Fleshpunk

Seiglinde stirred from her sleep. Conciousness began flooding her veins once more. Everything seemed normal, that was until the numbness in her legs faded. She could feel something sticky moving onto her ankle, she screamed and whipped off the covers to see what had woken her.
Where her ankle once was, was a vile mass of small, red flesh. She screamed and ran out of the room, span round and slammed the door behind her. She turned back around and sank agaisnt the door to catch her breath, she looked up and opened her eyes. More masses were moving along the ships corridor's. Flesh wasn't unusual on the ship, being as the ship was 70% organic material. But the flesh wasn't supposed to move independantly, it wasn't supposed to be in the living quarters, something has gone horribly, horribly wrong.
The flesh had been moving towards her at a rapid rate, she kicked over a small box and stood on top of it, the small wave of meaty matter slid underneath, it passed her by without stopping. Once it had rounded the corner she stepped down from her box and swung open her locker.
She removed a small bundle of armour and equipment and fitted it. It consisted of a tiny backpack, inside were engineering tools, a mobile welder, a drill, a extendable screw driver and a fold out hammer, not only that but also small pouches fitted on the outside of each thigh. Basic medical supplies on her left thigh, basic engineering materials such as nuts, bolts, nails, electricals in her right, along with a torch. On her knees she wore black kneepads, grey in places where the paint had been chipped off after many a time spent kneeling down repairing various things. It was all topped off by a small chest piece, covering her flat chest. It was black like the knee pads and sheath, apart from it had "45th Immediate Repairs Crew" in bold, white branding on her left breast.
It suddenly dawned on Sieglinde that she hadn't seen a single person or atleast a trace of human life in the brief time she had been awake. Anyone who was alive would probably of headed to the bridge, so thats where she was heading. She threw began making the walk there, at least she would of if there wasn't a bloody great iron door in the way.
Sieglinde grabbed hold of a sturdy looking fire extinguisher and swung it agaisn't a grate on the wall. The impact caused a huge dent in the grate, the screws came loose. She smashed the last resistence the grate put up with her hard leather boot. The grate almost splintered as it flew from its screws and sped along the vent a metre, clanging noiseily.
She tossed the extinguisher off to the side before grabbing her torch and flicking it on. Without hesitation, she climbed inside the vent. She rounded a corner and saw a menacing looking circular fan, uncovered. It was blocking her way so she began backing up out the vent. Once she climbed out she looked about, and instantly climbed back in. The flesh she had narrowly escaped earlier had obviously somehow heard the noise of the vent smashing open, she scurried through the vents towards the fan before jamming the torch between some of the blades, flicked out her hammer and smashed some of the fans blades off. Once she had squeezed herself through, the flesh hot at her heels, just rounding the corner, she quickly swiped the torch from between the blades, causing the fan to carry on spinning like nothing had happened. The flesh payed it no attention, it had carried of moving towards her. Once it had got to the fan it was instantly shredded to small giblets of meat which were thrown about the shaft. Sieglinde put away the hammer and continued crawling through the vent.
Once she came to what looked like the corridor leading to the bridge, she used her hammer once more to smash the grate out the way and crawl out. She looked to her right to see a tram, its trail leading straight down the corridor. She hopped inside, punched in the maintenence code and off she went. The tram moved at a steady pace, faster than she could walk, thats for sure. She sat back on the cold, metal chair.
She was headed to the bridge. The bridge was where the hivemind of the ship was. Seiglinde hadn't worked on a usual space-faring ship, hers was one of the first of its kind. It was a flesh-ship. 70% made of organic matter such as flesh, used for the hull and mechanisms, the other 30% was used for the computer systems, the living quarters and engines. The use of flesh made the ships cheap, as this flesh was developed in vast quantities for this specific purpose, expendable and cheap space flight. The flesh however needed its own hivemind to man the tendrils and tumors that operated as mechanisms, and this hivemind would negotiate with the Captain of the ship, who controlled the computer systems and more advanced parts of the ship. These hiveminds were meant to be fully devoted to the mission they had originally been set on, which is whatever the aim of the voyage they are on. As long as they are fed, of course. The hivemind has its own boiler room, well, equivalent of a boiler room. It consists of a large, toothless maw in the corner of a room, where anything organic can be thrown in. The maw doesn't lead anywhere, it just completelty closes around the thing inside and absorbs it. So far, all hivemind ships have been fed well, or recorded to have been. The Captains know that if they are found to have a mal-nourished hivemind, they will be executed for mis-use of government property.
Being a lowly engineer, Seiglinde had never been told where the ship was headed and why. The low ranking crew members had always only ever been told when they were leaving and when they were coming back. Each campaign the ship goes on usually lasted 5 years. This was Sieglindes 3rd campaign, she was 19 years old, born and bred on the ship during the ship's 23rd campaign. Her parents had been engineers too, but they had been rather prestigious ones, and had gotten to work in the safer areas, she however, being fairly inexperienced at first, was put into a Immidiate Repairs Crew. They were tasked with almost suicidal repair missions, going into space wearing minimal space gear and repairing the barrel of a cannon, whilst its still trying to fire, and whilst the enemy is firing, snuffing out a gas leak, whilst a enemy boarding party roams the same sector, to name a few. She knew that she and her entire team were expendable, why else would they be sent to do such things? There were already 50 Immidiate Repair Crews onboard, the 45th one going missing won't make much of a difference.
After a while the tram grinded to a halt, Seiglinde leaped over the side and landed with a splat. Her boots had planted themselves deep within a layer of flesh, Seiglinde leapt back. Grabbing hold of the tram's side and using her strength to pull herself up and hold there until she fell backwards back into the tram. She peered over the side, filling this entire section of the corridor was a sea of flesh, it ran on as far as she could see. The flesh had covered up the tram's tracks behind it, it was completely bogged down. She looked up, there were cables leading across the ceiling. She carefully balanced herself ontop of the seat and jumped for the cable. She grabbed it and was relieved to see that the rubber and metal casing maintained her weight. She began swinging forward in a attempt to move closer to a large bulk head door. The access terminal was far too low for her to reach from her, so once she got close enough she lifted her hips up and swung her legs over. She hung upside down for a second before she mustered the strength to put in the code, getting it wrong multiple times due to being upside down and swaying slightly. The door made a loud grinding noise as the huge sides spread out into a opening, Seiglinde quickly pulled herself the right way up and pressed her feet against the wall. Hoping for the best she kicked off and let go of the cable. She flew backwards before smacking her back off the inside of the door. She bounced off inside the room as the door quickly slammed shut behind her. She let out a small groan before scrambling to her feet as a small giblit of flesh had leaked through, disconnected from the mainbody, it was useless. She stomped on it, leaving a bloody splatter where it once was.
Seiglinde looked around what she assumed to be the control room. It was how she expected it to look. It had a small, central set of stairs in the middle leading up to a gigantic window, and two large blocks of computer systems on either side. All set out into smaller sections, each with specific roles. She looked up the stairs to see that the window didn't show off the vast, emptiness of space, it instead shown a huge, rounded tank. The tank was colossal. It was bigger than the control room itself, and looking through the many layers of glass she could see into other rooms around the ship.
But then she noticed what was in the centre, a gigantic, shapless mass of flesh. From it protruded tendrils of all shapes and sizes, they seemed to of smashed through the windows of the other rooms, and sealed up the entrance with flesh as to stop the tank leaking. These tentacles when in the room seemed to probe about, looking for something. She spotted one find a book, and immidiately it was absorbed into the fleshy tentacle, and she could see the miniscule bulge move down the tentacle and into the shapeless blob. She took a step forward and stopped dead, the mass was moving closer towards her window. It span with impressive speed to show a vast crater within it. A tendril shot out the crater and hammered agaisn't the window. She ducked behind a desk but it was no good, it had already seen her. She heard the glass shatter and saw it spread across the floor, a particularly large piece slid next to her. The tentacle slammed ontop of the desk and she fell onto her side and crawled back, the tentacle attatched itself to the bottom of her leg and she could feel herself being pulled in. She was up to her knee when she grabbed the glass and hacked away at the tentacle, it let go of her and writhered about in the air for a while. She looked at her shin, it was bloody and cut from the glass, and some of her trouser leg had been burned away, the tough leather of her boot seemed fine. The tentacle seemingly recovered and swung towards her head, she narrowly dodged by flinging herself to the floor. As the tendril looked like it was about to swoop her up off the floor, she kicked over a nearby table. The table slammed between them and the tendril smacked its tip off the table with a thump. Whilst it was dazed Seiglinde rolled onto her other side, facing the tendril and brought the glass shard down on the thinnest piece she could see. It severed and blood shot in a neat line all around the opening she had made. She threw the shard of glass away and checked out her hands, they were heavily cut and were bleeding. She noticed the tentacle was still alive, but it was beginning to try and squirm away from her, she quickly leapt to her feet and ran over to it, before promptly stomping on every last bit till it was just a oddly shaped blood splatter.
The large mass has moved even closer towards her window and she could see more tendrils slowly building out of its crater. She looked back towards the door she had come in by, it was one of three entrances. It was the central entrance. She quickly ran to the door to the left of it and buzzed it open, she ran through and it closed behind her. She was in a large room, with a conveyor belt stretching across. The conveyor had seemingly stopped working. She spotted a chair and table in the corner and she sat herself down. She opened up her left pouch and pulled out a small wrap of bandages. She breathed heavily as she pulled the bandages over the deep cuts on her hands. She had sharp intakes of breath every time she applied a new layer as the bandage grew tighter. After patching up her right hand, she moved onto the left. She placed the bandages back into the pouch and looked about for a exit that didn't involve her getting eaten by a tentacle. The only two ways she could see were by crawling through the conveyor shaft, and one way was heading in the direction of the tank. She clambered ontop and began slowly crawling the opposite way up the shaft. She had entered a dark tunnel section, the only thing she could hear was the sound of her scraping off the sides, and some wet slap hammering the walls around her. She hurried her pace and eventually emerged in one of the cafeterias. It was huge, the kitchen had to be big enough to feed a entire crew, of a space ship, a flagship, one of which had its own stomach that needed feeding. Seiglinde's belly growled, she hadn't eaten since she had woken up, and just to add to that she forgot her watch. She was horrified to see that the entire pantry was almost bare, practically everything had been gobbled up. After a good lot of searching she had found a large lump of bread, which she ripped a piece off and ate it, before shoving the rest in her bag, along with anything else she could find.
A noise broke the long silence of Sieglinde happily eating her bread, something had been knocked over. She heard the clatter as cuttlery flew across the floor. She clambered to her feet and crouched over to the kitchen counter. She peeked her head round the doorway to see a large body of flesh crawling its way along the floor. The front section had swallowed up a entire table, the box of cuttlery had been pushed off. After a while it had moved on to a different table. Seiglinde looked over to two doors nearby, toilets. She quietly volted the kitchen counter and kept low whilst moving between the tables, the flesh hadn't yet noticed her as it searched for organic matter on the tables. She got to the toilet doors and looked up to see that she was about to enter the male toilets, not that it mattered. She opened the door and walked inside, closing it quitely behind her. In the toilets it was tens upon tens of cubicles. Seiglinde felt like now was as good a time as ever to relieve herself of what her bladder had been storing since being attacked by literal mounds and tentacles of flesh. She stepped inside a cubicle and closed the door behind her, quietly as she could. She unbuttoned her overalls and began the slow process of getting off her pads and pouchs. After she had finished with that she let it all drop to her ankles, where she happily sat down and relieved herself.
Once she was finished, she got to her feet and began the even longer process of putting it all back on. Buttoned up her overalls, fitted her pouchs, placed on the kneepads, and finished by slinging her backpack over her shoulders. She didn't fancy going back outside to try and sneak past that abomination again, so Seiglinde took a look around the bathrooms. She unfolded her hammer, incase she found anymore handy vents. She looked up at the air conditioner, it looked like it was her only option. Using her engineering tools, Seiglinde had taken apart multiple toilets as best she could and as quickly as she could and had piled them ontop of the wash basins. They were off balance but it wasn't like she had any other choice. She hopped up and leapt, grabbing hold of the corner of the air conditioner. The toilets fell away noisely behind her. Seiglinde had her hammer ready in one hand, and she smashed at the fan, trying her best to hold on with one arm whilst swinging madly with the other. She could hear the blob of flesh slithering its was towards the toilets, brushing away tables and chairs. The fan eventually gave way and she managed to climb inside the air conditioner. She looked around, realising her mistake, it couldn't keep her weight, neither was there a big enough way out for her to escape without getting in the blobs reach.
The blob had reached the door, and had quickly began pressing agaisn't it. The wooden door seemed to sink into the blobs flesh, before dissapearing inside its vast form. Sieglinde was panicking now, she had no idea what to do, she was on the brink of tears. That was until the blob began making its way beneath the air conditioning unit and began hungrily reaching out, waiting. Sieglinde suddenly had a bright idea, she began trying to bounce up and down inside the already over-burdened air conditioner, it became to creak. All of a sudden it was ripped from its supports and came tumbling down ontop of the blob, Sieglinde smacked her head off one of the inside corners. She was dazed for a second, once she got to her senses she slowly climbed out. The air conditioner was on its side, what was left of the blob was either splattered on the walls and cubicles, all along the mirrors, or smeared on Seiglinde's back as she clambered from the air conditioner. She started off limping, and slowly began walking again.
Seiglinde emerged from the toilets back into the cafeteria, she looked over the tables. On one of them she spotted a tablet, she ran over and snatched it up. She tapped the screen and it flickered to life. The display was green and black, each button was a 2cm by 2cm box, the entire screen looked like a spread sheet with different functions and applications in each box. After searching for what felt like ages, she came across what must of been a map.
If the map was correct, she only had to follow a few corridors and she would come across the escape pods. She climbed the steel cat walk and took the first door the map suggested. The large bulk head opened up and revealed a long, straight corridor complete with rows of open doors on either side. She slowly began creeping forward, once she got to the first door, she began hearing a small, snarling noise. She poked her head round and instantly regretted it.
Inside the room was a man, the man seemed to be halfway through being consumed by a large mound of flesh, firmly covering his head, chest and what was at some point where his left arm was. Sieglinde could hear screams of pain coming from underneath the flesh, the man span round and slowly risen to his feet. He began stumbling forward, his one arm reaching out at her, she noticed that a string of flesh had coiled around his arm and had began extending towards her from it. She backed away until she found herself into the room opposite. She quickly pulled out her fold out hammer and unfolded it. The man was upon her, he sweeped his good arm towards her, she ducked under it as it smashed agaisnt the wall, the flesh on his arm attempting to lach onto the metal. The flesh on his head seemed to begin hissing, before it completely fell off backwards, leaving the man with a stump where his head once was. He fell forwards and thumped agaisn't the wall, before sliding down onto the floor. He wore some basic guardsmen armour. "Corporal S. James" was printed on the back of his armour in bold white text. The head on the floor, completely incased in flesh, was now rolling, almost worming away. She looked about the room and spotted a pistol carbine, she snatched it off the wall and scavenged a magazine off the dead guardsmen. The small mound of flesh was too fat to get away, it desperately squirmed and writhered, moving as fast as it could. Which was slow. Sieglinde raised the pistol, pressing the stock agaisn't her shoulder. She pulled the trigger, a loud bang sounded, and the kickback knocked her back a step. A bullet smashed into the flesh, causing it to disperse, leaving shattered pieces of skull, flesh, and blood. She regained her stance and carried on moving down the corridor.
Sieglinde ran down the corridor, carrying the pistol carbine just incase. The rest of the side rooms were unoccupied and so her journey down the corridor was uninterrupted. Once she reached the bulk head on the opposite side of the corridor it opened up to reveal a pristene, unused array of escape pods. Sieglinde didn't bother thinking about it, and instead lept inside the closest one, sealing the small, circular door behind her and pressing the launch button. Just as she felt the escape pod kick she realised.
The entireity of the outside hull was made of flesh.
As soon as the pod left the launch area, it was snatched up by a gigantic blob of flesh, stretched over the exit. All Sieglinde could see out the window was the flesh shift and move around her pod. She was being sent back deeper into the ship. She stared in horror and antisicpation at the one large window of the pod, expecting the flesh to bust through and eat her any moment. Instead, it just carried her. Eventually, she was realised from the flesh.
Things hadn't got worse, but they hadn't got better. She was inside the giant tank she saw before, the same tank with the Hivemind. And there it was, in the centre. It turned to look at her, its huge gaping crater stared blankly. A tendril shot out and wrapped around the pod. It began drawing it in closer. Sieglinde decided she had to act now, so she raised the carbine and fired, the bullet smashed a small hole in the glass, and loosened the tentacles grip. She followed through with a two footed kick to the glass window, shattering it, sending shards deep into the tentacle. Some kind of orange fluid had flooded her pod now, leaked in from the tank. Seiglinde held her breath as she swung ontop of the pod and kicked off, sending her sailing towards the edge of the tank. She span round to face the glass edge and opened fire into the closest window, the first few bullets pounded off, but after a while, the window smashed and she was spat out onto the floor. She sprawled out, soaking wet. She didn't have time to think as a new tendril had plugged the hole she had created, and was now whipping out at her. It grabbed onto her leg and began trying to pull her back into the tank. She rolled onto her back and fired two times into the tentacle. The two bullets ripped large chunks out till the tentacle was barely held together. She finished it off with a sharp kick, digging her heel into what was left of the connection. The tentacle around her ankle went limp, the newly formed worm squirmed weakly as the main body went haywire, writhering about, smashing into the walls and floors, turning up tables and throwing about anything in its path. Seiglinde made a break for it through the first door she could see.
It was a gigantic, metal door. It slid open with a hiss as she quickly approached it. It was only half way through opening when she past through. On the otherside of this door was a gigantic hall with what must of at one point been a humongous opening, now covered up by the flesh in a big, oozing wall. Dotted about the room were small space craft equipped with various different tools and weapons, a small ship caught her eye. A small landing craft with drills built on the front, made for digging deep into enemy ships. The only piloting experience she had had was controlling small engineering craft to carry supplies back and forth. She glanced back at the great wall of flesh, and back at the landing craft. She smirked slightly as the idea crossed her mind. She ran towards the landing craft and flung open the cockpit window before leaping inside. She closed it shut and firmly locked it behind her. She put on the rebreather and helmet inside the ship, hooked up to the life support as she nervously looked about for some kind of ignition. She cautiously flicked a switch and the ship roared to life. She heard the engines letting out a constant loud hum as she began piloting the ship forwards. It started off quite slowly, but by the time she had crossed the three metre line it accelerated dramatically and she crashed straight into the wall of flesh. Luckily, it was spread thin and she flew through it without much of a hassle. She looked back at the colossal ship she had been onboard. This was the first time she had seen the whole ship at once, in all its glory. She had been outside it, but she was always close to it or exiting or boarding through a small, tight tunnel with no windows.
Its size baffled her, though she thought it would be big, she didn't expect it to be this titanic. The whole thing however was covered in the red matter of flesh. The surface wriggled and twitched in places, Seiglinde couldn't help but find it repulsive. There were large bulges where the guns used to protrude out the flanks of the ship, now obscured by the layers of flesh and meat piled onto them.
Seiglinde turned back around to look where she was going. If the ship had dazed her with its size, she was not prepared to see what lay ahead of her. It was all black apart from the odd star dotted around. It was a seemingly endless void. She saw nothing but black and the occasional glow of a star. Seiglinde sunk into her seat. She hadn't prepared herself for this. The only food she had was the half eaten peice of bread from the cafeteria, and now that was still soaked by that vile orange fluid, a long with the rest of her. She looked about the controls and flicked off the inertia dampeners. She let go of the accelerator and the ship carried on moving. After that, she climbed out of her seat and took some compact steps down into the troops seating area. It was a small, tight room with seats packed densely. The seats were green, and were designed to be leaned on, not sat on. They were covered in binds and belts to keep the occupant in place during turbulance or once the ship is struck by enemy fire. Seiglinde sat down on the floor, leaing agaisnt the one wall not cluttered with seats and took out the soggy peice of bread. She stuffed it in her mouth peice by peice, trying to savour it. It tasted disgusting, but it was the only thing she had.
She may as well try and enjoy it.