Incursion Protocol

“Don’t go.”

Her voice echoed and bounced around my skull. There was no Hollywood-style jolt awake, no sudden bolt upright with a gasp, which wouldn’t have been possible anyway, considering I was zipped up in my sleep sack and firmly attached to the ceiling. I slowly opened my eyes to the dim lighting of the ship’s sleep setting.

I laid there, cocooned like a spider’s prey, wrapped up nice and tight, ready to be snacked on at any moment. That’s how I felt, too, like some overbearing threat was creeping up behind me, my attempts at escape useless, only prolonging the inevitable. Slithering out of my bindings, I drifted listlessly toward the pilot’s seat.

Gravity, or whatever weird, artificial version of it the ship had, pulled me into the seat once again as I commanded the computer to reengage. I did know how to deal with my melancholy, the dread, the impossible situation I’d thrown myself into. Thoughts of Abby and our life together, her pleading for me to stay, and my hard-headed insistence on being part of the mission, it all bubbled and festered in my head, threatening to leave me as a lump of self-pity on the floor.

Come on, I told myself, no time for that right now.

In my sepia-tinged mindspace, I led those memories out to the barn. I opened the two large doors to the basement, the kind you only see in tornado movies but no one actually owns, and motioned to the memories. “Hey, you see that?” I asked, letting my voice carry a hint of concern.

The memories, like gullible idiots, trotted over without an ounce of suspicion, narrowing their eyes as they peered into the darkness. My bottom jaw trembled, my emotions conflicted, but I knew what I had to do. I clasped my hands together, raised them above my head, and with all the grace of a star captain beating down a poorly costumed lizard, I smashed my memories into the darkness.

The heavy doors slammed shut with a crash, and I heaved a heavy 2x4 into its mount, locking them firmly closed. If the memories survived the fall, there was no way they were getting through those doors.

Problem dealt with. I wiped my hands across my imaginary chaps, nodded solemnly, and strolled away. A jaunty little tune made its way to my pursed lips as I mentally walked into the sunset. All my problems? Solved.

“What the hell is wrong with me?” I muttered aloud in the dim glow of the ship. That was weird, even for me. I blamed the Construct and his ridiculous cowboy getup. It must’ve buried itself deep in my subconscious. Anyway, existential crisis meltdown avoided for now. Bury those thoughts nice and deep, focus on what I can actually fix. I’m sure those memories won’t come back to haunt me at a really inconvenient time or anything.

I pawed at the console, the cabin lights flickering on and the starmap blinked into view again. I was nearing the first stop on my itinerary—a small blip indicating a structure on the edge of a sizeable asteroid field. If my intuition was right, it was probably some kind of Dulox mining operation, which meant I could check off two things from my to-do list:

Extract some sweet, sweet experience from my Crescenty friends.

Get enough salvage or material to start upgrading this weak ship.

An hour later, the Strommäsk Test Vehicle-which I kept forgetting to change the name of-and I were coasting into the system. I wasn’t sure how sharp Dulox sensors were or if I’d be rocketing in like a glowing Christmas tree, but so far, it seemed like I was just a small blip in the void. Granted, I was immediately jumped on only minutes after coming out of stasis, but I’d chalk that up to the Construct’s tinkering more than anything. My sensors weren’t picking up any active contacts yet, just the space station slowly growing in my cockpit’s viewport.

As I got closer, a few contacts did pop up, but they were tiny. Drones, most likely. Little blips flitting around the asteroids, ferrying themselves back and forth between the station and whatever mining haul they were carrying.

A label appeared over the station: Dulox Mining Station [INFESTED] - Level 1.

That made me pause for a second. First, the station had a level, which, okay, everything in this dimension seemed to have one, so I wasn’t too shocked. But the “infested” tag? That didn’t bode well. The lack of other traffic in the area was suspicious, too. I was still far enough from the system’s planetary bodies that any active contacts wouldn’t show up yet, but if the station was marked as infested, it might mean the local Dulox had already abandoned ship.

Or maybe it just meant a case of crescent-shaped lice had cropped up, and the place was in desperate need of fumigation.

Either way, I kept on my trajectory and reached the station without a hitch. The drones, basically flying boxes with engines and arms, paid me no heed. They just kept up with their tasks, completely ignoring me. The station itself, though, was something to behold. No sleek Space 2.0 design here; it was a haphazard mess of pipes snaking around, with large vents belching out awkward puffs of whatever byproducts they created.

I liked it and hated it at the same time. All function, no aesthetics, just pure industry. It was practical, sure, but god, was it ugly. I wasn’t an architectural expert, but if these Dulox designers had any sense of style, it must’ve been battling it out between the two halves of their dumb crescent heads.

I slotted my little spacecraft, which looked cool by the way, with its oversized prototype engine awkwardly bolted to the back, against one of the station’s ports. Luckily, the port was a universal type, so it accommodated just about anything with an airlock. Not the best for perfect seals, but hey, it beat trying to fix a door that had shorn locking bolts.

As I stood up, a notification popped into my vision: Entering Level 1 Infestation.

I stepped cautiously into the station’s hallway, the airlock hatch sealing behind me with a soft hiss. I could’ve left it open, but the last thing I wanted was for whatever was infesting this place to slip into my ship and surprise me while I was zipped up tight in my sleep sack. The station was a mess: equipment scattered everywhere, smears of dried yellow blood caked thick on the floors where puddles had once been, streaks of it smeared across the walls. It was the kind of scene that screamed “turn around now,” but this place was deemed Level 1. That seemed like a manageable start, right?

Something skittered around a bulkhead ahead, and I gripped the orange hammer tightly in my gloved hand. The suit wasn’t exactly a suit of armor, but it had taken two laser blasts and kept me mostly intact. Cautiously, I moved forward, rounding the corner as a small creature stepped into view.

It was about the size of a softball, with two gangly legs that shot out from either side of its bulbous body. Its dark, reflective eyes stared at me, unblinking, while a sharp proboscis dangled beneath it.

“You’re an ugly little thing, aren’t you?” I muttered, my voice muffled by my helmet.

The creature continued skittering toward me, its awkward legs doing nothing to help its speed or grace. I reared back, swung the hammer down with a satisfying thwack, and splattered the little guy across the hallway, adding another layer of Pollock-style yellow blood to the already gross artwork on the walls.

I could feel my experience points rise. Now that I wasn’t scrambling in a life-or-death situation, it was obvious, like a warm buzz in the back of my mind. A quick check of my status menu confirmed it: a few percentage points gained toward the next level. Nice! Maybe 20 more of these little bastards, and I’d cross that line into Level 2.

As if the universe had heard my overconfidence, another creature shuffled out from around the corner. This time, it was a Dulox. I stiffened, half-expecting another laser shot to come my way. But the Dulox wasn’t armed. Its grotesque, crab-like hands twitched and grasped at the air, empty. The thing’s distress was obvious.

One of the small creatures, like the one I’d just squished, was perched on its head. The critter stretched itself across the two points of the Dulox’s crescent-shaped skull, its proboscis jammed deep into the poor guy’s face. The Dulox's eyes were wide and lifeless, its movements jerky and unnatural, like a puppet being yanked around by an unskilled puppeteer.

"Well, that's... horrifying," I said, taking an instinctive step back.

It started toward me, and I readied my stance. No use in running, this was what I came for, and that sweet, sweet experience was now shuffling directly toward me. As it neared, I swung the hammer, fully expecting a satisfying squelch, but to my surprise, the Dulox leaned back, dodging the blow. It lashed forward, grabbing at my swinging arm, and latched on tight.

The thing wasn’t going to overpower me anytime soon, being about half my size, but it was fast. And grabby.

I could already feel it gnawing at my spacesuit’s arm. I bashed at it with my free hand, but it slipped out of reach again, just long enough for me to realize my mistake. I wasn’t just fighting one enemy here, I was fighting two. While the Dulox was making its moves, the weird facehugger parasite was right there too, its big, creepy eyes locked onto me, tracking my every motion.

“That’s not fair!” I shouted, shaking my arm in a jerky motion, disrupting the Dulox’s next attempt to bite into me with its disturbingly powerful beak. It responded by clambering around to a more advantageous spot: my back. I could feel it start pecking away at the neck seal of my suit, and panic hit me like a brick. I reached backward, but my suit wasn’t designed for this kind of agility. There was no way I was grabbing that thing in this bulky monstrosity.

But the parasite couldn’t see my legs.

I slammed myself backward, launching toward the nearest bulkhead with everything I had. The impact crushed the Dulox against the wall, and what followed was a horrendous crunch and squish of bones as my helmet flattened the creature clinging to the Dulox’s head in one blow.

The sound was awful. That sickening crunch of the thing’s skeleton and flesh, like stepping on a big bug, but magnified a hundred times and funneled directly into my ears. My stomach churned at the sensation, and I gagged slightly inside my helmet.

Our scuffle had caused enough commotion to attract an onlooker, another Dulox, sporting its very own parasite, proudly perched between its crescent peaks. This one paused, though, and I could see the parasite’s eyes glance down at the mess I’d left behind. I followed its gaze to the flattened remains of its friend, then looked back up.

“That’s right,” I said, “that’s your future. You don’t want to eff with me, guy.”

Apparently, he did want to eff with me, because he commanded the Dulox to move in my direction.

I crouched down, grabbed his dead friend, and slung the body at him like a sun-baked, brittle frisbee you’d find on a beach. It spun wildly, turns out, corpses aren’t exactly built for their aerodynamic properties, but it struck home. The body slammed into the parasite, tearing its proboscis from the Dulox’s face with a sickening squelch. The Dulox went limp and collapsed onto the floor as the parasite scrabbled, trying to regain its footing.

Before the thing could latch back onto its host, I stomped down hard with my boot, ending its miserable existence. I glanced down at the Dulox. Not sure if it was still alive, but, with that hole drilled into what amounted to its forehead, it was probably a goner. And I wasn’t a Dulox doctor or anything, so I gave it the same mercy.

I continued my trek through the station, feeling a little like a sci-fi Michael Myers, stomping around with my gross, yellow-blooded hammer. Fortunately, none of the Dulox or parasites I encountered seemed to call for backup, because I wasn’t sure I could handle a swarm of twenty of the little guys at once. Each encounter left my suit a little more torn up, and the dull ache in my muscles reminded me I couldn’t do this forever.

Eventually, I moved out of the industrial sections, full of strange, hissing equipment and who-knows-what, and into an area with a bunch of computer terminals and large monitors. The screens displayed a dizzying array of alien text, flashing symbols and random readouts for whatever was happening on the station. Still, I was pretty sure I’d stumbled into the control room.

Before I could even start inspecting the equipment, notifications began plinging into my vision. I read through them, curious what The System had in store for me this time.

You have gained a level in: Dulox Language

You have gained a new temporary objective: Secure the Dulox Mining Station

The screens around me shifted almost imperceptibly. Everything was still alien, but things made more sense now. I couldn’t read the language exactly, but I was starting to grasp the gist of individual symbols, like a kid trying to sound out sentences for the first time. I squinted at the closest monitor, trying to piece together what it was saying: Take many vigilance! Acute Peril! Exotic bad actor aboard! After a few moments, I figured it translated to something like: Be on the lookout. Extreme danger. Alien enemy has boarded.

Well, I guessed that alien was me, or… y’know, the many face-drilling softballs running around the place.

I was a little surprised that I’d gained a point in the Dulox language. I’d seen random symbols on my way through the station, but it wasn’t a ton of information to piece together a whole language. Was it just from being present around the language or in a Dulox vessel? It could be that The System was ticking up my understanding the more, uh, pest control I was doing. Maybe it was a combination of both.

There had been a screen in my menus I’d seen earlier, it looked like some kind of codex for things I’d encountered, but everything sat empty at Level 0. I hadn’t been able to pull any information from it yet. I’d have to check it out later when I wasn’t in the middle of an active threat.

The other notification caught my attention, flashing up some kind of temporary objective. Interesting. The System hadn’t exactly given me any overall objectives, which would’ve been really nice. You know, something along the lines of, Travel to sector 8A, 9X, and warp back home would’ve been perfect. But no. I was just out here, winging it. Thanks Mr. ‘The System’, you’re a real good guy.

I moved further into the control room, approaching the largest and most important looking console in the room. The screen was a jumble of scrolling symbols, I hoped it wasn’t attached to any AI, because if it were, that thing was not having a good day. On a hunch, or maybe some kind of implanted knowledge, I reached out and tapped one of the keys. They weren’t actually keys, since they were made for the Dulox’s weird, crablike hands, but I digress.

A notification popped up, larger and more imposing than the others I had seen recently:

Initiate takeover of Mining Station [INFESTED]?

Warning: Starting this process will trigger a takeover event.

Takeover event? That didn’t exactly sound like a party I wanted to attend, especially not dressed like this. Still, if I could gain control of the station, it seemed worth the risk. Possession’s nine-tenths of space law… or so they say. Maybe it’s just a myth.

I mentally confirmed the prompt, and everything kicked off. The party had officially started.