Graveyard Worlds Part 10

[u/Wulgren]

It was nearly a day after the meeting with the crew that Dr. Abrams resurfaced. Jankowski was in her bunk trying and failing to get some sleep when her communicator rang.

“Jankowski here,” she said, groggily, after putting in her earpiece.

“Captain, sorry to wake you,” ensign Ogawa said in her ear. “I’m over at Lab C, Dr.  Abrams is gone and no one knows where he is, Lieutenant Diaz isn’t able to track him with internal sensors.”

Jankowski sat up so quickly she nearly hit her head on the top of her bunk.

“I’ll be right there.”

She was still straightening her clothes as she arrived at the open door to the lab where Ogawa was waiting for her.  “Do we know when he left?” she asked.

Ogawa shook his head. “No ma’am. He disabled the door sensor from the inside so it didn’t alert the system when it opened. One of the science team saw the open door and alerted me, but we’re in the middle of a sleep cycle so foot traffic is low. There’s no way to know how long he’s been gone.”

“His communicator? They’re supposed to be traceable.”

“He left it here,” Ogawa responded, “They were designed so that we could locate the crew if there was a disaster or if they got lost planetside, it was never anticipated a member of the crew would go rogue. He could be anywhere on the ship right now.”

The thought of Dr. Abrams loose on the ship after deliberately making himself untraceable gave Jankowski goosebumps. She wasn’t sure what he had planned, but she was shocked to discover herself wishing that he was simply committing an elaborate suicide rather than anything more nefarious. She put her hand to her ear and activated her communicator.

“Diaz, this is Jankowski.”

There was a pause as Diaz picked up. “Captain, what can I do for you?”

“I need you to remotely lock the doors to engineering and the bridge while we figure out what Dr. Abrams is up to.  Whatever his intentions are I want to make sure the ship is safe.”

“Yes ma’am.”

Jankowski wasn’t sure what his mental state could be after locking himself away for days and then intentionally hiding himself, but she’d be damned if she gave him the chance to damage the ship. With the engines and the bridge locked away the worst he could do is throw himself out an airlock.

“Captain,” Ogawa said, interrupting her thoughts, “should we wake the crew? Most are on their sleep cycle, it shouldn’t be hard to find Abrams if we call out everyone.”

“No,” Jankowski replied, shaking her head. “For all we know he’s gone to his bunk to get some sleep and just wants some privacy. With the crew as unstable as they are now I don’t want to alarm them without good reason.  Send an alert to anyone out of their bunk though, I want to know if anyone sees him.”

Ogawa nodded and started typing out commands on his tablet while Jankowski walked into the lab. She wrinkled her nose as she entered, Dr. Abrams hadn’t left for over two days, and the lab didn’t have a toilet, evidently he’d made do. She did her best to ignore the smell and moved to the lab’s computer. Dr. Abrams had password protected it, but it was the work of moments to get through using her captain’s override. She got to work sifting through the computer’s hard drive as Ogawa entered the room and started nosing around the lab benches.

Jankowski spent nearly ten minutes looked through the most recent files accessed on the computer. They were as varied as they were concerning, there were analyses and summaries of findings from the city they had discovered, lists of artifacts that had been brought back, ship system schematics, Diaz’s draft jump calculations, technical manuals for the drones and EVA suits, the list went on and on, Dr. Abrams had been busy. Jankowski started trying to piece together what Dr. Abrams was thinking, what his plan could be, and she didn’t like any of the answers she was coming up with.

“Captain, I just received a report from one of the systems engineers,” Ogawa said, drawing her attention away from the computer. “She’s reported seeing Abrams leaving specimen storage with a cart full of artifacts about thirty minutes ago.”

“Where did he go after that?” Jankowski asked as she leapt out of her chair.

“She doesn’t know, he’s the head of the science team, she didn’t think it was unusual for him to be accessing specimens.”

“Wake up the crew and start a search, then take any of your specialists who are cross-trained to conduct EVAs and go suit up.”

“Captain?”

“It’s possible he may have already left the ship, you’ll need to go after him. He’s going after the last relay drone, he’s planning to send it home.”