Vanity in a Void

Solid black surrounded the cockpit. The inhabitants of the spacecraft had long since grown wary of one another on their now sixteen year voyage into the final frontier. It had been at least a decade since they last saw the sun's waning rays. They were on course to anywhere and nowhere at this point; but they nonetheless continued their routines ad infinum: maintenance inside and out, water and oxygen reclamation, exercise, sleep, gaze into the dark abyss they drifted within... rinse and repeat on the daily.

One day (night? who knows anymore when there's no sun) one of the four crew members was going from the cockpit into the main hull of their ship when he heard a few taps. Being onboard with three others, he thought nothing of this and continued to his quarters for some rest. Another set of taps. He slept a dreamless sleep.

The other three sat in the engine room. Given they were drifting, the combustion machine was shut off to conserve power; it was were they could have a smoke without catching the ship on fire. They had heard the first tap, and like their crew mate thought nothing of it. Someone may have made a passing grunt. They then heard the second time when it sputtered out. Then again. Again, again and again. It would start, stop, tap in increasing and harsh speeds, stop. 

tap tap

taptap

taptaptaptaptapTAPTAPTAPTAPTAP

TAPTAP

tap tap taptap

TAPTAP TAP TAP TAP

tap

They all went on alert and began a detailed inspection of the entire vessel as the orgasms of tapping burst out continuously. It sounded as if rain in a hurricane mixed with a turret on rapid fire. The man who had just fallen asleep for a moment was now up and pumping with adrenalin, he rushed back to the cockpit to check the ships diagnistics; another suited up and grabbed his tether to go out the airlock and check the exterior, bringing a specialised umbrella in case it was a microscopic meteor shower, or some sort of cosmic dust doing the battering. One stayed back in the engine room to make sure the issue wasn't originating there while another checked the hull for any sign of an air leak.

The three inside met within the hull when nothing showed to be wrong that was causing the tapping. There was one rotating gear that had needed replacing in the engine, but that was swiftly taken care to and yet, the tapping persisted. After a few moments they realised they were one member short as the fourth hadn't come back from outside the ship yet, though he should have been. Two quickly went off to see what was going on. When they got to the airlock they saw a missing suit and tether, but when looking through a small window they saw no tether anywhere. They could see nothing. One suited himself up while the other stayed behind to watch his tether and make sure nothing like that happened. The tapping continued.

Still in the cockpit the now wide awake member continued to check diagnostics triply when suddenly a knife slammed into the glass before him, then again. The alarm on the spacecraft went off as the sealing door between the hull and cockpit slammed shut while the rest of the glass shattered as the depressurisation shot it out into the abyss. The man inside imploded almost instantaneously. The one with the knife had been the formerly missing crew mate, a shard had pierced his suit and he died there and then. 

The tapping stopped to the shock of the one crew member still inside near the airlock as the alarm blared.

As one of the now two survivors of the party was approaching the middle of the hull from the outside he heard a pulsing sound buzzing over his radio. He quickly turned back and went back to the airlock. Back in the ship the two rushed to the hull and looked out another small window to where now only a sealed door shielded them from the harsh outer space; through that they could somewhat makeout a suit floating through wreckage. The tapping resumed.

It wouldn't stop.

Two days, or however long it really was, there was no more ship adrift. Nothing. No evidence of anything being in the void at all.