You want to know about that iced-over hulk I brought into port, eh? Can’t say I blame you, not every day you see a ship running their power on full, their life support turned off, and still so cold the thrust barely functions. She almost marooned us in the darks, you know.

Yeah, I said ‘she.’ It isn’t some malfunction, not some bug in the system. No, she’s alive, or dead, or something between, and she’s colder than a ball of ice sailing through the deep nothing between stars.

It started when we stopped for fuel and supplies. It was a human station, orbiting some tiny no-name star in our path. Only saw them ‘cause of a bit of luck and a bungled jump. Figured we had a bit of time in the schedule, may as well stop and get some decent grub for a shift or two.

We left in half a shift. Wasn’t anything wrong with the station, not really. People were friendly, atmo was perfect, and the food was tasty as all hell. But something caught at the edge of your vision, kinda like someone was there. An' you go to look, and what do you get? Nothing! We all felt like we had eyes on us, no matter where we were. So we jumped back on board and ran back to deep space.

We shouldn’t’ve gone back to the deeps. Not without giving our ship a once-over. She’d slipped in somehow, and hadn’t gone back out. Two jumps past, and we’d have sworn our life support was going insane. Ship temps were plummeting, so of course we try to check the life support to see why it’s sloughing off way more heat than it should.

It wasn’t. Was doing its job by the book, which is more’n I can say for me or my crew. But somehow, heat was just...going away. So of course we start running tests on everything, sending people through all the crawlspaces and hidey-holes. Give the ship a full inspection, right in the middle of the deepest dark between stars.

Dumb idea, now that I think about it. Some of my crew up and vanished, ‘n others reported seeing a pair of humans, but not being able to keep up with them. There has to be some truth to that. After all, three different shifts reported the same thing without even getting a proper chance to talk with each other. A tall human woman, pale to the eyes and colder than my ex’s heart to the thermos. And with her, a child, a tiny wraith of a lad who showed to the eye but not to the scans.

We didn’t find anything wrong with the ship, not at all. Everything was spick and span. But still my ship grew colder, and still my crew was shrinking. And when ice started forming on the walls and our breath began to frost the halls, that’s when we found them.

My missing crew, frozen rock solid. Ever seen what happens when someone gets iced in a containment leak? Sorta like that. You’d swear there was still life in their eyes, even with them being more frost than flesh.

That was when I’d had enough. Ordered a jump straight to the nearest star, had us throw the power plant on full. Everything in the ship put to full power, shield bleeding into the void and pulse weapons blazing. Anything that could run hot was overclocked and overpowered. And even that was hardly enough. Our life support was off, and still we bled heat faster than a pastry thrown into a vat of frosted nitro.

That’s about when we saw your station on scan, of course. Limped our way over here fast as we could. We might be able to leave sometime soon, if we can find a way to deal with her. Or if we can make our peace.

But if you feel an unwelcome chill in the air, and see a human woman or her child. Well, turn the other way. Catch a ship off this bucket of bolts. Find someplace that isn’t haunted by her cold, frozen by her gaze. If you feel her eyes, we’ve prolly passed our curse to you.