Though Hammond states that he is unaware of what the Marker is, Kendra confides to Clarke that she believes Hammond is lying. It then spread to the Ishimura via a colony shuttle carrying several Necromorphs, which crashed into the docking bay. An alien organism then began ravaging the colony, infecting the bodies of the dead and turning them into "Necromorphs" - organisms that kill to spread the infestation. Terrance Kyne, the Chief Science Officer, tried to relieve him of duty, only to accidentally kill him in a struggle. The captain cut off traffic and communications between the two sides and later went insane. Soon after the Marker was extracted and brought to the Ishimura, the civilians, first on the planet colony then the ship, suffered from mass hysteria and violent hallucinations, before subsequently killing each other. The Ishimura was assigned to retrieve the religion's most valuable relic, the Marker, from Aegis VII, under the guise of an illegal mining operation. Hammond recognizes that many of the ship's systems are failing, thus he and Kendra direct and assist Clarke in fixing them, so as to keep them all alive for rescue.ĭuring these treks, Clarke discovers various text and audio logs scattered throughout the ship and pieces together the events that transpired before his arrival: the ship's captain was actually an agent of the Church of Unitology, a large and influential religious cult. As they explore what appears to be an abandoned ship, they are attacked by grotesque monsters who kill off all but Clarke (who becomes separated), Hammond, and Kendra. The crew then begins to seek another means of transport. As the Kellion attempts to dock with the Ishimura, a guidance system malfunction occurs and the Kellion crashes into the Ishimura's dock. The CEC dispatches another ship to investigate, the USG Kellion. The game takes place in the year 2508, when the USG Ishimura ( a Japanese surname which translates literally to "Stone Village"), a "Planet Cracker" starship, sends out a distress signal to the Concordance Extraction Corporation (CEC) during a mining operation on the planet Aegis VII. Dead Space follows the story of Isacc Clarke, a space engineer and his battle against the necromorphs.