Organism Ch. 01

Location: Deep space

Commercial mining vessel: Cordoba

Crew: Eight

Cargo: 15,000,000 tons of unrefined mineral ore

--

Chief Science Officer Jacob Warren awoke from cryosleep. Dull red light filled his blurry vision, and he choked on the slime in his lungs and throat.

"Sit up, Dr. Warren," a disembodied female voice spoke up. "Take a deep breath and cough. You need to clear the bronchial surfactant."

Jacob pushed himself up, peeling his back off the formfitting gel bed. Wisps of fog overflowed from the cryogenic tube as he clumsily climbed out. He sat on a nearby bench, tried to inhale, and doubled over, coughing until a long string of clear fluid flowed from his open mouth.

He sat up and drew his first full breath in two weeks, tasting his lips and almost retching in the process. The cryo inhalant was specially designed to be regurgitated and swallowed, replacing nutrients lost in deep sleep. No matter how they changed the formula, though, it always tasted like lime-flavored mucus.

"Status, Mira?" the science officer called up to the ship AI. "Have we reached Halden Station yet?"

"Negative," the AI informed. "We are still currently eight hundred lightyears from Halden Station."

"What?" he murmured to himself in confusion. "Mira, what is our current location?"

"We've just exited FTL space above the uncharted planet of RX-91. Located in the Eradanus solar system."

This didn't make sense. They weren't even halfway home yet. Why was he awake right now?

Nothing for it, he supposed. Wake-up protocols dictated that he inspect the rest of the crew to make sure no one had run into problems reviving. He looked around the sleep chamber: rows of stainless steel lockers and showers, a medical pod for emergency resuscitations, and eight cryogenic tubes lined in a circle around the cryo bay.

There was only one other tube that had yet to open. The rest of the crew must have already been in the showers, Jacob deduced. So he decided to wait for their final sleeper to rise and shine.

A few moments passed before the final tube hummed open. Mist rippled out as its female occupant sat up, coughing. Her pale skin made her look like a ghost in the fog. Matted locks of dark red hair clung to her neck. She didn't look much older than him, and she was lovely, definitely a striking woman. Or at least, Dr. Warren always thought so.

Chief Medical Officer Brooke Holloway looked around the cryo bay before finally setting her deep blue eyes on Jacob. "Did we make it?"

He shook his head. "We're not even halfway back yet."

"You're kidding me." She looked genuinely perplexed as she attempted to stand up out of her pod.

Jacob turned away reflexively, his face reddening. He had done the cryogenic recovery song and dance over a hundred times since joining the Cordoba. Seeing your fellow crewmembers naked, both men and women, was just part of the job. But it was different with Brooke. Always had been.

"Could you give me a hand?" she requested, her voice still groggy from cryosleep.

He cleared his throat gruffly and assisted her out of the pod with as much impartial objectivity as he could muster, keeping his gaze respectfully away from her. "Hope Chris won't mind."

Brooke scoffed and rolled her eyes. "You were here; he wasn't. Chris can get over it."

Once she was up and steady again, Brooke left to head for the showers. Jacob risked a glance at her curvy backside as she walked away. At thirty-one years old, the medical officer was by far the fittest member of the crew. She stayed trim and toned by working out on an elliptical trainer instead of simply sitting when she watched TV in the crew lounge. It was strenuous, but as the only registered nurse on board, she felt obligated to set an example for the rest of the crew. Her vitamin-conscious diet kept her skin free of blemishes as well.

The moment he caught himself leering, Dr. Warren immediately turned away, silently chastising himself before exiting the cryo bay and making his way to the showers.

--

Freshly showered and shaven, Jacob changed into his jumpsuit and put on his glasses before making his way to the mess hall of the ship. Several members of the crew had already broken into the rations and helped themselves to breakfast. Among them was a bright-eyed young woman with long dirty blonde hair who smiled brightly at him and waved as soon as he entered the room.

"Morning, Doctor!" she declared energetically.

"Morning," he responded politely while having a seat.

"Sleep well, Sir?" the bright, youthful young lady asked the moment he sat down.

He nodded. "Fine, all things considered. You?"

"Just fine!" she beamed at him.

"Jess, hun, could you maybe turn it down a notch?" the woman with short brunette hair and noticeable bags under her almond eyes groaned while vigorously rubbing her temples.

She winced somewhat regretfully before speaking in a softer tone. "Sorry, Rebecca."

Jacob had to stop himself from chuckling at the two. Rebecca was in charge of communications. Having worked on commercial starships for nearly a decade, she was the second oldest member of the crew at thirty-eight. Her body told of a lifetime of working late hours and living on a diet of coffee and not much else. She looked like she would blow away on a stiff breeze.

Jess, on the other hand, was their resident "mascot," as the other guys liked to affectionately put it. Though technically classified as "support staff," her reason for being there was more akin to a paid internship program meant to cover the tuition costs of her university. In stark contrast to Rebecca, Jess was a nineteen-year-old thick-bodied blonde with enormous Double-D breasts and emerald-green eyes who radiated just happy to be here energy. Personally, Jacob thought she was a sweet girl if a bit naive.

She always seemed especially eager to talk to him, he noted.

Soon after sitting down, Jacob was passed a tray and a cup of coffee before being patted rather roughly on the back by a firm strong hand. He looked to his left to see a man in his early thirties with noticeably dark skin and broad shoulders.

"Rise and shine, Doc," the man who had taken a seat to his left insisted. "Another glorious day in paradise."

"Has the captain said anything about why we're up yet, Owen?" Rebecca asked perturbedly. "I feel like death."

"You look like death," he joked, to which she shoved him, inciting a stream of chuckling from the chief engineer. "Chris is talking with Mira right now. I'm sure we'll know what's up here in a second."

Of the eight crew members of the Cordoba, Owen looked the most like he belonged on a commercial starship. A mechanic to the very core of his being, their resident engineer always seemed to have grease or oil on his jumpsuit. Jacob couldn't help but note that they had just woken up, and already the lapel of his jumper was stained.

"We better..." she insisted, still rubbing the sleep from her eyes. "...there's no reason for the ship to wake us up in the middle of the damn..."

Her voice trailed off as a pair of voices moaning and grunting got progressively louder coming from the direction of the crew barracks. Rebecca sighed in frustration while clutching her throbbing forehead.

"Could someone please go tell those idiots to knock it off? My head seriously can't take much more of this."

"I got it." Owen stood up from his seat and made his way to the crew quarters.

Jess watched him as he left before turning her gaze back to Dr. Warren, a curious look in her eyes. "So...is it like...common for crew members to hookup?"

He shrugged indifferently before sipping his coffee. "It can be. Why do you ask?"

She blushed noticeably and looked away. "I was just curious. I mean...Kevin and Samantha always seem to be fooling around, and I know Brooke and the Captain are an item."

"It's called tin can syndrome, sweetie," Rebecca explained before taking another bite of her eggs. "You put eight people together in a cramped ship for weeks at a time with nothing to do all day, someone's bound to start acting up."

"So then it's common. That's what you're saying?"

She narrowed her eyes and nodded. "Pretty common, I guess."

Jess smiled at that bashfully. "Good to know."

The communications officer quirked a brow at her before turning to Jacob and gesturing toward the blonde. He waved her off, decidedly sure he didn't want to talk about it. A few minutes later, Owen returned with two other people behind him. First of which was their navigations officer, Samantha. Followed shortly by the ship's chief of mining operations, Kevin. They were both slightly red in the face and breathing heavily.

"Sorry about that, everyone," Samantha apologized somewhat awkwardly while zipping up the front of her jumpsuit.

Kevin chuckled and swatted her rump as they both sat down. "No better way to get blood flowing again after being frozen for a month and a half."

Jacob rolled his eyes. He was genuinely curious as to what attracted a woman like Samantha to a man like Kevin. The twenty-six-year-old navigator was almost as fit as Brooke, and her hips were noticeably curvier. Meanwhile, their mining chief was old enough to be her father and was shaped like a kidney bean, with fat pooling around his hips, belly, and behind his arms. He looked like he may have been in shape at one point in his life, but at fifty-four years old, the veteran miner was well past his prime.

Given their relationship was almost entirely physical, Jacob deduced that what he lacked in appearance, he must have made up for in performance.

"So, Doctor, I wanted to say thank you again for letting me have a look at your research thesis," Jess spoke up, smiling at him again.

He wiped his face with his napkin and set it down before relaxing back in his seat and adjusting his glasses. "You enjoyed that, did you?"

She beamed and nodded excitedly. "Oh my goodness, it was just so fascinating. Like...the work you've done on extraterrestrial microbial life and fossilization, it's groundbreaking."

He chuckled at that and shook his head. "My work is hardly anything quite so substantial. Though I am impressed you were able to understand the material. Are you considering pursuing a degree in either one of those fields?"

She flushed in embarrassment. "I'd love a chance for us to work together on a project one day..."

Both Kevin and Samantha snickered in amusement at her. Jacob elected to ignore them.

It was as Jess began to gush about his work again that Brooke reentered the mess hall, accompanied by a broad-shouldered man with a full head of well-groomed brick color hair and a matching beard. He was wearing the same greenish-gray jumpsuit they were, with one noticeable difference, the captain's patch located on his left and right shoulder sleeves.

"So what's the word, Captain?" Samantha asked the moment he entered the room.

Chris cleared his throat and spoke up formally, addressing the crew. "Well, as some of you may have figured out, we're not quite home just yet."

They all nodded.

"Mira has interrupted our automated flight path."

"Why?" Kevin asked.

"She's programmed to do so should certain conditions be met," Brooke explained. "They have been."

Jacob's gaze switched from Brooke back to Chris. The Captain shared a few similarities with Dr. Warren in that they were both about six' one, bordering on six two with short brown hair. Though that was where the similarities ended, however. Chris was a veritable wall of muscle, with hands the size of catcher's mitts, whereas Jacob was a lanky beanpole of a man with an unhealthily pale complexion. One of them paid their way through school with a football scholarship, while the other spent the majority of his life in windowless laboratories.

"So what are these conditions exactly, Boss?" Rebecca spoke up next. "No offense, but this sudden stop seems highly irregular."

"It's not without a good reason," the captain assured before turning his gaze up toward the ceiling. "Mira? Wanna tell them?"

"We've received a transmission of unknown origin," the ship AI explained.

Jacob immediately perked up at that.

"A transmission?" Owen sounded incredibly perplexed. "In the middle of nowhere?"

"Confirmed."

"What kind of transmission," Rebecca asked.

"The signal is an unidentified acoustical loop repeating at intervals eight seconds apart," the ship explained.

She leaned back in her seat and pondered on this. "Is it an SOS beacon?"

"Unknown."

"But it is human in origin, right?" Samantha asked insistently.

"Unknown."

A deathly silence fell over the crew for a moment. Chris spoke up.

"Protocol on this is very clear. Under section..."

"Alright, I'll just be the one to come out and say it because I know we're all thinking it," Kevin suddenly interjected. "This is not our rodeo, Captain."

Samantha sighed wearily at him. "Kevin..."

"This is a commercial mining barge," he insisted. "We're not equipped for a search and rescue."

"We don't even know for sure if that's what this truly is," Brooke explained. "There's every possibility we could be parked directly above a precursor artifact. Either way, we have a moral obligation to act."

"Hey, if they wanna add a bonus to my cut, I'll gladly go down there and dig through space rocks with Jacob," the miner joked.

They all collectively groaned at him in exasperation.

"Again with the bonuses?" Owen griped.

He shrugged. "I'm just saying, more work should equal more pay, right? Isn't that how this normally works?"

"If I may."

They all turned towards the chief of research.

"Under section thirteen, clause 38B of the Unified IFC Charter, any systematized transmission indicating intelligent origin must be investigated..."

"So, on top of everything else, he's a lawyer now, too, apparently," Kevin insisted sarcastically. "Is that why you make more than me, Mr. Science Man?"

Jess shot him a sour look. "The Doctor makes more than you do because he has a double doctorate in mineralogy and microbiology while you have a six-month trade-school degree. He's cataloging extraterrestrial fossils while you just mine asteroids for a living."

"You know he's not really a doctor, right?" he retorted in exasperation. "He doesn't have a medical degree. He's a geologist, for christ's sake."

The captain sighed wearily, finally speaking up. "Alright, that's enough you two. Let's listen to what Dr. Warren has to say."

Jacob nodded curtly before continuing. "As I was saying, the clause clearly states that any systematized transmission indicating intelligent origin must be investigated...under penalty of fines up to and including total forfeiture of profits."

"Translation: no money," Brooke declared sharply. "Still feel like being stubborn, Kevin?"

The miner grumbled under his breath but otherwise elected not to comment.

"Listen, I completely understand we didn't sign on for this," Chris spoke up. "You have every right to be frustrated. I won't deny you that. But as Dr. Warren said, our hands are tied on this one. Let's just go down there, investigate the signal, and if it turns it turns out to be nothing, great. We can all go back to bed."

Jacob smirked at him somewhat blithely. "Well, that's exactly the sort of level-headed and non-confrontational executive ability I've come to expect from you, Captain."

Brooke glared at him from behind Chris, a slightly sour look in her eyes. Meanwhile, the Captain nodded his head in approval.

"I appreciate the vote of confidence, Doc."

--

With their directive given, the crew began prepping the Cordoba's EVA shuttle for a landing on the planet's surface. Supplies were loaded onboard, systems were calibrated, and final checkoffs were underway. While the others prepped the shuttle, Brooke assisted Jacob in the lab with packing whatever supplies he may need.

"So, you mind telling me what exactly that was back there?"

"I'm not sure what you're referring to," he admitted while packing up scanning equipment into a large duffle bag.

She sighed in frustration. "Chris may not be aware when you're making fun of him, but I am."

He decided not to comment.

"I thought we were passed this."

"We are," he assured, as even-tempered and objective as always.

She spun around and glared at him, her arms crossed. "Really? Because it sort of feels like we're not."

His body tensed for a moment, whereupon the researcher returned to a look of stoic indifference. "I've made my thoughts on your relationship with the Captain perfectly clear, Brooke. I'm happy for you. I truly am."

"It's fine for you to say that, Jacob. But I'd like to know you mean what you say."

"How exactly?" he asked, no longer able to help the small hint of aggravation in his voice.

"By being supportive," she insisted. "Chris is a great guy. You'd see that if you just..."

"Gave him a chance?" he finished for her, almost immediately regretting his choice of words.

A tense silence formed between them. Jacob quietly sighed before finally turning and facing her.

"Brooke, I'm sorry. I shouldn't have said that."

"You told me you were over it..." she spoke in a low, slightly hurt tone.

"And I am," he assured. "Or at least, I want to be." With a slightly warmer voice, he added. "Whatever my feelings, it doesn't change the fact I do cherish our friendship first and foremost. I wouldn't still be on this ship if I didn't."

That made her smile. Brooke wrapped him up in a big hug before placing her hands on his shoulders.

"Promise me you'll try with Chris, okay? If nothing comes out of it, I'll understand. But I at least want my boyfriend and my best friend to try to get along."

He nodded. "I'll give it my best shot. You have my word."

Brooke kissed him on the cheek. "It means the world to me that we can still be close. I've known you for almost eight and a half years, Jacob. I'd have been devastated if you left the crew."

"You would have still had Chris," he assured.

She placed her hands in his. "But I wouldn't have had you."

His gaze slowly turned away, lost in thought.

"I'll meet you at the shuttle, okay?"

He nodded. "See you down there."

With that, she left. Truth be told, Jacob was rather frustrated with himself. There was no reason to go digging up that old wound again, but he went and did it anyway. Try as he might to tell himself otherwise. The fact was, nothing had truly changed.

His feelings for her simply wouldn't go away.

--

The shuttle aboard the Cordoba had an abundance of space for a vessel of its size. That said, its cockpit had all the maneuvering room of a walk-in closet. The rest of the craft was dedicated to engines, landing gear, a small room to store four personal EVA suits, and a medical gurney in the event of an emergency. Every surface of the shuttle was covered with monitors and screens. The small semi-curved viewport at the front served as the shuttle's only window, dark for the moment in the confined space of the ship's launch bay.

Once Jacob was inside, he sealed the pressure door behind him and entered the cockpit alongside the rest of the crew, taking a seat next to Jess near the back while Brooke sat in the copilot seat next to the Captain.

"Alright, everyone strapped in?" Chris called back to the crew, his fingers dancing across four different keypads, typing in commands.

"All good back here, Boss," Owen assured, having taken his seat next to Rebecca and buckled up.

"Mira?" he asked next.

"Awaiting your orders, Captain," the ship AI replied.

"Give me astrogational coordinates of the system. I want a direct course for RX-91."

"Confirmed, Captain. Locking coordinates now."

He punched a few more keys on his console. "Begin pre-burn warmup cycle for fusion engines and prepare shuttle for takeoff."