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Stowaway
The universal explorer Odyssey-9 drifted through the darkness. She was on a mission to explore the uncharted reaches of the Andromeda galaxy. Captain Eleanor Hayes and her crew were seasoned astronauts. They had made similar journeys dozens of times through the years. As they ventured deeper into that unknown void, something inexplicable occurred.
They were just subtle anomalies . . . at first. Untraceable whispers came over the intercom, shadows flitted across the edge of vision, and they began to experience the sensation of being watched.
Engineer Marcus Black was the first to alert the crew of the unusual phenomena. He was running diagnostics in the control room late one night when he saw a figure reflected in the screen. An astronaut in an antique suit stood behind him. There was no face inside its visor glass.
But when he turned, the room was empty.
Navigator Yuki Tanaka then reported the same figure in her sleeping quarters. It stood silently at the foot of her bed. The apparition, she described, was eerily familiar. It wore the suit of a long-lost astronaut. It looked like black smoke moved behind its visor.
The crew’s fear began to escalate when they found the presumed lost records of Odyssey-1. Their predecessor disappeared without a trace decades before, on its maiden voyage. They came close enough to receive her last transmission. It was a garbled message about a shadowy figure in an antique space suit.
Captain Hayes led an investigation into the ship’s logs once they were close enough. Odyssey-1 had an Omega M3 database. Nearby ships could use auxiliary power to restart her memory and retrieve the last 24 hours of the ship’s logs and recordings.
Odyssey-1 was believed to have vanished in the same sector they now explored. Apparently, it didn’t vanish. It simply couldn’t detect life forms aboard any longer and shut itself down to conserve power. They could obtain records, but still weren’t close enough to detect the ship’s exact coordinates.
They first believed the intruding presence might be a remnant of that ill-fated crew, forever lost in the cosmos. Perhaps the spirit sought to warn . . . or to collect other souls.
It became clearer as time passed. Whatever was aboard with them had also been aboard Odyssey-1. The unexplained activity grew in intensity as well as boldness. Lights flickered. They suffered a series of potentially devastating equipment failures. They began to see more shadowy figures aboard the ship.
The investigation into the old ship showed the occupants of that ill-fated crew likewise saw the shades of former astronauts and experienced bizarre anomalies. It didn’t start with them.
It ended with them.
The phenomena lasted a week and continued to claim life after life.
Eventually, the old captain was all that remained. He succumbed to madness. Their ship had been so severely disabled it wouldn’t propel in any direction. Supplies were nearly gone. Bodies were everywhere. None of the outside communication systems functioned.
He even recorded his walk to the cargo door in the rear of the ship and his intentional opening of the airlock. The last frames showed his dead body levitating in the cargo hold.
One phantom shade had become two, then three.
The final event aboard Odyssey-9 came several days later. Security cameras caught several phantom figures clustered at an airlock. They almost succeeded in opening it with four crewmembers nearby.
As eager as the explorers were to reclaim the original Odyssey, it was clear it would never happen. The shades damaged more and more of her electronics.
They decided to abandon the mission and return to Earth, or risk becoming another ghostly legend lost among the stars. They deleted all records they’d retrieved from Odyssey-1. The world would never know what happened to her.
She would continue to drift out there, lost in that void.
Whatever lived aboard her would live alone . . . and the crew of Odyssey-9 hoped it stayed that way.
