Zombies In Space

Beep..beep..beep, the sounds of beeping and sparks were constantly sounding out, a dark interior occasionally lit up, giving glimpses of a body that had been not even ten minutes ago joyfully watching a program on his hologram.

The creaking of the metal hull that had been eviscerated let it be known to all that entered, the ship was in a horrible state and wouldn't be safe to live in.

Within this tragedy, a breath suddenly sounded out and following this, a series of coughs sounded out. 

"Wha- where am I," A man said while groggily holding his now injured head, disorientated he lifted his face and began to look around. He saw that his surroundings were seemingly wrecked and after a moment's notice and a shake of his head, he began to remember.

He was Ridge Glovee, second in command of the battleship H.C Heart tasked with the mission of finding out what happened to the colony planet in the Coro system that was going to take a max of ten months to complete supposedly.

From what he remembered while they were making the journey to the Coro system to find out why communications had been cut off, transmissions from the home system of Earth had also been cut off, not without leaving an ominous message that simply stated, " Don't come back."

After contemplating with the crew for ages on what that meant, Ridge decided to just take a break and watch something entertaining that he had luckily downloaded before any sort of communications got cut, then out of nowhere a red alert began to sound out and one thing leads to another which brought him to the present time.

Scratching his head and slightly wincing in pain he sat up and carefully moved towards what was the doorway to try and get out. Before he did this, however, he first grabbed a mask that was luckily undamaged as well as an oxygen tank that was within a compartment underneath his now disheveled bed. Luckily while the lights seemed to have been shut, everything else was in ok condition just shaken up and thrown around the room most likely. 

Feeling around he also found a flashlight that was in the emergency compartment placed in everyone's quarters. turning it on he was blessed with sight and of course, he was now also able to see the undamaged space suit that could allow him to survive in the harsh environment of space without the protection of a ship and its many amenities. Better to be safe than sorry he thought to himself. Simply grabbing the suit and putting it over his current uniform he took some time to set up the flashlight and carefully piece by piece suited up. 

The grey suit was almost skin-tight and capable of withstanding even a bullet shot at point-blank range, not to mention the heat and cold of space. Of course, exposure to all three things for too long would deteriorate the suit and lead to the eventual demise of whoever wore it.

The occasional sparks within the room as well as any creaking let him know clearly that he shouldn't take forever and so after suiting up he grabbed the flashlight once again and moved to the doorway. It was primarily electronically based, however, in case of emergency there was supposed to be a lever to the right of the door that would open it if the electronics were simply roasted. 

Looking at the panel that was cracked Ridge smirked and then pointed the flashlight towards the right of the door. There was a compartment that was seemingly built into the wall and there was also a crack that he fitted his fingers into and then pulled the panel open. A red lever was switched up currently and after biting the flashlight and freeing his hands he firmly held the lever and then pulled.

Putting all his strength into it he finally after a very cumbersome amount of time pulled it down and watched as the door was slowly opening alongside the lever going down. Letting out a breath and having made sure the lever was locked in at the bottom he nodded. Going back towards the compartment he grabbed the oxygen pack and wore it on his back. taking the flashlight outside of his mouth and putting on his mask fully he began moving out.

He unluckily didn't have any weapons available, so he would just have to hope nothing like an enemy invasion had ended up happening. The ship itself had around a hundred crew members so there should hopefully be someone that made it out like him. He didn't even know if they were still floating in space or not. His room unfortunately was in a position of the ship where there were no windows that would allow him to see personally.

From what he recalled they were just about halfway to the mission objective, and there weren't any planets on the way that were habitable for humans unless the Coro Federation decided to invest heavily in terraforming a planet, but the number of resources used for that would be the equivalent of making fifty battleships and he would also be one of the people to know right away that there would be a planet like that on their way considering he was second in command of the ship and hence the mission.

Ridding himself of these thoughts Ridge walked through the dark hallways of the ship with only his breathing and footsteps being heard alongside the occasional sparks that showed up from the ripped cords and metal wiring. From his room, there was only a straight hallway and then there would be a left turn as well as a right turn. Assuming everything was fine in the engine room, it would be best to go right to look for any survivors.

Walking through the debris and making his way to the end of the hallway he flashed his light to the left and saw that there seemed to be some damage, but nothing serious that would endanger the engine. As he was wondering about where to go, a sudden pop of inspiration appeared in his head, the engine room.

"How could I be so dumb," he murmured to himself, eventually moving left and straight towards the engine. The ship itself was powered by a sort of nuclear reactor and although he wasn't knowledgeable enough to fix it if the reactor was damaged, he could still make sure that the backup power in some of the excess battery storage that was used for situations like this was turned on so that the lights and also life support system was kept on and operating at full capacity. This would also help the others who might be unharmed.

As of right now, considering that the lights were turned off it was highly likely that the life support system was being powered solely by an automatic energy storage that could run out at any moment so it was best to make sure the extra storage was connected and online.

Finally passing most of the debris and bypassing any security doors that had now been opened he made it to the final door which read engine room. Opening this door, he walked right into the darkness with his flashlight and saw that there were still some green lights shining out on some of the batteries on the right side of the room. The core of the engine room, which was the nuclear reactor was also placed in the middle of the room, and taking an initial glance at it revealed there wasn't any substantial damage that he could immediately recognize.

All good signs for sure, Ridge taking some steps towards the extra batteries on the right walked up to another panel that was also working.

"Hmm, access is still needed, code is... two-two-three-eight?" Scratching his head Ridge spoke aloud and tried to remember the code that would give him access to the batteries. By a stroke of luck, the code was accepted. Nodding to himself Ridge began typing in a directive towards the system to begin its siphoning of power. 

Suddenly the ship began shaking once again which caused Ridge to look up and around in surprise. The low rumbling only seemed to last for a little bit and after it ended he tilted his head slightly left and let out a sigh.

"Let's hope we did end up on a planet or near somewhere on the safer side, I don't know how long this ship will last floating in deep space, not to mention it could have been attacked which would also be a horrible sign for my survivability."

Letting out a murmur he then began re-focusing his attention onto the panel. After a series of fiddling with the many differing menus that were filled with a bunch of words he didn't understand Ridge finally managed to redirect the batteries. Inspecting some of the batteries he then activated the protocol and soon enough a powering up sound emitted from the ship itself and the lights began to turn on. His suit readings also began to register that there was a sustainable environment on the ship that was reliable, meaning it wouldn't be on the backup batteries that could have gone out at any minute.

"This will have to do, for now, anything else involves more technical stuff."

Speaking to himself Ridge left the room and began to backtrack until he was back to the hallway split, but of course, since he left from this area he already knew what was in it and didn't bother to return, so instead he began wandering the ship by going through the many winding hallways and checking the differing rooms that held occupants before this whole fiasco went down. 

The ship had some lights that were occasionally busted, prompting the use of his flashlight and allowing him to also assess the damage to the vessel. The torn metal didn't seem to come from many outside punctures because the life support system readings were relatively normal, even when getting closer to the debris, and there weren't any holes that were sucking things in the vacuum of space.

Confused Ridge had wandered for longer than what seemed like an hour and finally, after being in this state for a while he came across some sounds. Different ones from the typical creaks and falling of metal. It was the sound of fighting!

Hurrying his pace and picking up a piece of metal that would work as a weapon he moved quickly and turned towards a hallway that seemed to lead right. What came into view was a makeshift wall made of the different debris from the ship as well as furniture and behind said was at least ten of his crew members fighting seemingly infected crew members that numbered around fifteen or so from his rough view. With the noise he made while running the attention of the survivors were quickly brought to him and a women that sounded like one of his engineers called out. 

"Vice commander! you're still alive!"

Although he didn't what was going on he nodded and picked up his metal piece and began wacking at the backs of the infected crew members. Luckily there seemed to be some sort of fungus or something growing out of their bodies so he could easily discern who was actually infected and not accidentally hit someone who might have charged from the makeshift wall that the others.

Noticing that Ridge didn't call back the engineer also turned her attention to fighting these infected and the others followed suit, focusing on surviving.

Thump after thump sounded out and with heavy grunting as well as the shouts of the others Ridge whacked as hard as he could to kill the infected. His efforts did seem to help alleviate some of the pressure from the other crew, but due to this, he had attracted the attention of the infected with at least five seemingly turning around to fight him. Dodging a seemingly claw-like attack from the infected he dashed to the right with his metal piece and quickly swung it to his left, directly wacking the face of the infected.

Before he could revel in his successful hit though another attack from some of the infected came about and nearly scratched him. Using the piece of metal he found as a shield he grunted as the attack landed. They seemed to have also enhanced the strength of the crew members as well, considering the body of the attacking infected besides the other four was rather skinny and managed to rival his strength, at least in comparison to his stature which was on the more muscular side since he trained in hand-to-hand combat on the regular it was an improvement from their own strength while they were perfectly healthy.

Taking some steps back Ridge quickly ducked and weaved between some of the infected attacks and decided to join the others in their defense. It would be way easier that way. During his distraction, the others had also managed to take out at least another five of the infected with no casualties and now there were only ten left.

Controlling his breathing he rushed past a lot of the infected and with a couple of swings to move some out of the way he climbed atop the structure and with the help of an outstretched from one of the crew members he made it past the wall.

Giving a quick thanks Ridge turned around quickly and began to hit back the infected that closely followed behind him. The man who saved him also did the same, no wasn't the time to talk. While fighting Ridge evaluated the situation and knew that they would survive. They already outnumbered the infected and after some time they would be able to quickly clean up the remaining ones.