THE FALL OF ROSENROT STATION

KILLING FIELD

No sound. Said Even.

I am. Said Nico.

No. Listen. There is no babblespeak. Even pointed at the entrance to the surgical suite.

It was brightly lit. There was another of the plastic seals on the doorway again torn jaggedly, then entirely ripped away till about a meter above the floor. Biofilm puddled underneath like melted tar flowing out into the corridor.

Even approached the entrance and looked around at the others then crouched down and ducked underneath the plastic and into the room.

Inside was dim. Many of the lights were hidden behind growths of biofilm or clutches of pods that draped the walls. The ceiling sloped down to a partition that hid the surgical bay. A glass pane set in the partition was draped with membranous biofilm, filtering a blue glow from the room behind. Something shifted in the dimness to his right.

Come on. He hissed.

There was the sound of the others pushing through the curtain. The first of the hostiles shuffled towards him through the grey morass a man half naked dressed in tattered uniform. Flesh rotting from his body. He shoved it back, feeling soft flesh of its hands on his neck. It's fingers caught in his clothing and pulled him as it fell backwards and he fell on top of it. His right arm wasn't where it was supposed to be as he tried to catch himself and instead his face smashed into its chest. There was the sound of brittle bones breaking and pain flared through his old injuries.

The first needle rounds streaked overhead and by him on the left. He pushed himself up on his left arm. The creature under him was still alive and struggling weakly. It's hands clutched at his side and then found his wounds and he screamed despite the drugs in his veins. The pain cleared his head and he reached around in the muck until his hands closed on something thin and hard. He pulled on it and it snapped and came away and he glimpsed a shaft with a sharp end and a moment later he had it sticking in the man's skull. In that moment as the man's hands dropped away from his throat, he realised the spear was a section of human femur.

A hand grabbed the back of his collar and dragged him backwards and he turned to fight when he saw it was Nico. He was holding the needler in his other hand and looking at something past him and then fired and a moment later adjusted his aim and fired again. Even heard something drop.

Even shook off the hand. But then he nodded to Nico before turning to find her. She was fighting off some nester that had pushed up against the barrel of her needlegun. The barrel was sunk into its flesh low down and it was reaching past and clawing at her arms. Another one was stumbling in from the gap between the wall and the partition a few steps away. Sarah fired the gun again and the needle passed through the nester and out its back. The nester kept clawing at her and now the barrel sunk further in and one of its hands slashed at her face.

Even crashed into it from the side knocking it down. He stood there for a second panting then shifted aside. Sarah fired and the needle smashed through the biofilm beside its head. It was trying to right itself but it's legs didn't move at all. A second needle slammed through its skull and blew its brains out slant wise and about a meter up the partition.

Sarah. He called as the other one a big lumbering brute came towards her from the side. He was decked out with these tubes coming from his shoulder blades and running back to something behind him Even couldn't see. She fired and blew off one of his reaching hands. He screamed then the first sound any of them had made and came at her again. At the last minute he was jerked off his feet by the tubes behind him. Sarah steadied the gun and held the trigger and a burst of fire came out of the gun stitching up the wall totally missing him but cutting a second one partially in half blowing away arm and shoulder. It's organs dropped out the side of its suddenly exposed ribcage.