Treasure Hunter Hunted

07/08/4093

23:37

--

We found it splack-bang in the middle of an asteroid cluster, suspended in the blackness like the corpse of a whale. I’ll admit, the hairs on the back of my head froze into quills when it drifted into view—it’s gotta be at least a thousand times bigger than our Wildcat, which Morena carefully maneuvered between chunks of floating debris as she scoured the star base for a breach.

I got a good look at the name plastered on the rusted metal—Valhalla—each gigantic letter crystal-clear despite years of erosion and corrosion. If I had to guess, it blundered into more asteroids than it could handle.

Captain Reza had his face pressed against the window like he was a kid back on Gaia again. Can’t blame him, really; if this is the wreck we’ve been looking for, we’ll be filthy rich by the time we’ve turned it inside out.

The Captain kept nagging Morena to hurry up, at least until she silenced him with one of her trademark glares. It’s funny, I gotta say, how even Reza the Reckless, who single-handedly nicked a Nova Gem from Federation Headquarters before his eighteenth birthday, doesn’t want to get on our pilot’s bad side. Then again, Morena is an ex-mercenary, a fugitive from thirteen planetary states, and can hit the fuel tank of a Federation battleship from four-thousand yards with her plasma rifle. 

Aishah had her goggles pressed against the glass as well, but I think she was more interested in the patches of moss decorating the star base’s exterior.

You can bet that the Captain literally bounded down the gangway when Morena found a breach leading to the docking bay. Aishah had to remind him to put on his suit.

It took some time, but after meandering through a hundred dimly-lit hallways half-eaten by moss and mold, we finally found an airtight compartment—none other than the bridge itself. It was strange pulling off our helmets to find the air breathable, which is a nice change from having it fill your windpipe with dust or scorching your lungs from the inside out. According to Aishah, who couldn’t help scraping some samples from the walls, we have the resident flora to thank for that. She says it’s not uncommon for a terrarium onboard to leak during an accident.

Maybe it was sheer exhaustion that sobered him up, but the Captain decided to put off the treasure hunt until tomorrow. Can’t complain, really; my eyelids are getting heavy as I record this, and the four of us except Morena have found a dusty corner to curl up in. She keeps a vigilant lookout by the bridge entryway, rifle at the ready like one of those ancient war statues on Gaia.

The crew of the Valhalla are long dead. Unless Aishah’s precious plants are out to kill us, I don’t see what Morena is so worried about.

10/08/4093

21:48

--

By now we’ve moved all of our equipment and rations from the Wildcat to our base at the bridge, which of course means I had to break my back carrying the Captain’s rum stash and Aishah’s science kit while everyone else scoured cabins and mess halls and conference chambers for any sign of the treasure (or any sign of spores, in Aishah’s case). At least Morena checked up on me every few hours, though she would disappear every time I turned my back on her.

Heh. Who knew even pirates had interns? I wonder what Captain Reza will promote me to once two months of looting spacecraft becomes two years. Hopefully, more than just the teenage freebooter-in-training that fetches test tubes for Aishah and occasionally helps Morena plot a course on the star charts. The position of First Mate is conspicuously vacant, so I’ve got my fingers crossed until then.

It’s only been a couple of days with no sign of the treasure and the Captain’s already getting restless. All the lifts and other fast-travel systems are kaput, which means it’ll likely take weeks to scour every inch of the Valhalla. It took two bottles of rum for the Captain to stop pacing around the bridge like a madman and drape himself over a chair, though not before he dove into another speech, the words slurred but no less passionate. We get it, old man; the Valhalla went missing twelve years ago, its cargo of the super-ultra-rare element Animium disappeared alongside all contact with the scientists on board, said element rose to mythical status in shady taverns across the galaxy, blah blah blah.

I should be as excited as the Captain, but I’m not. Honestly… and it makes me blush just admitting it… I’m just glad I get to be with the three coolest people in the universe. Even if I am their butt monkey for now.

Oh, shoot. Aishah was only pretending to sleep. Now I’ll never hear the end of it.

17/08/4093

22:09

--

After a day hauling DuraGlass containers out of the hold so that Captain Reza could laser-saw them open, Morena pulled me aside and uttered a string of words that I somehow knew were for my ears alone.

“This place gives me the creeps.”

It must be her mercenary roots; the girl’s made of tough stuff, probably cinderblocks and T-bone steaks. I bet she feels like a fish out of water, being forced to pace deathly-quiet corridors and inspect every unopened bit of cargo like some mindless factory worker when she could be painting the deck of a Federation battleship red with blood.

But lately she’s been dipping into Captain Reza’s rum stash. Is this the same Morena that sticks to one shot a week, because any more would “numb her trigger finger”?

It’s true that we’ve never seen anything like this before. Dead star bases, sure, but never with their steel interiors half-blanketed by so much life; all these greens and browns and blue teardrop-shaped things that glow in the dark. Aishah had a polysyllabic word for that last one. Just don’t ask me what it was.

Morena might disagree, but I think this place is, in a weird way, beautiful.

18/08/4093

16:06

--

If there’s anyone who’d know whether we should be worried, it’s Aishah. Lately she’s been a little less peppy than usual, likely because the Captain made her prioritize the treasure hunt over her samples, so she was positively beaming when I asked her about them.

Honestly, I don’t remember half of what she said because I was too focused on the little strip of metal she pressed into my palm. Something about spores and defying the laws of nature.

There was a flower sprouting from the metal strip, its petals so vibrant you’d think someone tore it from the earth and glued it on.

I know what you’re thinking; I should’ve caught on when I saw the moss everywhere. But a flower, growing where it shouldn’t? I don’t need to be a biologist to know that’s plain wrong. You’d think I’d be okay with this after romping across the galaxy and seeing every definition of “weird” imaginable, right?

But I’m not. Anyone could tell you that ships and cities are made of metal to keep mother nature from crawling back in. Not to invite her.

I still can’t understand how Aishah thinks that’s “brilliant” or a “groundbreaking discovery.” I think it’s creepy.

Y’know, maybe Morena is onto something.

19/08/4093

09:45

--

Apparently, Animium is so rare that it doesn’t exist in any substance database Aishah can access, which means we can’t scan for its molecular signature.

When I asked the Captain how we’ll know we’ve found it, he said his gut would tell him.

28/08/4093

03:49

--

We’re awake. There was this noise, like something banging against a pipe; it stopped as soon as Morena left to check it out. It’s been two hours since then. I hope she’s okay. The Captain’s in no shape to be gunning down other treasure hunters and Aishah is… well, Aishah.

I don’t think I’ll be going back to sleep.

30/08/4093

15:32

--

I can’t believe our treasure hunt turned into a Morena-hunt. I also can’t believe the Captain’s still fussing over that stupid Animanium or whatever the hell it’s called when she could literally be dead. Aishah slapped him when he wouldn’t stop rummaging through a packing crate. His only excuse is that we’ve barely explored half of the Valhalla.

What the hell does this element even do for it to be worth a fortune?

Maybe I’m being too harsh. Morena has taken literal bullets for us and it’s hard to believe anything could kill her. She probably got lost and broke her navigation equipment.

When I asked Aishah what she thought, she just smiled.

31/08/4093

10:59

--

When Morena was here we’d always split up, ransack this storeroom while someone else ransacked that one. Now we’re huddled together like chicks in a nest as we roam the hallways. It always feels like the walls are closing in on us, especially when we stop to rest. The silence doesn’t help.

And is everything… greener than it was when we first arrived?

I swear this flower patch wasn’t here before.

02/09/4093

17:44

--

I think I’m gonna throw up. Aishah already did.

We’d turned a corner to find the words glaring back at us from the far wall:

LEAVE ME

The blood’s still fresh, each letter shedding a crimson tear to pool on the floor. That’s where we found her plasma rifle; the Captain’s cleaning it, but the smell just won’t go away.

Okay, I’m throwing up now.

02/09/4093

20:19

--

We’ve been arguing for hours and I want the world to be right again. Aishah says we heed Morena’s warning and go back to the Wildcat. Captain Reza says we should press on anyway because she might still be out there. There’s a fire in his eyes that screams vengeance.

And what’s my two cents, you ask?

Coming here was a mistake.

03/09/4093

08:31

--

It’s taking us days to get from one sector to the next; if the Valhalla’s fast-travel systems weren’t busted, we’d be back in the docking bay by now. Turns out, all it took was an ocean of tears from Aishah to change the Captain’s mind.

I.. I feel so lost. These people are my heroes, my role models. Everyone at the orphanage grew up with tales of their exploits, their daring escapades, their life away from boring Gaian soil. I still can’t believe they picked me out of all the small, nimble pickpocketing fingers offered up to them.

And here we are.

Fractured.

07/09/4093

21:09

--

I caught Aishah fiddling with a test tube the other day while the Captain slept; she says it calms her nerves, but her obsession isn’t any different from the Captain’s.

Anyway, she says every single sample she collected contains trace amounts of an element that doesn’t exist in her databases.

It can’t be the same one we’ve been looking for. Right?

08/09/4093

19:25

--

What happened to the crew of the Valhalla? Surely we would’ve stumbled across some skeletons by now? Aishah says they got sucked into space. There are breaches here and there, sure, but all of them?

The silence is deafening. It’s funny how it inflates like that, takes on a life of its own now that we know we’re not the only ones here. Sometimes I wish that pipe-banging sound would start up again, just so I’d have an idea of how far away we are from… it.

09/09/4093

13:58

--

The Captain ran out of rum today. It breaks my heart to see him this way, the spark in his eyes just… gone.

11/09/4093

16:01

--

I… I don’t know how to say this.

The crew didn’t get sucked into space.

They’re still here.

We must’ve alerted them when a floor panel broke under Aishah. She was stuck from the waist down, and we barely pulled her free before they got to her. 

We ran like hell, put a door behind us. They kept screaming and banging on the metal like they forgot how to open it. The Captain fired a few warning shots, but none of them even heard it.

I saw it in their eyes. Not a flicker of humanity remaining. And their flesh—grey as ash, as if all the life had been sucked out. The part that makes me sick to my stomach is the patches of mold adorning their skin, like they were dead.

Aishah sobbed in the Captain’s arms for a good ten minutes. Neither of them wanted to let go.

I looked towards them, a child expecting answers. They had none. 

12/09/4093

10:08

--

KLANG KLANG KLANG.

Hear that? That’s me banging my fist against a pipe. Now imagine that, but constant, like a thousand heartbeats thrumming inside your skull. It follows us wherever we go, fading away as we walk but never disappearing. And that doesn’t take into account the screams; sharp, sudden, more animal than human. Maybe you can hear it too.

An element rumored to be magic, flowers growing where they shouldn’t, and now this. You can’t tell me these things just happen by coincidence.

14/09/4093

20:10

--

We’ve accepted that the noise isn’t going away. We fill the air with noise of our own, songs and stories, anything to make the rest stops bearable.

The way Aishah talks about Gaia makes me miss it too. Turns out, she would’ve graduated top of her class if it weren’t for her back-alley experiments—things only a ragtag pirate crew would be happy to finance in exchange for her tech-savviness.

The cabin we’re staying in is so damp and claustrophobic that even the Captain, bitter as he is, couldn’t help joining in. I could tell by Aishah’s expression that even she didn’t know Reza the Reckless was a family man at the age of sixteen. I don’t suppose birth control’s on the list of things they teach you growing up in a shithole. The poor guy lost both girls to a rival gang. He’s been flitting from one planet to the next ever since, numbing the pain with adventure and rum. 

With a glance, he tells us we’re his family now.

I’m fine with that.

15/09/4093

00:56

--

Morena came back.

Aishah let her in. Why wouldn’t she?

They’re both on the floor, lying in each other’s blood. It was dark, so we didn’t see the flowers until she grabbed Aishah.

Just, fuck. The Captain took the shot, killed her with her own rifle. I knew he didn’t want to, but she was coming for us next and she wouldn’t stop screaming and Aishah doesn’t have a face anymore and—

I look at Morena and instead of eyes that watch for danger, I see a set of vibrant petals sprouting from each socket.

I look at Morena and I shed tears where she can’t.

16/09/4093

13:11

--

The noise gets louder every day.

We left them to rot. 

17/09/4093

08:27

--

Things are never that simple, are they? I should’ve caught on by now.

The Wildcat is still in one piece, but it won’t. Fucking. Start.

We’ve tried everything: changing the batteries, trimming the vines that have grown over the landing gear, praying to all fifty-six Cosmic Deities. Nothing. Not even a sputter.

The breach is right there, a window for the stars to peer in and jeer at us. I can taste the void of space, the freedom on all sides instead of these cold, cold walls.

It’s like this place doesn’t want us to leave.

I can hear them coming.

18/09/4093

20:03

--

Somehow, they could sense us huddled in our little craft. Half of them aren’t even wearing space suits and yet here they are, brandishing balled fists against the windows, jostling the Wildcat like a leaf caught in a deluge. The emergency sirens wail like banshees and there’s nothing we can do about them.

KLANG KLANG KLANG.

That wasn’t me.

The Captain’s on his knees, fiddling with the engine even though we both know he won’t get much work done from the inside. I think he just wants something to do so that he doesn’t have to watch the flowers. 

25/09/4093

13:13

--

How long have we been trapped in a shoebox? I thought I could get used to the noise, figured maybe the ceaseless jostling would lull me to sleep like a baby in a cradle.

Oh, how wrong I was. There’s no rhythm to this hell. My eyes are blood and my body is glass, but I am jolted awake anyway.

I can feel it in my bones. Every lurch, every vibration. I want to take a knife and cut it out.

The Captain hasn’t spoken in three days. He sits cross-legged by a door that will never be opened, numb to the world. There’s a framed portrait in his hand—two girls smiling up at him.

I can see it in his eyes that he regrets ever leaving Gaia.

So do I.

25/09/4093

22:06

--

I miss dirt. I miss clouds. I miss silence.

There’s a crack in the window.

26/09/4093

00:34

--

One bullet remains in Morena’s plasma rifle.

The Captain let me do the honors; one last job, one last thing he trusts me with. I just never thought it would be this.

As I aim for the fuel tank, we share one last glance. Can I still see a sliver of the fearless adventurer in him, or has that been snuffed out along with every trace of Reza the Reckless? I don’t know. All I know is that he smiles when he nods for me to pull the trigger.

Goodbye, Morena.

Goodbye, Aishah.

Goodbye, Captain.

Goodbye.