Continue As You Weren’t

Kaya found the first body in the break room. Her power suit highlighted the sprawled limbs and blood splatter with a red outline, a deeper scan automatically blinking to draw Kaya’s attention to the savage slices deep into muscle and skipping across bone. Cause of death: traumatic blood loss.

Kaya froze in the doorway. She twitched her standard-issue blaster—an Armash set to use solid iron bullets—around the room to check for hostiles, but found nothing but a coffee pot boiled dry and the dead miner’s chair tipped on its side on the floor. Nothing else appeared out of place. The room’s lights bathed everything in a soft warmth, and the polyglass wall opposite Kaya displayed a landscape from some distant planet—green rolling hills and a pinkish sky full of fluffy clouds. It was probably a corporate mandated nature scene for mental health. Working a nine-month shift on an asteroid out in the second belt of some uninhabited system didn’t leave much opportunity to touch grass.

She toggled her radio. “Kaya.” She announced herself on the wide band. “I’m in the break room. I found a body.”

Just then, her suit’s systems offered an identification. 98% confidence since their face had been… well Kaya focused on the bio that popped up. Isadora Bosco, miner and mechanic employed by StarDust Corp for fifteen years, lead technician for this site’s planned decommissioning.

Isadora had been in charge here. Before things went wrong.