I.
The alarm went off. It was a loud, constant beeping, hollering over every single speaker installed into the ship. Its howling voice echoed down every hallway, commanding its paired lights to flash in red, turning the spaceship into something of a loud, screaming disco of red flashing on and off. In between wails of the alarm, a pre-recorded voice could be heard commanding people to remain orderly, its calmness a complete juxtaposition to the severity of the situation.
Red was having none of it. Her footsteps thundered in her ears, the urgency no stranger to anyone still alive onboard. Her feathers were ruffled and frizzy, her mane standing on edge. With each step, the impact ran up her leg like lightning bolts. Green probably would have told her to not push herself like this what with after her previous leg injury, but who cared? It was a bloody emergency. Nothing else mattered.
The halls were stained with blood and bodies, the ones left in the halls anyway. Who knew how many bodies were left in the rooms? In crew cabins? Behind closed doors? As far as Red was concerned, everyone was dead. All engineers, technical crew, medical staff, navigators, maintenance, even janitors. No one else was sprinting for the bridge like the alarm commanded them to do so.
The bridge door slid upwards as the ruffled Skydancer ran up to them. She squeezed under the tiniest opening instead of waiting for the door to open enough, shoving her wings under the tiniest gap that would allow it. Already at the bridge were Orange, Yellow, Cyan, Purple, White, Black and Lime, all looking equally as panicked. In the middle of the bridge there was a table with a holographic projector, great for visualizing things in a three-dimensional space. It also had an emergency button on the side of the table by the control panel, which had a glass case over it to prevent accidental presses.
This time, it was no accident. The glass case had been opened and Orange's claws were on the button. The emergency button was meant only for, well, emergencies. Yellow was especially warned not to press it for fun, because the ditzy young Pearlcatcher had a bad habit of being blur and doing things she shouldn't, though never with malicious intent.
Cameras were already active on the console behind the table. Red stormed up to it, ignoring the worried chatter behind her, going through each camera for any sign of a culprit. Brown, Blue, Pink and Green streamed into the bridge, Blue and Brown locking the bridge door behind them. There was no way to be too safe if there was a killer among the ship.
Red's eyes flicked between each camera screen, hoping to the deities that someone out there was alive. Either a ship crew who had answers, or the suspect running around the halls. Each camera only returned static-filled feedback of dead bodies, not a single soul out there seeming to be alive.
With a frustrated grunt, she pushed herself away from the security console and went back to the table, where the other eleven remaining crew were already being interrogated by Orange. It didn't sound like anything was getting anywhere, what with Orange's accusations being thrown at everyone. Yellow and Purple were taking it, but Cyan, Black, and Blue were shouting back and forth. The entire bridge was in complete chaos, voices yelling louder and louder in an attempt to be heard.
Red's feathers flattened in irritation. The bridge fell silent when she slammed her claws onto the table, a holographic projection of the Skywell flickering. "SHUT UP!" Red screeched, furious at each and every one of her crew acting like such bloody
children in an emergency setting like this.
Eleven pairs of eyes were all on her. She had to take charge. Lucky for them, she was good at that. Red believed herself to be better than the rest of the crew, simply because, well, she was. The rest were overbearing, childish, foolish, and selfish. Red considered herself to be most fitting to lead the ship, a notion not everyone else agreed with.
The Skydancer huffed, suddenly feeling the exhaustion from the whole situation. Green's concerned look did not go unnoticed, but Red elected to ignore it for now. "Everyone, it's clear that we have an emergency situation. Someone has killed all our crew and left only us. We have to take charge and make sure Skywell stays in the air until we can get assistance and land. I need everyone to report where they were before the emergency alarm was called. Just key it into admin system, then we need to start clearing the bodies."
"And what are you going to do?" Orange sneered, the fiery Imperial never having agreed with Red's self-presumed leadership. "I say we keep everyone here and figure out who did it."
"Are you suggesting one of us did it?" Cyan snapped from her side of the table.
The bickering started again. Red refused to deal with their childish behaviour. She left the projector table and went over to the console again, starting to open a communication broadcast that would hopefully, reach the ears of any spaceship and ground terminal nearby that could help. She grabbed the headset and shoved it over her ears to block out the argument behind her.
After a little beeping and droning, Skywell's automated voice answered her.
"Broadcasting message from SKYWELL DASH ZERO EIGHT. Communication lines are open."
"Mayday, mayday. This is Skywell-08. There is a mole on our ship who has killed all our crew. Technical crew, doctors, engineers, everyone. They've only left us astronauts on the ship. If you are hearing this, we are requesting immediate assistance. We don't know who planted the assassin in our ship, or what their motive is. We're not sure who the next target is, or why. Skywell will attempt to land and evacuate. Broadcasting our location now."
The only thing left to do was to wait, and hope someone heard them. Red took the headset back off, taking off the top half of her unzipped suit. She tied the sleeves around her waist, figuring they were in for a long, long night and she may as well get comfortable.
Everyone else was staring at her. Even if she held resentment towards each of them for one reason or another, they were in this together. Until the killer could be identified, they had to put aside their differences and work together to get home safely.
Tension filled the air, heavy and choking. At least the alarm had finally shut off, now that anyone alive was present on the bridge. "I broadcasted a mayday alert. There's nothing else to do until someone responds. Let's just... start cleaning up. We can't have rotting bodies lying around."
Green decided to speak up. As the head of medical staff, corpses were part of her purview. "Red, there isn't enough space to keep all of them and bring them back. We can't preserve all of these bodies, assuming every single staff besides us are dead."
"Then we'll vent them out of the airlock. That's about all we can do, unless we want to keep them all in a room to keep rotting." Red glanced around the table to see if anyone agreed with that idea, but the thought of keeping bodies around was repulsive to everyone. After all, who knew how long they'd be stuck up there? If no one responded to their broadcast, they'd likely be on their own for awhile. "I think we're in agreement. Let's move, and stay safe. There is an imposter among us."
