Boneships

Salvage crews have our own horror stories.

When you run a wrecker ship a lot of terrible stuff comes your way. Especially on the Ganymede-Europa to Saturn route; deep space accidents and equipment failure is nightmarish. And we see a lot of it out here. Corps and management cut maintenance costs almost before anything else and all that accumulated wear and tear means catastrophic failure.

There's a rule on Systems Monitoring that if a ship hasn't responded in twenty-four hours they assume it's a dead stick. Just floating, endlessly. After three days the contract goes up and we all bid on it-- stuff like expected cargo, ship type, possible fuel reserves comes up a lot. We bet on a profit, then go out there and play can-opener.

What we usually find is dead crew. Chemical leaks, air scrubbers, power cascades, explosive micrometeorite decompression. That's the normal stuff; sad, but common. Bag 'em, tag 'em for next of kin, inventory what's left and auction.

But then there's the stories.

Popped an airlock once and there's three dead guys right on the other side. All of them at the other's throats. Blood and wounds everywhere from the deck to the overheads. Looked like the O^(2) recycling went offline and they decided to settle old grudges before gasping out. "Last guy gets the air"-style. Rough stuff. Rim justice.

Then there's my personal worst one: Big, modified freighter with a lot of those modular cargo bays. Only this one was taking people, off the books and illegally immigrating to Mars Prime. Well, at least they were until docking clamps failed, boxes came loose and smashed the engines apart. In my sleep I still see neat rows of freeze-dried families tied to walls with cargo straps. Like tiny packages, kids and all, luggage neatly tucked under their boots.

But even in a job this rough, there's one thing all the salvage crews steer clear of.

The Boneships.

Astraline model. Mid-71 series, the first time they tried the new artificial intelligence systems. Only time they ever tried it. Those Astralines came with automated maintenance, crew management, guidance and delivery. Supposed to be a one-stop solution to removing human involvement in transport in-system, cut those costs a little further. It worked fine for regular cargo runs.

Then they tried it on the colonizer ships.

Twelve of 'em, sent out. Fifty thousand souls aboard each. Ten of them are still circling the system. They're not damaged, or derelict, or even hard to find-- damn AI is still cheerfully logging flight plans in circles and broadcasting advisories. But they're changing.

Because, you see, the brain in them keeps the ships running. So when parts wear out? Stray rock puts a hole in the ship? Well, eventually the AI ran out of material to fix it with. So it started using the passengers.

We watch 'em out there. Slowly circling. Bits of hull growing patches that look like raw bone. Hatches and ports crusting over with pearly tooth enamel. Entire ships slowly ossifying, busy little drones adding crusts every year. The corps talk about reclaiming the Boneships sometime, but every ship they send gets a broadside from the anti-meteorite cannons.

The AI protects the colonists, while the colonists slowly become the ship.

Once a year, all of those Astralines send a cheerful status report. Number of people aboard, current voyage time, that sort of thing. It's macabre and we all raise a toast to the lost souls. But lately that's been changing.

Because last year?

The passenger count started increasing.

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I write sci-fi horror and weird fantasy over at r/Susceptible ;)