The Forgotten

Sheriff Hayden Duke was born on the Pilgrim, and he expects to die on the Pilgrim, like his father, and his father before him. That's the way things are on a generation starship centuries from home. He's never questioned it. Never thought about it. And why bother? Access points to the ship's controls are sealed, the systems that guide her automated and out of reach. It isn't perfect, but he has all he needs to be content. Until a malfunction forces his engineer wife to the edge of the habitable zone to inspect the damage. Until she contacts him, breathless and terrified, to tell him she found a body, and it doesn't belong to anyone on board. Until he arrives at the scene and discovers both his wife and the body are gone. The only clue? A bloody handprint beneath a hatch that hasn't opened in hundreds of years. Until now.