Holding Back Jack

TW:dead animals

Jack Dancer stared at the alien machine that was older than his species while eating salted popcorn. “Can you say that again?”

Silver from head to toe, the thing that had boarded the Fairweather nodded. “I one to tae que to my whole word.”

“You mean you want to take me to your home world?” Jack’s burnt hand scratched his head. The door to the canteen opened with a hydraulic hiss. Wafting air meant Jack could smell his body odor on his Fairweather ship’s uniform. He tapped the weathered tool box that went everywhere with him.

“Stop talking to that thing,” said Max, a fellow mechanic. “It’s creepy.”

“Creepy?” asked the robotic creature. It had learned that ending a statement with an upward inflection made it a question.

“Yes. You are creepy. You scare me.” Max pointed a finger at the thing that sat opposite Jack at the steel table bolted to the floor. The acne scarred young man rubbed crystalised sleep from his eyes and flicked it to the ground. He yawned. “You all need to be quieter when I’m trying to sleep. Between the snoring and the noises Irene makes when she’s masturbating in her bunk I barely catch a z.”

“Having our own cabins would be great,” Jack agreed while Max fried plant grown bacon in a sealed cooker. The extractor fan on the cooker whirred loudly.

“You scare me?” the droid thing repeated, head facing Max.

“Yes.” Popping open the cooker, calloused fingers popped the bacon onto a plate. “No offence, dude, but you’re the stuff of nightmares.” Rice hydrated and cooked in another unit. A can popped out and steamed. “We need more flavour packs. I hate wasabi.” Max filled a flask with cold filtered water and sat his magnetic plate on the table at the far corner away from the alien. Pulling steel chopsticks from a drawer built into the table, Max ate, eyeing the robot suspiciously.

“Why isn’t the captain here talking to it?” Jack asked. “Didn’t she give it a name?” He ate a rice cracker dusted with salt and pepper.

“Her shift doesn’t start for four hours. Read the roster.”

“I read mine.” Jack waved a hand branded with the imprint of a spanner he’d received during an engine fire long before, watching the reflection distort on the mirrored surface of his ancient companion.

“And you don’t care when anyone else is working?” Max shook rust from his hair. Pulling deodorant from a side pocket he sprayed his armpits, giving a satisfied nod.

“No.” Jack picked a line of black grease and dead skin from under a fingernail.

“You should be studying for your qualification.”

Jack rolled his eyes. “Probably.”

“Anything I need to prioritise on my shift?” asked Max, who was taking over from Jack.

“Check the secondary thruster heat exchange. And next time you put a suit back double check the boots are charging. In an emergency we might need them all.”

“I did charge it,” protested Max as he tapped out the rhythm to Clickbait Cold Killer on his stomach.

“The connection was loose.”

“No one lectured me before you got here, old man.”

“Maybe they should have.”

“Fuck off to bed and hug your teddy bear, weirdo.”

Jack nodded. Tossing back the last of his popcorn, he stood. The alien machine mirrored his movement.

“You should call it Mimic,” said Max. “Since it copies us.”

Jack nodded, walking away with his old toolbox. His boots grazed the grilled floor of the hallway. Mimic’s heavy feet clomped behind him, making heavy metallic bangs with each step.

Jack turned, putting a finger to his lips to shush Mimic. A silver finger copied the gesture as it always did but to the tired engineer’s surprise the robot stepped more gently after that.

It’s learning. Gods help me, he thought.

Opening the hatch to the quarters he shared with all of the crew apart from the captain, Jack noted with satisfaction how quiet the old door was. He’d greased the hinges and oiled the mechanisms, tired of being woken by a crew mate after their shift.

Every bunk but his was decorated to the tastes of the occupant.

Opening his trusted tool box, Jack pushed apart trays of tools and lifted out a tray that covered the treasure beneath. A faded scan of his long lost child in the womb lay beneath a bear that was vacuum packed. Unsealing the bear he watched it fill with air. Memories flooded him with warmth. Closing the tool box he magnetised it to his bunk, took off his boiler suit and clutched the bear. Soothed and exhausted, he slept the moment his head hit what he generously called a pillow.

Alarms woke him. Light painted the quarters red then blinked off and on again. Irene emerged from her bunk wearing nothing but her frayed black underwear. Long fingers plugged her ears. Her workmates averted their eyes.

“Prudes,” said the wide shouldered woman, tugging a tank top over the black buzz cut. “Let’s find out what woke me from a perfectly good wet dream.” Brown eyes flashed in the red light as her teeth showed in a terrifying grin. “Unless I’m still dreaming? Jack?” She tilted her head and stared at his crotch.

Jack shook his head.

“You’re awake,” said Doctor Annie Brie, her blonde bob cut in disarray. Green eyes framed by freckled skin flinched as the door hatch opened to the bright white light of the hallway.

Jack pressed his precious stuffed toy into the tool box with the photo of a child he’d never known.

The crew jogged to the bridge. Mimic ran along behind Jack, more silently than ever before. Captain Eliza Erdman stared at monitors from the pilot’s seat wearing an oversized season one X-Files t-shirt and pyjama shorts. Jack wasn’t familiar with the ancient show but knew Eliza worshipped the duo of main characters.

“What’s going on?” Irene asked, checking a course diagnostic at her station.

“I don’t know. Our long range sensors are offline. The ship is registering that as a threat. I’ve scanned as far as I can with short range and there’s no report.”

“Were we hit?” Max asked. He’d been awake at the time. “I didn’t feel anything.”

“Then we weren’t hit,” said Jack.

“Sabotage?” Captain Eliza asked. “Someone aboard?”

All faces turned to Jack. “It’s possible.”

“We’ll search the ship, in pairs. Arm yourselves.”

“With what?” Max asked.

“Come to my quarters.” The captain pulled a hatch down over the controls and locked it with a key from a chain around her neck. She led them to her room where they found no hint of intruders, only the signs of fantastical obsession. Bookcases lined with classics from science fiction and fantasy were no shock compared to the swords and crossbows artfully clipped to the walls. Undoing clasps, the captain handed out the weapons.

Max was given a short sword, Irene an axe. Jack took a crossbow and quiver from Eliza. She had to tell him how the firing mechanism worked. Simple enough. Notching a bolt he aimed down.

“You want something?” The captain asked Mimic. The machine they had found waiting in the darkness of space shook its head. “Not like you need a weapon anyway.”

“Are we sure it didn’t mess with the sensors?” Max asked.

“Why would it? It could kill us all easily,” said Captain Eliza. She waved a hand at the hulking thing.

“We need to check the sensor apparatus,” said Jack. Max nodded.

“So what, it’s boys and girls teams now?” Irene protested. “Why can’t I come with you?”

“Because you’re not a mechanic.”

“Let’s help them into the suits. If it turns out there’s a ship out there hunting us we need to know as soon as possible.” Armed with all of the weapons a posse could have asked for a few thousand years before they walked together to the vacuum suits.

Outside the ship the two mechanics found nothing wrong with the long range sensor equipment. Re-entering the Fairweather Jack had a sneaking suspicion he’d encountered the cause of their problems before.

Crawling through a maintenance duct from the outer hull where fibre optic cables fed information from the array to the bridge he cringed. Scents of burning plastic, hair and flesh assaulted his nose. “I smell a rat.” Caught in the act. Prime suspect apprehended. Gloved hands turned off the power to the sensor at a relay before Jack unplugged a smouldering rodent from the system it had short circuited.

Rewiring the chewed cables and insulating them with colour coded tape was done in a minute. He couldn’t cross his fingers in the thick gloves so he did it mentally.

“That’s disgusting,” said Max as Jack slapped the rat into his hands. The burnt corpse made a dull thud as Max dropped it.

“When you’re starving you’ll eat worse.”

Mimic lifted the dead animal from the floor and cradled it with the reverence normally reserved for holy relics. “Dead,” it said with unmistakable sadness.

“Look on the bright side,” said Irene, rounding a corner in the hallway. “We’re alive and well. Nothing on the scanner. Beautiful black vacuum in every direction. I’ve put us back on our desired course. Add four hours because we’ve been heading in the wrong direction. No big deal.”

“There will be more than one rat. They’re never alone.”

“We need a cat,” said Max. “Every ship should have a cat.”

“Well we don’t have one. That doesn’t mean we can’t kill the rest of the rats.” Mimic raised its head to stare at Jack as he spoke. “If we all wear our vacuum suits and have the ship suction all oxygen into the atmosphere tanks we can suffocate the rats without chasing them around the ship. When they start to decompose we can use methane emissions to track down the bodies.” Despite it being the obvious solution Jack found himself surrounded by frowning faces. He took the bolt from the crossbow he had been given and pushed through the crowd to take the weapon back to the captain’s cabin.

Clipping their arsenal to the wall of Captain Eliza’s bedchamber the other’s grumbled about Jack’s solution. None voiced other options. They suited up, ready to drift into the void if need be. They watched him on the bridge through their visors.

“You’ve done this before?” Eliza Erdman asked. “It seems a bit cruel. A bit inhumane. You know?”

“If they chew the wrong wire we could end up suffocating instead. Or burning. We can die in a thousand horrible ways aboard a ship. You all know that.” He turned off safety restraints. Warnings flashed on screens. The captain had to authorise the procedure. “My first ship had rats every time we docked. We had to do this a lot.”

A gauge on the screen showed air pressure dropping as it was drawn into empty canisters. The fabric of their space suits swelled as the pressure differential changed. When the air level hit zero Jack started a ten minute timer.

Mimic tapped his shoulder. Jack flinched. The machine held out the dead rat in its hand. He nodded to it.

“What’s it doing?” asked Doctor Brie who was in the largest of the suits due to her muscular frame.

“Guilt tripping me,” said Jack.

“What for?” asked Max.

“Killing the rats.”

“Who cares about rats?” Irene asked, tilting her head at Mimic.

In answer to her question a projection of the ship in ghostly blue lit up the bridge. Red blobs in the green bridge showed them all standing as they were. Red dots scattered throughout the ship flickered. Each one was magnified. Mimic showed each life fading. The rats kicked and twitched in their dying moments.

Doctor Brie closed her eyes. Irene turned away. Max sighed heavily. Only Jack and the captain kept their eyes glued to the live stream of death.

“Jack?” The captain’s voice stuttered with the seeds of grief.

“Fine,” he growled. Pushing a button, he vented gas from the atmospheric tanks. “This isn’t instant. They still might die.”

“What are you doing?” Irene asked.

“Being an idiot,” Jack said. “Come on Mimic, lead me to them.” He started walking to the service duct nearest a red mark on the holographic map. He magnetised his toolbox to the side of the tunnel. Sliding into the crawlway he found the upside down body of a rat. It wheezed softly, limp in his hand. Sliding out backwards he gave the unconscious rodent to the droid who cared. Holding a dead rat in its left, Mimic took the survivor in its right.

Jack retrieved two more who had cowered together by the heat of a communication relay. Noting more damage he would have to deal with later he handed the furry forms to his silver shadow.

Mimic’s fingers elongated to cradle more of the little beings. It was too easy for Jack to forget how liquid the ancient machine was. Mass flowed from the body into the arm it needed to hold the creatures it had saved. Max noted the location of another rat. He ran off and returned with an inflating and deflating ball of fur.

One by one, and up to three at a time, all of the rats were gathered. Mimic kept them in a cage made of its own fingers. Some woke. Others died. Jack found six pink little forms in a nest made from a pair of underwear the mother rat had stolen. All were dead from hypoxia. Mimic sent the corpses out an airlock, watching through the hatch window long after the little bodies were lost to Jack’s eyes.

It seemed to understand that the surviving rodents could not be free aboard the ship. Mimic’s body transformed into a hollow walking home for them. Jack gave part of his rations to feed them. Seeing their inquisitive eyes peering from between the silver strands of Mimic’s torso became normal for Jack.

He studied in the mess hall with his alien companion standing nearby. His mechanic qualification was tedious. Answers he was required to give flew in the face of his personal experience. Compartmentalising what he was supposed to write and what he would really do in a scenario was difficult. Often he grumbled, arguing with the answers audibly. Crewmates stared at him. More than Mimic.

Following him less religiously, the creature made of metal spent more time socialising. Captain Eliza loved to show it old videos. Ancient stories remastered using artificial intelligence made up the bulk of her collection. Retro was her jam. Duchovny was her man. Him and many other stars of yesteryear.

Fairweather arrived at the planet Dirtball two months after Mimic’s intervention. The surviving rats were set free on the newly terraformed world. The crew purchased a cat to be sure there wouldn’t be any more stowaways chewing through the wiring.

Rex was a sturdy beast in his own opinion. Fearsome and dignified. Running into walls chasing laser pointers undermined the feline’s claim to elegance but endeared him to the crew instantly. Freely roaming the ship, the cat regularly brought the crew the mangled corpses of socks he had valiantly dispatched in single combat.

Jack scratched his defender behind the ears. Rex rolled onto his back, exposing the dusty white stomach where he loved to be rubbed. He purred loudly.

“Do you know the correct procedure for checking the fuel in an interplanetary engine?” Jack asked, reading through the ten plausible answers for the multiple choice test. Rex purred, black and brown stripes breaking like waves as Jack’s fingers brushed along the cat’s back. “Nothing? Not much good as a study buddy are you?”

Mimic sat in the chair by his side. It stroked Rex when Jack wasn’t. The bizarre architecture it had formed to house the rats was gone. Mimic looked like a watery sculpture of a human. Whiskers and Rex’s white sunburst of fur from nose to eyebrows covered the reflective surface of the silver hand.

“Be careful, Rex. Mimic will make you feel guilty if you kill any rats for us.” The cat purred anyway. “You know you made me feel guilty about them?” Jack asked his alien companion. It shrugged. “Will you ever forgive me?” It shrugged. “No. I won’t forgive myself either. What’s a little more guilt when I’m drowning in it?

Question nine-” Jack’s hand strayed to his toolbox to reassure himself. Along with the bear he’d meant to give her was the scan of the daughter he longed to see. Someday.