Mesler stepped forward and banged his fist on the door. There was still no response from inside. He found the door’s controls and rooted inside. As the officer examined the stubborn mechanism, Elsa suddenly shivered.
‘Are you feeling alright?’ Konrad asked.
‘I don’t know,’ she replied. ‘Something doesn’t feel right,’ she then said through her quivering teeth.
Mesler opened a small service panel. ‘The power breakers have probably blown,’ he said hopefully. His tone sounded confident, but like the two prisoners his sense of foreboding of what lay beyond the door was intense. ‘That’s what probably cut-off the intercom system and locked the door. We’ve been getting power spikes from the reactor system for a few hours now. I’m not surprised given the way we had to re-rig its lines to the main network. But, it was the best we could do.’
He rearranged the breaker switches inside the panel and attempted to operate the intercom connected to the room beyond, but predictably only static sounded from the small speaker. He then pressed the door toggles below. Once again an abrupt tone indicated the door’s refusal to co-operate.
The sense of foreboding was now overwhelming.
‘We shouldn’t have come here,’ Elsa said. ‘We should’ve stayed in the sickbay.’
Mesler tried to ignore Elsa. However, part of him agreed with her. He too wanted to return to the apparent safety of the sickbay, and no doubt, Konrad agreed with that sentiment too, but until he found out why communications had been lost, his burden of command refused to allow any retreat. He beckoned Konrad toward him. A hand-wheel sat next to the sealed door which together they started to turn.
With a creaking groan, the door started to crank open and an indistinct shape flopped from inside. Another form rolled on top of the first, then another, and another.
Elsa screamed as the shapes rolled to a halt at her feet. Konrad quickly stepped away from Mesler and pulled her away. Both prisoners had to cover their noses at the nauseating sight in front of them.
The room had vomited out a host of dead bodies, their limp limbs twisted and tangled together like a pathetic pile of discarded clothing. Their fingers were denuded and bloody, a sign that they had pawed desperately at the sealed door as they died. But most shocking of all were the looks of terror that were etched upon each of the corpses’ faces.
Konrad switched on the torch they had brought with them and slowly raised it past the initial pile of bodies. Inside the short passage that lay beyond were more bodies. The room’s eerie blue lighting softened the corpses’ outlines, while a noxious mist of steam and gas hung, its broiling shape forming a phantom-like shroud upon them. Konrad, Elsa and Mesler remained as silent as the corpses as they carefully stepped inside. Their progress was slow as they constantly adjusted their footing to avoid stepping on the dead crew. Building up a little courage, Konrad stooped and turned the face of a nearby body towards him. Only dull lifeless eyes stared back. But as he looked, he realised that the pallor and the positions of the corpses were strangely familiar. He remembered a scene from years before when he and a group of other prisoners had been woken in the middle of the night and herded into the bowels of the prison-satellite. They were pushed into a room, its ceiling low and slick with damp. Then, like now, he had stumbled over dozens of corpses, their limbs similarly distorted and warped. The reason for this foul assignment that night was simple. The machinery that usually operated the gas chamber’s automatic disposal system had failed and they were needed to drag the bodies from the chamber and into the colony’s air-lock.
‘They’ve all been gassed,’ Konrad exclaimed.
‘That’s impossible,’ Mesler said angrily. ‘How could they have been gassed to death?’
‘I was at Neu Magdeburg long enough to know what the bodies looked like inside the gas chambers,’ Konrad countered. ‘Believe me, that’s how the crew were killed.’
Mesler appeared to bow to the prisoners better judgement. He, himself, had never seen such horrors. Stuff like that were safely hidden from the general populace, and that included officers in the Astrokorp.
Following the trail of bodies, they emerged from the passage into the control room proper, and again more corpses were found. Inside the spherical chamber they were draped on the catwalks or slumped across the room’s blank controls. Mesler walked amongst the bodies, recognising old friends and comrades. Konrad and Elsa looked over the devastation too, but unlike Mesler, they possessed no sense of grief. The swastikas that decorated the corpses’ uniforms were the reason for their lack of pity and sorrow, and so, for once, it was they who acted coldly and inhumanely. This Nazi-perceived show of strength was now the domain of the former prisoners as they acted just like the Nazi guards that had dragged Konrad down into the gas chamber that night. He silently wondered to himself whether Mesler would have acted as he did if the host of bodies had been those of the prisoners and not his Nazi shipmates.
Behind Konrad and Elsa, something dark and malevolent moved amongst the still bodies. It was no spirit, no imperceptibly ethereal shape, but a man. It was the chaplain, Lang.
Like an agile creature of the night he leapt from his hiding place amongst the bodies and attacked. He landed on Konrad’s back and knocked the prisoner to the floor. The Nazi cleric then quickly reached up, his claw-like fingers digging into Konrad’s eyes. Konrad rolled over onto his back and attempted to knock the crazed Lang off, but his grip was immense, his strength amplified by his rage to that of ten men. His eyes, like orbs of flame, gazed angrily into Konrad’s.
‘Die, you sub-human fuck!’ Lang shrieked as he lifted into the light his SS dagger. It glittered like ice in the ghostly light.
Mesler spun and aimed his Luger pistol at the crazed Lang, but just as he fired Elsa desperately pushed his arm out of the way. As a result the thunderous round spat impotently into the darkness.
Elsa rushed forward and beat the Nazi about the head and shoulders, but the cleric appeared to be impervious to her countless punches and kicks. Her blows grew in strength, each matching her desperation to free Konrad. Mesler also came to Konrad’s aid too. Like Elsa, he attempted to pull Lang off, but he soon realised that an almost demonic will possessed the cleric. As they attempted to free Konrad they noticed Lang’s strange pallor. His skin was like alabaster, but a sickly blue tint ringed his mouth like thickened and caked make-up.
The knife plunged closer towards Konrad’s throat. He turned his head and managed to sink his teeth into the mad-man’s hand. Thankfully, Lang could still feel pain and so he dropped the knife. What Konrad thought was blood oozed over his lips and filled his mouth, but its taste wasn’t warm and metallic, instead, it was cold and acidic in taste.
Deprived of his prized weapon, Lang now wrapped his hands around Konrad’s unprotected throat. The cleric’s face appeared to soften as Konrad coughed and spluttered, his resistance ebbing away.
‘I destroy the beast in thy name, O Lord,’ Lang then cried triumphantly. It was as if the Nazi was becoming overcome by some miraculous revelation. ‘Watch as I smite his foul spirit from thy new kingdom. This new Fatherland! This new Germany!’
Konrad’s head drooped in the steel grip, his face melting into the discoloured flesh on the floor. Lang opened his mouth. His teeth and tongue were the same ghastly colour as his lips. Fumes, foul and acrid, started to bubble from his throat. He leaned in closer…
Suddenly a horrific shriek erupted from Lang.