The transmission is unencrypted, you easily picked it up due to it having been broadcast on standard USCM transmission frequencies. Strangely enough, however, a set of coordinates that the message was sent from are not included. A male human's voice suddenly crackles into audibility after a few seconds of the transmission having started. The human sounds like he's in his fifties, but a metallic undertone to his voice suggests he has had cybernetic augmentations to his vocals. "This... Uh... Shit, I don't even know where I begin. I guess... I say who I am? I..." The speaker's voice is dampened, presumably due to him turning away from the microphone to talk to another crewman. "I haven't done this before, okay? I've only had the god-damn ship a week! Oh, okay." The voice clears again, he has turned back to the microphone. "This is the USCM gunship Raptor, ship dedignation Ma-412_Ops. This is a distress call to anyone who can hear this. Well, I mean... It really isn't cos I have no fucking idea where we are right now, I suppose this is more a statement on what happened. Uh, where it all started. My name is Harold Parker, captain of the Raptor. The ship is stranded in the warp after we evacuated Earth. I wasn't planetside at the time but, we got reports of giant tentacle monsters eating the planet from the inside out. Like a worm in an apple or some shit. So yeah, we were escorting the battleships and civilian cruisers to a safer location, but we took damage on our rear due to star-pirates taking advantage of the vulnerabilities of a broken fleet. The engineering staff said it was nothing serious so we made the FTL jump to keep up with the others. As it turned out, the pirates had landed a potshot we hadn't noticed on the main control terminals beneath the bridge. We found out what that meant when the fuel tanks exploded, tearing a massive fucking hole in the rear. We, uh... Lost seventeen of our hundred-and-fifty crew-members in the explosion. We sealed off the affected rooms and corridors to prevent air being lost, but we couldn't stop. We still can't and we can't fucking fix it either. Cos THEY are on board, but I'll get to that later. We essentially were velocity locked, unable to slow down enough to translate back into realspace. - - What the fuck are you doing? Look, I know it's bad but just hang on in there, OK? I'm sending a distress signal right now, so you can stop talking about using that gun of yours anytime soon. Sit down, shut up. --" The signal abruptly cuts off. End part 1 of 4
The signal suddenly surges back to life again after an extended period of time. Captain Parker begins to speak after a short silence that follows your regaining the signal. "I, uh... We lost contact for a bit there. Damn warp's fucking with our instruments like nobody's business. Time stranded, three weeks and counting. Nobody's come to help us yet. Hell, I don't even know if this has even got out there, but it's worth a shot. So, I guess i should outline the level of shit we're in here. The... things I said were on board, they still are. They're chewing their way to us here in the bridge, room by fucking room. I... Words don't exist to describe what the fuck they are, but I'll try... Demons." Parker sounds as if he cannot comprehend the fact such things should exist, let alone be on his ship. "In the naval academy back on Pluto, the teachers did mention that the warp was an alternate dimension, one that died when ours was born. They briefly said that there were supposedly things living in the warp that preyed on defenseless freighters, but we'd openly scoffed at them. The so-called 'eyewitnesses' of these things, all of them had gone insane. They said these demons could take your soul as you died and keep you around as playthings for their own amusement. Is that what we'll become? Will we die and rot in this fucking wreck forever? I don't even want to know." Indistinct sobbing can be heard in the background, along with guttural curses towards the demons. You deduce that Parker is holding out against whatever is on his ship with a number of other crewmen. "Those things... They're fucking evil. To the damn bone, every last one of them. From the broken security camera feed we've got from the sections of the ship we... Couldn't hold, not a single one looks like any other. One might look like a legless fly-person, another might have two mouths, and yet another might be wearing sewn-together clothes that seem to be made of skin. Human skin." Parker sighs heavily, his fear clearly audible in his next sentences. "This... I think this is the end. What I'm doing... I'm saying goodbye." --- The signal cuts out as before. You wonder whether it will come back again. End part 2 of 4
((I realise I probably should have put this in the character journals, but Parker isn't technically one of my characters. I also thought that recepients of the broadcasts could reply, but communication is probably next to impossible when you're stuck in the warp. As Parker himself suggested, it was a miracle that these messages ever reached civilization.))
After a somewhat agonizing wait, the signal picks back up again. But something is different this time. "I can hear them." It is captain Parker. He sounds defeated, as if he has already given up on survival. "The demons, they... They're t-t-talking to me. W-When they st-started talking to me, the life support system failed. Aircon, heating, it's damn freezing in here!! All that shit is dead. The entire FUCKING CREW is DEAD!!! All except for ME! Except for me... M-My first officer, he... He didn't hear the voices when I did. The voices, they are so loud... They make me want to do what they say. T-That's the wrong thing to do, I-I know, but... It's as if they t-t-took my ability to control my own b-b-b-body now. They told me... To... Oh sh-shit... They told me to kill him. Sharaq, my f-f-first officer... They told me to. I didn't want to! They MADE ME!!! My mind... M-My body is obeying them... I can hear where they are. I can h-h-hear wherever they are, every time they p-paint the walls red with the blood of my c-c-crew, every time they bust down a b-b-blast d-d-d-d-door to get at what's inside... Humans, fleshy human bits... They're so tender, they're t-t-telling me human f-f-flesh is delicious. I... I w-w-w-want to believe them. I got n-nothing else to eat h-h-here... I wonder if they're t-telling the truth this time..." There is a loud crunching sound. You assume Parker has gone insane enough to resort to cannibalism. "Eugh... Ewww!!! Fucking sh-sh-shit, dammit!!" Spitting and retching sounds are heard in the background a short distance from the recorder. "F-Fuck... What the hell is all this crap inside of it? Are those... Leeches? No, crap, get them off me! G-Get them off! Shit, no... No, NO!!! NOT LIKE THIS!!!!! PLEASE!!!! P-Plea - - Huuurghhh..." A short period of silence follows, then suddenly a gut-wrenching snapping sound. It is the sound of bones breaking. You don't know how, but with your mind's eye you can clearly picture a small snap-picture of the inside of the Raptor. What you see, or what you think, defies all processes of sanity and logic. A human, who you assume is Parker, is being lifted off his feet like a puppet, floating two feet in the air and his entire body is reforming. Reforming for what? By now he's likely long-dead, but the Captain's body still spasms in his death throes, his skin splitting into patches of gore and partially shedding off of his body, and his bones poking out of the exposed flesh at extreme angles that seem impossible. After a while the corpse takes the shape of a gigantic reptile-man, the charred skin cracking evenly to form scales, with the skull being contorted and stretched into a rictus snarl of pain. The eyes hang loosely out of their sockets, rolling around as if searching. Searching for what? ((Forgive me if I don't post a picture of this, trust me I tried and it just wouldn't be pleasant to look at.)) End part 3 of 4
The connection fades out, then suddenly jumps to a much clearer sound-quality. The... Thing you believe that Parker has become speaks now, a half-human sounding noise that puts every hair on your body on end. "Ooh, look at that, Parker. Seems that we've come back into real-space. My power comes from the Otherness. I am losing strength here. It was... fun, possessing you while I could. Your fear, your pain, your anger was delicious." A low humming sound starts up, rising into a crescendo of droning bass tones before cutting out altogether. "What... The... Fuck?!" The voice now sounds entirely human. Parker is panting heavily as if exhausted. "Ooohhhhh... Wh... This is... This is Earth! We've come out above Earth!" Parker's utterance has multiple suggestions of disbelief, happiness and sadness. A deafening creaking sound occurs a few moments later. "No, no no no... Shit!! We're burning up on re-entry! With the damage the ship's sustained, Raptor'll never make it in one piece! Dammit dammit dammit! All that crap, a hundred and forty-nine men and women dead, just to end up right back where we fucking STARTED! Fuck this shit, man!" You hear the Captain begin to cry softly at first, then moves to open, uncontrolled weeping. You hear a 'click!' of a pistol safety being snapped off. You then suddenly realise what he's going to do. Captain Harold Parker of the USCM Raptor is going to kill himself. "I... I'm sorry. One fucking week of being a captain... And this shitload happens. I've seen, felt... Things that no person should have to. I... Am no longer fit for this world. I just hope... My family is safe. They were on the transports we were escorting... Did they make it through? Please... Please, all the deities out there, make sure they made it through... 'Cos I'm not fit to stay here anymore. Goodbye, forever." Ten agonizing seconds of silence ensue, only the faint hum of metal heating up in the atmosphere. A single shot rings out. The signal is lost. You put your radio down and realise you yourself have been gently crying as well. You wanted this man, who you had never seen before, don't even know personally, to make it out alive and well. You wonder if his family, if they did survive, will ever know what happened to him. But, you tell yourself inside, A captain always goes down with his ship. End part 4 of 4
The message starts up after a week of the last one. The man who speaks is identifiably Captain Parker, yet his speech is broken and disjointed. He is most clearly insane, understandable considering his past experiences. "I am alive. Somehow my bullet missed me and it hit something vital on the ship... Well, whatever. I'm alive, yay me. I don't know where in hell I am though, but it seems there are people here. I might go down and see sometime. Still trying to make myself a sandwich out of this boot. This boot is my friend. I don't want to eat him. But he's done FUCKING NOTHING for me, so why keep him around?! I want to kill this boot and eat him alive. I want to hear his rubber treads squeal. Who's even listening to this? Is anybody listening to this? Is my seeming survival just a death dream? I dunno... So time to see if there are people wherever I am that will give me something to cut this boot... ...I broke my fork yesterday on my bed, I could have used that. I need a new boot and a new fork." After a few minutes of fractured rambling, a loud thud is heard, along with a loud "CRAP". Afterwards, the feed cuts out once more. End part 5 of 4
