I have thought about a name for this for a long time, however I have found it difficult to come up with one without sounding too generic. Until I come to the point when I decide upon it's proper name, I have dubbed it "Silent Hunter", simply because the main evil presence, as you may call it, is forever 'unseen' by the reader.
And I was reading a peice on German U-Boats at the time... 

EDIT - I altered the name to 'The Shadows', I'll let the readers be the judge of the relevance of the name as the story unfolds


WARNING: This is a pretty dark story, I class it as a Science Fiction / Thriller. Its not very pretty, if you are of the faint hearted turn back now!

[b]Plan – Silent Hunter (?)[/b]
Background:
• Year 2123
• Human empire, [i]United Earth Empire[/i] (UEE) in its infancy, still recovering from a catastrophic greenhouse cliff where every country became a 3rd world country.
• Two major capital systems [i]Sol[/i] (Our solar system) and [i]Rigil Kentaurus[/i] (Alpha Centauri)
• Neighbouring star systems (populated by the odd habitat, outpost, etc): [i]Barnard’s star, Wolf 357[/i]
• Barnard’s Star system: ‘scum’ of the galaxy. Mining operations from major companies, ‘lawless’ space, skirmishes over mineral deposits sometimes between miner factions. Miners are employed mercenaries.
• 1 Military outpost in Barnard’s Star; [i]Griffon[/i] base, Starting point of story.
• Wolf 357 – 1 station in this system, Research Station [i]Pegasus[/i].

Setting:
• Frigate UEN (United Earth Navy) [i]Harpoon[/i] – Assault Frigate, 4 Precision Laser Turrets, 2 Rail guns, Atomic Torpedoes, 2 Long range artillery batteries (dorsal and ventral), full radiation shielding. (Weapons not really crucian to storyline, just added for extra background)
• Pirate cruiser [i]Hellclaw[/i], slightly larger than the [i]Harpoon[/i], heavily armoured. Stolen heavy freighter modified for blockading and raids on smaller outposts. Radiation shielding, 6 jerry rigged precision laser turrets, 1 plasma gun (dorsal) and boarding craft for ship to ship/station assault. Dark, cramped interior, when found completely smashed up and covered with blood. Original crew compliment, approx 95 pirates.
• [i]Griffon[/i] Base.
• Research Station [i]Pegasus[/i].

Characters:

• Cal ‘Mustang’ Reinhardt – Boarding Marines Captain. 28, Born in Manchester, UK, Reinhardt’s mother was from Berlin and his father from Manchester. He grew up knowing violence from his childhood in the backstreets of Manchester; he learnt long ago the price of not being prepared for what the universe will throw at you. He joined the UEMC (United Earth Marine Corps) at the age of 18 and progressed through the ranks until his current rank of Boarding Marine Captain, earning a name for himself against the relatively new pirate forces that operate throughout Earth controlled systems. He is the ‘hero’ of this story, based off the Harpoon. 
• Marcus ‘Scarecrow’ Scarman – B.M. Gunnery Sergeant, team sniper. Scarman is Reinhardt’s best friend from UEMC. They progressed through the ranks together and eventually became stationed on the Harpoon together. Black American, 28 years, and around five foot eight. Not overly muscular, but strong enough to take on a score of armed pirates.
• John ‘Sparks’ Holiday – B.M. Gunnery Sergeant, team demolitions expert. Holiday the second British member of the team. From Sheffield, he is a very down to earth character who knows what he’s doing and is a good friend to Reinhardt. At 35, he is the oldest Boarding Marine on Reinhardt’s team.
• Brent ‘Rebound’ Juliano – B.M. Gunnery Sergeant, SMG gunner. Armed with a submachine gun, Juliano is one of the team’s two gunners. He is 24 years old and originally from Italy but grew up in Israel where he joined the Israeli Marine branch. His reflexes allowed him to climb the hierarchical ladder with ease.
• Jason ‘Uncle’ Caris – B.M. Lieutenant, SMG Gunner and Medical Officer. Caris is another sharpshooter like Juliano. He is the newest member of the team, at the young age of 21 years old. Caris is a New Yorker. Born in the expensive condos of Manhattan, he followed in his fathers footsteps as a Marine.
• Victoria ‘Dark Angel’ O’Brian – B.M. Captain, team engineer. From a locked down computer terminal to a downed F-34 Viper, Angel can get it working. At 24, she is the other Brit in the team. About five foot seven, thin and lithe with a shoulder length mop of strawberry blonde hair, she is stunningly attractive and renowned across Marine Corps Recon as being cold hearted by rejecting every offer, hence, the nickname ‘Dark Angel’. Born in Newcastle 2099, she moved to live in London until she was 20. She joined the forces to escape from the ‘boring routines of university life’. Many call her insane for it. There is a rumour that ‘Dark Angel’ rejects all the other guys so she can get a shot at ‘Mustang’ Reinhardt.
• Captain Dean Quinn. Quinn is the skipper of the [i]Harpoon[/i]. He’s an excellent tactician and was born to play the role of deep spaceship Captain. He trained under the legendary Commander Steiner of the UEN [i]Tirpitz[/i].

Story:

• Harpoon docked at Griffon base for debriefing on a covert assassination mission against some renowned pirates. Mission plan: chase Hellclaw, board and secure bridge, taking pirate leader (the notorious Captain Hercules Canute)
• Harpoon sets off into Wolf 357, and immediately heads for Research Station Pegasus, where they will pick up more specific information on the whereabouts of the pirate cruiser.
• Harpoon sets off to the last known location of Hellclaw; Wolf 357.
• Reaches last known location and sends out scout probes to locate the Hellclaw as she is rumoured to be taking refuge in the local asteroid field.
• Hellclaw is finally located by one of the scout probes and the Harpoon moves in to investigate.
• Strangely, the Hellclaw is inactive and no power readings can be detected on board. Captain Quinn suspects a trap and orders the dorsal artillery battery to fire at the engines.
• Now crippled, the stricken Hellclaw is unable to escape, leaving it open to direct assault.
The Harpoon engages, moving in with shields and precision lasers active. The Hellclaw’s own precision lasers retaliate, as we later find out to be set on automatic defence.
• Once the defence lasers are neutralised, Reinhardt’s team is sent across to the Hellclaw to secure the bridge and capture Captain Canute. However, once their boarding shuttle docks with the pirate ship, they find the interior deserted. Once inside they lose contact with the Harpoon due to unknown circumstances.
• As the Marines progress through the Hellclaw, they come across numerous disturbing things like pools of blood on the floor accumulating from drips from the ceiling, entire rooms onboard the ship trashed and the bodies of the former crew scattered about the ship, wedged gruesomely in air vents, or laying strewn across consoles.
• As the Marines progress through the Hellclaw, things begin to happen to them. First of all, Caris is electrocuted by a faulty door mechanism. His comrades try to revive him using CPR and his own medical re-breather but they lose him.
• Second to disappear is Victoria ‘Dark Angel’ O’Brian. The Marines are about to bust into the bridge, with ‘Dark Angel’ beneath the bridge section planting detonators to screw up the comm. system. Angel doesn’t report in when she should have supposedly set the detonators. ‘Mustang’ Reinhardt halts the bridge insertion and goes down to inspect them for himself, only to find the detonators on a console, unarmed, ‘Dark Angel’s automatic and a few small droplets of blood on the metal catwalk.
• Now freaked out, Mustang disables the comm Unit and they move into the bridge, only to discover the command crew of the Hellclaw suffered a similar fate to the rest of the ship. Whatever has killed them has made short work of it and made it messy.
• They identify the body of Canute and take images for proof, taking care not to disturb the bodies.
• They move off into the ship, heading for their next objective; planting explosives in the generator room.
• On the way, ‘Dark Angel’s transponder relocates and they pick her up again on their scanners. They close in on her position and find her sprawled, unarmed, across a console in some control room. 
• Now very wary of the situation, the team wants to get the explosives planted and flee the ship as fast as they can. Reinhardt wants to find out what happened to Angel.
• After the long trek to the generator chamber, in which Reinhardt thinks he sees dead people, which no one else can see, sprawled across consoles or standing at the end of a corridor or through a window, their eyes vacant. One in particular is the horrified face of Marine Brent Juliano. The four remaining spooked Marine’s morale is tested even more as they cannot see the premonitions and they believe that their leader is losing his sanity. The power fails and the ship is thrown into emergency lighting, with a random mix of flickering main lights, pitch black, and the red glare of the backup lighting.
• Gunnery Sergeant Juliano then goes, after the premonitions of Reinhardt. The four Marines round a corner, with their back facing to an inner glass window in the partition separating their corridor from one running parallel. The two corridors run along each others lengths with the partition in the middle until each one comes to a 90* corner. The right corridor off to the right, the left corridor off to the left. Juliano is grabbed roughly from behind and dragged screaming, through the still shattering window, down the left hand corridor away from his fellow Marines. Reinhardt leaps after him; weapon raised and chases him down the corridor, slipping on the horrible blood slick left in Juliano’s wake. But the screaming Marine is dragged away at a paranormal speed and is lost from sight as he rounds the corner. When Reinhardt slips around the corner all he sees is a little way into what seems to be a large computer room (which turns out to be the weapon power monitoring chamber, modified from the old control room for the old freighters huge cargo bays.) Reinhardt sees a live camera feed of ‘Dark Angel’ O’Brian lying on one of the sick bay beds shrouded in shadow, even though she is in the same room as he is. He tells no one of this. The trail of blood left by Juliano leads around the consoles until it reaches an air vent in the wall. They trace the vent along the roof until it disappears into the wall. Every vent or gap in it is oozing thick blood. The Marines are forced to agree on one another that Juliano must be dead, with all the blood left behind.
• Terrified, the four remaining Marines arrive at the generator room and plant the charges, where Reinhardt is separated from the others for a while. On his small solo trip around the generator chamber, he believes he sees ‘Dark Angel’s body again several times and is spooked by shadows that walk past backup lights and glow outlines in red against the walls and sniggering dark forms that echo around the room.
• Reinhardt finally regroups with his comrades, almost shooting them on sight. He discovers that, during his absence, there was a strange power anomaly in which the lights cut out completely. When they came back on, O’Brian had disappeared. He insists on going to find her but his friend Scarman, disturbed by Reinhardt’s visions and worried for his sanity, disagrees. An argument ensues afterward where Reinhardt and Scarman have a hand to hand fight, against the protests of Gunnery Sergeant Ratcliffe. Reinhardt wins the fight and leaves the two other Marines to themselves, believing that their fear has got to them. Ratcliffe helps Scarman back up and together they leave for the Boarding Shuttle to find that its interior has been completely wrecked. Reinhardt delves deep into the ship in search for Captain O’Brian.
• Ratcliffe and Scarman, forced to retrace their steps to find Reinhardt are set upon by faulty door mechanisms and automated sentry guns that have descended from the ceiling to shoot at invaders. After many visions and a spooky voice giving him directions, Reinhardt finds O’Brian wandering aimlessly through the ship and leads her off to the ships medical bays.
• Reinhardt deposits O’Brian on a sick bay bed and scouts the area for a booster to wake her and anything else he can find to protect himself. In doing so he finds a crumpled bloody body on the floor which can only be the pirate ships’ doctor.
• After further inspection of the body, Reinhardt discovers claw like tear marks in his flesh. He finds a hypodermic filled with adrenaline and makes to go back to O’Brian. The lights flicker and die however, freaking Reinhardt out more. He activates his flashlight and goes back to O’Brian to give her the shot that will wake her. However when he arrives at her body he finds that her throat has been slashed whilst he was away getting the hypodermic, letting the life seep out of her before Reinhardt could do anything to save her. By the time he arrives with the hypo, she is dead. Completely freaked out, Reinhardt leaves O’Brian’s corpse on the sick bay bed and makes for the escape pods.
• Meanwhile, Ratcliffe and Scarman are trying desperately to find a way off the ship, after giving up searching for Reinhardt. Scarman is depressed at the loss of his friend. In a spooky scene in a large dark empty room, an unknown assailant opens fire on them. During the fire fight, Scarman is gunned down. He is still alive and Ratcliffe tries to administer the basic medical training he knows. He fails however, and Scarman dies in a touching scene.
• Now solo, Ratcliffe resolves to find and eliminate Scarman’s killer. He eventually tracks down the lone gunner and takes him out after a brief fire fight. When Ratcliffe goes over to the body, he is horrified to find the jet black eyes of the dead Jason ‘Uncle’ Caris staring back up at him.
• Reinhardt finds himself under fire from an attacker he cannot see. Wielding his submachine gun, Reinhardt fires back and hits the target. Unsure whether he got the kill. Reinhardt moves steadily though the darkened sick bay. He eventually sees his target moving way too fast for anyone to get a clear shot. The target moves around to flank him and then dives for Reinhardt. Reinhardt sees the jet black eyes in the blood stained corpse of Brent Juliano as he springs catlike towards his former Captain. The two men fight, even though Juliano is dead. Reinhardt eventually pumps the corpse full of steel bolts and flees.
• Reinhardt and Ratcliffe, separately, decide to head for the escape pods, constantly spooked by shattering glass, doors slamming in their faces, plasterboard walls exploding out on them for no reason and strange noises like mysterious laughter echoing down the corridors.
• Throughout the flight to the escape pod section, they bump into another two hostiles. Reinhardt neutralises one to find that it is Caris. Not knowing that Ratcliffe has nailed him all ready, Reinhardt is confused by the bullet wounds in Caris’s chest. They reach the escape pods and Reinhardt hits the second target, to find out that it is Juliano again.
• Reinhardt reaches the line of escape pods just as the wall beside them is strafed by enemy fire. Reinhardt turns to find the corpse of Marcus Scarman shooting at him, a large patch of red covering his body. Reinhardt is devastated and is forced has to take his submachine gun and shoot at Scarman, his one time best friend. The back of Scarman’s head explodes as Gunnery Sergeant Ratcliffe suddenly charges around the opposite corner yelling ‘behind you’. Reinhardt whips around to see Juliano and Caris limping and snarling towards them. He ducks into cover, but Ratcliffe, out in the open, is caught in the fire. He eliminates Caris with a shot to the face and is then riddled with shots from Juliano, who is then in turn nailed for the third time by Reinhardt, leaning out of cover. Reinhardt moves to Ratcliffe to find him clinging to life, barely. Ratcliffe tells him to get onto the escape pod and get off the ship. Knowing that Ratcliffe is doomed to die from his wounds, Reinhardt has no other choice. He makes for the nearest escape pod and clambers inside.
• Ratcliffe, summoning his last strength, crawls to the escape pod and slams the door shut on Reinhardt. He then drags himself up the wall and manipulates the controls to release the pod. The pod is plunked away down the escape shaft and jettisoned out into space.
• The bloody corpse of Scarman stands and engages Ratcliffe from behind. The two fight, Ratcliffe losing strength by the second. Eventually, Ratcliffe destroys the remainder of Scarman’s head and slumps down the wall. Ratcliffe eventually dies on board the pirate ship Hellclaw from his numerous bullet wounds and sheer fatigue.
• The escape pod containing Reinhardt falls away from the Hellclaw and is picked up by the automated tractor beam from the Harpoon. The pod is pulled in slowly into the hangar bay. There is no one in the hangar bay, which is strange as there is usually a large, bustling throng of activity going on in some place or another. The yellow alert lights flash on and off in the background, signalling mutely that the ship has gone on to standby. The escape pod simply sits there unattended in the middle of the hangar, waiting patiently until someone comes to open it.
• The final paragraph is set in the dark interior of the escape pod. Reinhardt’s body remains still, pale and cold, his pistol clasped tightly in his hand. His neck is slashed and his lifeless eyes stare blankly at the window looking out at the roof of the Harpoon’s hangar. Curled up in a foetal position lying next to Reinhardt lies the lifeless body of Victoria ‘Dark Angel’ O’Brian, her all black eyes contrasting her white drained skin and red slit across her neck