There Came a Silent Scream

The light of the blue star Signus slowly rose over the gray horizon of a morning moon, bouncing light off the greenish atmosphere and through the multi-plated glass of the ship’s viewing windows. A young man stood dressed in a heavy pressure suit, helmet in hand watching the spectacle with melancholy eyes lost in thought. “It never gets old, does it?” he mused, half to himself, half to the older man piloting the vessel.
“You’d better close those windows,” came the reply. “I don’t want any of that radiation leaking into the bridge.”
“Don’t be ridiculous, dad. You know the shielding is adequate.”
“The Hammerhead’s an old rig and Signus is in its blue phase.” The old man grunted back. “Our shielding might not be enough to-“
“Your such a cynic,” said the young spacer, pressing the shutter controls and equipping his helmet. Darkness filled the once luminous hull as the windows closed, bathing the chamber in seemingly dark light from the flickering fluorescent bulbs above.
“Just mind your line and keep a keen eye for trouble. You know how far we are from the Core.”
“Yeah, yeah,” the suited youth replied, his voice muffled by the helmet but clear across the comm channel through which they would be speaking. “The life of a salvage hunter…”
“Treasure hunter,” corrected the old man with a slight grin.

For as long as anyone could remember, the Masons had been a family of salvagers. Gifted mechanics with a sense of adventure, they were constantly on some expedition to the most forsaken reaches of space in search for parts and cargo that could be recovered from wrecked vessels. They were never short on work. Even known space held a multitude of dangers from unpredictable solar winds to pirate attacks to simple engine failure. When the Masons weren’t on an expedition, they were gathering information for an expedition or selling whatever wares they had picked up from recent digs. The house/shop bore a striking resemblance to a junk yard with parts strewn over the lawn, and an open garage with tools and equipment strewn recklessly about. Cliff and Quinn Mason had two children, a boy named Eric and a girl named Chelsea. Aside from their profession and reputation, the Masons were a fairly normal family. Quinn and Chelsea tended shop while Cliff and Eric salved for treasure and maintained the family starship; an old decommissioned military craft Cliff had named The Hammerhead. According to rumor, Cliff’s father had won the ship in a game of chance and began salvaging when Cliff was just a boy. After his father’s mysterious disappearance, Cliff had inherited the ship and took over the Mason legacy.

Eric walked into a cramped chamber and secured his lifeline to the ship. The stout cable would be his only connection to home and a safe return; the line between family, friends ,and the certain death that waits for those who drift aimlessly in the void. Once he was satisfied that it was securely in place, he opened the airlock, allowing the artificial gravity of the ship to recede and the vacuum of space to cradle him in its vast, hollow arms. Using his own momentum and the suit’s gas-powered rockets, he maneuvered towards the wrecked vessel the Hammerhead was anchored beside. Debris floated by serenely like absent-minded ghosts as he made his way to the main body of the ruined vessel. The bold white lettering on the side indicated that this was an Alliance transport…what the United Systems Alliance was doing such a great distance beyond the safety of their Core Worlds may have been beyond Eric's comprehension, but it was not far from his concern. In fact, this whole job had given him an eerie, unsettling feeling from the moment his father had mentioned it. It wasn’t just the circumstances surrounding the dig or the unusual way the Masons had received information on the wreck, but the string of bad luck that had surrounded the whole mission sat uneasily in the pit of his stomach. From mechanical failures to Gate security's lack of cooperation, it seemed that every step of the Mason's way had been hampered and harangued by some unknown force whose only goal was to keep them away from this ship. But Cliff was a stubborn man who didn’t believe in superstition. He was the type who made his own luck and fortune was calling.

Eric found a hole in the ship’s hull large enough to fit through. Squeezing into the breach, he guided his weightless form through the interior. Signus’ scattered light filtered through the dozens of tiny breaks and holes, lighting up the chamber with a dim, sullen glow. Cargo crates, opened and empty floated carelessly around the chamber. “Damn pirates,” Eric muttered into the comm. “They got to it first. She’s been picked clean.”
“Any bodies?” Cliff replied.
Eric paused. Strange…he hadn’t noticed it before, but there certainly weren’t any bodies floating around the ship or inside the wreckage. It wasn’t like pirates to sack a ship and then pick up after themselves. “None,” he said after a moment of contemplation. “You don’t think pirates did this?”
“Just get back to the engine room and see if there’s anything we can sell back there. And relax. Whoever did this has probably left the sector by now.”
“Yeah, but I don’t like chancing it,” Eric said as he maneuvered around crates and debris towards the ship’s rear. “And what if the Alliance comes looking for their ship? This whole dig’s given me the creeps from day one. Plus, with the way our luck’s going today…”
“Nothing’s gonna happen," Cliff interupted. "Just hit the rear and let me know what’s back there. If you’re still too scared to shuck this wreck, then climb back aboard and I’ll take over.”
Eric said nothing as he opened a compartment in his suit and extracted a plasma-powered torch. Igniting the device, he began burning his way through the sealed doorway.

Eric’s father had always asked too much of his son. When he was young, Cliff had been visibly disappointed by Eric’s dream of leaving the homestead to become a doctor. All throughout school he received good marks and was the toast of his teachers but none of this seemed to please Cliff who was always in the garage working on a project of some sort. Amazingly, Eric had received a scholarship to attend Ipsodiel University, a prestigious medical school off-world. Naturally, his family was opposed to him leaving the house, let alone the planet. Fortunately for Eric, he had secreted enough money to fund his voyage to Laodicea and left home that very summer to pursue his dreams. Halfway through his second term, Eric received a letter from home informing him that his grandfather had disappeared and his father was now left to bear the weight of the failing family business. Whether through guilt or loyalty, Eric returned to his backwater hometown to help his father get the business back on track. He made it clear that his intentions were to return to school once the family was financially stable. It had been eight years since his homecoming and Eric had yet to abandon a dream of returning to Ipsodiel, though a gnawing thought in the back of his mind told him hopelessness was the wisest course of action. He hid his resentment for the life of his father and grandfather well, but every now and then, a tell-tale look in his eyes would peak out, hinting at the inner dialogue that burned in his throat.

The door finally yielded under the heat of the plasma torch and, had there been an atmosphere to carry sound, would have creaked loudly on its broken hinges as Eric opened a way into the noticeably dark chamber. With the flip of a switch on his belt, two lights mounted on the sides of his helmet came to life, their beams penetrating the darkness and thick dust of the chamber. Towards the back of the engine room, Eric recognized several useful parts that weren’t too badly damaged. “There’s a fusion compressor that’s in pretty good shape…and the control panel looks to be in working order as well. I didn’t know a ship this size could hold a dual-core engine.”
“A dual-core engine?” Cliff replied over the comm line. “That’s unusual…especially for an Alliance ship. Looks like they were pulling some heavy cargo.”
Eric began work removing whatever parts he could carry in his arms. “Well, whatever it was they were carrying, it’s long gone now.”
“Yeah…” said Cliff, a hint of lament in his voice. “Say, those drive heads wouldn’t happen to be intact, would they? We could get a real good price for those back home.”
“Hold on, let me check”
Eric ceased what he was doing and proceeded to the body of the engine. He couldn’t help but feel as though he was robbing a grave with the ghosts of the restless dead watching his every move with disdain or like a vulture, picking clean the carcass of some great, ancient beast. An eerie feeling came over him…a sense of being watched. He paused and looked fruitlessly around the chamber. Nothing but dust and shadows revealed themselves to the thin lights of his helmet. For a moment, the urge struck him to flee the chamber and urge his father to speed them home. But he steadied his resolve and turned his head back towards the engine, searching once more for the ruined treasures that just might bring him one step closer to leaving home and reaching his ever elusive dreams.

That’s when it came without warning; an uncharacteristically panicked Cliff spoke hurriedly over the comm. “Son, get back to the ship!” Eric didn’t need a second invitation. Without hesitation, he sprang from his prone position by the motor and projected himself towards the door. Pushing against whatever his arms and legs could find to gain speed, Eric raced through the skeletal remains of the Alliance freighter, back towards the relative safety of the Hammerhead. He had known something like this would happen. Whether it was pirates or an Alliance patrol, he knew that Cliff would not have urged his immediate return had the threat been anything less that dire. After the longest minute of his life, Eric emerged from the husk and into open space. What he saw there turned his blood cold. A ship, both alien and horrifying sailed silently several hundred meters around the perimeter of the Hammerhead like a shark circling its prey. It was a black, round vessel with obscene and unnecessary spiked protrusions dotting its surface. Though he couldn’t tell at this distance, Eric could swear the ship was made from bone. As fear clawed at his heart, Cliff’s voice came back over the comm. “What are you waiting for boy?! Get back to the ship!”

Eric’s legs moved on their own. The instant they did, the alien vessel fired, green blasts of light hitting the Hammerhead and the wreckage. Cliff’s voice came over the comm for a split second before the impact cut their communication short. Bursts of shrapnel and dust obscured his vision, but Eric’s legs remembered the direction of the ship and sped blindly towards it. When the reached the edge of the wreck, they pushed off into open space towards the waiting airlock. As he sailed through the void, the enemy ship closed in, switching from energy weapons to a hail of projectiles. As the cruel dictate of fortune had ruled from the foundation of time, one of the bullets severed his line to the ship as an explosion from another wave of hostile green lights propelled him away from the wreck, away from Cliff, away from home…forever. Eric’s heart sank and tears blurred his eyes at the vision before him. The Hammerhead grew smaller as the enemy pressed their attack. The old rig began fleeing, only to be struck down like a rabbit beneath the jaws of a wolf. Eric could barely see the small point of light that marked the Hammerhead’s destruction, the death of his father, and the wreck of a dream against the backdrop of a cold and uncaring universe. Closing his tear-stained eyes, Eric resigned himself to death in the vast darkness of eternity, cradled in the arms of the void.