Drios sipped her coffee slowly, sitting on the edge of her bed after a short sleep. She had been on a long stint in the outskirts of Stanton, deep in the asteroid field. Salvage and data recovery were not her first choice of odd jobs, but a freelancer like her had to diversify contracts in dry seasons to make ends meet. Hmpf.. seasons in space! The irony was not lost on her.
Her latest target was to check up on an area deep in the asteroid belt, after receiving a distress signal. She had been listening for random signals for days when this one popped up on her screen and she knew right away what it was. Rogue miners blowing up. They had probably gotten involved in a big scuffle and typically very few were left alive to tell the story after that.
Actually, come to think it, she never found anyone alive in situations like these, simply because in such a cutthroat line of business – illegal mining that is – there was no room for mercy. The winner takes all as the old saying goes.
Heading there was a chore, scanning, flying in one direction or the other until you could pinpoint the blackbox signal getting stronger and stronger and you could successfully triangulate the location of the wreck site. By that time, considering how signals traverse space, it was very unlikely to find anything intact, only some shielded parts, data disks and if she was really lucky, some mining cargo.
She had to be picky though, ’cause her Starrunner didn’t really have a lot of space for big parts. The proper salvage crews would later pay for this kind of information, where to collect shipwrecks, even some medical scavengers would be in on it to harvest organs. Grim, but such was the ecosystem in space. Every organism needed its antibodies and cleaning crew.
A few hours later she’d found the signal. On reaching there, her suspicions were confirmed, nobody alive, and a whole lotta metal spread all over the place. Everything had the markings of a proper bloodbath, imagine miners cutting up ships instead of asteroids. A lot of them were crazy suicidal too, they’d ram each other until both parties would blow up in a huge blue splash. Followed by endless silence.
After carefully scanning the area and keeping her signature low, Drios – now convinced she was indeed alone – set off to look for small items which could be picked directly by hand or by the multi-tool’s tractor beam. After a painstaking survey in EVA mode, she had to admit this had been a poor haul by any account, nothing of significant value on first glance. Only a few disks left still intact. The crew was in pieces, literally, and in such a gruesome state that she didn’t even see the point to call a medical salvage crew later. Biowaste.
She filled the storage with the few things found, one cute teddy among them, then scanned around the area to see what the whole debacle had been about. As it turned out, a small Quantanium yield from a nearby asteroid. Crazy miners. They fought over so little, just to chip away a little bit of ArcCorp’s wealth and paid with their lives.
Tired from all the days’ work, she set cruise mode outside the asteroid belt, engaged stealth and went to sleep, drifting away in the night. A few nightmares in, a creaky noise woke her up. She wasn’t superstitious at all, but every time around the Day of the Vara, the nightmares were more common and her sleep pattern was very jumpy. It could have very well been an overly active subconscious during this time, allowing for a sense of dread and horror to creep into her psyche.
Better have a glass of milk and get back to sleep to get a good rest, she decided. As she got back, she noticed the teddy on the chair in her room and smiled, wondering when she’d brought it to her room. Must’ve been sleep walking.
The next morning Drios went for coffee, ready for a new day filled with decryption work on the data recovered. The logs recovered from the miners were mostly a waste of time, but one of the pirates’ logs contained a rather interesting piece of information about a hidden stash which warranted a deeper investigation. Around lunch time she made herself a cup of instant noodles, and what better to wash it down than another cup of coffee! Such a stereotypical hacker.
As she was getting the capsule ready, her hand reached to the right to push the start button, only to meet the fluffy teddy, which was patiently waiting by the coffee machine. She laughed, finding it amusing during hacking sessions she had become so absent minded to move the teddy around all over the place. It reminded her of childhood and how much she lacked growing up in Lorville, such a dreadful industrial city, where your parents were never around due to double-shifts just to make ends meet.
Snapping back to reality, the data logs revealed a lot more mining locations info that she could sell off to the highest bidders, on the clean data market and on the black market as well. But the hidden treasure part, she wanted to keep for herself.
Another day gone by, rather successfully she mused, after the new discoveries. This time on purpose, she went to look for the teddy and take it to her room, but it was nowhere to be found. That raised an eyebrow but she was so tired that nothing could stand between her and the bed.
Over the course of the night, a repetitive creaking noise got closer and closer to her with increasing intensity until it woke her up. She was fully alert in a matter of seconds and looked around, listening intently. The noise had stopped so the source was impossible to trace, but this time around, she discounted the nightmare explanation. It felt real.
The air in the room was cold, and her breath was exhaling steam which was very unusual. Life support was working normally last time she checked. Shivering badly, she got out of bed and reached for her gun, then went out as fast as possible to the ship console to check the systems, grabbing her undersuit from the locker along the way. She ran diagnostics and even sent out pocket repair drones.
All reports came back normal, there was no damage to the hull, no life support malfunction, oxygen levels normal, but something was definitely off. Strangely, while breathing on the bridge, there was no steam coming out of her mouth. Better take no chances, Drios pondered, then put on the undersuit and the helmet thrown on the pilot’s chair the night before. All suited up now she went back in the ship’s entrails, manually inspecting the major components without ever finding the source of the noise or any logical reason her room was so cold. Back to the source in that case, she headed down the corridor to the sleeping quarters, one eye on the oxygen levels and the other on the temperature reading.
Up until opening the door to her room, things were quite normal, but after that, the situation took a bad turn. Lights were off, the chilling sensation came back, and on top of it all, she felt cold in the undersuit itself while her nostrils were exhaling steam, making her vision blurry inside the helmet. The oxygen levels in the room were normal but the temperature had dropped below -10 Celsius and continued to decrease.
This was completely unexpected, she’d never had steam clouding her vision inside the helmet and realized the phenomenon experienced was out of the ordinary. A quick hand drone inspected the room and life support systems, reporting normal levels again against all odds, but dropped motionless suddenly while passing by the bed.
Unfogging her vision was difficult, so Drios had to make a judgement call and removed her helmet. Her face froze, hair and eyelashes turned white instantly and shivers ran down her spine at that instant. Against better judgement, she unholstered her gun, hands shaking badly and came closer to the bed.
Just there in the middle of her bed, lay the cute little teddy bear, eyes glistening eerily in the darkness. There was a flashback of all her memories of the toy and how she found it in one of the miners’ ships, then how it kept popping up in odd places all over the ship. She’d never taken it out of the cargo hold…
She could barely breathe now due to the cold air, struggling with the thought of putting her helmet back on and throwing down the gun. She fell on her knees, having difficulty breathing and staying conscious. With a very unsteady hand she raised the gun at eye level and aimed at the bed. Then, everything went dark.
Drios woke up sprawled face down on the floor inside her room, lights back on, still clutching the gun in her hand. Her limbs felt heavy like lead, cold and very stiff. Raising her head slowly, she struggled to remember why she was there. A quick glance revealed a burn mark on her bed, where the laser had hit. The teddy lay there heavily charred along with the mattress. The gun had been on max setting, but didn’t breach through the wall.
Hours later, with a massive headache and body soreness, still recovering from the ordeal, Drios decided to toss the charred remains of the teddy out the airlock. She couldn’t comprehend what had just happened and just wanted to put this story behind her. There were contracts to fulfill and treasure to be found. Drifting was in her blood and nothing would scare her out of it.
As the spaceship moved away, with the coffee addict pilot at the helm, a creaking sound remained unheard in the vastness of space. The teddy bear moved its small limbs, looking brand new, like out of an ArcCorp souvenir shop and cracked a smile.