THE HULL - Original Science Fiction by RJ Voss
Original FictionScience Fiction
Author: R. J. Voss
The first thing Captain Elias Venn heard was the metal screaming.
Not alarms. Not the clipped electronic voice of the ship announcing another system failure. Metal.
A long, tortured shriek that seemed to travel through the bones of the vessel.
He opened his eyes.
Red emergency lights pulsed inside the crippled assault craft. Vapor drifted across the compartment in slow ribbons. Something was burning behind the navigation console.
Venn pulled himself upright.
“Status.”
Nothing.
He tried again.
“Computer. Status.”
Only static answered.
Then, from somewhere beyond the forward bulkhead, came three enormous impacts.
BOOM.
The deck jumped.
BOOM.
A panel fell from the ceiling.
BOOM.
The lights went out.
For several seconds there was only darkness.
Then the emergency illumination returned, weaker than before.
Venn looked through the cockpit canopy.
The stars were gone.
Something vast was moving across them.
The enemy dreadnought had found them.
It hung outside the damaged ship like a continent of black iron, its surface covered in towers, antennae, radiators and armored ridges. A cylindrical weapon assembly protruded from its forward section, glowing with a dull, unnatural light.
Venn stared at it.
“That's not a ship,” he whispered.
The radio crackled.
“—Venn, do you copy?”
He grabbed the receiver.
“Go.”
“Your hull is compromised. We've lost the aft section. You have ninety seconds before the reactor containment—”
The transmission dissolved into static.
Venn looked at the instrument panel.
The reactor temperature was climbing.
Seventy-eight percent.
Eighty-two.
Eighty-seven.
Then a second warning appeared.
BOARDING LOCK DETECTED.
Venn froze.
Something had attached itself to the ship.
He heard the sound a moment later.
A metallic grinding from the corridor behind him.
Something was cutting through the hull.
He reached for his sidearm.
The weapon was gone.
Another grinding shriek.
Closer.
Venn looked toward the corridor.
A thin line of white light appeared in the darkness.
Then another.
The enemy was cutting through the pressure door.
He backed away.
There was nowhere to go.
The cockpit was barely large enough for him to turn around.
The door buckled inward.
Venn raised his arms instinctively.
The first mechanical claw punched through.
He caught it.
For one absurd second, man and machine simply stared at each other.
Then the claw tightened.
Venn screamed.
He planted both boots against the bulkhead and pulled.
Something inside his shoulder tore with a hot, blinding pain.
The metal began to bend.
He pulled harder.
The claw came free.
He threw it across the cockpit.
Outside, something enormous shifted.
The cutting torches returned.
Venn looked at the widening wound in the hull.
Beyond it was the enemy ship.
And behind the enemy ship was the impossible blackness of space.
He understood.
They weren't trying to board him.
They were trying to open the ship.
To expose the cockpit.
To let vacuum do the killing.
Venn grabbed the torn edge of the hull with both hands.
The metal was hot enough to burn through his gloves.
He pulled.
The torn alloy peeled back another inch.
“Come on.”
Another inch.
“Come on!”
His suit screamed warnings into his helmet.
Pressure dropping.
Oxygen reserve.
Structural failure.
He ignored all of it.
The dreadnought's weapon began to glow.
Venn looked through the jagged opening.
He could see the enormous weapon charging.
A red targeting beam crawled across his ship.
He smiled.
It was the first expression of relief he'd made all day.
Because suddenly he understood something the enemy did not.
They thought his ship was trapped.
They thought he was trapped inside it.
They were wrong.
Venn tore the hull open.
The vacuum hit like a fist.
Every loose object in the cockpit shot toward the opening. Panels, cables, fragments of insulation and burning debris spiraled into space.
Venn's body slammed against his restraints.
The enemy dreadnought filled his visor.
Its weapon was almost charged.
He reached for the emergency manual release.
There was no release.
Of course there wasn't.
He laughed inside his helmet.
Then he saw the cable.
A thick superconducting line running beneath the torn hull.
The weapon's targeting system depended on it.
Venn seized the cable.
And pulled.
The cable snapped free in a shower of blue sparks.
Outside, the dreadnought's targeting beam vanished.
Its great weapon fired anyway.
The universe became white.
For an instant there was no ship, no cockpit, no astronaut.
Only light.
Then darkness returned.
Venn opened his eyes.
His cockpit was gone.
So was the forward half of his ship.
He was floating in space.
But he was alive.
His suit's maneuvering thrusters fired automatically, sending him slowly away from the wreckage.
Ahead of him, the dreadnought was turning.
Its weapon had misfired.
A chain of explosions traveled along its enormous hull.
Venn watched silently.
Then his radio crackled.
“Venn?”
He breathed.
“Still here.”
There was a pause.
“How?”
Venn looked down at his gloves.
The fingers were burned black.
He looked at the ruined ship drifting behind him.
“I had a disagreement with the hull.”
The radio went silent.
Then someone began laughing.
Venn laughed too.
Behind him, the dreadnought broke apart.
And in the enormous darkness between the stars, the little astronaut began drifting home.
