How can I forget about those days.., i could have even died. 7 out of 9 of our crew members were killed to death including my closest friends.
Me and my 9 other crewmates (Mayank, saksham, karan, chirag, jalaj, shivam, Deepak, James and Henry) were sent for a special training mission in the space. The main objective of the mission was to test our mental strengthness and teamwork. Our spaceship was designed as per our mission. After we reached a spiral looking galaxy which i believe is known as 'Milky way', our spaceship was turned off by the ground control. In order to turn it back on and reach our home planet again, we had to complete a bunch of tasks which were designed specifically for each crew member.
Everything was going well till we faced the third day.. We found a dead body in the storage area, it was no other than my beloved friend James. We tried contacting the ground support but unfortunately our communication system was malfunctioning. This was neither expected nor believable by any of our crewmates. We hosted an urgent meeting which is understandable. We couldn't contact our seniors nor we had any idea how James died. The body of James was founded by Henry who was the youngest out of the entire crew. He pointed out that he went pass shivam near communication centre which was just in the right side of storage. It was indeed suspicious how shivam didn't notice the dead body and was seen near communications just before they started malfunctioning. Although, shivam defended himself by telling us that he had a task of cleaning vents which he was doing, and was actually confirmed by Jalaj. We couldn't waste any more time as we had limited resources and had to return back.
On the day 4th, we received a message from one of the most oldest devices of our planet, we used to call it 'holograms-receiver'. The hologram was from one of our spacecraft managers. The hologram was sent to give us some additional instructions and contained an announcement, there was an impostor among us. The announcement did shock all of us but we couldn't deny the fact that James was killed, and was probably by the impersonator.
I went to check the status of reactor only to find Henry lying down dead in the security room which was just in front of the reactor. My brain stopped working, i just kept weeping and staring at the body. Just then, Deepak came. Deepak saw me and the dead body of Henry in my hands. This was enough for someone to have a misunderstanding especially in a situation we were having. Deepak misunderstood and reported me to the crew. He blamed me as the impersonator, the killer and for all the strange events happening in our spacecraft. I would have definitely been ejected out from the spaceship and would have faced the most painful death but fortunately my friends saksham and mayank defended me by making up that i was with them for a long time and didn't do anything wrong. I don't think i would be here currently if saksham and mayank weren't there. We mourned the death of our late friend and then pretended like nothing happened and started with our tasks again.
It was day 5, our crew had successfully finished 30% of the
tasks. We were all cheering in the cafeteria till alarms went on, as soon as we could understand something and know what's the alarm exactly about, karan shouted "It's reactor meltdown!!" We all rushed to the reactor for repairing it. Everybody was scared, anybody could die at any moment, at any place whether standing doing nothing or in the process of doing a task. I was personally suspicious about chirag, shivam, Deepak and jalaj, i didn't see them at the reactor while everybody else was there. The day 5 was almost over and we found another body, it was jalaj who was found dead and was reported by shivam. I shared my opinions and explained how shivam and chirag had been acting suspiciously. It wasn't only me who was suspicious of shivam. Shivam didn't have anything much to plea with that could prevent him from being ejected off the ship. As a result, the majority voted for shivam to be ejected off the ship. While shivam was being ejected off, i felt relieved. "The period of hell is over", Mayank said.
We all slept peacefully till we heard loud screaming noises of Deepak. Saksham was outside the room of Deepak. His face expressions were unusual. He wasn't talking either. All i could see on his face was fear. After a few minutes, he finally spoke up. Believe me, you wouldn't like to experience something like he did. He described about a mythical creature that was only seen in fictional movies, well till now i guess. A greenish blue colored two-headed thing with 6 eyes in each face, having some sort of long jiggly organs. When i came closer, i saw blood on the right head of him.
Saksham was about to tell me something but we heard even more loud screaming noises. These were even more louder than Deepak's. I gave up at this point, i accepted my fate, i accepted my approaching death. Only a miracle could save us now. We didn't move from the deepak's room. We knew it's one of us who's going to die now.
After noises went silent, we went inside. There was greenish liquid and blood everywhere. We lost another crewmate, deepak. Deepak's body turned black and he didn't have his head. Saksham wasn't willing to give up, he took some armed weapons from Deepak. Deepak was the oldest and experienced one out of us which is why he was assigned with some weapons. Although, the weapons saksham took were for capturing Cercopithecidae, a specie which was said to be our ancestors. I was scared, sitting in the corner. Saksham was standing near deepak's body pointing the gun towards the sliding door. There were only 2 bullets left, rest were already used by Deepak. We could very well hear noises of crawling which went up.. and up and... up. It was no joke, an yuanmonsi came out of the vent and started eating saksham. I panicked. Saksham instructed me to shoot the alien. I never used the gun, i prayed in the mind and shot at the Yuanmonsi.
Saksham's legs were heavily injured but we survived till the very end.
We returned back to our universe where our home planet 'Inderra' is. None of our seniors nor juniors had any belief of us returning with the spaceship in one piece. But, we did the impossible. We were rewarded the medal of braveness.
I was given the title of 'Dedicated Madman' while saksham got 'Sharp brained octopoda'.
Did we defeat the death? Well, at least that was what our communicator said in the speech.
It has been almost a month since the incident happened and the spaceship is still having an ongoing investigation. But, nobody has been considered the culprit so far. The investigation is going slow as the spaceship launched 2 days after ours had the same issues and most questioning thing about it was that it returned without anybody being alive in it.
As a person who was involved in this case, i obviously had questions regarding the investigation process. The director was managing the investigation. We can't contact the director in-person. So, i wrote him a letter. It has been a while since that letter was posted but i haven't been given any responses. Let's see what's awaiting in the future, i guess.
Deepanshu garg
