The mining ship drifted lazily in the void, the bodies of its crew hanging by their feet from tethers connected to the underbelly. They were decapitated, heads cradled in their arms, everything held in place by frozen blood. This was the signature of Madam Hemlock.
***
The ship was making a return trip from an asteroid a light minute away from the Sun when the raid happened. The jetblack pirate vessel was cloaked from the miner’s rudimentary scanners, the breach of an airlock being the only warning given of their sudden intrusion. The ensuing slaughter was quick and merciless with no survivors, the pirate crew was well practiced and moving like a single organism. Madam Hemlock strode through the captured vessel, admiring the viscera and wiping clean her cutlass before sheathing it in an ornate scabbard spiderwebbed with gold and bedazzled with diamonds and pearls. There was a severed hand tied to the scabbard, her master key to all the ship. Her bright red cloak flowed behind her as she entered the control room.
“What’s the cargo?” She asked a member of her crew who was watching a screen.
“Just what we thought. An asteroid's worth of gold, tons of it.”
“Perfect, must have been a hell of an asteroid.” She smiled, it was always great when a raid had no complications. She turned to head out of the room, she wanted to see that gold.
As she made her way to the cargo hold she occasionally barked orders at her crew, and as the most feared pirate in the system they listened to her demands with no complaint. No one, man or woman or even robot, had stolen and slaughtered more than the dreaded Madam Hemlock. Many had tried to stop her, but none had succeeded. She reached the cargo doors, and placing the severed hand of the captain on the keypad they opened. The sight was overwhelming.
The gold seemed to glow of its own accord, even Madam Hemlock had never seen so much wealth in a single place. And now it was hers, all hers. As she scanned the room she heard a loud crash followed quickly by a loud series of curses. She quickly turned as a crewmember sprinted into the room and grabbed her around the waist, picking her up and bolting through the halls of the ship. He paid no heed to his captain’s enraged threats and thrashing, there was something he was even more afraid of.
As he ran through the control room he screamed, almost out of breath, “CLOSE THE DOOR! CLOSE THE DOOR! GET AWAY FROM THE CARGO CLOSE THE DOOR!”
With that he collapsed, black foam coming from his mouth as the convulsions started. Madam Hemlock didn’t know what was wrong, but she knew to run. Out of the corner of her eye she saw other crewmembers fall and convulse, black foam leaking from their eyes and noses and ears and mouths. The door was closing, she could make it.
She made it.
***
“What the fuck is going on!?”
Madam Hemlock and her remaining crew were sat at a round poker table in the rec room, every face pale and wide eyed. It took half an hour for everyone to calm down enough to regain order, after a headcount it was determined that two thirds of the crew had perished.
“It appears to be some type of biohazard ma’am, reviewing security camera footage it appears that Jim was sorting through booty and opened a small box. When the box was opened, a dark cloud came from it and… I think it’s a type of spore or something…” stammered the young man who was looking at a portable screen acquired from the control room. He passed around the screen.
The picture was of a man laying on the metal floor of the cargo hold. His face was in a large, black puddle. His body was contorted like a dead spider, his veins black and bulging against his skin. As the survivors flicked through the cameras it became apparent that they were the only ones left on this ship, black bile and old dark blood making a horrific abstract painting of their vessel. Of their prison.
Taking a deep breath, Madam Hemlock stood up and placed her hands on the poker table. “They must have information on whatever that shit is in their system, find anything you can and report back to me. The rest of you, split into two teams. Team one, find food. We may be here a while. The contaminated zone lays between us, the galley, the control room, and where we docked our ship.”
“Team two, collect any and all EVA suits you can find. Check everywhere, if it comes down to it those may be our only chance of survival. I will be taking inventory of whatever medical supplies and medications we have access to, the med bay is in the danger zone but there should be kits stored around the ship. We will meet back here.” With that, they all got to work.
***
Madam Hemlock sat on a bucket in a janitor's closet with her face in her hands. ‘We are so fucked, we are so fucked, we are so fucked’ is what she was muttering to herself. The situation was worse than she could have imagined. This was a mining vessel, true, but after digging through the old captain’s files it became apparent that, if anything, the gold was incidental to the ship’s true purpose.
Transport of planet-killing mycological weaponry. A true weapon of mass destruction, the spores were to be disposed of upon arrival back on Earth. Found on the asteroid there was no cure, no treatment, no recourse. Once breathed in, the spores would kill at an extreme rate and even a single, microscopically small spore spelled the end. Not wanting this weapon to fall into bad hands, the Emperor of Earth ordered discrete collection and destruction. It was a miracle that any of Madam Hemlock’s crew were left standing.
Taking a deep breath, she calmed herself and stood up. She sighed, and made her way to their impromptu meeting room. Luckily they found the EVA suits, more than enough, as well as medical supplies and various medications. Various snacks and foodstuffs were found, more than enough for an extended stay. But they couldn’t stay, they had to escape their quarantined, floating prison.
Lots were drawn, and a young man was chosen to suit up and brave the spores. He was stoic. Either he would die now or die later, but there was a chance his suit would save him. As he donned the helmet he stepped into the hallway leading to the contaminated zone, closing the door behind him. The rest of the crew watched the cameras, huddled around the portable screen.
The young man appeared fine as he slowly walked through the carnage, trying to avoid the bodies and their liquified innards puddled on the deck. The only sound was his footsteps, the crew didn’t even realize they were holding their collective breath. For five minutes, nothing happened. But then the young man froze, and he started clawing at his helmet's face shield. He collapsed to his knees, clawing at his obscured face, muffled screams that soon turned to gurgles heard not through the camera but heard and felt through the walls of the ship itself. He fell, silent.
The crew looked at each other, no longer bound by a chain of command but by the gravity of their situation. The silence dragged on, nobody knew what to say. What they even could say.
Madam Hemlock violently rose, screaming “WHAT THE FUCK” as she launched her chair at the wall.
“WHAT THE FUCK! IT CAN GET THROUGH AN EVA WE’RE FUCKED” She yelled as she paced around the room, pulling her hair and screaming inarticulate nonsense as the rest of the crew began to pray and weep. Their only hope was dashed, there was no way out.
***
Hemlock sat with her crew, silent after their temporary desperate madness. She raised her tear-stained face, gazing around her. Only four men remained, four men and their captain. She broke the silence.
“Men, we have done unspeakable things. I do not regret that. We have made the decision to rob, kill, hijack, and mutilate any and all who stand in between us and wealth. I do not regret that. What I regret is that this is our last day alive.” She pulled out the portable screen and handed it around the crew.
“The Emperor’s Fleet is on their way, the miners sent out a distress signal when we boarded. There’s multiple scenarios we could expect. The first is that they attempt to board and die from the spores. That would not help us, and likely lead to the next scenario.” She continued.
“The second scenario is they blast this ship to pieces. If that happens, the spores will spread through space and likely eventually make their way to Earth. I’ve run the calculations on this here screen, if this ship blows up and even a single spore floats to Earth it could very well be a near-extinction event.”
“Men, make peace with yourselves. We are pirates, we are criminals and we are the most feared bandits in the solar system. But we are, above all and despite our deeds, human. And we cannot allow humanity to perish because of our hubris.” She arose, hand on the pommel of her cutlass. Her men looked at her with grim determination.
“We shall crash into the Sun.”
The ship resounded with cheers.
***
They suited up in silence, warriors dressed not in parade but in purpose. Their mission was etched with the precision of a scalpel, each second a sacred beat of destiny. Five minutes. That was all they had. Five minutes to save a galaxy. They ran, one after another, into the belly of the plague-ridden ship.
The first man unlocked the sealed doors with trembling fingers.
The second ignited the ion boosters.
The third aligned the vessel toward the blazing maw of the sun.
The fourth, barely conscious, disabled every safeguard the ship’s mind possessed.
Each gave their life not with a scream, but with resolve. For the first time, they were not scavengers, not pirates. They were heroes.
And then came Madam Gladiolus Hemlock. Clad in her flowing red cloak, her gilded cutlass still at her hip though it would serve her no more, she stood alone before the quarantine gate. She tightened her suit, bowed her head, and charged into the fungal inferno with a cry of defiance that echoed through the ship.
She burst into the control chamber, coughing, choking, vision swimming with spores and swirling light. She dragged herself to the comms panel and spoke, blood and foam already on her lips.
She began to speak, her voice steel.
“To the Emperor’s Fleet, this is Madam Gladiolus Hemlock. Cease pursuit. Do not board. Do not send aid. This vessel is death incarnate. A single breath from this mold will unmake your worlds. We go to the Sun not in fear but in duty.”
She gasped, trembled, and laughed once, as colors bled from the walls.
“I die unrepentant. I have burned colonies, shattered fleets, torn down kings. I carved my name into the stars… and now I burn it into the Sun.”
Her voice cracked.
“But... the light... it’s everywhere. It’s inside me. The Sun is speaking, no—no, the spores—they’re singing. I hear... every voice I silenced. I see the children… crying in doorways I torched. Mother… I see your eyes. I see all of you…”
She collapsed, foam and blood spilling from her lips, hand still on the panel, whispering as her vision melted into kaleidoscopic fire.
“I was the villain. I was the curse. I... I thought I was righteous. I thought I was free.”
A final rattle of breath.
“I’m… I’m sorry…”
And then, silence.
***
The ship drifted into the Sun, tailed by Fleet ships that held their distance, like mourners at the edge of a pyre. The ship, once a simple mining vessel, now glided in silence. A coffin of steel and sacrifice.
As the solar winds kissed its hull, the ship began to ignite. Fuel lines ruptured in a symphony of flame. Gases ignited like prayers. The metal screamed and bloomed open, shedding its armor like the skin of a dying god.
From afar, it no longer looked like a ship. It became a phoenix. Not metaphor, not symbol, but shape and spirit. Wings of pure fire stretched across the void, each feather a licking arc of radiant death. Its head bowed in regal sorrow, as if it knew the weight of what it carried. Smoke curled around it. An aura, a halo.
Within the furnace, within the core of that impossible blaze, something moved. A figure, vast and ancient, born from the fusion of heat and memory. Fire took form. She was a woman, carved from light and flame, her hair cascading embers, her eyes twin stars on the verge of collapse. In her arms, swaddled in firelight, was a child. Small, still, but radiant. She did not speak. She was the song. The song of endings and births.
Hemlock’s ashes rode the breath of that woman. Her sins, her sorrow, her final act of redemption all curled like incense around the child’s sleeping head. And the phoenix screamed. Not in pain, but in release. A cry that rippled across sensor arrays and made hardened soldiers weep without knowing why.
The Sun opened its arms, the woman of flame stepped into the core with the child. The phoenix folded its wings.
And the ship, the sins, the woman, all was consumed. Light poured outward. Nothing escaped. Nothing survived.
Everything was forgiven.
). But I could really use someone to bounce ideas off of. Basically my story involves a people who have tried to revive Old English, kind of like the Israelis with Hebrew or the Irish with gaelic. But instead of replacing English, it just became a second language. However, this has lead to unforseen "side-effects" over the years. They don't use many "latinate" words and instead tend to favor native Anglo words. They've even replaced some familiar loan words with germanic equivalents (astronaut=spaceman [I know space is latin, but still], guard=ward or watchman, etc.) If you've ever heard of "Anglish" before, I'm kind of copying this idea, but not to the extreme that they go. My people also pronounce vowels more purely and flip their r's, giving them something like a highlands scot accent.
