Everyone backed away from the door as it clanged and shuddered. Madison held on to Brewster, and he held on back.

And then the slamming stopped.

Silence from that quarter was followed by silence from the crewers, but their collective unease remained. "Has it stopped?" was the inarticulate question of one crewer, the Retriever engineer.

Madison's ears twittered as they picked something up from nearby. It sounded like crying.

And it was coming from the other side of the door.

Brewster clearly heard it as well; his muzzle scrunched up as he frowned. "Is that coming from Maizy?"

The sobbing continued. "Please," said a silvery voice, "please, let me in. I'm scared."

"It's Maizy's voice all right," Henriette said from beside them.

Maizy sniffled. "It's out there. It's after me. Please let me in."

"Was she ever this talkative?" Henriette snorted.

It was a snarky comment, but it set alarms off in Madison's head. No. No, she wasn't. She turned back to the guard, who was still standing nearby. "What's the ETA on any backup?"

The Cat looked to his radio, still in his paw. "The rest of my squad was down on the mess deck. They'll take a little while to get here."

Madison's head whipped back to the door as it suddenly buckled and crumpled. Exclamations of shock and terror were hurled in all directions as the tough veritium portal came away from its frame, ripped off its track, and Maizy Sark – or whatever was wearing her face – strode over it. Her right arm stretched to impossible length and, without looking back, she gripped the fallen door with her fingers, wrenching it upright and crunching it firmly back into the frame.

Blocking the exit.

Through all this her expression was shockingly vacant, and it remained so as her arms shot forward and grabbed the nearest crewer, the Retriever, and Maizy lifted her into the air before biting down on her, mixing the engineer's pained screams with wet, sloppy crunching noises.

"Get out of the way!" the guard yelled, shoving Madison and the others roughly aside as he levelled his rifle at the creature and opened fire, first getting a few head-shots into the hapless crewer, saving her from slow death, before putting most of his weapon into Maizy. The Wolf dropped the carcass and snarled as she absorbed round after round, the impacts from the bullets disappearing into the gore splattered all over her shirt and pants.

Another nearby crewer tried to dodge away from Maizy, but he didn't get far. Her left arm stretched to cover a good metre between them, and she grabbed the Rabbit by the collar and threw him at full speed into the near wall, which he hit limply and fell to the floor, unmoving.

And then she went for the guard, launching herself over the body of the half-eaten engineer and sinking her claws – now also impossibly huge – into his stomach. The rifle flew from his paws and landed among the carnage as Maizy lay into him.

Madison and company had spent those terrible moments backing away, unable to tear their eyes from the horribly fascinating spectacle before them until Brewster backed into the doorway behind them. He looked back into the dormitory and woofed. "Get in and close the door!" he yelped, shoving Henriette in and taking Madison by the sleeve and carting her through. He looked back into the crew commons and the general pandemonium within, clearly hoping others could make it inside as well.

But then Maizy's gaze flicked upwards towards them, and she rose on all fours, her red-stained teeth bared, and Brewster had to close the door.

It hadn't closed before concerned voices spoke up from nearby, before Whitney and Milan had seen what was happening. Madison turned to see two faces, their expressions set in absolute disbelief. Eyes were unnervingly wide and mouths hung open. "What the utter," Milan let fly with a barrage of A-list obscenities, "was that?"

Whitney didn't bother to qualify her profanity, simply firing it point-blank.

"It's Maizy," Brewster gasped. "Except it's not."

The door rattled as someone pounded against it from the other side, and panicked voices could be heard. "Help us!" yelled one, her feline face pressed up against the viewport.

"Sloane!" Brewster cried. "Don't worry, I'm coming!"

The mutt hadn't taken half a step before Sloane shrieked in agony as something grabbed her from behind and pounded her face against the glass, leaving a nasty red smear across it. Then she was yanked back into the commons. Her screams continued for a few seconds after that.

Madison looked to the others, their helplessness and horror bringing Jeff to her mind once more. Her self-preservation protocols had nothing. We all might as well be falling off the garbage mound, she thought bleakly.

The dormitory door smashed inward and in came Maizy, her body horribly stretched and deformed as she scuttled on all fours. Her red maw glistened in the lights, and her eyes roved about like tiny rodents as they evaluated the prey in front of her. Her elongated fangs twitched and clicked.

"Anyone got any ideas?" Henriette squeaked, expending her last squirt of snark.

Then Maizy was on the move again, and this time she launched herself at Whitney. The Raccoon howled as Maizy landed on top of her, shredding the bunk she sat on and sending stuffing everywhere.

Milan roared and charged at Maizy, wrapping his huge arms around her and pulling at her with every bit of strength in him. "Get off of her!" he bellowed.

Maizy sent him flying with the flick of an elbow and opened her mouth wide, sinking her teeth into Whitney's arm. Whitney's mouth likewise opened wide to admit a scream of pain beyond all reason. The others were panicking; Brewster was running back into the commons, yelling something about the guard's rifle; Henriette was checking on Milan, and Madison could only pick up the nearest reasonably weighty object and bring it down hard on Maizy's head.

Said object revealed itself to be Whitney's storage pack; Maizy let go of Whitney's arm and snapped her jaws at it, tearing into the tough fabric and letting its contents spill forth.

What happened next was quite interesting.

Several of the volainium crystals, filched by Whitney from the mine on Pomatta, tumbled out of the rip in the pack and showered over Maizy, and as they sprinkled across her fur, they glowed – and she suddenly fell backward onto the deck, writhing and growling, her body and limbs growing and shrinking, it would seem, at random. She rolled away from the crystals as they continued to drop on the floor and let out a long hiss of rage, her body contorting so hard that the clothes on her ripped in several places. Her face stretched out to a point, and more eyes bubbled up from the shifting mass. Her ears wobbled and began to form branch-like protrusions, forming what looked like sharp-tipped antlers, and her legs became longer, her boots taking on odd shapes as her feet too changed.

Brewster ran in, the guard's weapon in his paws; seeing the creature, he aimed and fired, and the bullets seemed to have more of an effect this time round. The monster let out a screech as it bucked from the impacts, but it clearly wasn't going to sit there and take it. It whipped round, Maizy's form returning to normal, and barged past Brewster, knocking him down as it went into the commons. He fired after it, but it was already gone, smashing through the wrecked door to the commons and disappearing into the ship.

A terrible silence fell.

Madison sat for what felt like a long time on her bunk, studying one of the crystals that had driven the monster away. Its planes twinkled back at her as she turned it around in her fingers, catching the overhead light every so often. It had saved them all, but it offered no explanation. It was just another low-value mineral again.

The others were too much in shock to take an interest in the volainium. The only survivors from the crew commons were gravely wounded and would likely soon die without immediate and comprehensive treatment. A battered Milan sat with Whitney, applying basic first aid to her mangled arm. The Raccoon wept openly, crying in gulping sobs, her face awash with tears. Brewster and Henriette were slumped near the door, their eyes dull.

Madison looked back at the crystal. Footfalls came thumping from the direction of the commons, and several security officers burst in, their noisy arrival eliciting little in the way of a response from anyone. The leader, a wiry female Husky, spoke first. "What the hell happened here?" she asked no one.

Madison looked up, a realization voicing itself as a response. "Fear the Barghest."