Author's Note:
Many, many thanks for the very kind ratings and comments on Cherry's story so far. Really glad folks seem to be enjoying it! Plenty more to come.
***
There was no response to their attempts at communication and it took over an hour to execute the manual docking. Scans showed E16 was completely without power and they had no way to open the shuttle bay doors remotely. Their only way in was to dock manually to one of the external hatches.
It was a complicated and dangerous series of procedures and maneuvers that were all new to Cherry and she struggled to keep her focus on them. Despite her best efforts, her mind couldn't help trying to make sense of the data it was presented with.
With no power readings, that meant no life support. No way for Tor or Fem to breath. George's scanners, admittedly not the most advanced, registered no signs of life whatsoever. Even if Tor and Fem had managed to get themselves into emergency suits, she should have been picking up some faint heat signatures but there was nothing at all coming from E16. Going by the sensor readings, she could have been sitting there like this for a thousand years.
Still, Cherry couldn't bring herself to accept the obvious conclusion from this data. Neither could Heb. He was utterly focused on the task at hand and Cherry was grateful for his calm and professional demeanor.
As Heb operated the controls, making the many manual adjustments necessary to sync George's course with E16's spin, Cherry monitored their position and called out sensor data to assist him.
Finally, they felt the soft impact of contact with the mothership and the thump of the docking clamps engaging. The lights on her panel indicated a safe, hard seal. Heb rose from the pilot's station with intent and focus in his eyes. Cherry was sure she saw fear there as well but her Captain was doing his best to conceal it for her benefit.
"Come on. Let's see what the hell is going on here," he declared.
They suited up and used the manual controls to gain entry to E16. They found their home in complete darkness. Tools and personal items floated here and there, untethered by the artificial gravity that was offline. They stood for a moment at the open airlock, only the light of their helmet torches showing the way.
"We've got to get to the bridge," Heb announced and began moving slowly forward, magnetic boots keeping him on the floor.
It took Cherry a moment to make herself follow. A terror that she had never known threatened to consume her and every time she closed her eyes she couldn't help picturing the frozen bodies of her missing shipmates drifting lifeless in front of her.
But as they made their way to the bridge, they saw nothing but the floating detritus of their lives and the bridge itself was as empty and silent as the rest of the ship.
Heb moved to a panel near the back of the space where Cherry knew the emergency power controls were. In a few seconds, lights began to flicker and her helmet's external microphones captured the sounds of air being pumped out of the vents once again.
"There," Heb announced, turning around and removing his helmet as the bridge's dim emergency lighting pushed back the darkness just a little. "I've got us hooked up to the shuttle's power, should be enough for life support and a few critical systems for a couple of hours anyway."
Without needing to be told, Cherry moved quickly to a workstation, removing her own helmet as she went, and brought up the controls for E16's internal scanners and sensors. As she feared though, they showed no signs of life anywhere on board.
"Fuck!" Her fist came crashing down on the panel in front of her as her fear threatened to get the better of her until she felt Heb's calming hand on her shoulder.
"It's OK Cherry, we'll find them," he said, as reassuringly as he could.
"Now," he went on quickly, "with the internal cameras still down, I'll have to make a visual inspection of the ship. While I'm doing that I want you to see if you can call up sensor logs, camera logs, anything that could tell us what happened to Tor and Fem."
"Aye, aye Skip. On it," she replied, snapped back to focus through Heb's influence once again. "We know they were here 34 hours ago, they responded to our message when we left Gasprol, so I'll start there and work forward."
"OK. Call me if you find anything. Use the suit comms, ship's comms is still down."
Alone now on the bridge, Cherry worked quickly. She needed to use all her still limited understanding of E16 and her various systems to search for the automatic CCTV recordings of activity on board and to divert power as she needed it to play the recorded video. It didn't take her long to discover what she was looking for and she called Heb immediately.
"Hey Skip, you can come back up here. You're not going to find them."
"On my way," came the immediate reply and Heb was standing beside her only a minute or two later.
Together, they viewed the internal camera recordings that showed Tor and Fem heading to the galley around eight hours previously. They had just completed their work on removing the broken coil and were taking a break, but before they reached the galley a proximity warning brought them back to the bridge.
Cherry and Heb both noted the unease they could hear in Tor's voice when he commented that George had made good time. He must have known it couldn't have been them, must have known that it was too soon. And he must have known that every other alternative spelled danger.
What Tor clearly suspected but couldn't have known for certain, but Cherry and Heb could now see from the recordings of the external cameras, was that it certainly was danger and with a very large capital D.
The ship they could see in the recording, approaching E16 with quiet, slow menace, was something neither of them had ever seen before. It was massive: incredibly long, perhaps a kilometer or more, yet slender, widening as it went aft.
Despite the absence of light to be reflected, Cherry could have sworn it glinted. Like a giant ice pick in space.
They returned to the bridge feed recording and saw that Tor and Fem's reaction to the intruder was much the same as theirs and they went about doing what Cherry and Heb might have done themselves: trying to scan the new ship, trying to make contact. Without engines, attempting an escape was pointless.
And then Cherry and Heb saw a bright flash suddenly fill the screen for just a moment before everything went black.
Feverishly, Cherry went through every sensor and camera log on the ship only to find they all blacked out at precisely the same moment.
