Captain Gregory Hitchcock stood on the flight deck of the warship Ahriman. His navy blue jacket was complimented with white gloves which he clasp behind his back. Hitchcock lowered his chin, covered in a neatly trimmed white beard, towards his chest. He looked out of the forward-facing windows; indeed, the entire front and sides of flight deck were covered in panes of ALON, providing a panoramic view. Uranus was ahead, the Ahriman was in orbit of the planet, the bow of the ship facing the light blue-green ice giant.
In the distance appeared a space station. It leaked gases into the vacuum, was lopsided and angled wrong. Lights flickered, periodically illuminating a debris field. A small metallic speck left the space station, heading towards the Ahriman.
"The boarding shuttle is returning to the Ahriman Captain," stuttered a young and relatively inexperienced flight officer.
Hitchcock signed, "I can see that with my own two eyes yah green grilled piss ant," he barked at the flight officer, "tell me something I don't know … like why there seemed to be a commotion with the rescue team followed by abrupt silence and now all seems well? Hail the shuttle, yah piss ant."
"Yes Captain," replied the communications officer, just four more months, he thought to himself, and then I'm off this ship and as far from this big old butthead as I can get, "Shuttle 12, we are tracking you on a return trajectory to the Ahriman. Status report?"
There was a silence, a little too long. Hitchcock bit the back of his lips, "Repeat the request piss ant," he said to the communications officer, "hey you," he turned to sneer at the weapons officer, "do something half decent for a change and lock weapons on that shuttle."
"Sir?" queried the weapons officer.
"Just do it yah blockhead!" roared Hitchcock.
"Aye-aye captain."
"I repeat," chimed in the communications officer, "Shuttle 12, status report."
More silence, interrupted briefly by some barely audible mumbling and someone saying, "Fun'n just get it right yah kun…"
"Shuttle 12, repeat?"
"Yes, this is ah, boarding officer Jensen," said a calm and pleasant voice.
"Good one kun, yeah the name on da patch…"
"Shoosh…"
"Shuttle 12?"
"Yes, yes, this is boarding officer Jensen … all is well. We are enroute back to the ah, the Ahriman."
Hitchcock's old grey eyes narrowed, "Weapons lock blockhead," he said to the weapons officer.
"Aye-aye captain," said the weapons officer, I'd like to shove your fat old arse into a torpedo tube, he thought to himself.
"And piss ant," he remarked to the communications officer, "override the shuttle's systems and open a vidcom to the cockpit."
"Yes captain."
The Ahriman locked its plasma canons, fusion warhead torpedoes and drone launching pods on the shuttle. A two-dimensional holographic view screen appeared in front of Captain Hitchcock. The screen displayed the cockpit of the shuttle. For a split second there was a blur of brown-orange fur? Black stripes perhaps? But the cockpit appeared to be empty.
"Weapons officer!" roared Hitchcock, "Prepare to destroy that shuttle!"
"Yes captain."
And then two heads rose slowly from beneath the shuttle's flight controls. They appeared to be boarding officers, the pilot and copilot of the shuttle.
"Sorry captain," said the pilot, "just ah, tying our shoe laces."
Hitchcock's eyes narrowed further as he sneered, "You're wearing mag-grav boots Jensen, they don't have shoe laces."
"Awe yeah," said the copilot, sounding a little dumbfounded, "we know that captain."
"Just checking there wasn't a fault, captain," replied Jensen with a blank stare.
"What happened over there Jensen?" asked Hitchcock suspiciously.
"Not sure captain," Jensen replied, "some kind of catastrophic failure of the station's life support."
"And the bioweapons prototypes Jensen?"
There was a brief pause as Jensen looked nervously at his copilot, "All dead captain."
"Yeah," added the copilot, "all dead."
"And the scientists? The geneticists?"
"All dead," replied Jensen.
"Yeah," added the copilot, "it looked like some of them were eaten…"
Jensen elbowed his copilot in the ribs.
"Eaten?" asked Hitchcock.
"Ah, yes captain," Jensen replied, "there was ah, evidence of scraps of flesh, bone and brain fragments and other such uneaten body parts floating in clouds of blood captain … the artificial gravity is out over there."
"Whatever ate them captain," said the copilot, probably thought they were good eat'n."
"Will you shut up yah dumb kun," hissed Jensen in a whisper.
"Well," said Hitchcock, hiding a degree of uncertainty, "I expect a full debrief once you return to the Ahriman."
"Yes captain," said the pilot.
Hitchcock terminated the communication, "piss ant," he said with a cold tone to the communications officer, "I want all hands in the shuttle bay with guns pointed at that shuttle when it arrives."
"Yes, captain," said the communications officer with a tone of concern as he sent out the alert.
"Weapons officer," keep weapons locked on that shuttle until it lands in the shuttle bay.
"Yes captain."
Hitchcock turned to the weapons officer, "and then switch to the sentry guns mounted in the shuttle bay."
"Yes captain."
Soon after the shuttle arrived in the Ahriman's shuttle bay. It was soon surrounded by all available crew, pulse rifles pointed at the shuttle's airlock. The airlock opened and 12 members of the boarding party walked down the ramp into the shuttle bay.
"I thought there only eight boarding officers," whispered a crew member to another.
It was then that the 12 stopped, surrounded by crew, guns pointed at them from all directions, including the four sentry gun platforms mounted on the ceiling of the shuttle bay. One of the boarding officers stepped forward, he appeared to be a man in his late 50's, well-muscled and with long white hair and a white beard with tuffs of black and grey stipes.
"Hello," he smiled to the crew.
"I say brothers," he said to the other 11 members of the boarding party, "do we rule?"
The boarding party smiled, a fiery look of hunger in their eyes. The crew looked at each other in nervousness and confusion.
And then it happened…
Each member of the boarding party began to morph and change, growing immensely larger, fatter and more muscular while simultaneously sprouting brown-orange fur with black stripes. The man with the white beard sprouted white fur with black stripes. In a matter of seconds, they went from humans to nine feet tall and four-foot-wide monstrosities, tiger but also bearlike with massive, gaping mouths lined with vibrating sharklike teeth. The crew in the shuttle bay opened fire.
Hitchcock watched the horror unfold on the viewscreen on flight deck, "Communications officer, what is the nearest Jovian Proxy warship?"
The communications officer conducted a brief search, "Thor's Schlong captain, it is enroute to Oberon, ETA to Oberon about 181 hours and 52 minutes."
"I know the captain of that warship, a veteran from the Fall of Mars, tough as a pit bull from IO, a real fudging hard arse … Captain Sarge," Hitchcock breathed in and then out in a long sigh, resigned to fate. "Send them our location and mission data. Tell them … all crew of the Ahriman presumed lost."
At this point, Hitchcock could sense the sheer fear and tension from the flight deck officers, "We are all sworn naval officers of the Jovian Proxy," he gravely said, "all officers on flight deck, arm yourselves with weapons from the flight deck armoury compartment, prepare yourselves; computer?"
YES CAPTAIN
"If we're going out, then we're going out in style, play Hells Bells by AC/DC."
PLAYING HELLS BELLS BY AC/DC
Over a series of several minutes, Captain Hitchcock and the crew on flight deck listened to endless bolts of weapons fire, blood curdling roars, screams of terror and the sickening sound of tearing flesh, the cracking of bones and unholy gulps. And then the sounds of stomps down the corridor towards the fortified hatch to the flight deck. And then the thunderous thumps on the metallic door. The crew on flight deck huddled together, pointing their weapons at the hatch.
"What are they?" asked an officer.
"The Jovian Proxy's response to the Terran Conglomerate's Mingers," said Captain Hitchcock, turning to key in the command codes to initiate the self-destruct sequence for the Ahriman, "bioweapons of mass destruction," only nine digits remained, "Just in case Earth gets any ideas of infecting the moons of Jupiter with Mingers, Europa would respond with a direct infection of Earth with these monsters," three digits remained.
The fortified hatch was torn violently from its hinges and flung at the flight deck crew, those that weren't hit by the metal and killed instantly fired their weapons at a monstrous brown-orange tiger-bear bipedal beast.
The creature took volleys of blasts into its barrel like torso, it screeched in pain and blood frenzied rage as spurts of blue blood splattered across the walls, floors and ceilings on flight deck.
It stopped momentarily, tore off its left arm and hurled it back down the corridor where it was caught by another creature that rapidly retreated behind an airlock at the end of the corridor.
The creature on flight deck, covered in open wounds gushing blue blood, turned and charged towards Hitchcock. Hitchcock turned and only managed to type in two of the three remaining digits to initiate the self-destruct sequence.
Unfortunately, he was tackled by the creature as it snatched him up and charged on, ramming into and through a flight deck window pane, plunging them both into the void. With the window shattered the flight deck underwent explosive decompression, farting the rest of the crew into space.
Hitchcock drifted, falling unconscious within nine seconds, his blood boiled, swelling his body as it rapidly froze solid. Needless to say, Hitchcock was dead as a doornail.
For a few hours the Ahriman remained in orbit of Uranus. The shattered window panel on flight deck was replaced and the interior repressurized. The creature with the white fur and black stripes appeared to be issuing instructions to the other creatures with brown-orange fur. And then the Ahriman fired up its main fusion drive, leaving the orbit of Uranus, heading towards the Kuiper Belt.