But mainly, it looks like a perfectly whole… abandoned ship.
“Fuck,” Voller says. “Look at that.”
As we come up on the bow, the glass enclosure at the front of the ship glows brighter beneath our lights, the normally clear surface frosted white.
Voller angles us closer to the top of the enclosure, where we can see down and inside.
The large rectangular-shaped pool has an infinity edge, likely to create the impression that passengers were swimming in the stars. But the water has floated out and away from the pool, probably when the gravity generator went down, and then it froze in the air and against the glass. Wooden deck chairs, which were apparently not bolted down, stick out of the ice at odd angles like toothpicks.
So environmentals are down, too. No heat, no air, no life support.
“If something went wrong with the environmental systems, then maybe that’s the first domino,” I say, trying to play the scenario through in my mind. It’s never just one factor, one element in play. There are too many fail-safes and planned redundancies. For this many people to be at risk, for a system this complex to falter, it has to be a combination of unexpected events.
Like, a previously unknown virus lying dormant in a soil sample until it’s revived by exposure to oxygen, thanks to rushed decontamination procedures. And then that virus spreads, in part, due to a delayed upgrade in the air filtration system—budget cuts. Add tothat a lonely eleven-year-old who understands quarantine procedures but—
“TL.” Lourdes grabs at my wrist, pulling my thoughts away from Ferris Outpost and the past. “What is that?” She points to a mix of odd shapes beneath the surface of the ice, like shadows in it, with a few swatches of brightly colored fabric.
I squint at the screen until my reluctant brain finally produces a match. That long, slender silhouette with a starfish-looking element at the one end… is an arm with an outstretched hand, seemingly in supplication. The arm cuts off abruptly, however, with no shoulder or associated body.
Those are people. There are people trapped in the ice. Maybe a dozen of them. Or… pieces of them.
“What the fuck?” Voller whispers.
Involuntarily, I take a step back, and Lourdes frowns at me, then back at the images on the monitor. And this time, she sees it.
Lourdes sucks in a squeaky breath. “Oh my God. Oh my God. They’re dead!”
“It’s fine,” I tell Lourdes. “We’re fine. Some fatalities were expected, remember?”
“But not like this!” she protests.
Oddly enough, several of the bodies—the intact ones, anyway—aren’t even dressed for swimming. There’s a woman in a tight, copper-colored ball gown with ruffles near her bare feet. Mermaid, I think the style is called, ironically enough. One man is in a tux, bow tie still in place, and another wears what looks like a set of pajamas, matching top and bottom in a shiny dark blue fabric. Which means they weren’t in the pool when this happened, or they weren’t expecting to be in the pool but died close enough to it to be absorbed in the water when the gravity generator gave way. It’s hard to say exactly what sequence of events is the right one.
Red encircles the head of Pajama Guy, a bloody halo in the water, now encased permanently in ice.
These people did not die from starvation. Or an environmentalsystems failure. Whatever happened here was violent and seemingly unexpected.
The little black spots creep across Mama’s cheek, like mold spreading over bread. And I try to wash them off, but her skin is so cold…
I squeeze my eyes shut for a moment and shake my head to clear the image.
“Mutiny?” Nysus asks.
Voller scoffs. “On a luxury ship? These assholes rebelled because, what, their sheets weren’t soft enough? They paid to be here.”
“It could have been crew,” Nysus points out.
“Right,” Voller says. “Sure. ‘We don’t have equal access to theswimming pool in space,so let’s grab a fire ax and chop this guy’s arm off.’” He shakes his head in disgust. “No, no way, man. It was a cush job. I’ve seen the videos. Crew quarters were double, triple what we got here. Plus real food.”
“If something went wrong in the environmentals, it’s possible they were suffering from hypoxia or—” Nysus continues.
“Since when does hypoxia turn you into a fucking homicidal maniac?” Voller demands.
“No one knows what happened,” Nysus says, sounding a little frosty at being questioned. “CitiFutura called off the search after a year, and they never announced any kind of official explanation. Here, look.”
One of the monitors flashes away from the view of theAurorato a screen of text, a piece from the Forum’s treasure trove, undoubtedly:
Aurora Search and Rescue Ends
