The Ribcage of the Void

A deep-space scavenger, cutting into the hull of a derelict freighter, discovers that some things that die don't stay dead. The prize of a lifetime becomes a race for survival.

"Anything?"

The voice, thin and tinny through her helmet comms, was Benji’s. Miles away in their patched-up hauler, 'The Rustbucket', he was her only link to anything that wasn't two-hundred-year-old vacuum-sealed death.

Cassie didn't answer. She was concentrating, the plasma torch spitting angry blue light that reflected off her visor. Metal slag dripped away into the void, cooling instantly into misshapen beads. The hull of the Star-Seeker was thicker than the salvage manifests suggested. It resisted. Everything about this ship felt wrong.

"Cass? Lost your signal for a sec."

"I'm here," she grunted, pulling the torch back. A jagged, man-sized hole now gaped in the freighter's side. Blackness within. "Breach is complete. Going in."

"Copy that. Keep the channel open. And try not to touch anything priceless until I'm there to tell you what it is."

She bit back a retort. Benji was the brains; she was the muscle. That was the deal. Her mag-boots clamped onto the hull with a heavy thud. She clipped her torch to her belt, grabbed a fistful of the torn metal, and pulled herself through the opening. The inside was cold. A deep, penetrating cold that had nothing to do with temperature and everything to do with time.

Her suit lights cut through the oppressive dark, illuminating a cargo bay. Dust, or what passed for it in space, hung in the zero-g environment like a frozen cloud. Crates were tethered to the floor and walls with thick magnetic cables, their contents a mystery. The silence was absolute. No hum of life support, no creak of settling metal. Just the sound of her own blood in her ears.

"What do you see?"

"Cargo bay. Standard configuration. Looks untouched," Cassie reported, her voice low. She unspooled a tether from her waist, clipping one end to the hull beside the entry point. A lifeline. Her boots propelled her forward in a slow, controlled float towards the far door.

That's when she noticed it. A sheen on the surfaces. Not frost, not oil. It was a thin, almost invisible layer of something... organic. It coated a console, dripped in long, hardened strands from a ceiling girder. She reached out a gloved finger, hesitating just before making contact.

"There's something weird here, Benj. Some kind of residue."

"Contaminant? Viral? Don't touch it, Cass. Get the core specs and get out."

"Acknowledged."

But her curiosity was a physical itch. The target was the reactor, deep in the ship's engineering section. A Cresh-Core V, according to the records. Obsolete, but the unspent fuel rods were worth a fortune. Enough to get them out of this sector for good. She pushed off a crate, gliding towards the door marked 'ENGINEERING'. The panel beside it was dead. Of course it was. She pulled a pry-bar from her thigh-rig. Time for some unsubtle persuasion.

The metal screamed in the silence as she forced the doors apart, just enough to squeeze through. The corridor beyond was just as dark, just as still. But the organic resin was thicker here. It pulsed with a faint, internal luminescence, like the veins on the back of a hand caught in moonlight.

And there was a noise. Not a noise, a feeling. A low-frequency thrum that vibrated through the soles of her boots.

"Benji, you reading any energy signatures?"

A crackle of static. "Negative. The whole wreck is dead as a doornail. Background radiation is nominal. Why?"

"I'm hearing something. Feeling something. A vibration."

"Probably just your stomach. You skipped breakfast again."

She ignored him, pushing deeper into the ship. The corridor opened into the main engineering bay. And she froze. The chamber was vast, a cathedral of dead technology. The Cresh-Core V reactor sat in the centre, a massive, cylindrical beast. But it was… changed.

The strange, resinous growth wasn't just on it; it was *part* of it. Thick, veined tendrils snaked out from the reactor's housing, burrowing into the ship's walls, the floor, the ceiling. They pulsed with that same faint light, all in time with the thrumming that was now so powerful she could feel it in her teeth.

"Oh, hell," she whispered.

"Cass? What is it? Talk to me."

"The reactor... it's... I don't know, Benji. It looks like it's alive."

---

She drifted closer, mesmerised. At the heart of the mass, where the primary control conduit should have been, was a dark, pulsating sac. It was immense, the size of a shuttle, and it beat with a slow, powerful rhythm. A heart. She was staring at a giant, mechanical heart.

"Get out of there," Benji's voice was sharp, cutting through her awe. "That's not in any salvage manual. Abort the mission. Now."

But she couldn't move. The sight was impossible. A ship dead for two centuries didn't just grow a heart. It didn't happen. Her mind struggled to process it, to file it away under some logical explanation. A biological experiment gone wrong? A strange form of space-borne life that had made a nest? None of it made sense.

Her suit's scanner whirred, trying to analyse the material. The results scrolled across her HUD, a stream of nonsense. 'Organic. Metallic. Silicate. Unidentified Genetic Markers.' It was everything at once.

She raised her multi-tool, switching it to the spectral analysis function. A beam of blue light shot out, playing over the surface of the pulsating organ. As the light touched it, the rhythm changed. The slow, steady thrumming sped up, becoming a frantic, agitated beat.

THUMP-THUMP. THUMP-THUMP. THUMP-THUMP.

"Cassie! What did you do?" Benji yelled.

Around the chamber, dormant lights flickered on. A single, piercing emergency klaxon began to blare, the sound painfully loud after the long silence. Red light bathed the chamber, reflecting off the glistening surfaces of the organic growth. On the consoles around the room, screens that had been dark for two hundred years lit up, displaying streams of alien code.

The ship was waking up.

Panic seized her. She fumbled for her tether, trying to pull herself back towards the corridor. But the organic tendrils were moving. They peeled away from the walls, reaching for her like grasping fingers. One wrapped around her ankle, its grip shockingly strong. It wasn't sticky or slimy; it felt like living muscle lined with metal fibre.

"Benji! It's got me!"

She kicked out, her boot connecting with the tendril. It didn't even register the impact. More tendrils were coming for her now, snaking through the air. The central heart was beating faster and faster, a frantic drum against the hull of the ship. The entire freighter was vibrating around her. The hole she'd cut was her only way out, but it seemed a universe away. She drew her plasma torch, the only thing she had that resembled a weapon, and aimed it at the tendril wrapped around her leg.