"That's part of the ship and I control the ship."
"Right. If we're going to evacuate the ship I don't want a door getting in the way. We're going to have to work together to come up with a good evacuation plan."
"Aw, how sweet, we're working together now."
Yelolus lifted his shoulders showing humor. "Don't get used to it. When we're done here I'll just keep on ignoring you."
"Oh good, I'm looking forward to that."
Chapter five
Scrapper knocked gently. Trang responded by yelling. "Give us a second, okay?"
"Every second we waste is another second the Corps ship gets closer."
"Naomi is getting ready," she said annoyed. "Wait a second."
Scrapper stood and waited. He wasn't really sure how to go about this. Finding a survivor was a rare event. Most ships he boarded had been adrift for so long the crew had abandoned it or were dead. He knew the laws and if this wasn't such a valuable claim he'd give it back to Naomi, send a rescue request out, and then head to the next system.
"Come on in," Trang replied.
Scrapper opened the door and walked in. Naomi looked a lot better than the last time he saw her. She wore a gentle expression on her face. She couldn't be any older than twenty-five, and far too pretty for her own good. "Hello, Miss-""
"Just Naomi," she replied.
"Naomi. May I take a seat?"
"Not much room in here," Trang replied, standing from her chair. "Guess I'll stand."
"No, you'll wait outside," Scrapper said. "I need to talk to Naomi alone."
Naomi waved at Trang. "I'll be fine. I'm sure your Captain isn't going to hurt me."
"Scrapper, call me Scrapper."
"Fine," Naomi replied, sitting up on her bed. "Scrapper."
"Okay," Trang walked to the door. "If you need me, just yell."
"I will," Scrapper replied with a grin. He knew enough from his UC days that using humor helped relax everyone.
Trang left and Scrapper waited for the door to close completely before turning his attention to Naomi. "Are you comfortable?"
"I guess," Naomi replied. "This bed could use some work."
"Those normally aren't comfortable, I know."
"I'm glad you didn't put me in the jail."
"I may have if I thought you were a threat."
"I can see that. What happened to the Professor?"
"He's still in sick bay. I haven't visited him and I don't know his status."
"Be sure to tell him I'm okay."
Scrapper gave her an uneasy smile. "I will. Can we get onto busy here?"
"You want to know what happened?"
Scrapper nodded. "I really want to know if my ship is in any danger."
"It is."
"Why?"
She squirmed in the bed as if the sheets were agitating her. "Didn't you see what attacked me? Those were my best friends. They contracted some sort of virus and it turned them into that."
Scrapper's heart raced in his chest. "What kind of virus? Is it airborne?"
"I don't know," she replied, the sobs started and her face turned red. She held back her tears for as long as she could. "One minute they were fine, the next they were running around the ship attacking people. I couldn't believe it until I saw Janice, she-" Naomi stopped talking, her gaze fell to the bed.
"Before she what?"
"Before she killed." Her eyes continued to look at the sheet as she told the story, her voice soft and distant, as if she were describing something from a book and not something she witnessed herself. "I was in the cafeteria eating with some friends when Janice dropped down from a ceiling vent. She looked- I don't really know how I knew it was her, she looked so different. I think it was her chain. Yeah, she always had a cross chain that she wore. I recognized it right away and knew it was her.
"She jumped on the guy I was talking to and ripped his throat out before I had a chance to even scream. She looked at me and gave me a smile I'd seen before. She said, 'what are you waiting for?' then attacked the others."
"What did you do?"
"From there things are fuzzy." She started punching the bed with her hand. She shook her head and squeezed her eyes shut. Scrapper waited for this to end. He was getting somewhere and would not let this outburst stop him from getting the information he wanted. "I ran. I saw death. Saw bodies in the hallway. Heard screaming. I turned a corner and saw another one. She chased me. I don't know how I got away. I-I can't remember much more before you found me. I remember waking up in a lab. Don't know how I got there. I don't- god everything is a blank."
"I need you to remember." Scrapper leaned in closer to Naomi. "My crew could be in danger and I need to know what happened."
"I'm telling you all I know!"
"You're not!" The anger in Scrapper's voice caused Naomi to jump. "Come on, you know what happened. Tell me."
The door flung open and Trang ran into the room. "Sir, you need to stop."
Scrapper looked at Trang. "Get out of here, Trang."
"She doesn't know and pushing her won't get you the answers you need." Trang's face softened. "Let me talk to her. Maybe I can get her to remember."
Naomi nodded, "Scrapper, I want to help, I do, I just-"
"I know," Scrapper replied standing from the chair. He ran his hand through his hair and sighed. "I know."
Trang placed her hand on his shoulder and stepped by him to sit in the chair. She reached out and grabbed Naomi's hand and started whispering something Scrapper couldn’t hear. He walked outside and let the door close behind him.
He took a deep breath to try and relax. He didn't like the way he acted in there. Didn't like how the stress of this situation was making him into a monster.
Walking into the sick bay Scrapper found Doc fast asleep at his desk. The doctor always kept odd hours, probably never got more than a few hours' sleep in a day so Scrapper never got upset at his afternoon naps. "Doc, wake up."
Doc opened his eyes and leaned forward in his chair. "Ah, Scrapper, sorry about that. It's been a busy day. Thought I'd catch some shut eye while things are slow."
"No problem. What can you tell me about the Professor?"
"Well, he's not as hurt as we thought. I think most of the injuries are pretty superficial. I also think he's in shock."
"Can I talk to him?"
"With the shock I'm not sure how coherent he'll be."
"You didn't tell him anything did you?"
"He knows nothing about Naomi or the fate of the crew. I don't know what he knows on his own."
"Of course." Scrapper replied walking into the room where the Professor lay.
His closed eyes belayed the trauma going on in his mind. His rem sleep looked disjointed, his eyes darting back and forth behind his eye lids. Scrapper sat next to the bed and tapped his shoulder. "Professor?"
The old man's eyes opened, wild and scared. "You're now safe."
"Safe?" He asked as if trying to find the meaning of the word.
"We killed the three crew members who were attacking the ship."
The professor looked at Scrapper absorbing the information. "Three?"
"Are there more?"
"Yes, I believe there were four."
"We've searched the ship and did not find anyone else alive."
"I'm the only survivor?"
Scrapper nodded and did his best to sound convincing. Lying wasn't something he did well. "Yes."
He relaxed a bit and the weight of the events that pressed on his body eased. "Where am I exactly?"
"We're a salvage ship. We came into the system looking to see what's here. We were ready to leave when we detected your ship."
"Our distress call?"
"You never made one," Scrapper replied. "When we tried to contact you we got no reply and our scans didn't show anyone on board."
"What of the monsters?"
"We didn't find any monsters. We did find three crew members dressed as animals running around. They tried to kill
us and we were forced to kill them."
"Oh, that's a shame. Such a shame. I was trapped in my lab when most of it went down."
"Seemed like that was a pretty safe place."
"As safe as any other, I suppose. I don't remember much, hate to say it but I'm not a hardened warrior and I panicked and don't recall everything that happened. I'm sorry I can't be more useful."
Scrapper wanted to use the same tact he tried with Naomi on the Professor but his heart wasn't into it and the Professor didn't seem like the type of person who would respond to that kind of aggression. "I need to know if that ship is safe."
"Are we still connected to the ship?"
"Yes,"
"Captain-"
"Scrapper, please, call me Scrapper."
"Charming name." The Professor replied. "If you only killed three monsters and I think there are four isn't it prudent to remove ourselves from the ship and send that ship into the gas giant?"
"No," Scrapper replied. "That ship is valuable to me and my crew. Unless I'm sure there's a threat, and I'm sorry your word is not good enough, I'm going to stay attached."
The Professor crossed his arms, looked right at Scrapper and said, "Your greed will kill us all."
Scrapper's felt his face flush with anger. He suppressed the urge to punch the Professor in the face. "It's not greed, it's making a living. Now, you tell me that was your lab, correct?"
"Yes."
"One of my techs found a recording of you talking about some sort of snake like thing in a tank?"
For one brief second the Professor's eyes grew wide. He composed himself quickly. "Yes, that thing was the start of all this I believe. Have you found it yet?"
"No," Scrapper replied, worried. That thing could easily hide somewhere on the ship, in a vent, under a computer, anywhere.
"If you stay, you had better find it quickly."
"Why?"
"That snake, as you call it, started out as a batch of bacteria we found floating in the clouds of the gas planet. We took it on board and it did something amazing, it started to quickly adapt. It adapted to everything I threw at it."
"So what happened?"
"It escaped,” he replied. "It broke through the container and we couldn't find it. The next thing I know four women started killing everyone on the ship. I don't know why, I don't know how, but for three days our ship was under attack from within and we could do nothing to prevent it."
"Thank you, Professor. Before I go, can you tell me the names of the woman who attacked you?"
"Yes, they were Janice, Frank, her real name is Francis but everyone called her Frank, Lisa and Naomi. Naomi was the most dangerous. She was the leader."
Chapter six
"He's just looking out for his crew," Trang said sitting next to Naomi on the bed. She stroked some hair out of her eyes. "You remind me of my kid."
"Kid? How old are you?"
"Probably older than you think," Trang replied. "We Echolites age a bit slower than humans. I may look young but I'm really about sixty Earth years."
"You'd be older than my mother," Naomi laughed. "Thank you for staying with me. This has been trying."
"Only a few hours ago you thought you'd be killed. I'm surprised you're as with it as you are."
"Being taking care of helps," Naomi replied,gently grabbing Trang's hand. She held it tight, squeezing every so often as if to reassure herself Trang wasn't going away. "I'd be dead if not for you guys."
Trang's communicator beeped. In a quick tone Scrapper said, "Trang, come in."
"Sorry, need to get this." She pulled her communicator from her belt. "Yeah."
"How's Naomi?"
"Doing well."
"Can she be left alone for a few minutes? We need an all hands on deck meeting."
Scrapper rarely called an all hands on deck meeting preferring to communicate on an open channel. "Sure, I'll be down in a few minutes."
"Lock the door. I don't want Naomi leaving that room without an escort." As if anticipating a question he quickly added, "No questions."
"Right, I'll lock it on my way out." She turned the communicator off.
"Guess he still doesn't trust me?"
"I have no plans on locking the door. I don't understand why he doesn't trust you."
"Won't you get in trouble?"
"As long as you don't leave the room and get in trouble I'll be fine."
"I'll be asleep anyway."
Trang released Naomi's hand, stood from the bed and walked out the door.
Trang hated the all hands on deck meetings. Smiley, Yelolus, her, Doc and Scrapper would be there trying to shout over each other, trying to get their points across in a disorderly fashion. Scrapper eventually called the meeting to order once everyone got their views out of their systems.
She laughed at her own hypocrisy. The Echolite culture made her strong and forceful and she could yell and scream with the best of the crew.
She had a soft spot for Naomi. The thought of that poor girl running from her friends, hiding from them, fearing for her life, brought out the maternal instinct inside her. Echolites, being a nomadic race, grew strong family ties with all around them. Trang felt Naomi’s need to be taken care of at this time of crisis.
She walked into the room to find Scrapper sitting at the end of a cafeteria table. This was the biggest room on the ship and sat about fifty. The Jolly carried a crew of one hundred and fifty people who worked rotating shifts. One very long table which sat fifteen lay in the middle of the room. Smaller, round tables which sat 8 to 10 people surrounded the long table. There were a few smaller, 4 man tables at the corners. The meetings normally took place at the large fifteen man table. Scrapper sat at the head looking down. "Scrapper."
"Trang," he said looking up. "Had an interesting talk with the Professor a few minutes ago."
"What did he say?"
"He told me Naomi was the leader of the monsters and helped them kill everyone."
"He's lying," Trang replied, sitting across from him on the long table.
"I don't know that. We don't know that. Smiley has some recordings he made. He doesn't know we know about them. He was very forthcoming about what happened but I also think he's lying about his role in the whole thing. So, who knows what he was lying about and what was true."
"I trust my instincts on Naomi. I feel she's telling us the truth. I can feel how frightened she is. If she was a danger I'd know it."
"I'll take that under consideration when we decide what our next move should be."
The door opened and the other three walked in. Yelolus sat next to Scrapper, Doc and Smiley sat across from each other. Smiley never let the grin leave her face, Doc sat with a tired thump and Yelolus sat with a serious expression on his leathery brown face.
"I'll start this as I always do," Scrapper said. "What do you guys think?"
The room erupted in a cacophony of people and aliens talking over each other. Scrapper waited a moment before raising his hand. "Come one guys, do we have to go through this every time?" He sighed and pointed to Yelolus. "What do you think we should do?"
"We have ten hours until the Corps ship arrives. We should salvage all we can then try to leave undetected."
"Smiley?"
"I'm doing all I can to get the drives off the computer. If we want to get the most out of this ship we need at least two days. I don't know what we should do, but if we leave in ten hours we won't get as much from this ship as we could and then the UC will get the rest."
"Doc?"
"The two who came over seem to be unharmed, for the most part. There's no need for us to leave because of their condition."
"Do you think they're a danger?"
Doc shrugged. "Not when you ordered them both locked in their rooms."
"Trang, I'm sure you have an opinion."
"We should stay as long as we can," she said. "I think I can convince Naomi to say she's one of us and if we keep the Professor in the Medical lab and say he was hurt dur
ing an accident the UC won't know they were crew members."
"Naomi's problem is, she's too pretty." Scrapper said. "No offense to the ladies in the room, but you girls look like you've been in space for a long time. Naomi looks like- well she looks like the computer programmer she is."
"I won't pretend that didn't hurt me," Smiley replied, her smile dropping for a comic second before laughing. "Who am I kidding, that's funny. If she is a programmer and she knows the system I could use her for my crew. She could blend in there, you know, as long as she's working with ugly people maybe they won't look twice thinking she's just a new crew member."
"That's a good idea. Might even help keep her mind off of what happened."
Trang said, "She's sleeping now."
"We could all use some sleep but we need to keep going. I want as much done as we can before the UC ship arrives."
#
"Am I ugly?" Smiley asked Yelolus as he used an electronic screwdriver to take one of the computers apart.
"I'm the wrong alien to ask," he replied with a slight shutter in his shoulders.
"Come on, even Ulliams have to know when a human is pretty or not."
"Could you tell if an Ulliam is pretty?" He asked. "From what I understand humans have a hard time telling the males from the females. If not for the small bumps on their chests female and male Ulliam look almost exactly alike."
"Is that true?"
"We can tell a male from a female in many ways," he replied pulling out a circuit board with a grunt. "But, to be honest, I can only tell a male and female human from the bumps on your chests as well."
Smiley looked down at her chest. "Must be hard with me. God didn't give me much to work with."
"From what I can tell about what humans think beautiful is it's safe to say you would fall within that range."
"Aww, thanks,” she replied with a big smile. "I think."
"Scrapper was out of line about a lot of things."
"Like what?"
"I wish to speak honestly but I don't want Scrapper to find out."
"Yelolus, how long have we known each other?"
"Two Earth years."
"Have I ever done anything to lead you to believe you can't talk to me?"
Scrapper's Hope Page 3