Scrapper's Hope

by Timothy Callahan

  "We can't outrun them but we can outfight them if we really need too. How many crew on a destroyer?"

  "About 400, give or take a few."

  "They could easily overrun us. I really hope we don't have to outfight them."

  "What do you think they want?"

  "The Corps has never cared for our line of work. They probably want this ship and all its information. I'll give it to them, for a fair price."

  Trang laughed. "Enough to retire on?

  "I can only hope."

  "They haven't contacted us or let us know they're on their way."

  "It's a common trick, surprise us, try to catch us doing something illegal, which is why I want to do this by the book. The claim beacons are broadcasting. Smiley is cataloging all the stuff."

  "The only thing we're not doing is telling them about the Professor and Naomi?"

  "No other choice. If we tell them they're alive the ship goes back to them. I can't have that."

  "Do you think they know that?"

  "Naomi might, the Professor probably doesn't."

  "What are we going to tell them?"

  "I'll have a talk with them to explain the situation. I'm sure they'll understand."

  "Yeah, I'm sure they will,” Trang replied, looking at the destroyer one last time before turning the computer off.

  #

  "Scrapper," Jolly said. "I'm done looking at the video and I've put together some highlights."

  Scrapper felt happy for the distraction. Over the past five hours he did everything he could to avoid talking to or about Professor Litchen, Naomi and her gang. He managed to get a lot of things accomplished. But, those things were mostly boring. He helped Smiley get more drives over to the Jolly. Helped Yelolus move more furniture and bodies out to the airlock and helped his crew look for the snake thing. That worried him more than anything else, what was the thing and where had it gotten to?

  Now, with only three hours left until the UC arrived, he needed to deal with the survivors again. "Yeah, I'll look at them in my room."

  Walking around the ship had become second nature to him. He could get to any location from muscle memory so, as he walked, he looked at the newest images from the destroyer on his communicator. He was still unable to see the name and it wasn't broadcasting. Standard procedure for a ship that was trying to sneak up on them. They managed to position themselves in the powerful magnetic field of the gas giant, hiding it from his sensor so even if he did an active scan they wouldn't have seen it. At least that was the standard practice in situations like this.

  He found himself at his room and opened the door. Even though he was the Captain he refused to allow himself to be above anyone else, as such his room was nestled in the middle of everyone else's and it was just as cramped. One dresser, one trunk, a small bed and a computer, that's all he wanted. He sat at his desk and waited for the computer to boot. "Okay Jolly, let me see what you've got."

  Professor Litchen stood in his lab and looked at the camera. Janice walked busily around in the background. "Um, let's see, we've been observing the gas giant organism for the better part of three days now and it's amazing. What started as a few bacteria cells has become mold. It evolves at a very fast rate. Adaptations which might take hundreds of generations on Earth take only a few with this organism. This will change everything we know about evolution."

  The recording stopped and Jolly played another one. This one was of Janice, her long dark hair hung over her shoulder, her eyes tired and her skin pale. "I don't want to take another nanostim but the Professor says we need to be sharp, we need to keep going, and we need to see what else we can do to that mold to make it change. He's become obsessed with it, he's become someone who pushes us to the limit. I want to go out with Lisa, Frank and Naomi and drink and party. Well, back to work now, can't wait ‘til this is over and I can get some sleep."

  "Jolly, how long ago was that entry?"

  "Keep all questions until the end please, I don't want to spoil it for you."

  "Fine, show me what's next."

  Naomi appeared on the screen. She wore a red dress that did nothing to hide her figure. She had her hair styled up with a few curls hanging in front of her face. She looked down and her face sagged in sadness. "So much for a girl’s night. Damn that Professor Litchen, he's working my friends too hard and too long. I'm going to have to say something to him, get them away from him, or at least let them have a good night's sleep."

  The image faded and Professor Litchen appeared. His hair tasseled and wild, his eyes low. "That woman, Naomi, came in and yelled at me. She's a simple woman, smart in her own ways I guess, but not wise enough to understand what's going on in here. She threatened to tell the Captain. I told her to go for it, what we're doing here is much more important than a good night's sleep. I'll give my girls a few hours to rest just to appease her, but after that it's work until we figure this out."

  Jerk, Scrapper thought.

  The next video played. Janice looked at the camera again. Long bags hung under her eyes and her hair lost all the fullness it had before. Her entire face drooped down leaving her with an ugly scowl on her mouth. "I'm not well. Not well at all. I thought we were going to let this rest, the mold hadn't turned into anything for a while, the Professor even seemed bored by it by now but then, right in front of our eyes, the mold broke up and a- snake thing, emerged. We didn't get the sleep we were promised, we got another bag of nanostims." She held the brown bag up, it was the same one he found on her. "Guess it's time for another dose. Time for more work. Time to-" she turned the camera off, leaving the statement hanging.

  "That's all," Jolly replied.

  "Does that snake thing have anything to do with what happened on the ship?"

  "I think it might," Jolly replied. "I have a theory after watching all these recordings. May I share it?"

  "Go ahead."

  "The Professor saw the bacteria turn into mold then the mold produce something as complex as a snake. It drove him nuts trying to figure it out and, in return, he drove his team nuts. I don’t trust him. I'd lock the Professor up and throw away the key."

  "I can't really do that, I need his cooperation, at least until the UC ship leaves." He pulled out his communicator. "Trang, Doc, Yelolus and Smiley. I want another meeting. Doc, bring Professor Litchen, Trang, bring Naomi. We're going to have to lay it all out for them and see what they say. Scrapper out."

  Chapter ten

  "So, what's the plan?" Smiley asked.

  "Let me do all the talking," Scrapper replied as he sat behind the table. "I hope to make them an offer they'll find acceptable so we can move on."

  "Might be a tough sell. If you knew you could own a ship would you give it up?"

  "They won't own the ship, they'll just be able to claim it for the owner and have it towed back to a space port."

  "What are you going to offer them?"

  "You'll see," Scrapper replied.

  The door opened. Trang and Naomi walked it. Scrapper noticed their hands, Trang's left and Naomi's right, drop as soon as they entered. Where they holding hands? "Hello, Naomi, please have a seat."

  She tentatively sat across from Scrapper. Trang sat close as if to protect her. In a shy voice she almost whispered, "Thank you for letting me out of the room. I was getting a bit stir crazy."

  "I hope to remedy that situation very soon."

  "Thank you."

  The door opened and Professor Litchen and Doc walked in. Litchen froze when he saw Naomi sitting there. His face turned red and he pointed at her with an angry finger. "What is she doing here?"

  Naomi stiffened. "What's he doing here?"

  "Look, I know you two have a history but I need you to put it aside for the moment while we talk about the situation."

  "Put it aside?" The Professor asked. "How can I put it aside? She killed the crew. The fact she's even here is a testament to how stupid everyone in this room is."

  "I didn't kill anyone!" Naomi yelled, standing.

>   The Professor took a defensive step backwards. "See how aggressive she is? Do you not see the monster hiding inside of her? Put her away for good. Out an airlock if you could."

  "What are you talking about? It was your work that caused them to go crazy. If I was the leader why did they try to kill me?"

  "Why were you the only one to survive outside my lab? I had the lab locked down, that's how I survived."

  "That's bullshit," Naomi replied.

  "Both you two sit down! We have more pressing matters to discuss."

  "Captain, if you don’t do something about her then we’ll all be dead."

  "Sit down and listen to me.” Scrapper said in as calm a voice as he could muster. “In about three hours a UC ship will arrive and try to take what is rightfully mine. I can't have them do that and in order for them not to take my ship I need your help."

  "Ah, yes, the salvage code." Professor Litchen said. "Let me see if I can remember it correctly. If they find any survivors then those survivors can lay claim to the ship and thus take it away from you. Am I right?"

  Didn't expect you to know that, Scrapper thought. "That's it in a nutshell, yes."

  "What?" Naomi asked. "What does that mean?"

  "It means," Trang answered, "that if you say you were a crew member then, by law, you would lay claim to the ship and you'd be towed back to a space station where you could give it back to the rightful owner."

  "Oh," she said. "What will happen to you guys?"

  "We’d have to give the ship up and leave," Scrapper replied. "All this work will be for nothing."

  "Well, that's tough." Professor Litchen replied. "Too bad about that because I have no desire to lose that ship."

  "Actually, I think it's the data you need." Scrapper leaned forward with his fingers interlocked. "The data we have in our docking bay right now. Smiley, how many drives did we salvage?"

  "Eighty-two," she replied.

  "Could you lose Eighty-two drives of data from your project?"

  "I see," Professor Litchen said. "Are you saying if I don't co-operate you'll jettison those drives?"

  "Yes. But, just to show you that I'm all heart, if you agree you can go over those drives and can copy all the data you want off them for free. Information can fetch a high price, so me giving you that for free is a huge sacrifice for me, just as losing that data would be a huge sacrifice for you."

  "That's only a small part of my data, what of the rest?"

  "You can go over all the other drives we get off the ship after the UC ship leaves."

  "And all I have to do is say I'm a member of your crew?"

  "Actually, I'd prefer if you stayed out of sight until they leave but, if that can't happen, then say you're part of my crew."

  "Fine," the Professor said angrily. "I won't forget this though, I might agree but I do not like it one bit."

  "I didn't expect you would." He turned to Naomi. "And for you, I'll give you all the freedom you want, no more locking you in your room."

  "I'd like that," Naomi replied. "You don't need to ask me twice."

  #

  "Are we all ready?" Scrapper asked. He sat in the Captain's chair; below him his crew arranged themselves at their stations. No one had any particular station they were best at, each member of his bridge crew could take over for any other member and, in the worst case, Jolly herself could run a station. He preferred not to have the computer run any stations; AI's were known to make mistakes they could logically justify.

  "Ready," Trang replied.

  "Yup," Smiley said.

  "I am ready," Yelolus replied.

  "All right. Open a channel to the UC ship. Let's all pretend we're surprised."

  The UC ship loomed large on the screen. The ship's captain tried to approach during a time when the Jolly's crew would be asleep. Scrapper was familiar with that tactic so he had his crew dress as if they had just awoken. It was all illusion to make the captain believe they had caught them by surprise.

  "Channel open." Trang said.

  "This is Captain Johnson of the salvage vessel Jolly. Welcome to our salvage, how can we help the United Corps today?"

  He waited for a long time before getting a reply. He could only image the conversation the Captain having with his second. Maybe they didn't expect to be seen yet. A female voice replied. "This is Captain Yuki Forrester of the Graff, what is your business here?"

  "We're here to salvage this science vessel we found adrift."

  "How did you spot it? It's barely on our scanners."

  "We got lucky." At least so far Scrapper hadn't lied. "We were scanning the system and found an anomaly, I decided to check it out. Turns out it was this ship."

  "I see your salvage beacons. I'd like to take a look at your logs to be sure you followed all the proper protocol."

  "You'll see that we have."

  "And there were no survivors on the ship?"

  "No," Scrapper replied as flatly as he could.

  "Did you find bodies?"

  "Yes, we're in the process of space burials. You'll see that's all in the protocol manual, we don't have room in our ship for the bodies. We're taking everyone's name so we can alert the ship's owners so they can send their regrets to the families."

  "Well, so far everything seems up and up. Do you know what killed the crew?"

  Scrapper paused, not sure how much to tell. This Captain would probably want to visit the ship and when she did she'd see all the blood, the claw marks, the damage from the fighting. He didn't see any other choice but to tell her the truth. "It appears three people went crazy and murdered the entire crew."

  Another long pause. Scrapper could only imagine what they were talking about. Finally, the communicator cracked on.

  "Next time, start off with that." Captain Forrester replied. "Okay, here is what we're going to do. I'm going to head to your ship and we can head over to the science vessel. I want to see it for myself to determine if it's a murder scene worth our time or if I should allow you to keep the ship."

  "Captain, this is our salvage and under law it's our ship."

  "There are always gray areas under the law. Don't forget, it's the United Corps that upholds those laws." Her voice didn't leave any room for negotiation. "I know we got here a bit early in your cycle so I'll give you an hour to get ready."

  "Thanks," Scrapper replied sarcastically. He looked at Trang who turned the communicator off.

  "We're clear."

  "Bet they're having a very interesting conversation," Smiley said.

  "Yeah, I bet," Scrapper replied. "All right guys, ready for our game face?"

  "Game face?" Yelolus replied. "You mean, are we ready to lie to keep the ship?"

  "Yup."

  "I'm ready," Trang replied. "I'm really hoping that keeping the Captain on the Science ship will prevent her from talking to our crew."

  "Don't bet on that," Scrapper said. "She'll want to interview everyone. Yelolus, is the crew up to date on what we're telling them?"

  "Yes," Yelolus said. "They know that Naomi and the Professor are part of our crew. They know that we found no one alive."

  "Good. Jolly, have you erased all the videos you uploaded?"

  "There are no longer any personal logs. I made it look like they were deleted by the ship."

  "Good, that's all we can do I guess. All right people, let's get our best dress on and meet Captain Forrester."

  Chapter eleven

  Yuki Forrester looked around the Jolly's hanger bay in disgust. She hated dealing with salvagers. They were the vultures of space. Parasites that took anything with no regard for whom they belonged to. It didn't matter if this ship was stranded, it still belonged to the United Corps and should be taken back.

  The Captain of the ship, she believed he called himself Johnson, stood in the tiny docking bay and waited for her to make the first move. Next to him stood an Ulliam, something she hadn't expected. Next to the Ulliam stood a tall, blond woman with Echolite features. Most people wouldn't kn
ow the difference between an Echolite and a human but she did. Yuki studied every race the Corps encountered, noting their differences and similarities to human. Echolites stood differently, hunched forward ever so slightly. She speculated it was because they spent most of their lives bend forward to move around in their ships.

  She stepped forward and held her hand out. Protocol dictated she be nice to him, for now. "Captain Johnson."

  He shook her hand firmly. "Captain Forrester. Please, just call me Scrapper."

  When they released she resisted the urge to wipe the filth on her pants. "You are the Captain of this ship, correct?"

  "Yes, but I hate that title."

  "Fine," she replied. "Let's get onto business. I want to see all the ship's logs and I want all the video journals transferred to my ship."

  "That's a problem. When we got here we found all that personal stuff and the AI erased."

  "Have you tried to recover the information?"

  "We don't have the tools to do that."

  "Well, give me the drives and I'll see what we can get."

  "Captain, I can't do that. That's our property and I will not give up those drives."

  "It's not your property until I tell you it is."

  Scrapper’s face flushed with anger. The Ulliam spoke next. "Captain, I don't think we need to quote the law to you-"

  "It's not about the law, it's about what the United Corps wants,” she snapped. "If we want this ship we will take it away."

  "That's not right,” Scrapper said between clinched teeth.

  "Everything the United Corps does is right. Now, lead the way, and don't hide anything from me. I'll know when you do."

  Scrapper walked in front of Captain Forrester and led her to the docking tube. She noticed the ship was well maintained for such an old vessel. His crew were well dressed, perhaps a little ragged. She chalked that up to hours of hard work on the found ship.

  "We've been dismantling the ship's computers," Scrapper said. "So far all we found were petabytes of information about what they were doing here."