Routine Boarding

It was supposed to be a routine boarding and inspection. Patrol ship 1105-3A, the Gallant, had detected an anomaly inbound on the usual trade routes. The anomaly identified as small merchant vessel on a ballistic course into the system. The ship's transponder was offline and attempts to communicate had failed, so it was time for a borarding inspection.
The ship appeared to be an older model of one those small merchant vessels that ferried high value cargo and passangers between systems. Sensors detected nothing out of the ordinary, no radition or radio emissions. Only thermals registered anything and it was a very small heat source, similar to when a fusion generator was put in trickle charge mode. An inspection of the exterior indicated this ship had been drifting in space a very long time with dust and micropitting covering its surface.
So the crew of the Gallant reported to base they were going to follow procedure and board the small craft. Extending the boarding gantry they made contact with the smaller ship, when the Gallant's airlock indicated green, Ensign Biko and Spacer Strauss made their way accros to the other ship. Attempting entry with the emergency code failed, insufficient power. Using a portable power supply, Spacer Strauss was able to open the outer airlock. The inner airlock door registered as vacuum on the other side, never a good sign for any crew.
Entering the small ship, which the crew was now calling Derilict-1, Biko and Strauss made their way inside. First heading to the bridge, the two noticed nothing amiss, only a thin layer of dust on the floor indicating the ship had not been disturbed in a long time. Upon reaching the bridge Biko and Strauss set about trying to find the ship's logs. However, the emergency log was empty and there was insufficient power in their portable power supply to provide the juice necessary to power the main computer and pull standard ships logs. The heat source the Gallant's sensors had detected indicated was near engineering, so the next logical step had Biko and Strauss headed aft to see if they could at least get minimal power flowing, so they could power up the main computer to learn more about the fate of Derilict-1.
After reaching engineering the team found their first sign something was amiss. Engineering was a mess, there were six bodies, all appeared to be once human spacers, all armed and there were signs of a fight in Engineering, some consoles were wrecked and signs of weapons fire marked the walls. Pirates perhaps, a possible mutiny; radioing the Captain of the Gallant, Ensign Biko asked for guidance and was told to determine the state of the fusion reactor and bring the ships power to low power and pull the computer's logs. Acknowlding his orders, Biko and Strauss begain working on bringing the ships power plant online.
Fortunately, the main engineering console was undamaged and indicated the fusion bottle had been scrammed, but was running at minimum maintenance power. There was sufficient H3 fuel to run the ship's reactor at low power for a few days, so the team brought the ship back on line.
Almost immediately the Captain contacted Biko and Strauss indicating a signal had been recieved from Derilict-1's transponder indicating an emergency but not of what kind. A panel in engineering indicated that the majority of power was being routed to the cargo bay, very curious indeed.
Biko ordered Spacer Strauss to invistigate the power drain in the cargo bay and report back, while he would continue to bring the ships system back online.
Making his way to the cargo bay, Spacer Strauss located the source of the power drain, it appeared to be a rather crude cryopod cobbled together with mulitiple redundant battery arrays. It was hard to see inside of the pod due to the accumulation of dust over time, curious Strause rubbed the outside of clear polyglass viewing window to see what was inside. Oddly the polyglass felt warm not cold and Strauss could just make out a humanoid shape in the darkened pod.
Since the cargo bay and this pod were directly beneath engineering, Strauss reasoned the cyropod and not the fusion drive might be the source of thermal readings they had gathered on approach. "Was this a survivor?", thought Strauss. As Strauss was about to contact Biko with his findings, he realized that someone was pounding on the cryopod door from the inside and the exterior monitors were flashing red. Checking his instruments, Strauss confirmed that while still cold, the ship's cargo bay was warm enough and had enough breathable atmosphere to relase the occupant. Strauss certainly did not want someone who had come this far to be suffocated in a malfunctioning pod. Acting quickly, Strauss opened the cyrocpods lid, what greeted him was not human, well not a human anymore. No the naked bony emmaciated body of greying skin and bone with all black scelera was something else entirely.
Spacer Strauss gasped and was about to leap back when an arm whipped out and a bony grey hand grabbed him by the forearm. The grip was inhumanly strong and painful and Strauss could not jerk his arm loose. Panicked, Strauss toggled his comm shouting; "Biko! Biko, help..." But it was too late, Stauss felt a sudden sharp pain in his arm and then blackness.
At last, after so long it was free and was consuming its first meal in a century, so satisfying. It had almost dispaired but now it was free and the cycle could begin again; it was free to move, to feed, to consumer The entity had many names given to it by its victims; the Dark One, Demon, the Vile Darkness, the Black Death, the crew of this particular vessel had called it the Scourage...

Inspection Boarding by Thomas Peters