When the weapon clattered to the floor, startling the anxious men, all turned towards the sound and stared at the rifle. Weapons held in nervous grips scanned the area for danger. Though all sensed a malicious presence and an acrid smell, musty and noxious, none were able to pinpoint its origin.
Brusilov looked at Babinski. “Where’s Mikhail?”
Babinski shrugged, his eyes darting all over the place for a clue of what had just happened. “He was right next to me and then…he wasn’t.”
Sergei picked up Mikhail’s rifle. “There’s no blood.”
“He can’t have just disappeared,” argued Babinski, gazing back along the path for his missing comrade.
“In this alien hellhole I wouldn’t be so sure,” stated Rozovsky, who peered over the rail and roamed his light below. “Nothing down there either.”
Brusilov glanced at the ceiling. It was also clear.
“Mikhail!” called out Babinski.
There was no reply.
“If he was still alive he’d let us know, somehow,” said Nikolay, worriedly.
Sergei turned in a circle, his eyes searching for the menace. “We’re being hunted.”
When the next man was taken, Babinski noticed something and fired. “It’s taken Rozovsky.”
Surprise appeared on the men’s faces when they looked at where Rozovsky had stood a moment before, but saw no sign of their comrade and, thinking Babinski knew what had taken Rozovsky and where it was, copied him in firing into the darkness.
“Cease fire and keep moving,” ordered Brusilov. They couldn’t afford to waste their limited ammo by shooting randomly into the darkness hoping a lucky bullet would kill whatever hunted them.
“This is too fucking weird,” said Babinski. “How can they disappear without a sound?”
Though Brusilov wondered the exact same thing, he wasn’t prepared to waste time debating it. “Let’s move.”
They rushed through the room and reached the far exit without losing another comrade. Sergei closed the door they had rushed through.
While they rested, their thoughts were preoccupied with their latest losses. Two men lost without more than a fleeting glimpse of what had taken them. What made their disappearances even more eerie was that it had been carried out so silently; neither Mikhail nor Rozovsky had uttered a sound. No screams, no sounds of struggle and no blood to shed light on their fate.
Brusilov approached Babinski. “What did you see when Rozovsky was taken?” If they could learn something about the creature it might help them to defend against it.
Babinski shook his head. “That’s the thing, I saw him taken, but I saw nothing. It was as if the dark swallowed him. He was there and then…he just disappeared.”
Brusilov found the man’s account hard to believe. “You must have noticed something.”
Babinski shook his head again. “It was as if Rozovsky turned into a shadow, absorbed by the dark.”
“Whatever it was, it’s now on the other side of that door,” said Nikolay. “So at least we’ll hear it enter if it comes after us.”
“How can we be sure they are dead,” argued Sergei. “There was no blood and no bodies.”
Babinski humphed. “I think that’s extremely unlikely given all the other murderous monsters we’ve encountered.”
“Dead or alive, there are only four of us left and we can’t risk more lives finding out.” Brusilov glanced around at the surviving men; all wore fearful expressions and some seemed near to panic. “We have to keep pushing forward. The men we have lost will not be forgotten and we will mourn our lost comrades, that I promise, but not here and not now. That time will come when we return to the Motherland and where we will toast them with the finest vodka, the foulest jokes and the greatest pride. But first we have to get off this damn ship.”
Brusilov turned and gazed around their new surroundings. They were on a metal platform that stretched across this end of the wide square room. A large machine with four pistons connected to chunky metal arms rose almost to the ceiling of the straight-edged arched ceiling. Three of the pistons rose up and down with a slick suction sound and a loud hiss at each end of their movement. The forth piston was broken and dangled from its supporting arm. At one end of the machine, a blue light sparked like a bolt of electricity in a glass tube, and small red lights dotted the machine. At the far side of the machine a corrugated circular tube compressed and expanded like bellows with each rise and fall of the pistons.
Brusilov turned to the man standing beside him. “Any idea what that is?”
Nikolay shrugged. “My best guess is its pumping air through the ship, perhaps scrubbing it clean and recycling it.”
“Whatever its purpose, it’s not going to help us complete our mission,” said Sergei, keen to press on so they could leave the ship before more deaths occurred.
When they crossed the walkway and opened the door, a blast of cold air assaulted the men. They pushed through and entered a room filled with whirring fans. Each of the six-foot-wide fans positioned at the end of an opening fed cleaned air into the ducts that snaked through the ship. One fan had a failed bearing and clacked with every wonky rotation. Blasts of cold air forced through the round opening in the wall by the bellows in the previous room whooshed through the room.
The men passed through the chilled room quickly and paused in the corridor the far exit led them to. What they saw wasn’t an encouraging sight. Dark stains covered the six sides of the hexagon corridor.
Babinski shone his light at the nearest spatter. “Is that blood?”
Every man was certain that it was. Whatever had been killed here it had been killed by something that might lie ahead, but they couldn’t go back, not with the silent shadow killer behind them.
When the spaceship settled to ominous silence and a gentle rocking, McNally checked on any casualties and learning of the loss of the two men and the helicopter, he knew it was time to leave. He was about to contact Starlight Control to let them know, when his radio crackled.
“Control to Salvage team, is everyone okay?” enquired Corporal Norton, who like all others on the bridge, had witnessed the iceberg breaking in two.
“We lost a man outside, a co-pilot and a helicopter, so no, we are not okay. I’m calling a halt to the salvage operation. We’ve already pushed our luck too far and I’m not willing to risk anymore lives.”
Norton glanced at the Admiral, who reluctantly nodded.
“Acknowledged. Sending the remaining helicopters to evacuate your men.”
McNally gazed around at his men. Take whatever’s ready to load and let’s get out of here.”
The forklifts already loaded with storage pods, headed for the ice tunnel and the men followed.
As they walked across the hangar, Cassidy nodded at the bulldozer. “Are we taking that?”
McNally glanced at the large machine and shook his head. “Leave it. I’d rather use the little time we have left to save the alien artifacts we have ready than to waste time with something so easily replaceable. Leave it.”
When the salvage team had left the spaceship, McNally gazed around the hangar and let his eyes linger on the remaining cargo vessels for a moment before turning away and heading back through the ice tunnel.
The motivation for the one-eyed Hunter’s journey towards the rear of the spaceship was freedom. Because the tunnel they had dug through the ice was now blocked, it had decided to again seek the cause of the draft of cold, fresh air that wafted through the ship. It glanced at and ignored the Clicker corpses the humans had killed and moved down the stairs. It sniffed at the foul stench rising from the open floor hatch it arrived at a short distance later and carried on along the corridor.