Chapter 13: THE SCOPULI
The Scopuli drifted like a corpse in the black.
No running lights. No transponder signal. No movement except the slow tumble of a ship that had lost all power and most of its structural integrity. Hull breaches gaped along the port side, frozen atmosphere crystallized around the wounds like scar tissue.
"Mother of God," Alex whispered from the pilot's seat.
Holden leaned forward, knuckles white on the console. "Life signs?"
"Negative." Naomi's voice was flat, professional. "No thermal signatures, no power readings, no atmosphere in the main compartments. She's dead, Jim."
"We need to go aboard." Holden unbuckled his harness. "Someone sent that distress signal. If there's any chance—"
"There's no chance." Amos spoke from the back of the shuttle. "Look at her. That ship's been cold for hours. Maybe days."
"We still need to know what happened." Holden was already pulling on his vac suit. "Naomi, can you dock us?"
"No stable airlock. The docking collar's gone." She studied her screens. "I can get us close. EVA approach."
I reached for my own suit. "I'll take exterior sweep. Check the hull damage, look for evidence of what killed her."
Naomi glanced at me. "You have EVA certification?"
"Enough."
Her eyes held mine for a moment too long. Then she returned to her console. "Suit up. Approach in fifteen."
Space swallowed sound and color, leaving only the helmet's soft hum and the Scopuli's broken silhouette against the stars. I pushed off from the Knight's hull, maneuvering thrusters correcting my trajectory, and began my approach.
The damage told a story.
Breach one: explosive decompression, blown outward. Internal pressure failure, not external impact. Breach two: similar pattern, different section. Breach three: larger, messier, the edges twisted inward—this one was deliberate. A cutting torch, maybe, or a shaped charge.
Someone had opened this ship like a can.
I documented everything, camera capturing details that would matter later. No meteor strike. No collision damage. No signs of the kind of catastrophic failure that killed ships accidentally.
The Scopuli had been murdered.
"Kwame." Amos's voice in my helmet. "We're going in through the cargo bay. You joining?"
"On my way."
I found the cargo bay access and cycled through what remained of the emergency airlock. Amos waited inside, his headlamp cutting through the frozen darkness. His expression was the particular blank that meant he was thinking thoughts he wouldn't share.
"Interior sweep first," I said. "Watch for bodies."
"Always do."
We moved through the ship in coordinated silence. The crew quarters held the first casualties—three figures in emergency positions, hands frozen reaching for emergency oxygen that had never come. Decompression kills fast. They probably hadn't suffered.
I hoped they hadn't suffered.
The bridge was worse. Two more bodies, one still strapped in the command chair, the other floating near the communications console. The captain, based on the uniform fragments. And someone who'd died trying to send a message.
"Cargo hold's empty," Amos reported from ahead. "Completely stripped. Whatever was here, they took it all."
I joined him in the cavernous space. Storage racks lined the walls, every one of them bare. Magnetic clamps designed to hold containers showed no signs of damage—the cargo hadn't been ripped away. It had been unloaded. Carefully, deliberately.
"This was a heist," Amos said. "They wanted what was here."
"Agreed."
His eyes met mine through our faceplates. "You got any theories about what a ship like this would be carrying that's worth killing for?"
I did. The Scopuli had been carrying Julie Mao, daughter of Jules-Pierre Mao, unwitting host to the protomolecule sample that would reshape human civilization. But I couldn't say that.
"Nothing that makes sense," I said instead. "But whoever did this, they planned it. The distress beacon—"
"Wasn't original equipment." Naomi's voice cut through the comm. "I've traced the signal. It was added after the attack. Someone wanted this ship found."
A lure. A trap.
And we'd walked right into it.
I found the crew roster in the galley, printed on a laminated card and tacked to the bulkhead. Seven names. Seven people who'd woken up one morning expecting another routine haul, not knowing they'd be dead by evening.
Mao. D. Dresden. T. Kwan. M. Espinoza. R. Chen. A. Williamson. S. Hernandez.
Julie Mao. The daughter who'd run from her family's money and found herself caught in something far worse than corporate politics. She wasn't among the bodies we'd found—she'd been taken, along with the cargo. Taken to Eros, where she'd become something else entirely.
I read each name. Memorized them. These people deserved to be remembered, even if only by someone who couldn't explain how he knew their story.
"Kwame." Holden's voice in my helmet. "We're wrapping up. Back to the Knight."
"Copy that."
I took one last look at the roster, then pushed off toward the airlock.
The Knight's cabin was crowded with six people processing different flavors of shock. Shed sat in a corner, medical kit open but forgotten, his face pale. Alex stared out the viewport at nothing. Holden paced, working through something in his head.
Naomi pulled up sensor data on the main display. "I've been tracking some anomalies since we left the Canterbury. Thought it was interference from the ring dust. It's not."
"What is it?" Holden stopped pacing.
"I don't know. Ghost contacts, maybe. They appear and disappear, no consistent signature." She enhanced a section of the display. "But they're moving in formation. And they're heading toward—"
The display updated.
The contacts were vectoring toward the Canterbury's position.
"That's not ghost interference," I said. "Those are ships."
Naomi looked at me sharply. "How do you—"
"Because ghost contacts don't move in tactical formations." I pointed at the screen, keeping my voice level despite the ice in my gut. "Whatever those things are, they're real. And they're heading for the Canterbury."
Holden was already at the comm console. "Canterbury, this is Knight. Captain McDowell, do you read? We've detected unknown contacts on approach to your position. Recommend immediate evasive action. Canterbury, respond."
Static. The particular silence of a channel with no one on the other end.
"Canterbury, this is Knight. Do you read?"
Nothing.
"Jim." Alex's voice was hollow. "Long-range sensors are showing thermal bloom. Big one. Right where the Canterbury should be."
The display updated again. Where the Canterbury had been drifting, waiting for their return, there was now a rapidly expanding cloud of debris and radiation.
No one spoke.
The Canterbury was gone.
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