The ascent from Baden Baden was brief, though not easily forgotten. Volcanic thermals clawed at the shuttle’s underside as if the planet’s weather had a personal grudge against aerospace design.
From his window seat Hermann Schmidt watched the planet dissolve into layers of cobalt blue. Below, the islands of Baden Baden slipped away into hazy abstraction: beautiful, if you enjoyed your holidays witha slight scent of boiled eggs and vulcanic instability.
“Ship signature ahead,” said Neer from the co-pilot seat, in the tone of a man hoping this counted as hazardous duty. “Geostationary over Yankee7. No transponder. Just a passive return on hull plating and a faint thermal bloom. She’s dead quiet."
And then they saw her.
She drifted into view—less a spacecraft than a gothic cathedral that had taken a wrong turn at Lagrange Point Three. A bruised TR-1130 Pilgrim Liner, blocky and brooding, wrapped in the kind of frost that made you reconsider whether “derelict” was the right word. “Haunted” felt more appropriate.
“She’s been patched,” Neer muttered, squinting at the readouts. “Hull’s a mess. Layers on layers. Drive spines look like they were yanked off a Rheinland cruiser and reattached by a poet with access to welding gear.”
The docking maneuver was entirely manual, The Serendipity, now firmly in retirement from functioning automatic coupling systems, offered no assistance. Belck’s hands were engaged in both flying and issuing a masterclass in multilingual swearing.
Eventually, with a clunk, the shuttle docked.
“We’re connected,” Belck reported. “Pressure’s nominal. Life support reads as... present, which is strange. I wouldn’t trust this ship to keep a cactus alive.”
Neer sealed his gloves with the weary grace of a man preparing to inspect the inside of a very old tomb. “What do we expect to find aboard?”
“A ship forgotten by its owners,” Schmidt said, rising from his seat. “And quite possibly by God.”
Inside the Serendipity
Service docking corridor 4A
The hatch opened with a hiss that sounded more like a sigh—one of those long, weary exhalations that suggested the ship had not only been sealed for decades but was rather hoping to stay that way.
A corridor revealed itself—rusted, flickering, and somehow vaguely annoyed. The lighting flickered reluctantly to life, casting a dim glow on walls that seemed designed by someone with strong feelings about claustrophobia as a character-building exercise.
“Smells like vinegar and ozone,”Neer muttered. “And something else.”
“Like a museum that drowned,” Schmidt offered, wrinkling his nose.
“Coolant,” Belck added, glancing at a handheld sensor. “Probably a leak from the backup systems. Explains the pickled atmosphere.”
Their boots echoed dully on the floor, which was doing its best impression of a surface once intended for walking. There were no insignias, no dedication plaques.
“She’s seen better days,” Neer said, shining his light over rusted signage pointing toward observation decks, labs, and what appeared to be an engineering section that judged you as you passed it.
Schmidt adjusted the light on his shoulder. “We split up. If you find anything broken—mechanical or philosophical—call it in. I’m heading to the command bridge.”
Neer peeled off toward the labs. Belck hovered near a vertical shaft, muttered something unkind about structural integrity, and descended. Schmidt climbed.
