The strike team slowly made their way up to the bridge. They didn't realize how dark a freighter can be. Every shadow cast on the wall seemed to be following them. Nye couldn't shake the feeling that something sinister had taken place here, but what it was he didn't know.
"General." A soldier with a horrified look on his face ran and fell at Nye's feet.
"What is it?" He slowly picked the man up. He was muttering and shaking, obviously in shock.
"I saw..."
"What did you see soldier?" All the man could do was point up ahead. He collapsed on the ground again and began sobbing. Nye let him lie there. His men quickly caught up to him.
"What happened?"
"I don't know but something up ahead gave this soldier the worst case of shock I have ever seen. Be careful and have weapons at the ready." The carefully walked to the door. It gently slid open. The team hid on either side of the wall.
Eric mouthed the count down."One...two...three." They rushed in. "Oh...god." A horrible odor covered the room. Death and rotting flesh seemed to supress everything else.
"God I can scarcely breath or see. Damn it's dark in here. What's making that smell?" The private pointed his wrist light on the ground. "Holy shit..." The ground was littered with rotting dead corpses. The strange gray bubbles covered the walls and the bodies, almost writhing in unison. Corpses were scattered everywhere, some hanging impaled on items on the wall, others being held to the ceiling by the gray bubbles. But no matter where they were, they all looked horrible.
"So this is where the crew went. Their all up here in this mass grave." Nye quickly grabbed his surgeons mask and placed it over his face. He nodded for the others to do the same.
"Where are we?" Someone asked. Nye ran his hand against the blood covered wall trying to find a light sensor. Nye shuddered as he found one half underneath a body. The bloody body oozed over his hand as he tapped the sensor and the lights went on to reveal the entire room.
The body count was much less than they had orginally thought as they soon saw that the pile of of bodies only took up one corner of the gigantic hallway they were in. "This must be the main hallway. If I'm not mistaken, the bridge is just ahead." Nye began walking down the hall.
"Have you no sympathy? These are real people here!" One of his soldiers got up from where he had been sitting.
"Yes I know but the only way we can find the surviviors is if we-"
"Don't you get it! There are no survivors! This is just a giant grave. See how bad their wounds are? Whoever did this intended to kill them. All of them." Nye was furious with this outrage. How dare a lower officer question his authority. Eric would have gone on a authority rampage when he heard something.
"Everone quiet." The room hushed. A mumble. a whisper. There it was again. "What is that?"
"Oh my god. Look." The private pointed to the bodies. All of them were slowly mumbling sounds that began to form words.
"We are the Hive. Join us. We are the way. The Hive is your future. Join us or perish. The Hive. We are supreme. The Hive is all powerful, all knowing, always watching..." To the horror of the team the bodies continued on there long speech.
"What in God's name is this?" Nye began to stutter. In all his life he had never seen anything like this. Dead, slashed bodies slowly becoming animated again. This was only something that was supposed to happen in stories, or in horror movies. Not in real life.
A gray blob began to heave and hurl. "What now?" A long slender gray arm poked out. Eric stepped back as fast as he could. The bubble burst revealing a cat sized spider. It was covered in a black ooze that quickly soaked into it's skin. It released a high pitched series of shreiks and whines. The other bubbles began to jiggle and they too bursting to reveal spiders. Slender purple spines began to grow from their back as they turned their attention to the humans. 'Oh god...RUN!"
Nye and his men bolted down the hall with the spiders in close pursuit. "Today's a bad day." He screamed as he watched one of his men getting shot down by the purple spines the spiders could obviously fire. "Damn it."
"Med team! Med team! Get the shuttle ready! We got company." He yelled into his comlink.
"General!! AIII!!" He heard the men screaming for a short time before it was replaced with the same chant that was rising all about them. 'Join us. The Hive is right, just, and holy. We are the path to the future."
They leaped into the ele-chute just in time. The doors shut just as a wave of spines were about to strike them down. "What in the name of hell are those things?" Nye asked as he slumped against the wall.
"I have no idea." Said Jason, one of the last five members of the team. "Whatever they are, they killed ten of our men and however many people who were on this freighter."
"They didn't kill those freighter people though. They were talking. The Hive." For reasons unknown they shuddered at the mention of that name.
"Yeah, but how? One of those men had his entire chest ripped out! How does that work?"
"Uh guys...I think we have a bigger problem." A guns expert named Hannah pointed upward. Huge dents were forming in the roof of the elevator cart. The spiders were making it in.
"We're almost there."
"I don't know if almost will cut it." Nye cocked his gun and prepared for the bloodbath. If they died today, than so be it. He had his machine gun at the ready, preparing to blast those spiders to pieces when the cart came to a halt.
"We're here!" Nye grabbed the men nearest to him and ran out of the cart. "Going up." He pressed the up key on the panel. The gray eggs from before were gone, most likely hatched.
"Where's the team we left here?" Hannah asked.
"Oh god." Nye looked up to see the bodies of the search team hanging limply from the ceiling. Their bodies were slashed up and their lips mouthing the long speech they had heard before. "There's nothing we can do. Quickly, down to the shuttle."
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Hannah ran after the group, her bones aching from the agonizing run to the shuttle. They still had ten hallways to go before they reached the docking bay. If she had had a choice, she wouldn't go another step until she had a break, but the screaching spiders a floor above them reminded her that she had to run.
They soon reached the shuttle to find what they had prayed was not the case. The bodies of the med team were all strapped to the outside of the ship. "Help me pry them off. We don't want to take them back to the V." Nye used his gun as a pryer and the others did the same. They piled the bodies in front of the door as a way to block the spiders.
The docking bay door opened and the shuttle took off into space. "Mulligan...Mulligan. Do you copy?" All Nye got was static. "They somehow made it to our ship anyway."
"General, your going to want to see this." Hannah shouted. Eric quickly ran over to the window.
"Oh god almighty..." A huge green ship was docked above Eric's ship. It looked as if it was almost living. Large amounts of those gray eggs were growing all over it. It was firing green bolts at the hull of the ship. "Stop it! Stop it!!" Eric screamed in vain. The ships lasers stopped. "Wow. I'm good." The large mounted cannon aimed at the shuttle. "I take it back. You can keep shooting the ship." The cannon fired and speed towards the craft. "It's the end." But before the bolt could hit the ship a cool icy ball inveloped his ship and sucked it to the intended destination.
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