# Derelict — ISV Heron — room key

ISV Heron went dark on a long haul when the main bus dropped and would not come back. The crew pulled every blanket aboard into the crew quarters and ran one heater off the battery. The battery lasted sixty hours. The cold has lasted longer.

Last log entry: Eng. Kowalczyk. Their trail runs through three rooms.

Hook: The heater in the crew quarters was switched off, not exhausted.

## Main deck

**1. Bridge**

Vacuum. Suit up. Nav plot frozen on the last fix. Somebody wrote the numbers on the glass.
Hazard: frost on every surface, thick enough to hide the floor. Grates, drops and open hatches are all the same white.
Log fragment (Nav): "Sent the mayday on the last of the capacitor. If anyone heard, they have not said."

**2. Hangar**

Empty cradle. Scorch marks.

**3. Engineering**

Panels off, parts sorted on the deck by someone who ran out of time.
Hazard: the bus is one bad contact from live. Bringing power back brings everything back, including whatever tripped it, and a bare hand on the wrong contact takes a hard shock.
Log fragment (Eng.): "Bus dropped. Not the reactor — the reactor is fine. Something between the reactor and us said no."
Salvage: the fault. A single component, expensive, sabotaged. Fit a spare and the ship lives.

**4. Armoury**

Rack half empty. The sign-out sheet stops mid-line.
Trail 1/3: A sound-powered handset hanging off its hook, the line still open to the crew quarters (5). It needs no power, and someone at the other end kept talking long after anyone answered.

**5. Crew quarters**

Bunks stripped. One is made, tight, the way the service teaches it.
Hazard: the crew, together, under every blanket aboard. They were breathing until quite recently. Lifting the blankets lets the last pocket of air out: everyone here checks against the cold at once.
Log fragment, on a slate held in a frozen hand: "hour 58. still here. tell Moreau's mother"
Trail 2/3: The other end of the line. Kowalczyk's helmet sits under the handset, and on the bulkhead beside it, chalked in Kowalczyk's hand, the next room: the lab (6).

**6. Lab**

One sample tray labelled and signed. The rest are blank.
Trail 3/3: Kowalczyk's last call went here. The recorder clipped under the console is Eng. Kowalczyk's. It caught both ends of the call, and everything after, to the end of the last day.

**7. Drive section**

Fuel gauges at zero. The log says they were not.
Salvage: a crew locker, still locked. A month's pay in hard chits and a photograph nobody is coming back for.

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The map for this key, free and CC0 (PNG, and .dd2vtt with walls and doors): https://bulkhead.bananafest-destiny.com/daily/2026-11-11/
Drawn with Bulkhead, a starship deck plan editor, free in the browser: https://bulkhead.bananafest-destiny.com/