Chains of Command

[Boss]

Three thousand five hundred cases of food, four hundred tanks of H-fuel, and one hundred strange containment units, all but one or two of which were damaged to the point that whatever was being kept in them would be long dead. One was open. One was shut. I trekked down to the cargo bay, the detective side of me rabidly curious about this ship. Why had it shot me, why was the crew dead, and what was in those canisters? I had to find out.

On the way down, I found another crewman lying across the hallway with a pistol in hand. He looked like he’d died of a heart attack or stroke fighting something off. No visible marks on the body, just gouges in the wall panels where his fingernails had been shredded raking across. I looked the gun over—it had been fired at least five times—and determined that he’d been firing down an air duct. I didn't rule out the possibility of his having shot the pilots with two of those. I pulled my light off of its clip and shone it down. Some kind of goo down there, but it wasn’t moving. I turned away and kept going.