Dead Silence by SA Barnes
Synopsis
Two months ago, Claire and her team stumbled upon the lost luxury spacecruiser Aurora, which had mysteriously vanished twenty years prior along with all souls on board. Now, she is in a medical facility with a fractured skull, being interviewed by two corporate investigators. The only problem is, she can't quite remember what happened in the time in between.
Something went horribly wrong on that spacecruiser, both twenty years ago and then again two months ago. Something caused the passengers to lose their minds and kill each other. Was it mass psychosis? An alien disease? A monster? Whatever it was, they had better find out soon, because the Aurora is on the move— and its destination is Earth.
Content Warnings: Suicide, Death, Mild Gore
Plot Summary - Spoilers!
Now
Claire is in a rehabilitation centre, suffering from a fractured skull, amnesia, and possibly a psychotic break. She keeps seeing dead people— but that's nothing new. She has always been able to see ghosts. But right now she is being accused of killing her entire team so she could acquire a larger share of their find.
Then
Two months earlier, Claire is on her last mission before being grounded. She works for a company called Verux, and is the team lead on a small ship that maintains the commweb beacons in the outer reaches of civilized space. They are nearing the end of their eight-month run, heading towards a rendezvous point where they can meet up with a larger ship and catch a ride back to Earth. Claire doesn't want to be grounded. Space is her home. There aren't many people around this far out in space. And the less people around, the less ghosts she has to see.
But they decide to detour when Lourdes discovers a distress signal. An old one, by the looks of it, since distress signals hadn't been broadcast on that particular channel in years. They puzzle over it, and theorize that it is just an echo, but they can't be sure. Despite the team— with the exception of Claire —being more than ready to go home, they decide to investigate. After all, they are kind of required to investigate distress beacons.
Just outside the reaches of the commweb, they discover the source of the beacon. It's the Aurora, the only luxury spacecruiser to ever have flown, which vanished on its maiden voyage twenty years ago. The team decides to claim the wreckage, which is extremely valuable both because of the expensive loot onboard and because of the ship's mysterious legacy. This find could make them all rich. They just need to board the Aurora and find something unique to the ship to bring back with them, to prove their find and their claim. It is decided that Claire and Voller will board the ship.
Now
The story Claire keeps telling the investigators, Max and Reed, is that some sort of presence onboard the Aurora drove everyone insane, and they all killed themselves. It's revealed to her by Max that the Aurora is on the move. Claire demands to know where it is headed, but they won't tell her unless she continues her story— and tells the truth this time. As far as she can remember, Claire has been telling them the truth— they just don't believe her.
While she is being interviewed, Claire keeps seeing the ghosts of her team, with the strange exception of one— Nysus. She wonders if it's possible that he is still alive on board the Aurora.
Then
Claire and Voller board the Aurora. Their goal is to find the ship's black box and something expensive and exclusive to the Aurora to serve as proof of their discovery, since they know the black box will quickly be confiscated. In the cargo bay, Claire sees the ghost of her mother, screaming at her.
Claire hadn't seen her mother since she was rescued from Ferris Outpost as a child, when her mother guided her through contacting the rescue ship. At that point, her mother had been dead for a week. Claire was the sole survivor of the disaster that had befallen Ferris Outpost.
While Claire and Voller are making their way up the levels of the massive spacecruiser, they come across strange scenes. Cabin doors are locked, with furniture built up in the halls to barricade the doors, as if someone wanted to keep the door from being opened from the inside. As they continue on, they end up in the Atrium, a enormous grand room. They reflect that it is weird that they have yet to discover any bodies. But when Voller finds a way to turn on the lights, prompting Claire to look up, she realizes why they haven't seen bodies— they're all floating adrift in the space above their heads.
It is quickly apparent to them that the passengers did not die natural deaths, or accidental deaths, like from a life support failure. Some have ropes around their necks, some have horrible wounds. Some have knives clutched in their hands.
Moving along, they find the captain and first officer near the bridge, both dead, obviously. It looks like the first officer shot himself. From investigating the bridge, they determine that the ship was shut down voluntarily.
Now
Reed interrupts her story, unable and unwilling to believe that the ship could have been shut down voluntarily. Max tells Claire to continue with her story.
Then
Claire and Voller return to their little maintenance ship— the LINA —and the team regroups to decide how to proceed. Nysus tells them about something called the Versailles Contingency, which was something of a conspiracy in the forums back when the ship launched, but might have some truth to it. It's a protocol that locks the bridge and certain personal quarters away from the rest of the ship, which could be run on entirely different systems. They decide that if the Versailles Contingency was real, that they can use it to bring the Aurora back. They plan to board the Aurora, lock themselves in the front of the ship using the Versailles Contingency, get the ship up and running again, and fly back into range of the commweb, where they will broadcast themselves to the public so Verux can't deny their find later, at least not without public backlash.
Claire, Kane, and Voller board the Aurora first and get to work. Claire is frustrated with Kane— the ship's medic and only person to know about her history —because he doesn't seem to want to let her do anything alone while aboard the Aurora. But the three get to work clearing the corpses out of the front of the ship in preparation for booting up the systems.
The LINA is parked in the Aurora's cargo bay and the rest of the crew— Nysus and Lourdes —join the others on the bridge. They discover that the navigation system is entirely fried, so they decide to use some of the LINA's systems to repair it. Once they do this, the LINA is rendered useless, and there is no going back.
Twenty years ago, there was a reality show being filmed aboard the Aurora. Nysus finds some video footage from un-aired episodes that shows what was happening when things got out of hand. But no matter how much they review and analyse the footage, they can't determine what caused everyone to suddenly go berserk. Claire decides that nobody is to be alone on the ship, ever. The buddy system is a must. She sends Kane, Voller, and Nysus to rest for six hours, while she and Lourdes take the first watch.
While sitting on the bridge, Claire keeps hearing doors opening and closing, and assumes that it is Kane, Voller, or Nysus returning to the bridge, but whenever she turns around, nobody is there. Lourdes doesn't hear any of the sounds. Eventually, Kane actually returns to the bridge, and scares the crap out of Claire. Claire and Lourdes retire to one of the rooms for their six hours of rest. While Claire is in the bathroom, Lourdes calls out to her, asking what it was Claire said, she couldn't hear her through the door. But Claire hadn't said anything, or at least she didn't think she had. Trying to ignore the anomaly, Claire and Lourdes go to sleep. When Claire wakes up, Lourdes is gone, and there is a strange sound from under the bed. When Claire looks under it, she sees one of the corpses they found under one of the beds earlier—one wearing a tight blindfold. She reaches out for Claire, causing her to fall off the bed in a start and hit her head. When Claire looks back under the bed, nothing is there.
Trying to shake it off, Claire goes back to the bridge, expecting Lourdes to be there, but she isn't. She is about to ask after Lourdes when Nysus summons her to look at something he found, and she is distracted by the readings that indicate the power to the noise dampers was spiking and redlining when there was no reason for them to be working so hard. Nysus also recovered a bit of the Captain's log, in which she reports that she saw her wife, who has never stepped foot on the Aurora. Then, they hear Lourdes scream, and can smell the scent of death.
Everyone runs out into the hall to find the door to one of the suites open— it's one of the ones they sealed off earlier because of a large amount of blood that would have begun to decompose the moment they turned the life support systems back on. The door had been locked, and Claire had the only key on her nightstand when she went to sleep. Lourdes is in the room, and she asks Claire why she would make her look at the grisly scene inside. She explains that Claire had been leading her around through the rooms and had beckoned her to enter this one. But Claire had gone straight from her room to the bridge after she woke up, and Lourdes was already gone.
Later, Claire talks to Kane and tells him he should remove her from command. Maybe she did lead Lourdes around, and didn't remember it. Maybe she was losing her mind. Kane confides in Claire that he saw his daughter earlier. He tries to explain to Claire that she isn't the only one seeing things, and that she shouldn't be removed from command because of it.
The group talks and they establish that many of them are seeing people who aren't really there, including the captain of the Aurora, as they discovered through her logs. But so far, Claire is the only one who is seeing dead people, everyone else is seeing people that are supposedly still alive. Voller has a very painful and persistant headache, and keeps complaining about continuous tapping sounds that nobody else can hear. They still haven't figured out what is causing the hallucinations, so they decide to search the rooms again, this time for clues.
Things start to change when Nysus starts to see his grandfather, who is dead. Claire sees Becca, the ghost of the little girl who beckoned Claire to break quarantine on Ferris Outpost. Kane starts talking to a hallucination of his daughter. While Kane and Claire are searching rooms together, struggling to tell hallucination from reality, they hear a scream from the bridge. It's Nysus. When they get to the bridge to see what is going on, they find Nysus and Lourdes trying to wrestle their plasma drill away from Voller. Voller is arguing that if they just let them in, they'll stop knocking. But they know that if they open the doors into the rest of the ship, they'll all die. So Claire joins the struggle, but gets hit hard in the head by the butt of the plasma drill, fracturing her skull. She can't do anything but watch as Voller shoots himself in the head with the drill.
Claire is in and out of consciousness. When she wakes up for a short while, she sees Lourdes. Two of Lourdes. One is standing over Claire, frowning at her, saying that she doesn't understand. The other Lourdes is stretched out next to Claire, eyes bandaged and face clawed apart. She is dead. The ghost of Lourdes starts to claw at her eyes, and Claire looks away. When she looks back, only the body of Lourdes remains.
Now
Claire explains to Reed and Max that this is the last thing she remembers. Now that she has explained her story in full, with as many details as she can remember, she demands to know the course heading of the Aurora. The Aurora is heading to Earth, and they are going to go and meet it before it gets there. They want to bring Claire as their expert guide, but she doesn't want to go back there. A recording is played for Claire of a distress call from the Aurora, and Claire recognizes the voice as Kane's. This convinces Claire to agree to go with them to the Aurora.
Claire hides the sedatives she has been taking so her head won't be clouded by them. She needs to be able to see everything and remember everything. Without them, she starts seeing ghosts everywhere.
When Max and Reed take Claire to their transport— the Ares —she is surprised to see military personnel on board with them. She expresses that whatever it is that's on the ship, they can't just shoot at it.
When they arrive at the Aurora, they can't establish contact. They form a boarding party, which includes Claire and Reed. Max stays on the Ares to supervise. Once again, as they are boarding the ship via cargo bay, Claire sees the ghost of her mother.
When they board the ship, the different teams split off, ignoring Claire as she tells them it's better to stick together. In the Atrium, Claire finds three bodies wrapped in sheets. She knows two of them are Lourdes and Voller. She pulls back the sheets on the other and discovers Nysus, who has a screwdriver driven into his ear.
While the military personnel are bagging up some bodies, Claire and Reed go searching for Kane. They squeeze into one of the rooms, and find Kane in it, with mattresses lining the floors and walls. He is alive, but has been alone for weeks, hallucinating. It takes him a while to realize that Claire is real and not a hallucination. Diaz, one of the military leaders, closes the door on Claire, Reed, and Kane, and seals it, locking the three in.
Claire gets into contact with Max, and he explains everything. He explains that before the Aurora disappeared and Verux acquired CitiFutura— the original owner of the Aurora —the two companies were in competition with one another. Verux developed a device to create vibrations that would cause headaches, paranoia, dread, and depression, perhaps some hallucinations, but rarely. They put the device on the Aurora to sabotage CitiFutura by making their first luxury cruise have poor reviews. But the vibrations turned out to be far more intense than intended after CitiFutura changed their specs, causing everyone on board to die. Nobody was supposed to find the Aurora and find out what happened.
Claire realizes that she and Reed are the cover story. Max is going to blow up the ship with them in it, claiming it was Claire's doing. Their death's— Reed's especially —are to make it convincing.
The three manage to escape the room, and Claire uses her acclimatization to hallucinations as a weapon against everyone else on the ship. She turns off the sound dampers, succumbing everyone to the full force of the device. This renders Kane into a zombie-like state, and Claire has to nudge him along with her. Reed starts seeing things, and gets super paranoid, eventually attacking Claire. She and Kane have to run away from Reed, back to the cargo bay.
Claire's plan is to find a EVA helmet for herself— she had to leave her helmet behind in the room — and a full suit for Kane so they can pose as Max's people to get back on the Ares. Claire finds a helmet for herself, but still needs to find a suit for Kane so they can escape. Claire leaves Kane in the LINA where he will be safer as she goes off in search of a suit.
Max appears in the cargo bay, and is surprised to see that Claire got out of the room she was locked in with Reed and Kane. They have a standoff. One of the team finds the device and disconnects it. They are taking the device so nobody will find it in the Aurora's wreck after it explodes.
Reed appears, unintentionally creating a distraction for Claire, who hooks herself to the Lina's safety tether. Claire shoots at the seal to the extendable airlock between the Ares and the Aurora, and the vacuum of space rips everything, including Max, out into space.
Claire waits for the pressure to equalize, but the airlock on the other side of the cargo bay is open, meaning a lot more air has to escape. The LINA isn't properly strapped down, so it starts to get dragged towards the open airlock. Eventually, she and the LINA are pulled out into space. She tries to pull herself along the tether towards the LINA, but her oxygen is running dangerously low and she can't. But then she feels the winch bringing her in.
Claire wakes up on the LINA with Kane looking after her. He has recovered a bit since the device was shut off, and he noticed Claire out on the tether and brought her back in. The Aurora is set to blow up, but the LINA doesn't have helm control because they took it apart to fix the Aurora. But they still have thrusters, and they manoeuvre the LINA to a position that keeps them from taking too much damage from the blast. After the Aurora blows up, they are essentially dead in the water, with no navigation or way to communicate... but the Aurora's emergency beacon is in the LINA. So they try to use it to hail rescue.
Epilogue
Two years later, Claire buys and refits her first ship for her new company. She asks Kane to join her, and he agrees.
Thoughts - Spoilers!
This was a fun sci-fi horror. It does a good job at being creepy, so it's a good introduction to the horror genre. I did find it was kind of lacking in actual scariness, but that is probably down to personal preference.
I think my biggest qualm with this book is that the Then-Now structure of the book is broken just over halfway through, where everything is suddenly solely told from the present, as Claire has no more story to tell and they have to take action based on her story. The shift is rather jarring, and even though we find out what happened to Kane and Nysus through clues later on, I wish we got to see the rest of Claire's story from her perspective, and learn why she left in the escape pod. I think the Then-Now structure is part of why I didn't feel like the book was particularly scary. The 'then' parts are quite creepy and delightfully atmospheric, but all the suspense and tension gets broken every time the book cuts back to the 'now,' and all of that build up has to start all over again.
I think that the cause of all the horror was kind of underwhelming when it's revealed to be a device planted just to sabotage a company by making it's customers complain. I don't know that an alien presence or some disease would have been more fulfilling, or even not having an answer at all, but I just found this explanation to be kind of boring. The mystery was super hyped up but in the end the answer was just underwhelming. All this supernatural stuff is actually just corporate greed? It just kind of seems like it's trying to add a twist for the sake of a twist. Max is supposed to be one of the good guys, and without any earlier indication turns out to be the moustache twirling villain. The story sets us up to think that the cause of the mass psychosis is some kind of presence, maybe an alien, and I honestly think the story should have run with those predictions.
I also found that there were some issue in the character writing. I especially noticed it in Lourdes, who was just super inconsistent. Before she goes to the Aurora, she is super adamant about how looting bodies would be really bad and totally unacceptable, but as soon as she is on the ship she seems to forget those strong feelings and goes to town playing dress up with a dead person's clothes. The characters are all just kind of flat and one note. Lourdes is naive and obnoxiously child-like, Voller is mean, Nysus is a nerd. As the love interest, Kane gets a bit more to him, but it's really just the detail that he's divorced and has a daughter. So when these characters die or are put in danger, I feel like there is no stakes because I wasn't given a reason to care about these people.
And finally... for all the explanation we get about the source of the hallucinations experience on the Aurora, why do we never get an explanation for Claire's penchant for seeing ghosts? Seeing people who aren't really there is Claire's entire backstory, and we can't get anything about that? It would be less of a big deal if there wasn't such a cut and dry explanation for the other hallucinations, but I just feel this was something that got missed.
It's not a terrible book, but I think there is some lost potential. Overall, the story is enjoyable, there's a creepy atmosphere, and a mystery to be solved.
I recommend this book to sci-fi lovers who want to start getting into the horror genre as well.
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honigfrosch
