Tragedy – and Mystery

Madiwa hurried over to the small terminal in the corner of the cargo hold’s admin office. “What’s up?”.

He turned the monitor towards her and pointed excitedly at a graphic showing the upper floor of the station. Several coloured dots pulsed on the screen. “Transponders in the command centre – there are people there”.

“Dead or alive?”. Madiwa wasn’t getting her hopes up.

“At least a couple of them have moved, so they’re not dead”.

“OK, let me rephrase that – alive or zombie!?”.

Straight’s face fell. “Um – no idea. I can’t get IDs or any biometric data from them, we weren’t able to get into the database to identify the tags. I just know they’re there”.

“So they might not be alive ?”.

“No. But it’s the first time we’ve found anyone – and they’re in the command centre, which would be an obvious place for any other survivors to head to”.

The executive officer pondered briefly and then straightened up. “OK, we can’t hang around here all day – and it’s starting to smell anyway. Getting to C&C was always the goal, so everyone up saddle up, we’re moving”.

The cargo bay was on the outer part of the station – Command and Control was three decks up in the middle, so it wasn’t a short walk. The next deck up was mostly crew quarters, clustered around the ship’s mess and rec rooms. Helen took the lead, flanked by Harker and Barry, each toting a blaster rifle. Instead of the obvious route down the main corridor, she took them straight across to a side passage that led to a workshop. She moved a pile of boxes, slid a welding trolley to one side and revealed a battered access ladder fixed to the wall. She climbed up a few rungs, then turned two latches that held a maintenance hatch in place.

She carefully lifted the hatch a fraction, peering through the gap to make sure that there was no-one (or no thing) moving in the space above. Satisfied that all was clear, she swiftly climbed the ladder and emerged into a shower cubicle. Stepping through the open door into the head, she motioned for the rest of the eight crew from Hiber-D to follow her.

She stepped over to the exit door that led into one of the corridors on the accommodation level. Again, she opened it a fraction and squinted into a dimly lit corridor. She was beginning to become used to surprises every way she turned, so the sight of four more blood-stained corpses in the passageway didn’t do too much to phase her. Except that these weren’t crew, the gore-spattered bodies were dressed in military green armour and clutching some serious looking weaponry.