Jesus Christ, it’s out. I don’t know why it went, but it spilled into the airlock and I hit the seal. Fuck. It’s not even…. I can’t believe I’m even.. still here. Ok. Shit. Let’s make this official. This is second mate Byron Tindler of the salvage ship Carrion’s Pass. We all came out of stasis two - was it fucking TWO, Jesus Christ - two days ago to the breach alarm. Standard procedure is to wake the bridge crew and primary engineers, but half of them were already dead. Whatever this thing is, whatever breached the hull, it… fucking ate them. God…. There was only scraps and blood left in the tubes.

I came to with klaxons blaring on the pod deck. People were running past, but I was still a little lagged from the hyper-V. I guess that saved me, because the captain, flight engineer… they all sped off towards the lift. That’s where it was waiting. I don’t know what it is.

There’s a lot of random shit out in the vacuum, and plenty of it will kill you outright. Whatever this is, it’s not only solid, but it seems to have a… will. You run into rocks out here, and some of it carries some nasty stuff, especially in the shipping lanes. But this…. It moves. It knew to look for us.

Whatever. We didn’t know what was going on. At first, it seemed like the breach was IN the lift, but then it came out of there and… fuck. It just sort of grabbed Lt. Kinney’s shoulder and squeezed until her arm separated from the rest of her. She screamed…. The shock wore off long enough to start running. I’ve been without shoes or a jumper. There’s blood everywhere. Shit. Ok, I’m ok.

I can hear it outside now. It’s banging on the hull. I’m not sure how it got in in the first place. It could just be a matter of time until it figures that out. I need to get the power back to the pod deck; see if anyone’s still alive. I gotta get a message out. I have to seal however that thing got in here…

Day 2. Salvage ship Carrion’s Pass, second mate Byron Tindler reporting.

Ironically, one of the best places to hide on the ship seems to be the bridge. There’s only one way in, and it’s the most protected physical space in the ship. I realized this while I configured the distress beacon to fire on a regular interval. Who knows how long we’ll be out here in the void before someone comes for us.

And I do mean “we”. I am unsure why it hasn’t left. It seems to be crawling on the surface near the port A2 airlock, banging. Constantly banging. It’s the only sound in the whole ship, which doesn’t bode well for the rest of the crew. The bridge stasis pod bay was…. sigh emptied soon after I woke. There’s nobody left there. I don’t know if anyone from the lower decks might have made it yet. I’ve just been assessing my situation, looking for ways to dodge the creature if it makes it back in.

The bridge, while well-isolated, is really the last bastion. There’s only one way in, but there’s no way back out but through the one door. After I set the beacon, I grabbed a light pad and left in search of better hiding places.

Of course, I’ll need food. The mess isn’t too large, but there are hatches top, nadir, and fore-ship that can be quickly shut with the explosive releases. It’ll be hard to reopen if it comes to it, but if it keeps it from me, that’ll be worth it.

There are a lot of chaotic spaces on the Pass, with pipes running here and there, but the crew quarters are a navigable maze. It’s not so much a singular place to hide, but a maze of welded bunks and random shit from port knit into a space that, well… at least it seems comforting, even if it’s not truly protective. I have no idea if this thing sees or hears or just has fucking ESP to know where I am…

I have inspected two of the airlocks. Of course, there’s port A2, which I really… rather… it’s a miracle, honestly, that it happened to go in there. Why? Still. Maybe it would do it again. But there’s a suit storage cabinet there that is missing two suits, and is big enough for me to squeeze in if I had to. But really, I’ve been prepping starboard B1. The space is larger, my own suit is there, in case of… god knows what. And it’s near enough the airlock that maybe I could push it out if I had to? I dunno. I’ve moved some food there from the mess and reconfigured ship control to the pad. At this point, I just want to get some sleep. The banging… It shouldn’t be so loud from so far away.

Day 3. Salvage ship Carrion’s Pass, second mate Byron Tindler reporting.

I woke, which is a miracle in itself, to the complete fucking explosion of light on the pad. For some reason, the Pass hadn’t reported that some systems were failing. Like the main engine. And my addled fucking brain never put together that we were on the float, and not under gees. So obviously we’re just drifting. Fuck!

I spent a good while poking at lights on the pad, trying to figure out where the goddamn failure was, but the moment I highlighted one thing, the next would fail, and the original would turn out looking just perfect. So I decided to head down to the engineering space to see first hand.

The ships’s innards are shit. I’m no engineer, but everyone’s got their two year’s training on these things, and I’ve been on this ship longer than…. Anyone fucking alive right now!!! So you figure maybe I can hit something with a wrench and maybe at least shut off some of the klaxons. No. The whole thing is a giant flaming ball of shit, and I’m so tired of looking at tubes labeled S-143-adjunct-E, trying to figure out why they’re lighting panel 47F… Who named this shit anyway?

But while I was down there, the banging changed. It was not regular, really, but it was constant, if that makes any sense. And then it stopped. I didn’t even register it at first, so focused on the damned red piping labels. But then I heard something else. A kind of scraping, scratching on the outer hull.

I admit, I stared at the pipe a bit more. But I pulled myself together and went to see what fresh hell awaited me. Eventually, I tracked the noise to the observation deck. It’s the only room in the ship with glass viewing the outside. Why we need glass on a salvage ship…. I guess you’d go a little crazy not seeing the outside for some of our long hauls…

So, who cares for the glass, except the goddamned monster was there, scraping some… I dunno, it was just like it was pulling a sharp stone across its surface and scraping it against the glass. It seemed to know the glass was there. By the time I arrived, there were a handful of shallow scratches in various places. The monster had affixed itself somehow over 3/4 of the left observation window, though, and had been working a deep groove into the glass with.. whatever the fuck that thing was.

I just expected the observation deck to be lost, and I surely didn’t want it in here, so I took a moment and formed a plan.

I’m not proud. But I did what I had to.

I… didn’t mention. The rest of the crew decks. The crew is all gone. I’m not sure how, but the power to the stasis pods was killed abruptly. The backups were all severed. At least they went in their sleep.

So I brought three of the corpses and set them in the observation deck.

When the glass would break, the vacuum would draw them out quickly, and if the creature leapt for them… Maybe I’d at least be rid of it to space, and could wait out for rescue.

So I sealed the observation deck and set up in B1 with the exterior cameras to wait. It didn’t take him too long. And the crewmen flew out into the void, as expected. And the creature leapt, as expected. And for a moment, I had joy.

It has some means of propulsion.

While I was moving the crew, I found a small book next to one of the pods. It was red, leather-bound. Obviously some kind of dream diary, which one Private G. Harding was hoping to fill when he woke. I read a few entries in B1. He dreams a lot about “the farm”. There’s a couple of funny moments with cow-beetles, but really he just misses his girl, and is looking to be home with her after list last run. Shit, if only.

The banging resumes.