Airlock

“Enya, this is Hospital One. Report.”

Captain Hodge of the Hospital One waystation waited for the response of the Angel Class Rescue frigate, the Enya, out on a routine distress call.

“Hospital One, this is the Enya.”

“Lieutenant Arlen. What’s out there?”

“Just a pipship, Sir. There’s no respon…”

“Arlen, this communication is being recorded and Central is not fond of slang,” Hodge said.

“Sorry, Sir. It’s a research vessel, Sir. The Shepherd Moon. There’s no response, Sir. We’re latching onto the airlock now.”

‘Keep me posted.” Hodge shut off the com.

What was a research vessel doing out in the Oberlin System? Oberlin was still under dispute in Earthside court. Everyone wanted to claim it, but it belonged to the Laria. Until an agreement could be reached, it was off limits to humans.

“Sir?” Lieutenant Arlen chirped in on the com. “We’re aboard the Shepherd Moon – you’re gonna want to have a look at this…”

“Bring it up.”

The images on the the Hospital One monitors were unlike anything Hodge had ever seen before. The emergency airlock on the Shepherd Moon housed three badly battered escape shuttles. The walls and floor were smeared in blood, as if they had just missed a violent murder, only there were no bodies. The view from Arlen’s helmet cam showed the rest of the crew gaping around in shock, standing in a haze of fine white powder. Arlen ordered the crew to search the ship in pairs, and then sound off every minute.

“Good plan,” Hodge said. “I’ll get a surgical team on standby.”

“What the hell…?” said someone from Arlen’s team. The image on the screen showed the central hallway of the pipship, its floor covered in drifts of the same white powder that was stirred up in the airlock.

“Any survivors?” Hodge asked. He waited for a response as they checked the various rooms and labs in the hallway. The rescue crew had a hard time keeping their footing in the pools of blood on the floor.

“It looks like the ship was abandoned,” Arlen said. “ But all the escape shuttles are accounted for. We’ll keep searching.”

The crew went through their routine, searching section by section for the scientists who should’ve been on board. Hodge watched their video feeds on his monitors.

Arlen nearly tripped over a dead woman in the command bridge.

“Found one,” Arlen said. He felt for a pulse. “Dead. Severe head trauma.”

“I see that. She’s holding something,” Hodge said. “In her left hand - see it?”

“Yeah, I got it. It looks like a whirlycam. And the com panel is active. It looks like she was trying to get a message out.”

“I haven’t seen a whirlycam since I was a kid. Bring it back. It may have recorded something useful. Be quick, Arlen. Something’s not right.”

“I agree, Sir.”

Hodge replayed the original distress message.

‘This is Captain Remy Felton, requesting immediate assistance. Hull breach – life support failure imminent.’ Co-ordinates leading to the ship followed.

But there was no hull breach. The co2 scrubbers were working fine – there was plenty of oxygen. And it looked like Inashi died trying to get a message out on that whirlycam. Hodge put a clean up crew on stand-by until the rescue crew came back and he could determine what happened on the Shepherd Moon…


The whirly cam Arlen pryed out of the dead woman's hands was just like the one Hodge had as a boy - a golf-ball-sized orb that hovered above it's owner's head and recorded everything that happened around that person. The software had been upgraded since then, but the concept was the same - hold it up, press a button, and the orb acted like a second set of eyes. It was a first person point of view, without the hassle of having to hold a camera. Of course, in his day, whirlycams hovered using rotors to keep them aloft. Newer versions, like this this one, relied on magnetic field generators for flight and they were much more vigilant in keeping up with the movements of their subjects.

When Captain Hodge accessed Inashi's whirlycam through the Hospital One interface, he saw about thirty seconds of footage of a dark haired woman sitting on a leather couch with a little boy laying in her lap. She was stroking his hair and giggling as the boy sang a silly song about lambs jumping over moons. Then, after a second of static, the message she was trying to send from the research vessel snapped into view.

Shepherd Moon message attachment:
This is Dr. Elsa Inashi of the research vessel Shepherd Moon. The Captain sent out a distress call – you must disregard that order! There is a contagion aboard this ship. I repeat: there is a contagion aboard…”

Hodge shut the message off and ordered the rescue crew quarantined. Air circulation was tested for contaminants every time a crew came back, but he ordered it again, just in case. He ordered the contaminant sensors recalibrated. He turned the message back on.

Whirlycam journal: Dr. Elsa Inashi…
‘I need to get my head clear and start at the beginning. I’m in the lab now, testing samples of the spores on the ship. I should be safe for a while - I locked access to this sector.'

Inashi was a beautiful woman: silken brown hair pulled back in a tight ponytail, hazel eyes set in a harshly angled face, full lips, naturally shaded and colored without a fleck of makeup. Thanks to the whirlycam, only glimpses of her face came into view, when she moved too quickly for the software to catch up. She was in a lab, typical on a ship like the Shepherd Moon - all metal and glass, sharp edges, and miscellaneous medical gadgets hanging on the walls.

'Umm, let’s see…Yesterday morning Clive came back in from doing a routine outer hull inspection. He came to the sickbay, he said he had a sudden and severe headache. Pressure changes from coming in and out of an airlock can trigger sinus headaches, so I didn’t think much of it. I prescribed a pain reliever and some bedrest.'

She was looking into a microscope.

'Looking back, I realize that that was one of the symptoms of the infection. Looking at these fungal spores, it seems that they have some sort of hooks or barbs that allow them to attach to skin and nasal membranes. I can only guess that once they’ve infected someone, they release some sort of toxin that reaches the brain. The reaction to this toxin is paranoia, irrational behavior, violent tendencies. At least, that’s what I saw in Clive when I was called to his quarters after I’d released him. He was standing in the corner, ranting and screaming. He was scratching his arms and pulling out his hair. I tried to administer a sedative, but he knocked it out of my hand and tried to choke me. Leland pulled him off me, but then he… oh god, he…' Inashi fell into a fit of stifled sobs. 'He tore Leland’s eyes out...!’


‘I managed to wrestle Clive to the floor and got the sedative in him. Leland’s eyes were destroyed - he was screaming in agony. I patched him up as best as I could. I was calling for help the whole time, but no one was answering coms. I ran down to the sickbay for a hover-stretcher.

When I came back, Clive and Leland were gone.’

To be continued...