I’m looking at a corridor like a camera filming a movie. A sort of out of body experience. A wide steel door, like something from a Doc Smith novel, takes the focal point of the shot. The corridor’s bluesteel walls run to the left and right, lit by dim, oppressive blue-white lights like winter’s full moon if tyrannical gods had set it in the sky.

  Evil cries from horrible maws echo off the steel walls, howls like wild, aberrant wolves and profane pumas in heat from the scent of the hunt. Bursts of gunfire interrupt the predatory croons of carnage, followed by the screams of men. Death muzzles them.

  The wide door splits down the middle, sliding into the walls to open. Four warriors in red space armor rush into the corridor, two clearing each direction with their black space carbines, high and ready at their shoulders.

  The red armor is more hulking than a Gothic knight’s. Each man has the presence of a tank in the wide corridor. The place seems cramped now, tight as a jar of pickles.

  Their full helmets look like wolves born for war. Hiding the men’s faces, they bare steel teeth to the enemy in violent snarls. Black belts wrap around their waists, hosting three grenades and what I can only assume are packs of ammunition. Side arms hang, magnetically perhaps, from the warriors’ right sides, each with his own kind: a saber, a sword, an axe, and a mace. The medieval weapons look like they’re made more for killing giants than men, too broad and hefty to be quick in a fight for a normal soldier.

  But these aren’t normal soldiers. They’re space soldiers. Remember, Jack: you’re still learning the rules of the game. Still, it’s hard to imagine how they’re supposed to use those things.

  Two warriors run to the left up the corridor with the other two walking backwards in rear security.

  The running warriors stop dead in their tracks. Ahead of them, a writhing, hellish mass of pulsating purple tendrils shloops from around the slanted corner. Its tendrils wave back and forth the blood-smeared, red-armored legs, feet, and arms of fallen men.

  The amorphous horror stuffs one of its dozen maws with a limb, crushing and chewing the armor like hard taffy. Stuffing more limbs in more mouths, the monster chews and chews as it shloops forward in inches, crunching and grinding the metal with a shrill squeal in each bite. The metal softens as the abomination salivates, yellow saliva with bits of red dripping from its gibbering lips. Each empty mouth screams and chatters, perhaps asking for more food in some language known only to the damned denizens of Hell.

  With all advance blocked by the screaming abomination, the warriors halt and open fire. Blue round after blue round erupts from their guns, pummeling the fleshy atrocity, neon green blood bursting from its wounds and spilling out into the grated floor.

  Then, from the rear: two hellish creatures, purple, skeletal hounds, race to crack the warriors’ shells and eagerly feast upon their flesh and bones.

  The stoic soldiers pull their security without mercy, obliterating the nightmares with a salvo of hot, blue fire. The hounds - or the piles of purple fur left, at any rate - explode under the impact of the rounds, immediately crumpling to the grated floor.

  More hounds rush in, and the soldiers put them down without remorse, piling their end of the corridor with purple corpses.

  “They’re trying to block us in!” yells one of the soldiers through what sounds like a mic and speakers in his helmet.

  Do they have some kind of radio in their helmets? Is Dave’s space magic giving me a line to their coms?

  Climbing over the tentacular monstrosity, the two forward warriors press on to secure more of the hallway.

  “Move!” yells the soldier with the saber on his hip, looking over his shoulder for a moment while still pulling security.

  Wait… was that a man or a woman’s voice? No telling with these aliens, I guess.

  The rear security continues to hold their ground for a moment, laying violence upon the hounds now flooding the opposite end of the corridor while their pile of ghastly corpses approaches the ceiling, closing off the rear as predicted.

  Halting their fire, the rear security team turns, rushing in a red blur, and climbs over the dead tentacular horror to join their forward comrades. The abominable thing quivers, agonally gnawing as they stomp across its pulpous body.

  Unauthorized use of content: if you find this story on Amazon, report the violation.

  “The ship is overrun. Get to the main deck,” says a woman’s voice from the warriors’ internal comms. “Speed is our security.”

  That is a woman. Why’s a woman fighting? Damn space dreams. Stop showing me more of this weird stuff, Dave.

  “Heard, Sergeant.”

  Sergeant? She’s a sergeant? No wonder these mooks are being overrun.

  They round the slanted corner, all four of them running forward, still in a two-by-two formation. Their space steel sabatons clang against the metal grate under their feet.

  A deep rumble crawls through the corridor like the agonal breaths of a massive beast.

  “Sergeant. What’s that growl behind us?” asks the warrior with the mace, glancing over his shoulder at the empty hall behind him.

  “Doesn’t matter, Konrad,” calls their Sergeant. “We rally with any remaining forces. To the main deck!”

  “Heard, Sergeant.”

  “Are we being pressed into a trap?” asks the warrior with the sword, his voice more curious than anything. He takes a quick look to his right, to the warrior with the saber.

  She looks back and asks, “What difference would it make? Anything in our way, we cut down with impunity. We are the Force of the Emperor.”

  They’re still running in all that armor. How are they not out of breath?

  “Understood, Sergeant. No sense worrying.”

  “It’s not worry encroaching on my mind,” says Konrad. “It’s mania. I’ve never seen anything like these creatures before. What in Voltyr’s name is going on?”

  “We’re fighting the very horrors Voltyr himself faced,” says the warrior with the sword, “beasts from the realm of dreams and nightmares manifested in flesh and blood. All you need to know is that they die if you shoot them enough. Same as anything else that bleeds.”

  “Just what are you on about?” says the warrior with the axe. “Horrors? Dreams? Magic? You sound like a psychic or a conspiracist.”

  “Never mind it. We’ll talk after we’ve secured our objective,” says the dame. “Gustav is right: just shoot. Aurick, has the ship map logged any blocked passages?”

  “Nothing, Sergeant. They might have hacked the systems at this point, though. No sense trusting the map.”

  Konrad has the mace, the dame has the saber, Aurick sounds like the guy with the axe, and that’d make Gustav the one with the sword. It’d be a lot easier if they weren’t wearing helmets.

  Who am I kidding? They probably all look like aliens, and I bet all aliens look the same. They sound pretty normal, though. I really wonder what’s under those helmets.

  “Mark the blocked passages we see on the system map. It’ll give away our position, but it might help any other survivors. Konrad, can you link comms with any other teams?”

  “No, Sergeant. We’re being jammed.”

  “Then they’ve definitely hacked the system,” says Gustav, the one with the sword.

  “You’re right. No sense in giving away our position then. Disregard, Aurick,” says the dame.

  “Heard, Sergeant.”

  “What would we do without you, Gustav?” asks the dame.

  “A lot more work,” says the warrior with the sword.

  Yes, Konrad has the mace, Aurick has the axe, Gustav has the sword, and the dame with the saber is their sergeant. They seem to respect her. She sounds like she knows what she’s doing. Just as important, she’s running at pace with them. Well, if she can do the job…

  But, she shouldn’t have to do a man’s job. Of course, not even men should have to do this kind of job. But it has to be done sometimes.

  I’d be lying if I said fighting wasn’t fun. Yeah, I’d had my fill of fun. I was ready just to get by until I die. Now? I want something more again. I don’t know what more is, but I want it. I don’t want to get by until I die anymore. That’s just not enough.

  What changed?

  A lot changed. And I get the feeling a lot more is going to change still. It has to. I need to. Funny world though: while it’s always changing, it never changes. Nothing new under the sun.

  They round another slanted corner to their right. Gustav and the dame immediately open fire: four emaciated hounds are gnawing at the throats of red armored corpses. Were, rather: green blood spurts from the hounds under the blue volley. Cut to pieces by the rounds, the purple corpses collapse onto the red ones.

  A scream like the unbridled wrath of an autistic child drives the warriors to their knees.