Young Writers Society

General Eric Nye looked at the black expanse of space through his small window. It all seemed so incredibly the same. How many weeks had he and his troops been out here looking for that missing freighter? Two? Three? It had been too damn long. They'd soon run out of ammo and the United Terran Alliance would have two missing ships. All the fueling stations were a good two thousand miles away.

A knock on his office door broke his train of thought. "General?"

"Proceed." A young pilot rushed in, out of breath and desperate."What's wrong? Space pirates?"

"No. We found freighter 9755." Nye leapt up from his holo-desk and began the long run to the cockpit of his V-69 Terran war-fighter.

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The large space freighter hung in space, illuminated by the icy planet below. It was an older model, most likely an old Russian Empire craft being used for shipping weapons. The ship looked eerily dark.

"You picking up any life readings?" The general asked the instrument man.

"Your not going to believe this. This piece of crap must be broken. It says the ship contains ten thousand life forms. That's six thousand more than the capacity."

"Okay, but never call my ship a piece of crap again." He walked up a short flight of stairs to his speech platform. "I want a med team and a strike team assembled for the ride over there. Some try to hail that ship and communicate with them. Ask how many alive and injured. I want the strike and med teams ready in five minutes."

The men rushed around in a well trained manner. These troops weren't called the best recon team in the Alliance for nothing. They were fully ready in 3 minutes. Nye ran down the metal stairs leading to the docking bay. Thirty men stood at attention in their usual mission gear. Night vision goggles, laser resistant chest, arm, and leg covers, four frag grenades, two med packs, and a com link.

"Mulligan," Nye spoke into his head set."you've gotten a hold of the freighter?"

"Nope sir, but we'll keep trying." Nye walked to the craft. "Sir."

"What?"

"See yeah on the other side." Nye smiled. Of all his crew Mulligan was his favorite.'Don't go and get yourself killed. We need yeah."

"I should be telling you that."

"I gotta go." He got in and waited to arrive at the other ship.

*This should be longer but because I lacked time last night I couldn't finish it. I'm going to finish the intended prologue now.*

The small shuttle slowly approached the large freighter. It looked so...so dead and forgotten.
"Freighter, do you copy? I repeat, freighter 9755, are you there?" Mulligans voice rang out through Nye's small com link.

"Just give it up. We're almost there. Can you override the door and airlock system on the freighter?"

"Is that even a challenge? That's a piece of cake." The great metal door slid open slowly. Crates and other cargo were stacked all over the docking bay. "Wait just awhile after I shut off the airlock so the room gets oxygen."

The doors slid shut again as the craft began it's decent. Everything looked okay, and it was obviously not space pirates. The merchandise was left yet no people in sight.

"It's okay to leave now. I'm---losing---talk to---back." Mulligan's voice faded out. The frequency on a different ship could do that. The men assembled into their usual teams. Fifteen medical members to stay on the ship, and five teen strike team members to recover. The perfect team.

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"I don't like it. Why would all the cargo be left here, but no people?" Nye thought out loud. This was all too puzzling. "Never mind. Just focus on the mission." His team slowly made their way towards the hold. From there they could enter the bridge, the place where they could get feed from the entire ship. The hallway lights were all turned off, but on a freighter of this size they usually were. It would take millions of dollars to supply it for just one day.

"General." Eric turned around. His young assistant came up along side him."So who do you think did it?"

"Did what?"

"This. Evacuated an entire freighter and left the junk. I bet it was Crulian slave traders."

"I doubt it. The Crulians haven't been known to enter this part of the space or take down freighters. They most likely had a engine malfunction and had to abandon ship." Nye said with false confidence. In all of his years in the military he had never seen something like this.

They reached the hold in no time and began searching the crates. "I want some of you to stay here and keep searching for clues of this disappearance. The rest of us will head up to the bridge. Send us a hologram if you find anything. And stay alert. I don't like the look of this." Eric headed for the ele-chute. A strange pile of gray bubbles grew on the controls."That's odd." He thought as he and his team shot up the tube to the bridge.

The strike team slowly made their way up to the bridge. They didn't realize how dark a freighter can be. Every shadow cast on the wall seemed to be following them. Nye couldn't shake the feeling that something sinister had taken place here, but what it was he didn't know.

"General." A soldier with a horrified look on his face ran and fell at Nye's feet.

"What is it?" He slowly picked the man up. He was muttering and shaking, obviously in shock.

"I saw..."

"What did you see soldier?" All the man could do was point up ahead. He collapsed on the ground again and began sobbing. Nye let him lie there. His men quickly caught up to him.

"What happened?"

"I don't know but something up ahead gave this soldier the worst case of shock I have ever seen. Be careful and have weapons at the ready." The carefully walked to the door. It gently slid open. The team hid on either side of the wall.

Eric mouthed the count down."One...two...three." They rushed in. "Oh...god." A horrible odor covered the room. Death and rotting flesh seemed to suppress everything else.

"God I can scarcely breath or see. Damn it's dark in here. What's making that smell?" The private pointed his wrist light on the ground. "Holy shit..." The ground was littered with rotting dead corpses. The strange gray bubbles covered the walls and the bodies, almost writhing in unison. Corpses were scattered everywhere, some hanging impaled on items on the wall, others being held to the ceiling by the gray bubbles. But no matter where they were, they all looked horrible.

"So this is where the crew went. Their all up here in this mass grave." Nye quickly grabbed his surgeons mask and placed it over his face. He nodded for the others to do the same.

"Where are we?" Someone asked. Nye ran his hand against the blood covered wall trying to find a light sensor. Nye shuddered as he found one half underneath a body. The bloody body oozed over his hand as he tapped the sensor and the lights went on to reveal the entire room.

The body count was much less than they had originally thought as they soon saw that the pile of of bodies only took up one corner of the gigantic hallway they were in. "This must be the main hallway. If I'm not mistaken, the bridge is just ahead." Nye began walking down the hall.

"Have you no sympathy? These are real people here!" One of his soldiers got up from where he had been sitting.

"Yes I know but the only way we can find the surviviors is if we-"

"Don't you get it! There are no survivors! This is just a giant grave. See how bad their wounds are? Whoever did this intended to kill them. All of them." Nye was furious with this outrage. How dare a lower officer question his authority. Eric would have gone on a authority rampage when he heard something.

"Everyone quiet." The room hushed. A mumble. a whisper. There it was again. "What is that?"

"Oh my god. Look." The private pointed to the bodies. All of them were slowly mumbling sounds that began to form words.

"We are the Hive. Join us. We are the way. The Hive is your future. Join us or perish. The Hive. We are supreme. The Hive is all powerful, all knowing, always watching..." To the horror of the team the bodies continued on there long speech.

"What in God's name is this?" Nye began to stutter. In all his life he had never seen anything like this. Dead, slashed bodies slowly becoming animated again. This was only something that was supposed to happen in stories, or in horror movies. Not in real life.

A gray blob began to heave and hurl. "What now?" A long slender gray arm poked out. Eric stepped back as fast as he could. The bubble burst revealing a cat sized spider. It was covered in a black ooze that quickly soaked into it's skin. It released a high pitched series of shrieks and whines. The other bubbles began to jiggle and they too bursting to reveal spiders. Slender purple spines began to grow from their back as they turned their attention to the humans. 'Oh god...RUN!"

Nye and his men bolted down the hall with the spiders in close pursuit. "Today's a bad day." He screamed as he watched one of his men getting shot down by the purple spines the spiders could obviously fire. "Damn it."

"Med team! Med team! Get the shuttle ready! We got company." He yelled into his com link.

"General!! AIII!!" He heard the men screaming for a short time before it was replaced with the same chant that was rising all about them. 'Join us. The Hive is right, just, and holy. We are the path to the future."

They leaped into the ele-chute just in time. The doors shut just as a wave of spines were about to strike them down. "What in the name of hell are those things?" Nye asked as he slumped against the wall.

"I have no idea." Said Jason, one of the last five members of the team. "Whatever they are, they killed ten of our men and however many people who were on this freighter."

"They didn't kill those freighter people though. They were talking. The Hive." For reasons unknown they shuddered at the mention of that name.

"Yeah, but how? One of those men had his entire chest ripped out! How does that work?"

"Uh guys...I think we have a bigger problem." A guns expert named Hannah pointed upward. Huge dents were forming in the roof of the elevator cart. The spiders were making it in.

"We're almost there."

"I don't know if almost will cut it." Nye cocked his gun and prepared for the bloodbath. If they died today, than so be it. He had his machine gun at the ready, preparing to blast those spiders to pieces when the cart came to a halt.

"We're here!" Nye grabbed the men nearest to him and ran out of the cart. "Going up." He pressed the up key on the panel. The gray eggs from before were gone, most likely hatched.

"Where's the team we left here?" Hannah asked.

"Oh god." Nye looked up to see the bodies of the search team hanging limply from the ceiling. Their bodies were slashed up and their lips mouthing the long speech they had heard before. "There's nothing we can do. Quickly, down to the shuttle."

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Hannah ran after the group, her bones aching from the agonizing run to the shuttle. They still had ten hallways to go before they reached the docking bay. If she had had a choice, she wouldn't go another step until she had a break, but the screeching spiders a floor above them reminded her that she had to run.

They soon reached the shuttle to find what they had prayed was not the case. The bodies of the med team were all strapped to the outside of the ship. "Help me pry them off. We don't want to take them back to the V." Nye used his gun as a pryer and the others did the same. They piled the bodies in front of the door as a way to block the spiders.

The docking bay door opened and the shuttle took off into space. "Mulligan...Mulligan. Do you copy?" All Nye got was static. "They somehow made it to our ship anyway."

"General, your going to want to see this." Hannah shouted. Eric quickly ran over to the window.

"Oh god almighty..." A huge green ship was docked above Eric's ship. It looked as if it was almost living. Large amounts of those gray eggs were growing all over it. It was firing green bolts at the hull of the ship. "Stop it! Stop it!!" Eric screamed in vain. The ships lasers stopped. "Wow. I'm good." The large mounted cannon aimed at the shuttle. "I take it back. You can keep shooting the ship." The cannon fired and speed towards the craft. "It's the end." But before the bolt could hit the ship a cool icy ball enveloped his ship and sucked it to the intended destination.