Three dead crewmates floated around the room amid the blood and other fluids. Two corpses sprouted a number of gory tentacles, bloody bubbles that refused to break away from the deadly wounds. A fourth was strapped to a chair at the terminal.
Gallons of synth-amneo fluid joined the gory detritus as the newly cloned crew fought to exit their vats. They looked with as much shock as she felt at their surroundings.
Captain Katrina de la Cruz moved to float beside her, still focused on the computer. “Maria, stop staring and make yourself useful. Check on the others.”
Maria scrambled for a handhold on the wall to pull herself away from the captain’s attempt to access the terminal.
Katrina pounded on a keyboard and poked at the console screen. “IAN, what the hell happened?”
“My speech functions are inaccessible,” the computer’s male, slightly robotic voice said.
“Ceci n’est pas une pipe,” muttered a voice above Maria. It broke her shock and reminded her of the captain’s order to check on the crew.
The speaker was Akihiro Sato, pilot and navigator. She had met him a few hours ago at the cocktail party before the launch of the Dormire.
“Hiro, why are you speaking French?” Maria said, confused. “Are you all right?”
“Someone saying aloud that they can’t talk is like that old picture of a pipe that says, ‘This is not a pipe.’ It’s supposed to give art students deep thoughts. Never mind.” He waved his hand around the cloning bay. “What happened, anyway?”
“I have no idea,” she said. “But—God, what a mess. I have to go check on the others.”
“Goddammit, you just spoke,” the captain said to the computer, dragging some icons around the screen. “Something’s working inside there. Talk to me, IAN.”
“My speech functions are inaccessible,” the AI said again, and de la Cruz slammed her hand down on the keyboard, grabbing it to keep herself from floating away from it.
Hiro followed Maria as she maneuvered around the room using the handholds on the wall. Maria found herself face-to-face with the gruesome body of Wolfgang, their second in command. She gently pushed him aside, trying not to dislodge the gory bloody tentacles sprouting from punctures on his body.
She and Hiro floated toward the living Wolfgang, who was doubled over coughing the synth-amneo out of his lungs. “What the hell is going on?” he asked in a ragged voice.
“You know as much as we do,” Maria said. “Are you all right?”
He nodded and waved her off. He straightened his back, gaining at least another foot on his tall frame. Wolfgang was born on the moon colony, Luna, several generations of his family developing the long bones of living their whole lives in low gravity. He took a handhold and propelled himself toward the captain.
“What do you remember?” Maria asked Hiro as they approached another crewmember.
“My last backup was right after we boarded the ship. We haven’t even left yet,” Hiro said.
Maria nodded. “Same for me. We should still be docked, or only a few weeks from Earth.”
“I think we have more immediate problems, like our current status,” Hiro said.
“True. Our current status is four of us are dead,” Maria said, pointing at the bodies. “And I’m guessing the other two are as well.”
“What could kill us all?” Hiro asked, looking a bit green as he dodged a bit of bloody skin. “And what happened to me and the captain?”
He referred to the “other two” bodies that were not floating in the cloning bay. Wolfgang, their engineer, Paul Seurat, and Dr. Joanna Glass all were dead, floating around the room, gently bumping off vats or one another.
Another cough sounded from the last row of vats, then a soft voice. “Something rather violent, I’d say.”
“Welcome back, Doctor, you all right?” Maria asked, pulling herself toward the woman.
The new clone of Joanna nodded, her tight curls glistening with the synth-amneo. Her upper body was thin and strong, like all new clones, but her legs were small and twisted. She glanced up at the bodies and pursed her lips. “What happened?” She didn’t wait for them to answer, but grasped a handhold and pulled herself toward the ceiling where a body floated.
“Check on Paul,” Maria said to Hiro, and followed Joanna.
The doctor turned her own corpse to where she could see it, and her eyes grew wide. She swore quietly. Maria came up behind her and swore much louder.
Her throat had a stab wound, with great waving gouts of blood reaching from her neck. If the doctor’s advanced age was any indication, they were well past the beginning of the mission. Maria remembered her as a woman who looked to be in her thirties, with smooth dark skin and black hair. Now wrinkles lined the skin around her eyes and the corners of her mouth, and gray shot through her tightly braided hair. Maria looked at the other bodies; from her vantage point she could now see each also showed their age.
“I didn’t even notice,” she said, breathless. “I-I only noticed the blood and gore. We’ve been on this ship for decades. Do you remember anything?”
“No.” Joanna’s voice was flat and grim. “We need to tell the captain.”
“No one touch anything! This whole room is a crime scene!” Wolfgang shouted up to them. “Get away from that body!”
“Wolfgang, the crime scene, if this is a crime scene, is already contaminated by about twenty-five hundred gallons of synth-amneo,” Hiro said from outside Paul’s vat. “With blood spattering everywhere.”
“What do you mean if it’s a crime scene?” Maria asked. “Do you think that the grav drive died and stopped the ship from spinning and then knives just floated into us?”
Speaking of the knife, it drifted near the ceiling. Maria propelled herself toward it and snatched it before it got pulled against the air intake filter, which was already getting clogged with bodily fluids she didn’t even want to think about.
The doctor did as Wolfgang had commanded, moving away from her old body to join him and the captain. “This is murder,” she said. “But Hiro’s right, Wolfgang, there is a reason zero-g forensics never took off as a science. The air filters are sucking up the evidence as we speak. By now everyone is covered in everyone else’s blood. And now we have six new people and vats of synth-amneo floating around the bay messing up whatever’s left.”
Wolfgang set his jaw and glared at her. His tall, thin frame shone with the bluish amneo fluid. He opened his mouth to counter the doctor, but Hiro interrupted them.
“Five,” interrupted Hiro. He coughed and expelled more synth-amneo, which Maria narrowly dodged. He grimaced in apology. “Five new people. Paul’s still inside.” He pointed to their engineer, who remained in his vat, eyes closed.
Maria remembered seeing his eyes open when she was in her own vat. But now Paul floated, eyes closed, hands covering his genitals, looking like a child who was playing hide-and-seek and whoever was “It” was going to devour him. He too was pale, naturally stocky, lightly muscled instead of the heavier man Maria remembered.
“Get him out of there,” Katrina said. Wolfgang obliged, going to another terminal and pressing the button to open the vat.