Re-Coil - J.T. Nicholas Page 0,31

can you summarize findings related to the coil?”

“Yes, Langston. You made the determination to retrieve the coil’s core. After doing so, you decided to delve deeper into the vessel. At that point, you noticed the airlock’s interior controls had been disabled from the inside.”

“Wait. What?”

Without asking, the image changed, going to a close-up of the interior airlock controls. The damage was substantial and would certainly have resulted in the airlock remaining closed. “Why would he lock himself in the airlock?” Chan asked.

“I don’t know,” I replied. “Sarah? Any data on why?”

“The logical conclusion from the rest of the footage available is that he wished to avoid whatever killed everyone else aboard the vessel.”

That sent another chill coursing up my spine. “I think we need to see more,” I said. Chan nodded her agreement.

“Do you wish to watch the opening of the airlock?”

“No. Move on to the next salient point.”

Again the view lurched, and resolved into an empty bridge. “You found no indications of the ship’s crew. Nor were you able to recover the box.” This time the imagery blurred, moving in fast forward, then stopping on a blank spot in the ship’s circuitry, where the successor to the flight recorder should have rested. “At this point, you made the determination to check the passenger cabin as well.”

This time, Sarah played out the walk from the bridge, past the airlock, to the hatch labeled, “Passenger Cabin.” There was a hesitancy in the video, as if the branching me didn’t want to make that walk, and certainly didn’t want to open the door. Given what the airlock had held, I couldn’t blame him. But open the door he did, and his light panned across another horrific scene.

The bodies were not, thankfully, in a state of decompression. But that small mercy was overwhelmed by the volume of them. Nearly thirty souls, all perfectly preserved, all seemingly at rest in their acceleration couches. “Jesus wept,” Chan said softly. “What happened to these people?”

“Sarah?”

“Insufficient data, Langston.”

Chan’s avatar was looking pale and sickly again. “Did you…” she whispered. Then she stopped and drew a long breath. “Did you have to retrieve them all?”

“Pause playback,” I said. Retrievals were a necessary part of the job, but that didn’t mean they turned my stomach any less. I really did not want to watch as the branching me performed the procedure on thirty corpses. “Did I make retrievals of the cores, Sarah?”

“You completed the retrieval process on eighteen of the twenty-seven passengers.”

“Skip that part, unless anything out of the ordinary happened.”

The scene shifted again. The branching me had just completed a core extraction and was tucking the cube into a pouch when it went very still. “At this point,” Sarah said, “the engines of the derelict vessel came online. Helm was reestablished, and the ship began accelerating toward Sol.”

“Wait,” Chan said. The video obligingly stopped. “If the vessel was empty, how did the engines come online? And how was steering established?”

“That is indeterminate from the video feed, but only two logical possibilities exist.”

“Time- or distance-triggered AI control,” Chan said, and I nodded. It would be simple enough to give a Beta AI instructions to begin acceleration and pilot the vessel toward the sun after a certain time had elapsed or a certain distance from Sol had been achieved. Even a ship that appeared dead could have enough power reserves to monitor basic astrogation functions.

“What’s the other?” I asked Sarah.

“Remote activation and control.”

Chan and I looked at each other. “That would mean a vessel close enough to send real-time signals,” Chan said, an exaggerated frown creasing her animated features.

“Which should have shown up on the Persephone’s sensors,” I agreed. “Any indication of another vessel in the area, Sarah?”

“No, Langston. An analysis of the file does not indicate any other vessels in the area.”

“AI control, then.”

“Not necessarily,” Chan said. “There are a number of military-grade systems that could have spoofed the Persephone’s sensors. And AI control doesn’t explain one key thing.”

“What happened to the Persephone?” I stated as much as I asked.

“Exactly. We wouldn’t have just watched you rocket off into the sun. And we certainly wouldn’t have followed after you if that’s what did happen. So, something had to have…” she faltered, as the enormity of what she was saying dawned on her.

“Something had to have taken out the Persephone,” I finished.

“Excuse me,” Sarah interjected politely. “There is more footage that you need to see in order to obtain the necessary variables for your analysis.”

“Resume playback,” I said.

The view swept