Re-Coil - J.T. Nicholas Page 0,4

I pulled, and though the door resisted, it finally gave, swinging open and beckoning me into the darkness beyond.

The airlock opened into a short hallway, ending at another hatch at either end. The flashlight mounted on my shoulder provided the only illumination, casting odd shadows as I swept it through the hall. The beam caught the edge of letters, where the bulkhead met the overhead, and I focused the light there. Three lines of standard text, and a pair of arrows. The top row read, “Airlock.” The second row read, “Control” and an arrow beside it pointed off to the right. The third read, “Passenger Cabin” with an arrow pointing off to the left.

Sarah, have you identified this vessel, yet?

Insufficient data. The vessel has no active Net transponder. General physical characteristics are consistent with a mid-range passenger shuttle, of the type used for moving between planetary masses and their moons. Most commonly found around Jupiter.

We’re a long way from Jupiter, Sarah.

Current estimated position puts us approximately seven hundred and fifty-four million kilometers from Jupiter.

Thanks. Super helpful.

You’re welcome, Langston.

I swear she sounded smug. “Well, I guess one way’s as good as another. How much time do we have left?”

Miller’s voice came back at once. “Four hours, Langston. You need to be on your way back here in four hours, latest.”

Passengers or crew? I thought about the bloated corpse in the airlock and shuddered. So far, I hadn’t found any evidence of the ship being holed—other than the outer door to the airlock. But something had depressurized the vessel, and the thought of a passenger cabin filled with the decompressed dead sent a shiver running down my spine. I turned to the right and made my way to the door.

The manual controls presented no problem, since no one had attempted to melt them. I opened the door and panned the light across. Another corridor stretched before me, and I followed it. It branched off twice, but I ignored the side corridors, moving steadily forward to—I hoped—the bridge. My hopes bore out when I reached another hatch, this one with the words, “Control” and “Authorized Personnel Only” stenciled across it.

The hatch was shut, but whatever had caused the person in the airlock to seal themselves in must not have bothered the command crew, since the door wasn’t sealed. The latch spun freely and the door swung inward. I braced myself, mentally gearing up for what I expected to find—the distended coils of the pilot, captain, and astrogator.

Instead, the light revealed an empty chamber. The boards and screens were dark, the chairs, empty. Nothing seemed out of place. It was as if the crew had simply got up and left, shutting the door behind them on their way out. The only problem was, every regulation of every merchant and military vessel required that the bridge be manned at all times. Sure, you could maybe get away with a Net link for a minute or two, but any spacer who lived long enough to claim the title knew better than to tempt fate too much. I’d been aboard more than one vessel that had been evacuated. No one ever took the time to close the doors behind them, all nice and tidy. And if they hadn’t had the time to evacuate… in that case, the bridge shouldn’t have been abandoned. Finding bodies was never fun, but sometimes finding nothing was worse. “I’ve got a whole lot of nothing on the bridge, Persephone.”

“We’re seeing it, Langston,” Miller said.

“And it’s creepy as hell,” Harper chimed in.

“Can you get the box?” Chan that time, stepping on top of Harper’s words almost before they got them out.

“Wait one.” I moved to the captain’s console and found the access panel. A little work with a screwdriver, and the panel came free. I pushed it away, letting it drift. There wasn’t much harm it could do at this point.

I shone the light into the cavity, revealing a mix of cubes, boards, and dark fiber optics. Amidst the various electronics, there should have been the box, the successor to the antiquated flight recorder that logged the ship’s position, astrogation data, and ship’s logs. Instead, there was an empty place in a circuit board.

“It’s gone,” I muttered.

“Say again?”

“It’s gone, Persephone. Removed.” Which didn’t make a whole lot of sense.

“Did they evac?” Miller asked.

“And leave a crew member or passenger sealed in the airlock?” That thought sent a little tingle of fear coursing up and down my spine. What would it be like, to