SPACESHIP ZOMBIE CRUISE

FILE ENTRY 40.0

Commander Amari Kanumba

From the African Province of the Federation, Commander Amari Kanumba stands with a dozen of his highly trained combat veterans in the deployment bay of their ultra fast troop transport. The ship had shuttled the special forces unit, the Black Mambas, all the way from a top secret raid on a space station orbiting Saturn. Everyone believed the special forces unit was a good two weeks away from the Celestial Sea. The Federation doesn't have light speed technology, but the Mambas conduct black op missions all over the solar system. Because they were already in the realm of the outer planets they were able to reach the cruise ship in days instead weeks or months.

Already in route and hours after receiving an S.O.S. from Electra Draco, Kanumba and the Mambas come within visual range of the Celestial Sea and prepare to board the space cruise ship.

The Space Venture Corporation and the Interplanetary Federation spotted the Celestial Sea on radar gliding through a small asteroid debris field somewhere between Neptune and Uranus. The debris field is uncharted due to the limited sizes of the space rocks, the largest of which are as big around as a house. The smaller asteroids are only as big as tiny boulders. Not only did the cruise ship lose its ability to communicate with Earth, it also was operating under reduced engine power.

On the way to intercept the cruise ship, Kanumba had studied the ship's blueprints. According to the diagrams, it's possible the gravity drives are still operating on auxiliary power, meaning the ship's passengers may not be floating around in zero gravity. As soon as the Celestial Sea's location was discovered, the black ops unit had been assigned the task of securing the ship. Once the captain of the vessel set off the emergency beacon used solely for piracy, the Federation was able to lock onto the ship's coordinates. But it may not matter based on the information obtained in Draco's S.O.S. Kanumba and his team may be too late to save anyone.

Kanumba waits for the airlock to pressurize, ready to board the cruise ship. He grits his teeth with anticipation. A viral outbreak of the zombie kind isn't something he's ever encountered. But he's primed and pumped for any situation. Even now.

Because Kanumba and the Mambas are trained in zero gravity combat, their first move is to infiltrate the ship through a maintenance bay entrance located in the lower stern. With the airlocks connected, they pop the hatch and enter the ship.

Once inside, the unit engages and eliminates multiple infected passengers and crew members.

They make their way to the engine room where they deactivate the gravity drives, plunging the ship into the weightless, free floating environment of microgravity.

Strangely, when they power down the gravity drives, they encounter no more resistance. All they see are drifting corpses and seemingly unconscious individuals. From the engine room they move through the lower levels of the vessel, finding carnage along the way, until they secure the bridge and discover Draco dead of what appears to be a self inflicted wound to her abdomen. They find her personal assistant, Cygnus Lo decapitated, murdered by an unknown individual. They're unable to identify any suspects. The corpses of infected crew members litter the bridge and copious amounts of blood contaminate the crime scene. For all intents and purposes, Kanumba considers it possible that Electra Draco killed Cygnus Lo before killing herself. Conveniently, all the ships records and video recordings have been deleted and wiped clean, and the only person with the security clearance to do that is Draco herself.