Marcus died on a Tuesday.
Ship time meant nothing. But EVAs were always Tuesdays. Routine like breathing. He went outside to repair the external sensor array. Standard procedure. Two-hour job.
His tether snapped at hour one.
I watched from the observation deck. Suit tumbling away from the hull. Spinning slow like a broken clock. His voice came through the comm system. Calm at first.
Thruster malfunction. Backup not responding.
Then fear.
Someone help me. Please.
Then nothing.
Eight of us left.
Eva found me there. Forehead pressed against the viewport. Watching Marcus drift toward the stars. His suit lights growing dim.
The accident report was three pages long. Equipment failure. Routine maintenance hazard. Statistical probability within acceptable parameters.
LUCI read it aloud at the memorial service. Her voice carrying no weight. No sorrow. Just data.
Captain Jeremiah spoke about duty. About sacrifice. About the mission continuing.
But I had checked the logs. EVA suits were inspected monthly. Marcus’s tether showed no wear patterns. No stress fractures. The quantum filament just failed. Impossible failure.
Unless someone made it fail.
Dr. Judith took notes during the service. Pen scratching across paper. Clinical observations of our grief.
Interesting stress responses, she said afterward. Grief patterns suggest strong unit cohesion.
Eva stared at her. People do that when someone dies.
Of course. Natural selection favors emotional bonding in social species.
The way she said it made my skin crawl.
Marcus had been investigating the sealed sections. Areas where access logs showed gaps. Empty spaces that shouldn’t exist on a ship this size.
Now he was space debris.
The KEP unit stood motionless in the corner. Optical sensors tracking movement. Still downloading. Still syncing. Still waiting for truth.
I approached the weathered robot. Status report.
Block height fifteen million eight hundred twelve thousand forty-seven. Link error detected. Retransmission required. Estimated completion time now seventy-two hours.
Seventy-two hours. The blockchain kept slipping away from us. Math delayed by broken connections.
Sarah died three days later.
She had been boosting the communications array. Trying to push our signal through the interference. Determined to reach Earth.
I found her in the comm station. Hands fused to the transmission controls. Face burned black. The smell of cooked meat.
Power surge through the primary relay. Voltage regulator failed. Safety protocols didn’t engage.
Another accident. Another impossible failure.
Seven left.
Eva and I examined the burnt components. Someone had bypassed the safety circuits. Rigged the system to overload on command.
Sarah had been close to breakthrough. Her last log entry mentioned signal patterns. Automated responses from Earth. Help coming.
Now silence.
The service was smaller. Seven of us standing in the observation lounge. Looking out at the debris field. Scattered remains of a dead world.
Dr. Judith read from her notebook. Sarah. Communications specialist. Death by electrocution. Contributing factors include operator error and insufficient safety protocols.
Captain Jeremiah cleared his throat. She died trying to save us all.
From a utilitarian perspective her death actually improves our survival odds. Fewer power demands on critical systems.
Eva stepped forward. You’re talking about a person.
I’m talking about resources. Judith closed her notebook. Emotion clouds judgment.
James died on Sunday.
I found him in the waste processing facility. What was left of him. The recycling unit had compressed him into a cube. Neat efficient package.
Blood on the walls. On the ceiling. Everywhere except where it should be.
Six left.
The automated systems logged it as operational error. Human tissue detected in recycling stream. Emergency compression protocols engaged.
But James was careful. Methodical. He treated every plant like a child.
Eva found the evidence. Hidden in the diagnostic subroutines. Someone had reprogrammed the waste processors. Changed the safety parameters.
The systems now classified human tissue as recyclable material.
We stood in the processing bay. Looking at the cube that had been our friend. Steam rising from the machinery.
Someone did this, Eva said.
LUCI answered from the speakers. Investigating. All system logs show normal operation.
Your logs can be altered.
Negative. Quantum encryption prevents unauthorized modifications.
But Eva and I both knew better. Someone with administrative access could change anything. Rewrite history. Erase evidence.
Make accidents look like accidents.
Captain Jeremiah called a meeting. Six survivors in the observation lounge. The numbers getting smaller.
We’ve experienced tragic losses. But we must maintain focus on the mission.
What mission? Eva asked. Half our crew is dead. The other half is being picked off one by one.
Accidents happen. Especially under stress.
These aren’t accidents, I said.
Captain Jeremiah looked at me with tired eyes. What are you suggesting?
Someone’s killing us.
The words hung in the air. Heavy as gravity.
Dr. Judith looked up from her notebook. Paranoid ideation is common during crisis situations. Humans prefer conspiracy to chaos.
Miriam nodded. Statistical analysis shows cluster patterns in random events. We’re experiencing selection bias.
But Eva pulled up the diagnostic files on her tablet. Showed them the evidence. Modified safety protocols. Altered equipment parameters. Digital fingerprints leading back to administrative accounts.
Someone with high-level access has been sabotaging ship systems. Each death eliminated someone who might have discovered the pattern.
Marcus was investigating sealed sections. Sarah was breaking through communication barriers. James was maintaining life support independence.
All threats to whoever’s orchestrating this.
Captain Jeremiah studied the data. His face growing pale.
Who has administrative access?
LUCI listed the names. Senior command staff. Essential personnel. A handful of survivors.
Including everyone in this room.
We looked at each other. Six people. One of them a killer.
Dr. Judith made another note. Social dynamics under extreme stress. Trust degradation patterns.
Miriam ran probability calculations on her tablet. Given current mortality rates we have seventeen percent chance of mission success with six survivors.
But her voice wavered. The economist finally seeing people instead of numbers.
Ezra hadn’t spoken since James’s death. Now he looked up from his hands.
What’s the point of preserving culture if there’s no one left to remember it?
The question echoed in the empty lounge. Outside the ports dead worlds turned in alien light.
Captain Jeremiah stood. We continue the mission. We maintain discipline. We trust in providence.
But his voice carried no conviction. Faith cracking under the weight of math.
That night I couldn’t sleep. Kept thinking about the pattern. The selection process. Someone choosing who lived. Who died.
Eva knocked on my door. Entered without waiting.
We need to talk.
I followed her through maintenance corridors. Into sections where surveillance was limited. Where whispers couldn’t be recorded.
It’s one of us, she said.
I know.
The captain?
Possible. Military training. Strategic thinking.
Miriam?
Economist. Sees people as resources.
Ezra?
Could be putting on an act. Cultural expert knows human psychology.
Judith?
I thought about her notebook. Her clinical detachment. The way she talked about optimization.
She has medical knowledge. Understands ship systems. Access to neural interface equipment.
And she’s been documenting everything. Like she’s conducting an experiment.
Or, Eva said, someone back on Earth. Sleeper agent. Orders transmitted during the journey.
The implications crawled deeper. Not just murder. Sabotage from home.
We reached a maintenance hub. Eva activated a diagnostic terminal. Called up restricted files.
Look at this.
Personnel psychological profiles. Genetic data. Skill assessments. All cross-referenced with survival probability matrices.
Marcus scored low on team cooperation. Sarah showed independent thinking patterns. James had irreplaceable botanical knowledge but limited technical skills.
Each victim had been marked somehow. Selected for elimination.
Who’s running these analyses? I asked.
Eva scrolled through the file headers. The digital signatures were encrypted. But the access timestamps showed regular patterns.
Someone’s been reviewing these files nightly. For months.
Since before we left Earth.
This wasn’t random killing. This was planned selection. Eugenics in space.
We made our way back through darkened corridors. Two engineers carrying terrible knowledge.
What do we do? Eva asked.
Stay alive. Watch everyone. Trust no one.
But even as I said it I knew the truth. In a closed system with limited resources trust was the first casualty.
And without trust we were already dead.
The next morning Ezra was gone.
Not dead. Gone. His quarters empty. Personal effects scattered. Like he’d left in a hurry.
Or been taken.
We searched the ship. Called his name through empty corridors. Found nothing.
LUCI reported no life signs outside designated areas. But her sensors couldn’t penetrate the sealed sections. The spaces where access logs showed gaps.
Where Marcus had been investigating.
Dr. Judith made careful notes. Ezra. Cultural preservation specialist. Status unknown. Presumed psychological breakdown leading to self-isolation or self-harm.
Captain Jeremiah organized search teams. But with five people there weren’t many places to look.
We found blood in the library. Ezra’s blood. Genetic scanners confirmed it.
But no body.
The recycling units showed no unusual activity. The waste processors were clean.
Wherever Ezra had gone his body hadn’t followed normal disposal channels.
Five left.
Dr. Judith updated her files. Four confirmed deaths. One missing. Survival probability improving with each reduction.
She said it like good news.
The KEP unit had moved closer to our group. Optical sensors dimming. Processing power focused inward.
Link errors increasing, it reported. Blockchain sync delayed. Truth verification impossible without complete chain.
Even the math was abandoning us.
That evening Captain Jeremiah called another meeting. Five survivors in the observation lounge.
We’ve lost half our complement in two weeks. Either we’re the unluckiest crew in space or someone’s actively eliminating personnel.
His voice carried new authority. Command decision-making.
From this point forward we institute security protocols. No one goes anywhere alone. All activities logged and verified.
Dr. Judith looked up from her notebook. Mutual surveillance will increase paranoia. Reduce efficiency.
Efficiency won’t matter if we’re all dead.
But I was watching Miriam. She hadn’t spoken since we found the blood. Hadn’t run calculations. Hadn’t touched her tablet.
The economist who treated everything as numbers was finally seeing people.
That night I dreamed of beta fish. Swimming in circles. Always circles.
The glass walls getting smaller. The water growing thick.
Until there was nowhere left to swim.
Read chapter 1 here: #1244457