cargo. The ship remained green across the board. Atmospheric pressure stable. Reactor stable. Navigation stable. Hull integrity one hundred percent.

Everything was fine. Except for two people missing.

Ghost arrived less than three minutes later already dressed for violence. Simon Riley had apparently skipped whatever stage existed between unconsciousness and combat readiness, skull mask and balaclava dragged over his face and tactical vest hanging open while he tightened its straps. Gaz appeared behind him, then Soap, the Scot still pulling a shirt over his head as he entered the Command Deck. Nobody asked whether it could wait until morning. Price wouldn't have summoned them if it could.

Cargo cameras were dead. Not malfunctioning. Fucking dead.

Camera C-17 had stopped transmitting at 0321. C-18 followed at 0322. C-14 lasted until 0324. One after another, surveillance feeds covering the aft cargo compartments had disappeared in a pattern that Gaz immediately disliked. It wasn't random. Whatever fault was moving through the system appeared to be progressing inward from the starboard loading section, camera by camera, toward the main access corridor.

"Power failure?" Soap suggested.

Engineering said no. Power was reaching every camera. Something had simply destroyed them.

The first alarm sounded at 0346. Not Code Black. Not decompression. Not fire. Motion. A sensor inside Cargo Bay Three registered movement where nobody was supposed to be. Then another registered it twenty meters away. Then another. Far too bloody fast.

Price ordered the compartment sealed.

The bulkhead came down immediately, several tonnes of reinforced alloy slamming into its housing with enough force to shake the corridor. Emergency locks engaged. Pressure seals inflated. The ship's computer confirmed Cargo Bay Three isolated from adjoining compartments. Whatever was inside would remain there until they knew what they were dealing with.

For twelve seconds, that seemed reassuring… Then the motion detector outside Cargo Bay Three activated.

Ghost stared at the display. Nothing aboard the Liminae should have been able to cross a sealed bulkhead. Price ordered a ship-wide security alert.

The transformation was immediate. White night-cycle lighting snapped to harsh red. Crew quarters unlocked automatically while restricted sections were sealed. Sleeping personnel stumbled into corridors to the sound of klaxons and the ship's calm synthetic voice directing them toward designated muster stations. Engineers abandoned nonessential maintenance. Medical began preparing isolation rooms. Armoury authorization shifted from restricted to emergency access. Every crew member aboard the vessel understood one thing before they understood anything else.

Something was wrong inside their ship. Task Force 141 armed themselves in less than four minutes. Ghost checked his rifle twice. Soap shoved spare magazines into his vest. Gaz pulled the internal schematics onto his wrist display. Price stood before the weapons locker while the Liminae shuddered softly around them, listening to reports arrive over the command channel. Crew accounted for. Engineering accounted for. Medical accounted for. Flight crew accounted for. Hangar personnel—

One missing. Then two.

A scream came through the radio.

They say in space, no one can hear you scream.

That isn't true. Not when you're inside a pressurized hull. Not when the scream comes through an open communications channel directly into your headset.

The sound tore across every active frequency aboard the Liminae—a man's voice transformed by terror into something almost unrecognizable. There was shouting behind him. Gunfire. Three shots, rapid and deafening through the microphone. Something metallic crashed. Someone yelled to close a door.

Then came another sound. A choking gasp. Silence. Price was already moving. The 141 hit the corridor at a run.

The Liminae they knew disappeared around them. Familiar passages became tunnels of pulsing crimson. Emergency lights strobed across pipes and armored walls. Crew rushed in the opposite direction toward shelter compartments while security personnel moved toward the disturbance. Bulkheads slammed down behind them sector by sector, dividing the vessel into smaller and smaller pieces in accordance with quarantine protocol. The ship was doing exactly what she had been designed to do.

Contain the threat— but nobody knew where the fucking threat was. That was the problem.

The first body lay outside the junction leading toward the Hangar Bay. Ghost reached it first. He stopped. Soap nearly collided with his back. The dead man was security. Ghost knew him—not well, but well enough to remember drinking with him two nights earlier. His rifle remained beside his hand. His chest armor was broken inward. Not pierced by a bullet. Not cut. Broken. Something had struck him with enough force to crush composite plating intended to stop rifle rounds. There was blood on the ceiling.

Gaz looked up.

A maintenance grille hung open above them. The darkness beyond it suddenly seemed infinite. Price ordered everyone away from the vents. They reached the hangar five minutes later. The doors were sealed. Someone was pounding on the other side. Price approached the access terminal while Soap covered the door and Ghost watched the ceiling. Gaz attempted to establish contact with whoever was trapped inside. Static answered at first.

Then breathing.

A woman's voice.

One of the hangar technicians. She was crying. There was something in there with them.

She didn't know what—she hadn't seen it properly. It had come down from above. It had taken Williams. It had taken Mercer. There were six of them left. Then she stopped speaking.

A sound passed through the radio. A faint clicking hiss. Ghost's eyes narrowed. The same sound answered from somewhere above his head. He looked up. Nothing.

Only pipes. Cables. Shadows. The same ceiling as always. Price heard it too. They all had.

The four men stood perfectly still.

The Liminae groaned around them, her engines maintaining their steady burn through the darkness while kilometers of machinery continued functioning as though nothing had changed. Beyond the armored hull there was vacuum, absolute and merciless. No reinforcements. No escape route. No convenient place to retreat.

Whatever was aboard was trapped with them. And they were trapped with it. The pounding behind the hangar door stopped.

Price looked toward the terminal.

Six biometric signatures became five. Then four. Three. The hangar lights failed. Two. Soap whispered a curse. One.

Then none.

For several seconds, nobody spoke.

Ghost stared at the sealed door.

He had spent decades fighting men. He understood men. Men became frightened. Men made mistakes. Men wanted things. Money. Power. Revenge. Survival. You could predict them because underneath all the ideology and training and violence, they were still human.

Whatever was behind that door wasn't.

Something slammed against the bulkhead and the entire fucking door bowed outward. Soap took one involuntary step back. Another impact struck it. The reinforced alloy buckled. A warning appeared across the terminal.

[STRUCTURAL FAILURE DETECTED.]

Fuck.

[UNDOCUMENTED — WEYLAND-YUTANI RESEARCH DIVISION — RECORD REDACTED]