On Monday mornings, I send out a story via email: ultra-brief tales of 1,000 words or more, usually in genres including horror, science fiction, and the supernatural. Those stories collectively are called Once Upon A Time. I’d love to have you as a subscriber to the weekly free story. You can subscribe via email here. Unsubscribe any time, from the link in every issue.

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Here's story 271, of 288 so far.

Please note: permission is expressly denied to input any part of the story below into a machine learning (ML) or artificial intelligence (AI) or Large Language Model (LLM) system in any form.

Log of the UES Deo

This log was created automatically by on-board AI at the request of the serving Captain, and initiated on Relativity-Adjusted Date 667483. Transcribed journal entries are included. Crew-members presently accounted for are nine in total. No other life-forms aboard. Manifest of 36 ferroceramic storage units, sealed. All systems functioning normally. This vessel departed Eltanin (Gamma Draconis) 6 on schedule, bound for Sol Earth.

RAD 667485. Systems normal. Crew 9. Journey on schedule, supplies nominal. Henceforth only deviations from expected status will be noted.

RAD 667488. Captain’s journal: “A strange mood upon the ship; one that neither myself nor these men are accustomed to. Our transit time is not overly long, and we are well-provisioned. Our second mate is a superstitious man, and I wonder if his mutterings will come to damage morale.”

RAD 667490. Thermal variation in auxiliary cargo hold, reported to engineering for investigation. Crew 9, and one large black canine of unknown breed or origin.

RAD 667490 addendum. Crew 9. No other life-forms aboard.

RAD 667491. Captain’s journal: “Surprised to hear a report from the engineer of a possible stowaway. He swears he briefly saw an unknown man, tall and thin, near the gravity generators access junction. Internal security systems showed no alerts. I have ordered a search of the immediate area, and review of automated surveillance. It will come to nothing. Men are given to strange imaginings during space travel.”

RAD 667491 addendum. Crew 9, and 1 unknown male passenger.

RAD 667492. Crew 8.

RAD 667492 addendum. Captain’s journal: “Dark tidings. A crewman has gone missing, after assignment to the night watch. His last logged position was the starboard oxygen processing annex, but a shipwide search has failed to yield evidence of his whereabouts. Standard alert protocol has been enacted. We continue on course.”

RAD 667494. Thermal variation in auxiliary cargo hold.

RAD 667494 addendum. Captain’s journal: “Another sighting of the unknown man, this time by the cook. Seen only for a moment. Described as exceedingly pale of complexion. Cook swears it was not the missing crewman. I have doubled the watch.”

RAD 667495. Crew 7.

RAD 667495 addendum. Captain’s journal: “There is some doom upon this ship. We have lost another man, and one we could scarce afford: the engineer. There was blood found at his station and upon the master systems control console, the machinery itself mercifully undamaged.”

RAD 667495 addendum. Captain’s journal. “The engineer has been found. Dead. We now fear we somehow have an animal on board. The man bears the marks of being snatched from his station with a vicious swiftness, then attacked about the neck. Second mate examined him in the medbay and found substantial blood loss, but remarkably little of the substance around the position the body was discovered. By general agreement, myself and my first and second mates will now be armed at all times with stun weapons.”

RAD 667497. Crew 5.

RAD 667497 addendum. Captain’s journal: “Disaster! Two men gone, and we are forsaken by God. First mate now swears he has also seen the apparition, described identically, and a crewman saw something large upon the upper wall of the central service corridor over the pod bay, there one moment and gone the next. The cook has barricaded himself in the galley when not serving meals. A black mood hangs over all, and every small and normal sound of the ship has us flinching at imagined dangers.”

RAD 667498. Crew 4.

RAD 667498 addendum. Captain’s journal: “First mate gone. He discharged his weapon twice, and the automatic alert directed us to his position, but to no avail. A torn throat, his own hand prints bloody against the titanium panels. As I stood over his body I felt I was being watched, but could find no observer. I fear we will not make Earth.”

RAD 667499. Crew 5.

RAD 667499 addendum. Captain’s journal: “Impossible to believe, but I must make these entries lest they are all that remains of us. First mate, dead for some eighteen hours, was seen walking aft from the makeshift morgue. Did not respond to any challenge, deathly pale, and movements clumsy. His eyes were cloudy with death, but when approached, attempted to attack with an inhuman fury. He has been imprisoned in the crew lounge, port side, and scratches at the door without cease.”

RAD 667499 addendum. Crew 4. Fire suppression systems activated. Fire extinguished.

RAD 667499 addendum. Captain’s journal: “Second mate had idea to remotely open the radiation shutters within the lounge. We are passing a main sequence yellow star, some 600 million kilometres distant. The first mate, or whatever he had become, burst into flames upon the intrusion of the light. Four of us remain, and have resolved to sleep in the lounge after removing the ashes of the man, but we will not long be near enough to the star.”

RAD 667500. Crew 2.

RAD 667500 addendum. Captain’s journal: “I have seen it! Him! The man who cannot be a man, prowling my own decks. I felt its hatred and its hunger. It moved like the ground-cast shadow of a hawk high in the air; there in the blink of an eye and then gone. It took my second mate, and straight after our youngest deckhand lost his mind, chasing after the thing and its prey. He has not returned. The cook and I have fled to the command bridge and secured all portals, but there are too many ways in and out. Earth is lost to us, and I fear we are not long for even the stars.”

RAD 667501. Crew 1. Course adjustment authorised.

RAD 667501 addendum. Captain’s journal: “All is lost. Cook gone, torn from life not even two metres from where I stood. Impossible strength and speed, and it has wings. We cannot allow it to reach Earth. I have rerouted us directly into the Sun, and lashed myself to the pilot’s console, opening all external shutters. I will burn, to be sure, and so will the devil that stalks me. But it comes even now! I hear it in the ceiling. It comes! It co–”

RAD 667501 addendum. Crew 0.

RAD 667504. Automatic course correction to avoid navigational hazard.

RAD 667508. Attached to assigned docking point. Preparing automated cargo offload. Voyage completed on schedule.

RAD 667508 addendum. Thermal variation in auxiliary cargo hold.

JINX

KESTREL face a new and terrifying enemy: an all-seeing mastermind who already knows exactly who they are, and many of their deepest secrets. Nothing stays hidden forever, and the line between privacy and liberty is razor-thin…

Book 3 in the KESTREL action-thriller series.

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