Short Story: The Last Transmission
For over twenty years, the Celestial Dawn had been nothing more than a ghost ship—a derelict vessel lost in the endless void of space. When the Argosy picked up its distress signal, Lieutenant Hannah Kessler knew something was wrong. Ships didn’t just reappear after decades, and messages weren’t sent from corpses.
What began as a rescue mission would soon become a nightmare beyond comprehension.
The Last Transmission
The Argosy drifted in the void, its hull scarred from micrometeor impacts and radiation burns. Lieutenant Hannah Kessler tightened her grip on the console as she scanned the latest distress signal. It was faint, pulsing in irregular intervals, and carried a static-laden voice barely audible through the interference.
“Help… trapped… it sees… not alone…”
Kessler swallowed hard. The ship had been responding to a derelict vessel—the Celestial Dawn—lost for over twenty years. The signal matched its transponder. That wasn’t what unsettled her. It was the fact that someone—something—was still transmitting.
“Captain, we need to board,” she said, glancing at Commander Sullivan.
Sullivan exhaled slowly, his gaze fixed on the derelict vessel visible through the viewport. It loomed ahead, a silent, skeletal shadow against the cold stars. “We go in armed, full EVA suits. No mistakes.”
The Celestial Dawn was a tomb. Kessler stepped through its airlock, the silence so thick she swore she could hear her own blood pulsing. The emergency lights flickered weakly, bathing the corridors in a sickly red glow.
“Stay close. We locate the source of the signal and get out,” Sullivan ordered.
They moved carefully, boots clanking against the grated floors, weapons raised. The ship smelled wrong. The air was stale, metallic, tinged with something acrid. As they passed a shattered viewport, Kessler’s breath hitched. The glass was broken inward.
“This doesn’t make sense,” she whispered. “What could’ve done this in deep space?”
“Movement up ahead,” Corporal Lee muttered.
The signal led them to the bridge. The distress beacon flickered weakly, connected to a crumpled figure slumped in the captain’s chair.
Kessler moved forward, bile rising in her throat as she got closer. The figure—what was left of it—was little more than a husk. The desiccated remnants of a uniform clung to the body, its skeletal hands frozen in place. The mouth was stretched open in a silent scream.
“Oh, hell…” Lee exhaled. “The ship’s logs are corrupted, but the timestamps say they kept transmitting up until last week. That’s impossible. He’s been dead for decades.”
A scraping sound echoed from the corridor. A slow, deliberate drag. Kessler’s blood turned to ice.
“We are not alone,” she whispered.
They turned just in time to see something emerge from the shadows. It moved unnaturally, limbs contorting, its face a shifting blur of stolen expressions.
“Help…” it mimicked, in a voice that belonged to no one and everyone. “Trapped… sees…”
Sullivan fired first. The bullets barely slowed it. The thing shuddered and split, as though shedding a layer of itself, its body shifting again.
Kessler grabbed Lee’s arm. “Fall back! Now!”
They ran, but the ship twisted around them—corridors shifting, doorways vanishing, the layout wrong. The Celestial Dawn was changing.
“It’s the ship,” Kessler realised, her voice barely above a whisper. “It’s alive. And it doesn’t want us to leave.”
Sullivan was the first to disappear. One moment he was there, the next his scream cut off mid-breath, swallowed by the walls. Then Lee. A blink, and he was gone.
Kessler staggered, her helmet lights flickering. She turned back towards the airlock, lungs burning, but the doorway had vanished. Only endless, twisting corridors remained.
Her comms crackled. A voice. Her voice.
“Help… trapped… it sees… not alone…”
Kessler felt her knees buckle. The last transmission. The message wasn’t from the past. It was from her.
The ship had been waiting. And now, it had someone new to call for help.
© Colin Lawson 2024
© Colin Lawson Books