Open vents spewed all kinds of vapors and waste - some scaldingly hot, others frigidly cold, some radioactive, others not. No fighter patrols flew in or out. Had the Hessians launched an offensive consisting of a single wing of bombers, they would have taken the system with no opposition. Mortal minds ponder... what is the cause of this?
Death incarnate. The very spawn of Hell wreaking terrible vengeance on the crew of the Fes.
She was attractive, with her Corsair complexion and delicate features. She would have been beautiful, if not for the insane glint in her eye. She was in the launch bay of the Fes, and as three companions goaded her towards the escape pods and freedom, she looked back. Her friends, the ghosts, had left without finishing their job. People on the ship still lived, after all.
Smiling, she made an appearance of giving in to their pleads to motion. Then, as their backs turned and they moved forward, she struck. Three gunshots rang out across the room.
Three thumps thudded to the cold, unforgiving floor.
The bridge was a gruesome scene. A pile of corpses was stacked methodically in the exact center of the bridge. Blood flowed freely, though some bodies showed not a mark. Some were little more than a gory pulp, sometimes the limbs were ripped off and stacked. All-in-all, every single person died a different, yet equally gruesome, way. And there, at the pinnacle of the mountain of bodies, was Alec Lekkas, his skin black and blue and bloated. They had ruptured every blood vessel in his body and let him bleed to death from the inside. The ghosts surveyed the damage, looking pleased with the results.
In unison they turned to look at the forward instrument blister, an assortment of different panels and wires which were now covered with blood. A light sobbing could be heard, though it was obvious it was trying to be suppressed. Hiding beneath the controls was a young woman, who had witnessed the massacre and had done her best to hide herself from certain death, though the ghosts could feel her presence. She was on the verge of trying to scratch her eyes out with her finger nails. She had delicate features, and fair complexion, though it was marred by tears, fear, and a lot of blood, though none her own. They chuckled to themselves and phase through the bulkhead. Unbelieving at first - surely she should be dead, should have died with her comrades! - she scrambled over the consoles and to her feet and hesitantly, at first, walked to the door leading to the outside. Her pace increased until she's at a dead run, through the door and the anteroom, down the hallway, running to escape memory, escape the pure terror and homicidal glee she had seen. She tripped on what appeared to be a wrench, which she picked up and kept running. Anything to guard from memories and ghosts, even if it doesn't do much against either.
About a hundred yards down the corridor, she came across a lone marine, who looked more than a little spooked. "Thank god," he said with relief, "I was beginning to think I was the only one still alive!" She didn't hear him however. All she saw was the ghost's face, mocking here with a Corsair's body. My god, it was awful! She swung the wrench with all her might at the Corsair, hitting him in the head, screaming as blood covered her, screaming and sobbing. He lay there, his head a bloody pulp, brain matter sticking out the top and leaking fluids, but ghost gone. Ghost gone. Laughter goaded her to run faster - it was still alive! Onward she ran, now looking for someplace to hide. Into a locker room, she beat at the padlock on the first locker with the bloody wrench until it fell off, opened it, only to see a ghost waiting. Screaming, she slammed it shut and ran back through the door and down again. This couldn't be happening!
Further and further, she tried the next locker room. In this one, all the lockers had no locks, though she paid it no mind. She ripped open the first one and saw the same thing she had seen with the Corsair marine - the ghost had taken another Corsair over, and hid him in the locker to wait for her! Swinging again, he died much like his predecessor. Then she saw the lockers opening, with much the same result. Ghosts everywhere. Panicking, she reached down and drew the hand gun from the Corsair she had just killed, pulling it out of the holster and firing wildly, the Tizona-model pulse shots ripping through bodies. Laughter. Had to stop the laughter! Tempted to just turn the gun on herself, to stop the madness, something took control of her arm and moved the gun away from her temple. The ghost was in her! It's at that point where she gave up, and broke down crying, while the ghosts around her laughed endlessly, taking joy in her pain and terror.
The laughter slowly faded away, leaving her to weep, balled up, while surrounded by the bodies of her brethren that she had killed herself.
As she walked the desolate corridors, blood splatters on the walls caught her eye, and she went "Oooo" and "Ahhhh", like a child at the circus. She played a game called "connect the blood dots". It passed time. Time needed to be passed, as the ghosts had done a thorough job.
Somehow, though, she knew where humans were hiding. She found them, and killed them, making a game out of that as well. The game was to make it as original as possible. Once, she tried to flay a woman alive, stripping the flesh and sinew off in fascinating patterns. While keeping her alive as long as possible, of course.
Another time, she seduced a man into thinking that she wanted to have sex with him, as if it were their last day alive. As he reached his climax, with her on top, she strangled him to death.
In her most creative episode, she opened a man's chest while he was tied down, extracting all his organs. She made a carnival spectacle of them, arranged and held up by bits of wire. While giving him just enough painkillers to ensure he saw it all.
And so, little by little, she did what the ghosts had been unable to do, with a sadistic smile on her face.
The Necrosis, with its sinister owner, came and went, taking the two Sabres of the Fantasmas de la Nube Siniestre with it. Time passed. The massacre on the Fes had attracted more than the attention of the now-four-man show; greater forces surveyed the carnage from afar, an admiring eye brushing over the details as an artist would view one of his finished paintings. He liked what he saw, and while he could no longer have the two agents chiefly responsible for it, he could have their gift to the world - Angelica.
And so a few fighters launched, and moved towards the distant tomb of a battleship.
Raven Claws, designed to force their way onto hostile bases, set down on the Fes. It was not hostile, there was not even any resistance. There was no one to mount a fight, even if they had wanted to. No one in their right mind angered a group of Phantoms if they could avoid it, and as a rule most Corsairs were left alone by the demons. The Raven Claws, black as midnight, seemed to absorb light. The figures that disembarked, shrouded in power armor, were even darker. Had anyone been alive to see, they would have appeared to have a ball of shadow surrounding them. Surely just technology, to intimidate. Surely.
Angelica, with blood bathing her hands, felt drawn to the launch deck they had landed on. She could not describe it, it was simply a tug, and she must obey.
The three figures - for there were three - simply waited until she arrived. Angelica viewed them with awe, knowing they possessed a darkness, a power, that she wanted, desired, craved. She offered herself to the one in the lead, almost crawling forward on her knees.
"Please, teach me your ways..."
He grabbed her by the shoulder and the world went dark.
They took her. They broke her. They grabbed her pure essence by the throat and strangled it. The woman that was known as Angelica died. Her ties to the Corsairs died. And in her place was forged a shadow. Where before she killed to fulfill the mission that had been implanted in her brain by the desensitized violence she had witnessed, now she took a different sort of insane glee of it. More than enough reasons to kill. Multiple reasons.
Months of torture followed. Refining. She came to laugh at the pain, laugh at everything. The pain became an old lover, and she smiled for him. And then she became the pain. And pain's purpose of existence was... multiplying.
And the shadow-clad figures looked, and they were pleased with the work of their hands. And thus, she too became shrouded in the obsidian. And it was her turn.
- - - - - -
The newly-constructed station in Sigma 19 was dangerously close to the Omicron Beta jump hole. The Gas Miners Guild, however, was determined to contain the flow of piracy into their systems. It was inhabited by a skeleton force, mostly to avoid detection by large supply runs. They were hidden by the far side of a planet inside the green cloud, a place where no one had any real business, not even the Outcasts.
"Do you see that?" Ichirou asked suddenly, watching the monitor that gave sensor readouts. They had been on the station for near two months with little contact with the outside world, as the large communication receiver wasn't completed yet. Eisuke simply rolled his eyes and decided to humor Ichirou, rolling his chair over to look at the display over his shoulder.
"Looks like more background noise from this damn nebula to me."
"I swear, I saw..."
The lights dimmed for a moment before coming back online.
"What the hell?" Eisuke bit off, rising from his chair. "That's not supposed to happen!" Mechanical errors were not unheard of, but never of that type. He activated the internal comm and spoke quickly. "Chikara, is there a problem?" Silence answered him. "Chikara?"
That's when the lights went down for good.
What is the meaning of this?
That's when Eisuke heard the faint laughter.
"Ichirou? Is that you?"
No response. The laughter turned into incessant giggling. The darkness in the room appeared to focus around one particular point. The only door out. Eisuke found himself panting, trying to gasp down air that wasn't coming. Then he felt a weight from behind dragging him backwards, backwards... the sound of a knife leaving a sheath, the feel as its blade caressed his back gently as it trailed down, ripping his shirt. The terror of realizing that his muscles weren't responding to his commands. A sweet, almost-lucid, female voice whispered into his ear, "I turned off the air. I wonder how much fun we can have before you die?"
That's when he found the will and power to scream, as the blade descended farther.