Ramash burrowed deeper into his nest of salvaged uniforms, and listened intently to the conversation of the ship's officers. Although they were speaking on the other side of the plasteel partition, in the ship's break room, the air ducting carried their voices to him perfectly.
"I tell you, we have a stowaway on board! Every time I run the vitals on crew, we have one more heat signature than we should!" ranted Pfeifer, the ship's Steward. His job was to ensure the comfort and well-being of his shipmates on the Terra's Pride. "And our rations are being consumed at a faster rate than normal. There's extra carbon dioxide in the air, and we're not recycling our garbage in the same proportions that we should. Someone or something is getting to our garbage before it goes into the recycler."
"And I'm telling you, your sensors are off," rejoined the voice of Jubell, senior Communications Officer. "You know that we picked up some vermin from the planet Novitia in the Novish system. Some of those nasty critters can grow to the size of a dog, given the right diet. If you're picking up an extra heat sig, scan it for sentience, why don't you? What do the brain EMT signals give you?"
"Of course, I've tried that," sighed Pfeifer in exasperation.
"And...."
"And, nothing. No sentient activity, no human neutron pulses, no psi radiation whatsoever."
"I rest my case," rejoined Jubell with perhaps just a tad too much smugness. However, Jubell knew how far to push. Part of her job was to notice and recommend therapeutic action for discord among the crew members. Professionally, she knew, she should soothe Pfeifer's ego and recommend closure for the disagreement between two high ranking officers. She often augmented such ego soothing with her own personal psychic "massage", as she privately termed it, using her native Mareshi talent for empathy.
"I'd recommend a hematographic chemical scan. If there is an unknown human being with iron and oxygen in blood makeup lurking somewhere in our ductwork, that will flush him out."
"You'll authorize such a scan, then?"
"I will."
With that, the two officers left the break room, leaving Ramash to ponder his next move. A hematographic scan would certainly reveal his presence to the crew. So far, he'd managed to block Pfeifer's sentience scans by making his mind utterly blank, taking refuge in the meditation practice his mother had taught him long ago. But when he returned from his trance state, often hours or even days had passed, leaving him sore, cramped, and very hungry. His last raid on the stored rations had undoubtedly earned him the wrath of the Steward. But raiding the recycle bins just wasn't quite doing it any more.
For the first time, Ramash considered revealing his presence openly to the Terra's Pride crew. There were criminal penalties for being a stowaway. But at least, he had heard, the United Earth Federation didn't practice slavery, so the most he'd have to face would be a few years in prison, not forcible labor the rest of his life. Or worse...he knew that some slavers sold young boys into a life of prostitution. Plenty of planets would pay for a teenaged, olive-skinned, black haired youth such as Ramash.
Perhaps, they'd even let him work for his passage. Perhaps...they'd even let him be crew. Briefly, his mind held a glowing vision of himself, clean and handsome in a UE uniform, seated on the main bridge, operating one of the fascinating illuminated consoles, taking orders, giving them, being accepted into the crew's complicated web of relationships....
He sighed. Since his mother died in a street brawl on Novitia, there had been no one he was close to. He had existed, like all street brats, living hand to mouth, fighting for his food and sometimes for his very life. He had been running from a gang of thugs who wanted, literally, the shirt off his back. He had ducked into an unfamiliar alley, leading to the Novitia ship's hangar. The docking bay of the Terra's Pride had gaped open, and he had slipped in, hidden on a pallet of ship-bound supplies. From that day on, he had crept through the ship's hidden places, ducts, storage units, jerry tubes. Many times, he had been on the point of being discovered, and had shut his mind and body down into trance, hoping no one would hear or see him as he lay curled into a ball in some dark recess of the ship. So far, it had worked. So far......
His thoughts were interrupted by a lurch of the hull under his feet, and the blaring of the Pride's alert klaxons.
"All hands! All hands! Get to your stations! We are under attack!," shouted someone from the bridge. The nervous voice of the ensign who first gave warning was replaced by the Captain's stentorian tones, then.
"This is not a drill. We are under attack by.....ships of unknown origin. We are attempting to hail them, and they are not responding. Brace for impact."
Ramash tried to comply with the Captain's orders, but there wasn't much he could do. He was in a void between two walls, and the only exit was through the ducting into the break room. Something thudded into the ship, and Ramash bounced in his tiny space from wall to wall. He hit his head on a protruding pipe. Hard. Then there was only darkness.
He awoke to a pounding headache. His limbs were twisted under him into his nest of blankets and discarded uniforms, and he struggled to free himself. Quietly. There was no telling what had happened. He had air, though, and the ship seemed to have gravity. It was cold, though, very cold, and he could feel a draft rushing by his exposed skin. Had the hull been breached to vacuum? It was likely he'd find out, sooner than he wanted to. Something else eddied into his nostrils with the chilled air the taint of death, of unburied corpses. It was a smell he remembered from the streets of Novitia, and had hoped never to smell again.
With his ears and mind, he reached out, to discover what had happened. First, he discovered that there were people on the ship. Next, he discovered that they were not the Pride's crew.
Then, he found that they were unkind. A man's scream, torn raw from an abused throat, assaulted his hearing. He barely recognized the voice as Pfeifer's. Ramash heard the crack of something hard against soft flesh, and he heard Pfeifer scream again, but with a choking sound as if he was choking on blood.
"Damn you, you will tell me. What was the Federation's mission in this part of space? What were you looking for?"
Silence, broken only by Pfeifer's choked sobs. With another sickening crack, those subsided as well.
"God's stinking turds, this one won't tell anyone anything anymore. Another one for the recycler."
A new voice cut in, more refined, less brutal, but subtly more terrifying in its absolute control of its own nuances.
"Fabian, you must learn to control those violent impulses of yours, or we'll have no one of the crew left to question. How can we possibly determine the nature of this ship's mission if you continue to be so rough with the prisoners?"
"Sorry, ma'am", muttered "Fabian". "I'll be more careful with the next one. Who's left?"
The silky voice hummed with displeasure. "I'm afraid you have disposed of all of the senior officers. We have some ensigns and low ranking people left. There is one officer missing. We have not found the Pride's Coms Officer, one....Mareshika Jubell."
Ramash found that he was shaking, and forced his body to calmness. In trance, he became aware of another psychic presence, belonging to the very person just discussed. With eyes closed, the face of Mareshika Jubell appeared on his brain. She appeared calm, orderly, her uniform was neat. Only her eyes betrayed desperation. She focused on him, and to his psychic vision, that focusing was a blast that left him flayed. All of his being, his secret hopes and desires, were laid open to that psychic blast. He didn't know where Jubell was physically, but she knew him now as no one else did.
And she asked the question that he had dreaded for weeks, that reverberated along his raw synapses.
"Who are you? And what are you doing on my ship?!!"
(This message has been edited by moderator (edited 03-25-2002).)
And for the rest of this story:
(url="http://"http://www.AmbrosiaSW.com/cgi-bin/ubb/newsdisplay.cgi?action=topics&number;=20&forum;=*EV/EVO+chronicles&DaysPrune;=50&article;=000184&startpoint;=20")Stowaway, Chapter 2(/url)
(url="http://"http://www.AmbrosiaSW.com/cgi-bin/ubb/newsdisplay.cgi?action=topics&number;=20&forum;=*EV/EVO+chronicles&DaysPrune;=50&article;=000192&startpoint;=20")Stowaway, Chapter 3(/url)
(url="http://"http://www.AmbrosiaSW.com/cgi-bin/ubb/newsdisplay.cgi?action=topics&number;=20&forum;=*EV/EVO+chronicles&DaysPrune;=50&article;=000198&startpoint;=0")Stowaway, Conclusion(/url)
(This message has been edited by mamajama (edited 11-10-2002).)