Horror in Alpha Quadrante

["Captain's log, star date 38552.41. Our destination is a hitherto unexplored part of the Alpha Quadrant. Our mission is to explore and chart this unexplored part of the universe. No obstacles have been encountered in our path until today when we found a strange organism in an otherwise lifeless system. I don't know why but I feel an unnatural sense of fear and sheer terror at the very thing. If we don't survive this I just want you to know Shelia, I love you".]

I finish the log entry as I look at the crew on the bridge and see that they are also absolutely terrified.

"What's that thing doing?" I ask my deputy John.

"Looks like he's just watching us, Captain" John said in a frightened voice full of primal and unnatural fear.

I respond to his answer with a slight nod. I look at the screen and see the thing change and open an unnaturally long mouth. In a second the thing was rushing towards us.

"ACTIVATE WARP DRIVE, FAST!!!". I say

"Captain, we can't, the ship won't go into warp drive. It seems that the entire ship's system won't work properly," says Maria in a completely terrified tone.

"This is not happening," stuttered Vasilie, again and again. Steve was sobbing softly, his head in his hands. Sara just stared, the image on the screen reflected in her wide, dark eyes. Only I turned away from the display. I walked over to my command chair, paused, straightened my uniform and sat down.

"Crew members," he said, his words cutting through Vasili's and Steve's despair. "Over the past few years of service, I'm ashamed to admit I haven't said it enough. Regardless, if there ever was a time, you know now is the time to say it. It's been an honor to steer this ship with all of you.'

"And with you, Captain," said John. He was the only one who responded. His own words seemed distant, disjointed, as if he were talking to himself somewhere far away. His mind was sluggish, unresponsive. His breathing was difficult. A strange, detached part of his mind assumed he was probably having a panic attack.

I had no more orders. I just sat there, looking at the screen.

Steve reached for his small picture of Amelia and Tom, his wife and son, attached to the side of the monitor. He would see them again, one day. He was sure of it. A fresh burst of Vasili's stuttering curses distracted him before he could get the picture off the side of the screen.

Strange Organism filled the screens. Even as the stunned crew watched, the great, hooked beak disintegrated. The thing yawned wide, incredibly wide, wide enough - John was sure - to swallow the small moon. His shadow fell across the ship, obscuring the starlight. The structure around them seemed to shudder, as if its terror equaled that of its crew. The screen now showed nothing but static-washed darkness. It swallowed them whole.

Vasilie slumped on the deck, shaking and crying uncontrollably. Steve was looking down at his lap, his knuckles white where he gripped the arms of his chair. Vasilie finally stopped babbling.

Sara continued to stare at the now blank screen until a horrible theory occurred to her, as they lost contact with the rest of the ship's crew, she realized that she along with the others on the bridge were probably the only survivors of the entire ship.

The sudden impact threw them all back. The captain found himself stretched out overboard. Their ship shook violently, the tremors dislodged things in the command post and caused things to start bouncing around the deck. Alarms went off again on the cramped bridge. Sara, who was the only one who managed to stay in her seat, deactivated them without comment. The screen turned off completely, showing nothing but a gray blob.

"The thing will come on board?" Vasilie stuttered when they picked themselves up. Any response was lost in another powerful impact. The ship's frame screamed in protest at the strain. With their systems disrupted and broken, it was impossible to tell exactly where they were or what was going on outside.

The ship seemed to settle slightly, the sounds of tortured metal reduced to a low creak. Everyone searched the ceiling, looking for any sign of a breach.

'Do you hear that?' said Sara. Everyone listened, holding their breath, straining to hear the overpowering sound of the gunshot. Finally, Johan caught what Sara had discovered, a faint sound of scratching, scratching, as if someone - or something - was scraping the outside of the hull. It mirrored the scratching that tormented them all from their own skulls.

"They're on the hull," said the captain. Before he could continue, the breathless silence was interrupted by a crash. A section just above John's chair, in the center of the ship's cockpit, collapsed. With it came a torrent of boiling green liquid that hit John just as he looked up.

If John managed to draw a breath to scream, the bio-acid flooded his mouth, throat, and lungs before he could make a sound. Johan caught the impression of his death as he was completely lost in the torrent - flesh peeling from bones, organic matter consumed in an instant. The rest of the crew backed away, but too slowly - Sara, closest to the center of the cockpit, was hit by the acid. Her hands rose to her exposed face, and her screams filled the claustrophobic space.

'No!' Vasilie roared, throwing himself over his bench to catch Sara as she fell. He managed to get her hands away from her face and then pulled away. Her features were already reduced to jagged bone, her eyeballs oozing like fluid from their sockets, flesh and sinew sliding through her fingers. She screamed though. Vasilie doubled over and was sick.

Steve, whose seat was farthest from John's chair, returned to his bench as a flood of acid spread across the floorboards. Sara collapsed into the oncoming shift, her body disintegrating. Vasilie tried to push away, but he got sick again and collapsed. The bugs got him before the acid.

There were insects in the hissing, steaming slime—wriggling, invisible worms with hard black shells. They swirled out of the discolored, vomit-like biomatter, the air thick with the feel of their passage as they quickly covered the deck, then the workbenches and walls, riding the rising tide of acid. First hundreds, then thousands of them reached Vasili, jumping over his shoes and knees and raising their hands. He tried to scream but choked on his own bile. His eyes rolled into their sockets as the alien swarm began to eat him alive.

The captain killed himself. His face always streaked with tears, he jumped straight from his chair into the stream that swallowed John and his command chair. He disappeared in an instant, as the crack in the ship's hull burned even wider.

Seeing all the horror around him, Steve just looked the acid in the face and jumped into the acid with a crazy smile on his face, killing himself instantly.

As Vasili's eaten remains crumbled into bio-organic matter that splattered the cockpit deck, Maria stood pinned to the top of her bench. She couldn't think, couldn't move. She was in a spasm of panic - part of her realized that she needed to end this quickly as the captain, but another part was desperate for another way out, any way out that would avoid the bile of the all-burning nightmare. He digested them whole.

For a moment, Maria was left alone. In one single, absurd second, everything was surreal, funny, almost peaceful. It must have been a nightmare. None of this horror can be real.

Then her table collapsed.

'Oh no!' she screamed, trying to climb back onto the crumbling remains of the table. 'No no no!'

The bio-acid caught her and splashed her shoes and the bottom of her uniform. Her panicked moans quickly turned into screams of agony as the material was eaten away, revealing flesh which in turn began to flake off. Muscles and tendons turned to a gray, organic paste, revealing bone that had given way and crumbled under its own weight, eaten away by the acid.

Maria was dying slowly, on her knees, eaten inch by inch by the bile and blind creatures swimming in her. Eventually the insects swarmed her throat, suffocating her as they ate away at her eyes and burrowed through his nose and ears into his brain.

The acid took what was left. As another part of the hull collapsed and released a fresh batch of vicious toxins, the image of Amelia and Tom fell into the flood. In an instant, the smiling wife and son disappeared, completely exhausted.