The Hell’s Ark was not equipped for a funeral service. Even with the danger the crew faced traveling through the unknown, there was an assumption that nobody would die, so there was no need for black clothes or artificial roses. The crew, however, did their best. On the back table in the galley, the group set up an electronic picture frame of Luther, and set his trinkets around it.

  Erika approached the picture of Luther smiling toward the camera. This was the official photo taken by SmallWorld, so the corporation could put a face on its researchers. Luther always claimed his smile looked fake in the picture, but nobody else noticed.

  Erika wished she had another picture of Luther, but the crew never took pictures of themselves. Erika and Luther were camera shy, and no one else felt the need to snap candid photography. If there were other photos of Luther, the crew would have used those in the shrine.

  Mi-Cha cleared her throat from behind, bringing Erika back to the real world. She had lost herself in the photo, but she wasn’t the only person in line.

  Erika glanced to the object in her hand–one of Luther’s favorite movies in a physical case. He insisted on physical media, and if you let him, Luther would give a half hour sermon on the importance of movies and music stored on disks instead of computers. Erika placed the movie next to Luther’s photo, then stepped away.

  We’re gonna miss you. Erika wanted to say the words out loud, but her throat was closed up. If she tried to talk, she would only sob.

  Aymeric was next up. He tried setting his face into a blank mask, but his eyes shimmered with tears. He set a hat on the table, then scurried back. If anyone would have said anything, it was Aymeric. Something had broken inside the man.

  There was evidence suggesting that each decision branched into a parallel universe, and if that was true, then there was a reality where Luther was alive. There was a reality where Erika had been fast enough to save him, a reality where the goddamn airlock doors opened, a reality where the wake wasn’t happening. If that reality was really out there, Erika would escape to it.

  Petra shuffled to the makeshift shrine. Her breath came heavy as she stared at Luther’s photo. A sob escaped her lips. Petra covered her mouth and turned her face away from everyone, but it didn’t mask the crying.

  Erika’s breaths came ragged and tears welled up in her eyes. She faced a wall and rubbed at her eyes as if dust got into them.

  Aymeric made a sound like a laugh. He looked away and wiped his eyes. Mi-Cha fell into a chair and buried her face into her hands.

  Naoki, who was at Erika’s side, patted her on the back. His face was tight, but he’d avoided joining the crying session. He was just as responsible for Luther’s death as Erika, maybe more so. Opening the enclosure doors was a simple task, but Naoki fucked it up, and now Luther was gone. He should have been bawling his eyes out.

  Petra set a necklace next to Luther’s photo, then dragged herself to the far side of the room. Ryder abled up next. He was sniffling. With his bravado gone, he was just a skinny man in a captain’s uniform.

  Erika glanced to the elevator, waiting for the doors to slide open. Luther would step out, see everyone’s sour expression, then say exactly what everyone needed to straighten out their emotions.

  That’s denial. Some analytical part of Erika’s brain kept up with her emotions and reminded her what stage of grief she wallowed in. Erika wished she could turn that part of her brain off. No, what she really wished was to skip straight to the acceptance stage of grief so she wouldn’t have to deal with a flood of miserable emotions.

  Luther would tell you that you should experience grief instead of trying to sweep it away. Yeah, he would.

  More crew members stepped up and left offerings to Luther’s picture. The shrine was small and cheap and silly looking on a galley table, but the Hell’s Ark wasn’t equipped for funerals. Erika stared at the shrine, trying to focus on the good times, but everything turned sour. Luther had an unrestrained laugh, and Erika would never hear it again. He gave warm hugs, and Erika couldn’t remember the last time Luther hugged her. Playing Battlespace with him was a blast, but they would never sit opposite of the board again.

  Naoki stepped forward and blocked out Luther’s photo.

  “I know this is…this is a bad time,” Naoki said. “However, someone must become the lead investigator.”

  “Now? Really!?” Mi-Cha demanded. “You can’t even wait for Luther to cool off before…”

  Mi-Cha slumped back in her chair. Aymeric wrapped his arms around Mi-Cha, and she buried her face into his chest.

  Naoki took a deep breath.

  “Erika, please stand next to me,” he said.

  Erika breathed out through her mouth. She forced herself to stand and move to Naoki’s side. What happened next made sense, but Erika didn’t want it to happen.

  Soon, Erika was at Naoki’s side. The corporate overseer faced Erika with a straight posture.

  “Erika, you will become the emergency lead investigator.” Naoki said. “I cannot confirm if the company will let you keep this position, but for now, you are in command of the scientists.”

  Silence followed.

  Ryder decided to clap. Clive followed a few seconds after, then the rest of the crew followed. It was a half-hearted sound.

  “Is there anything you’d like to say?” Naoki asked.

  There was a lot Erika wanted to say, and none of it was good. She needed to say something, though.

  “Um…” Erika swallowed. “The title is a temporary thing. We’re in this together, and, uh, Ryder is the captain. Naoki is the overseer. I think they will do a good job leading us.”

  Ryder straightened his posture.

  “Okay,” Naoki said. “Well, um, I need to write a report.”

  Naoki hurried to the cabins.

  Ryder and Erika exchanged looks. Ryder was waiting for Erika to say more, but she was out of words. When the Captain realized this, he cleared his throat and spoke.

  “Ten more minutes,” he said. “We’ll take ten minutes to mourn, then we need to get back to work.”

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  Erika slinked into a chair. Petra came to Erika’s side, and clapped her on the shoulder. She moved her lips like she was preparing to say something, but she couldn’t get the words out. She stopped herself, then tried again.

  “Congratulations,” Petra whispered.

  Erika didn’t respond, because there was nothing to celebrate.

  ? ? ?

  Naoki stepped through the door to his cabin, and locked it behind him. He leaned against the door, and stared into the room. The bed was still there, sheets still made from the morning. The desk was at the side of the bed, and the laptop on it waited impatiently. That desk was where Naoki would write Luther’s death certificate, and where he could officially promote Erika to lead investigator. First, however, Naoki needed to deal with the main reason he hurried away from the galley.

  He let his mask of calm melt, and faced the situation not as a corporate overseer, but as a human being. Tears welled up in Naoki’s eyes, and he let them roll down his cheeks. He didn’t sob, because Naoki never sobbed. He wiped tears away from his face, but they kept coming. He wished he could have cried with everyone else, but the others couldn’t see Naoki in a weakened state.

  Naoki pulled the clock up on his IRIS, letting the numbers flash in front of his face. When three minutes passed, Naoki shut his eyes and took a deep breath. He rubbed his palms across his face to wipe the tears away, though Naoki still felt their salt on his cheeks. He was tempted to go to the shower room and wash his face, but he had work to do first.

  Naoki lowered himself into his office chair, and booted the computer up. He navigated through the list of template files in the documents. His most used templates, the daily and weekly reports, sat at the top. Naoki scrolled by, and found a folder with two files. One was an incident report for a dead crew member, and the second was an official death certificate. Both were meant to be filled out as soon as possible after a crew member died, and Naoki realized how silly it was now. After spending months together with people on a ship, everyone became a little family. The emotional attachments made it hard to boil someone down to a couple of documents.

  You have a job to do. Do it.

  Naoki opened the files. He started with the death certificate, since it was the shorter form. Naoki started by filling out Luther’s name and the location of his death.

  Luther and Naoki clicked the moment they’d met, and Naoki wasn’t the type of person who clicked with others. In fact, he’d pretty much given up on friendship with anyone he worked with, and stuck with rigid professionalism. Luther gave Naoki a firm handshake when they met, and promised to do his best. When people disagreed with Naoki, they often treated him like some corporate robot. Luther always remembered that Naoki was human. He was the only person Naoki worked with who treated him so kindly.

  Tears welled up in Naoki’s eyes again. He blinked these away. He had his time to cry; now it was time to work.

  He stared at his computer screen, at the boxes a good man had been reduced to. Luther had been good at resolving conflict. Naoki first thought that Luther was simply doing his job by defusing fights, but that was too simple. Luther didn’t see himself as doing a job; he had been helping his friends.

  You. Have. A. Job.

  Yes, Naoki had a job. He had to ensure the SmallWorld executives knew he’d done everything in his power to keep the ship moving on time, and that circumstances out of his control made the Ark late. Circumstances out of his control killed the lead investigator. If Naoki played his cards right, he could escape whatever punishment that would land on everyone else.

  Naoki forced his personal concerns to fill his head, because that kept him from thinking too much about Luther. He popped earbuds in, turned up his music, and got back to work. He finished the death certificate as if he was filling out any other document, then he moved on to the incident report.

  This paper demanded Naoki to actually write out what happened, and it demanded that he write out the events with clinical language. Naoki wrote a couple of sentences describing Luther’s death. He stared at his work for a moment. It was vague–maybe too vague for SmallWorld.

  Naoki went through the science databases to find footage recorded from the Lamia enclosure. The footage was usually only on the lab servers, though Naoki moved it out before leaving the lab. He knew he was going to need it after Luther’s death.

  Naoki pulled up the video. The Lamia was in frame and unconscious on the film. Luther’s head was visible in the corner of the frame.

  Naoki took a deep breath. Then another. Then he put the video away. He went through the other records from the lab, specifically those regarding the door. The malfunction was the reason the scientists hadn’t made it safely out of the enclosure; that needed to be looked into.

  Naoki checked the status of the door when he had attempted to open it. The door received the order to open, then refused said order. It wasn’t a malfunction. Naoki looked over various failsafes, believing he’d find something that activated, but he found nothing.

  Naoki leaned into his computer screen. If it wasn’t a malfunction, and it wasn’t a failsafe, what was the issue? Naoki toyed with the question for a moment. The door may have malfunctioned, as Naoki suspected. Or someone might have tampered with the door so that it stayed shut.

  A chill went down Naoki’s spine.

  SmallWorld wasn’t the only company setting up alien zoos; Frontier was also in the picture. Before leaving Earth, Naoki heard that a Frontier spy had been found traveling with a SmallWorld ship. That man had been arrested, but there was talk of more spies hiding within SmallWorld’s operations.

  Someone tampered with the doors. Someone was a corporate spy.

  Naoki’s thoughts turned into a jumbled mess of questions, none of which had answers. One thought rose to the surface: Should I tell the others?

  Naoki’s instinct was to keep this information to himself. He could keep the investigation quiet and wait for the saboteur to slip up, though this spy survived for months without alerting anyone. This spy was careful. If Naoki told the crew, he’d have more eyes hunting for the saboteur, but the spy would know they were being hunted. An already careful opponent would keep their head so low that nobody would find them.

  Naoki toyed with both ideas. Then he stood up, leaving his report half-finished, and stepped back into the galley. The crew was still gathered. Luther’s photo smiled from the back table, though the crew kept their distance.

  “Can I have your attention, please!” Naoki called.

  Everyone stared.

  Sweat beaded on Naoki’s forehead. He should wait before he said anything. He shouldn’t say anything at all.

  It’s too late to turn back.

  Naoki swallowed, then spoke. He watched everyone’s faces as he told the story about the door malfunction and the spy hiding aboard the ship. Nobody made any weird twitches, or did anything to indicate that they felt guilty. Whoever the spy was, they were a good actor.

  “That’s…” Ryder shook his head. “Naoki, don’t take this the wrong way, but I think you’re losing it.”

  Of course Ryder would want to push this out of mind, like he did with everything else important.

  “If someone sabotaged the doors, someone was trying to kill Luther,” Erika whispered.

  “They were trying to kill all of us,” Aymeric added. “Wipe out the scientist team, then…what?”

  “Wipe out the scientists; excuse me?” Ryder stood. “That sounds suspiciously like you’re blaming my crew.”

  Clive took a place at the Captain’s side. The pair glared at Aymeric, and Aymeric glared back. Erika and Petra watched intently.

  “We should not throw out accusations; we do not have evidence of who is the traitor yet,” Naoki stated in a calm tone.

  “We have evidence that you were in charge of the doors!” Mi-Cha shouted.

  “Right. Naoki, would you like to explain that one?” Ryder demanded.

  “If I–” Naoki stopped himself. He heard the anger in his voice, and he was certain everyone else did.

  “He can’t explain himself,” Mi-Cha sneered.

  “But why would Naoki want to kill us?” Aymeric said.

  “Uh, excuse me?” Mi-Cha pulled away from Aymeric.

  “I’m just saying–”

  “I’m just saying to back me the fuck up!”

  “We have no proof that a sabotage took place!” Naoki had to shout so his voice could be heard. “It is purely speculation!”

  “Right. We need evidence,” Theo spoke up.

  “What!? Theo!” Mi-Cha shouted.

  “We need evidence,” Theo repeated.

  The shouting match continued so fast that Naoki could only catch snatches of the argument. He kept shouting that the crew needed proof before an accusation could be made, but his voice was lost in the din of the argument.

  Luther’s photo smiled from the corner. If he was there, he would have gotten everyone under control.

  “Oh I think it makes perfect sense!” Petra’s fists were balled up tight. She glared at Ryder like an animal ready to attack.

  “I think it makes more sense that you wanted everyone else outta the way!” Ryder leaned against a chair. He was trying to look relaxed, but his body was rigid. If Petra swung, she was in for a fight.

  There’s going to be a fight.

  “Everyone!” Naoki shouted.

  “Just do it. See what happens.” Clive stood at Ryder’s side, fists curled up.

  Naoki opened his mouth to shout again, but he didn’t get the chance. The galley fell into darkness before Naoki could say anything.