The Voyager and the derelict ship moved as one. Both were in synchronized orbit around Cautlus like twin slow dancers in perfect sync.

Juno, Mackenzie, and Hadden awaited disembarkment in the airlock. Soundlessly, the room was depressurizing at the hands of experienced, nervous, technicians. One slip up would be fatal for those inside.

The feeling of weight in the room dissipated. Then all sound faded. Only their steady, worried breaths remained, slow and rhythmic and hot inside their helmets. Soundlessly, the exit door slid first outward, and then creeped upwards revealing the world outside.

Empty space met them.

“Entering Zero G in three seconds,” Pressly said. The airlock door was open. The crew was exposed to the elements of wild space. The derelict ship waited just a slight hop away.

Eventually, Juno felt gravity’s downward pressure completely release. Suddenly, her feet were free and she hovered off the ground. Excitement? Fear? She didn’t know which was taking over.

Marine training had regular Zero G practice, as well as drill spacewalks. She’d even done a couple real space walks, but they never sat right with her. It felt unnatural, and open space was a void of danger she could not muster herself to face.

It was just a small skip across a foot wide gap, but still, Juno was afraid. The thought of slipping, and falling into the endless void, drifting forever alone until her suit functions slowly died one by one, was haunting.

“Hopping across,” Hadden said, kicking off the side of the entry door. He floated over so simply, like he weighed nothing.

The derelict ship had no airlock bay like the Voyager. There was only a flat surface with simple hand grips near a naked door. Hadden didn’t seem to mind Zero G. He casually gripped the door handle to stay attached to the ship, but otherwise, floated in midair without a second concern.

“Looks like whatever operated this ship was humanoid,” he noted, because of the hand holds and design.

“It’s probably an Aratid ship,” Juno guessed, still clinging to the Voyager like a baby monkey to a tree limb. Mackenzie didn’t have the same fear of space, either. She stood haphazardly at the edge of the exit bay, half hanging into the void.

“Not likely, ma’am. Aratids aren’t exactly humanoid,” she corrected. Juno didn’t know much about alien life. That much was apparent to the other two.

“I assumed all intelligent life was humanoid,” Juno said.

“Not these guys. They’re giant crabs,” Mackenzie said, wiggling her fingers at Juno as if Juno was a child she was trying to spook. She’s having fun. At least someone is.

“Yes, ma’am. And ugly suckers if I can say so myself. Command bridge. Door inhibitors are on. Is there a way to contact the ship somehow to let us in, or will we have to get tactical?”

“I hear you, Specialist Hadden. Currently, there’s no response. If you want in, you’ll have to get crafty.”

“Don’t blow a hole in the airlock, Specialist,” Juno warned. He laughed.

“Yes, ma’am.”

Around the edge of the door, where a docking terminal would connect and lock in a compression state, there was a band of insulating rubber. Hadden searched around it until he found a bundle of wires which he ripped out. He fiddled with them for a moment.

Lights on the doors flickered. Suddenly, spurts of smoky gas shot from little holes all over the exterior of the airlock chamber. It was a delicate dance of smoke puffs escaping in elaborate sequences. Then, the doors gently opened, breaking in the middle and splitting apart. Hadden climbed inside.

That was impressive, Juno noted.

Mackenzie hopped the short gap playfully, gliding peacefully, arms wide in grace half flying, half falling into the derelict airlock.

Juno’s nervous eyes checked the gap another time, then once more. It’s small. Just do it.

Before she jumped, Juno stole a deep breath. Then, she kicked away from the exit bay, and hovered helplessly across. Her heart jumped against her chest as the gap passed beneath her feet. She got a flash of the planet. The sight almost made her gasp.

Softly crashing into the side of the airlock, Juno scrambled for the airlock safety handles like a frightened cat clinging to someone’s shirt.

She’d made it, but embarrassment flooded her. What if the others saw her like this? Her pride tasted bad when she swallowed. No time for that.

After Juno climbed in, the airlock closed behind them unexpectedly.

In a panic, Juno called out to the pilots, “The door shut behind us,”

“It’s probably the ship AI. It knows you’re aboard. The ship’s lighting up inside. Everything’s turning on. Don’t worry, it either thinks you’re the crew, or it’s trying to assist you.”

“Or, it trapped us like rats in a cage,” Mackenzie said to herself. Juno felt that.

Lights flickered on in the compression chamber. Through the thick glass windows of the entry door, the boarding party could see lights flickering to life in the hall too, one by one.

Then the room started to compress. Sound reemerged, air entering the room in a hiss before the doors to the ship opened. The three of them slowly drifted to the floor, feet tapping against the metallic base of the compression chamber. Then, their spines compressed like normal. Gravity had been restored.

Juno breathed easy. Now that she had her legs back, her confidence returned.

“Alright. Now that’s over.” Juno was the first to step out onto the ship. Her legs were wobbly.

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“You don’t like space walks?” Hadden asked.

“That’s a hard no. Watched a recruit float off into space once. It still gives me nightmares.”

“Yikes.”

“What happened to her?” Mackenzie asked.

“She’s alright. It was a training program. A drill sergeant rescued her with a propulsion pack. Afterwards, she wished he hadn’t. He had her repeating the space walk forty times in a day.” Juno nodded at the door, “How’d you learn to do that, Hadden?”

“I was a Ground Specialist before this, ma’am. We spent a lot of time boarding ships like this. Humanoid forms are all similar. They like things at eye level. They like to walk around. They steer the ship with their hands. I figured these guys designed the doors like us, too.”

“Good thinking, Sergeant.”

“Thank you… Ma’am,” he added quickly.

“Ground specialist huh? Does that mean you can do it too, Mackenzie?”

“Me? No, ma’am. I leave the technical stuff to the pretty one. I’m all muscle.” Juno laughed noiselessly. She liked the sound of that.

A sanitized white hall waited ahead, leading to a separation of paths. Far at the end of the hall they spotted another door, but two different halls led elsewhere on either side.

The hall was white with a black floor. Tiny windows broke the monotony, looking out onto the stars. They gleamed under the pure fluorescence.

“It seems like you’re right. These halls are designed for a species like us,” Juno noted as the trio clomped down the hall in their heavy suits. “Could this be a human ship?”

“Not likely. This is pretty far out of the human systems. Clear across the galaxy. I’d be surprised if we found anything human-like.”

“I’ve never seen a ship like this. You’re right though, Commander. It’s eerily human.”

Juno woke her HoloGlass with a tap to her wrist. “Connect me with Pressly.” The watch happily chirped twice. In case comms get cut, she told herself.

The door they’d spotted earlier was the cockpit. Peering through the glass confirmed this. Empty space suits sat in the three pilot’s seats, each with a big monitor and console to boot.

She would’ve thought the space suits were bodies if they had any shape. As they were, the suits resembled deflated tube worms with glass helmets.

The consoles helped steer the ship. Lights blinked on and off across their faces. One display had a squiggly line jumping up and down on it. A giant glass porthole framed the frozen Cautlus, its massive red splotch taking up most of the image from this angle.

“Cockpit. No one’s inside,” Juno relayed to both the team and the Voyager.

“Where’d everybody go?”

“Looks like they’re gone. Could’ve scuttled the ship and hopped off board. Voyager, look for any signs on Cautlus. Any beacons, or strange signals. And contact any nearby Mayboys to do the same. The crew might have abandoned ship and ended up planetside.”

“Man, this is creepy.” Mackenzie checked the hall behind them, just in case something was creeping up.

Two halls led away from each other and the cockpit. “Alright, split up. You two take that hall. Notify me if you find a body.”

“Yes ma’am.”

“Keep your eyes open for text anywhere. On halls, cargo, wherever,” Juno reminded as the two split.

Juno hovered around the cockpit for a moment longer. There might be ship logs inside, she could have translated. Maybe even an equivalent to a black box, or flight recorder. She could rip it out and send it back to the ship. If only there was a way inside.

She moved on.

Everything was white, black and silver, gleaming under the light. Every door on the ship was closed, but they each had a thick glass viewing panel Juno used to peek inside.

A door in the same hall protected a bland steel colored room. Inside was a ton of thick plastic boxes. A store room. It was locked too. The dim room was uninteresting. She knocked on the glass with vigor just to make sure someone wasn’t alive and hiding somewhere within.

Looking for text on the walls, or floor was futile. All of the displays were holographic. Little beads in the door panels shot light out to create complex three dimensional shapes. It was all electronic.

“Ma’am. Looks like we found some kind of bunk room.”

“Can you get inside? All of the doors on this side are hard locked so far.”

“Yes, ma’am. We’re inside now. Looks like a crew of ten were here. There’s some stuff lying around that could identify the species, little toys, or icons or something. I found some stuff with symbols on it. No bodies.

“Something weird though, Commander. There are clothes everywhere, like someone took a drawer and threw out all of the stuff inside. There is some kind of white powder all over the place. Maybe a kind of disinfectant or something.”

“Alright, don’t touch any of it. Grab anything clean that will help us identify the species, and grab anything that looks important. If we can find a way to get the AI to open these doors, we can get the flight logs in the cockpit. Keep searching.”

“Will do. One more thing. There’s a room in the back here. It looks like a storage closet, but it’s locked tight. I can’t really see inside. There’s a keypad on the door. Maybe I can tap some numbers and open it?”

“If it looks like a storage closet it probably is. Does it have symbols on it?”

“Yes. Definitely not human.”

“Scan them and send them to the ship. Don’t bother opening it.”

“Yes, ma’am. Scanning now.” The radio went silent for a while afterwards.

In the solemn quiet, Juno wandered the empty halls. What was it like when the ship was full of life, she couldn’t help but think. The ship was filled with memories that could not speak. What were they wanting to say? What was the mystery here?

Something was odd. She felt a presence onboard, as if there was some stranger lurking who at any moment would come stepping through the halls. She’d give chase after them only to find they’d disappeared without a trace.

At the end of the hall another hallway pointed back towards the Voyager. It was adjacent to the airlock. Juno recalled the ship’s house shape. Down that hall was a series of fat box shaped rooms if she remembered correctly. But across from the storage room there was another door.

This one looked important, with a green stripe down its center.

When Juno peered through its tiny window, she saw what looked like a radio room. The walls were simple, vanilla colored. A console reached from wall to wall. Lights flashed absently over its face, relaying information to no one. A monitor glowed at its center. More white powder and scraps of something else polluted its light.

She also spied a conspicuous round steel hole beside the monitor. A ring of lights echoed from inside. Its dull glow seemed to pulse gently.

It was an AI port. This is the AI core. Excitedly, Juno looked for a way in. A fat buttoned keylock secured the door. Yes, Juno thought. The AI core should have its memory intact. She could eject the AI into a carrier and take it. It would tell all.

Juno pressed a random button to see what it would do. Behind the rubber, a red backlight glowed hellishly, then faded. Juno clicker her comms.

“I found the AI core. But it’s locked away. The ship is in full lockdown.”

“That’s strange,” replied Pressly, “With the crew gone, who’d lock down the ship? I wonder if there is another way to interface with the AI aboard. If you can contact it, and scan whatever it tells you, we can translate a communication line to you. You might be able to get the AI to unlock all the doors,” Pressly added. Juno was pleasantly surprised by his technical prowess.

“Right. Good thinking, Pressly. I’ll keep looking.” She knocked on the glass with her knuckle before leaving. “I’ll be coming back for you.”