Back in her room Jack stripped down and scrubbed herself down with a dry towel, quickly getting into her space suit. Jack also dropped off a bit of breakfast for Drew though she didn’t even look at it. Then she headed down to the rig bay.

Her rig stood with all the others, a private contractor before the accident hers looked very different from the Earth Protectorate rigs. Her, Screamer, as she called her, was a racer unit; sleek like a jet fighter, with sharp angular fins, a recessed head, and high thrust rockets. Jack had even integrated a full dive system into it, so she could get a real feel while she flew. Unfortunately her fuel tank had been damaged in the accident so she was stuck tethering off for power.

Sam loaded his AI onto the rig and turned all systems to his watch and motor control to Jack.

“All ready to go Jack.”

“Let’s go Sammy.”

She grinned. A quick once over on systems clearing her to launch, and she walked out the hangar airlock and vented the room and was on the outside of the ship with Sam’s AI maintaining her systems in record time.

“Ahhh,” she sighed, “Nice and quiet, just us out here.”

Space had always been amazing to her, the cosmos, that black ocean of nothing and everything all at once, the stars twinkling like far off diamonds. “It’s beautiful.”

“My external sensors are inhibited by the same radiation that is preventing us from communicating with the Jupiter colonies.” But then he said something that startled Jack, “Would you describe it?”

Jack smiled, “I’d be happy too.”

They managed the spacewalk with little problems talking away as they worked, clearing the ice from the panels along the wings. The hole in the aft cargo area was definitely a problem, they couldn’t get close enough to fix it with the hulls shielding preventing them from getting in. That meant all they could do was continue to clear ice from the outside of the ship till they were in range.

They did a quick bounce around, a few more maintenance stops along the way towards the forward hatch where the rig hanger was.

Sam had switched on some heavy metal music, so they were grooving along when they hit the manual button for the airlock.

The hatch opened with a woosh, weird only because she had been the last one out, so she knew she had depressurized it. What Jack saw, Sam knew, even without external sensors, that something was wrong.

His scans detected no life but as the object bounced off their cockpit window he could tell what it was.

“Jack, is that Stephan?”

It was Stephan, he was frozen stiff, and from the state of him had been in the airlock for some time.

Jack sucked in a sharp breath, a tremble moving through her whole body. Stephan was lifeless… his eyes frosted over and pale.

“S-Sam… get us inside… NOW!” She had enough sense left in her to grab the man’s body and retreat back into the ship, with Sam taking control of the station’s arm dragging them in.

They left the body in the airlock with Mr. Penny who was the first one on the scene.

Mr. Penny was quiet but a smart man, and since they had no doctor he was closest to check over Stephan’s body.

“Sorry Jack, I’m not sure what happened, from the looks of it he got trapped in the air lock.”

Sam was quick to retort, “There has been no report on the door being opened or closed since we left. That means that when the bay was closed behind us he was already in here, he did have a bad habit of being in your back pocket?”

“Sam’s right, maybe he followed you in and just got trapped?” His words rang with a truth, but something wasn’t sitting right.

“I don’t buy it.” Jack folded her arms, and looked at the body, a shiver moving through her again. “Why would he have follow me and Sam in here. Also there are warning alarms and lights to indicate that the lock is going to be vented.”

She never liked the man, but to die in such a way… it was horrible.

“I’m sorry Jack, is there anything I can do?”

Sam seemed sincere, but Mr. Penny wasn’t as convinced.

“If he was in there wouldn’t you have known? The ships sensors should have caught it Sam! Feels like maybe Mr. Murder, the jerk AI.” Then Mr. Penny turned to Jack, “Sam may be our prime suspect.”

“Jack, tell Mr. Penny I was synced to your Rig, even before you were in the airlock,” it was true, and uploaded like that he would have only been able to monitor the rig and nothing else.

“I don’t think this was an accident and I don’t think this was suicide,” Jack mumbled, Stephan may have been negative to AI’s and woman, a loathsome hateful jerk; but he was not suicidal. That, and while he didn’t seem to believe it, everyone knew they would be able to radio for help in 3 days.

Mr. Penny suddenly looked very serious, “Well then, it would seem someone on board is a murderer.”

Jack looked at Mr. Penny and frowned. It did indeed seem like murder. “We need to talk to Captain Sho.”