Organism Ch. 04

The days were starting to blend together. Honestly, it was hard for Brooke to tell just how long they'd been stuck on this ship. Logically it couldn't have been more than three days, though it was hard to think logically about much of anything being trapped in the middle of deep space with nothing to do.

When they were working, a week would go by in a heartbeat. Under these conditions? It crawled. Being stuck in this ship was sapping away at her willpower. Yesterday was a perfect example of that. She very nearly said fuck it and went into that quarantine unit without her isolation gear on to hug Jacob. Ultimately she managed to overcome that desire and put on her hazmat gear first. But still, this was miserable.

She wanted to just sleep until the quarantine was over. Maybe this was due to all the stress of the past seventy-two hours, but Brooke was exhausted. She had zero motivation to get up. And had it been her choice, she would have likely spent the remainder of her time on that ship in Chris's big plush bed.

Unfortunately, that wasn't an option. As she was so rudely reminded of by the Captain entering his quarters and turning the lights on to full bright right in her face. She groaned in complaint before placing her pillow over her head. That was so unnecessary.

"Sorry, Babe. We've got a situation," Chris insisted, a hint of urgency in his voice.

She lurched up from the bed like an undead zombie, hair a tousled mess, drool running down the corner of her lip. Definitely not her best look.

"What time is it?" she spoke in a groggy, half-asleep voice.

"Just a little passed 13:40," he admitted.

She turned towards the bedside clock. "Fuck, that late?"

He nodded. "You seemed pretty zonked out this morning, so I didn't want to wake you."

This didn't make sense. She'd been asleep for almost fourteen hours now. Why was she so damn tired?

"What's going on?" she asked while rubbing the back of her neck.

"Kevin's gone missing," he explained. "No one can find him."

Brooke blinked at him in confusion before finally getting out of bed. "What?"

He nodded. "Get cleaned up as quick as you can. We're having an emergency meeting in the mess hall."

"We should hold it in the med bay," she suggested, already in the process of getting dressed. "Jacob deserves to know what's going on."

"Hmm. Good point," he admitted. "I'll tell the others to head to the medbay."

Chris left. Brooke was in the process of getting her hair situation under control when a thought occurred to her. She turned her gaze towards the computer monitor sitting in the corner.

His PM box was wide open.

Shaking the thought away, Brooke focused on getting cleaned up before heading out the door. She made her way down the corridor, through the mess hall, to the medbay where everyone was congregating.

"Is this everyone?" Chris asked as they all gathered around near the quarantine unit.

"We're missing Samantha," Owen informed.

"I'm sure she'll be here soon," Jess assured cheerfully, sitting on a cadaver table while kicking her feet in the air. "She just needs a minute."

Brooke wasn't sure, but she could have sworn she saw Jess turn and wink at Jacob. At that moment, a figure came walking briskly down the hall. The sliding door to the medbay opened, and Samantha came walking in, a slick grin on her face, eyes coated in shadowy mascara, and lips pumped up with a glossy coat. She was wearing her hair down, which was strange, but what's more, she'd apparently gone down a size in jumpsuits as well. Her booty was looking especially perky in that getup.

"Sorry, everyone. I had to finish blow-drying my hair."

"Oooo, you are looking good today, Chica," Jess complimented in a flirty tone.

Samantha flipped her locks behind her shoulder and flashed her a stunning smile. "Why, thank you, Jess."

She patted the spot next to her. "Come sit next to me."

Samantha happily sat her shapely rear next to Jess. Brooke glared at them both suspiciously. Since when did those two become so buddy-buddy?

"You held up the meeting because you were blow-drying your hair?" Chris asked, a mixture of confusion and annoyance in his voice.

She shrugged. "Pretty much."

"You realize one of our crew is missing, right?" he insisted. "And considering who it is, I figured you, of all people, would want to show a bit more urgency in the matter."

Samantha laughed at that. "Oh, please. Me worry about Kevin? The asshole is probably off sulking on the mining deck somewhere."

"It is the only place on the ship he's even remotely important," Jess commented.

She snickered at that devilishly. "Good one, Girl."

While they giggled amongst each other, Rebecca nudged Brooke's arm and murmured quietly to her. "What's with them? I didn't realize those two were friends."

She shook her head. "They're not..."

Chris cleared his throat sharply. "Look, we can make all the jokes we want, but this is serious. A member of our crew is missing."

"Kevin never came to bed last night. He hasn't been seen in almost twelve hours," Rebecca insisted. "It's a big ship, but it's not that big. Something's happened to him."

"Samantha, you were the one who saw him last. Did he say anything about where he might have gone?" the Captain asked.

She sighed in annoyance. "We argued about some shit, and then he took off. Look, I don't know what you want from me, Chris. My best guess is he's down on the mining deck somewhere avoiding me."

The more she heard, the more suspicious Brooke became. Samantha was one of the first people to notice Kevin was missing. And now she was behaving like she didn't care he was gone.

"Can't you just access the Cordoba security footage?" Jacob suggested. "If he's down on the mining deck somewhere, he'd show up on the cameras, surely."

Chris sighed in worry. "Unfortunately...that's the other reason I needed to call this meeting."

The crew all gave the Captain concerned looks. He turned up towards the ceiling.

"Mira, would you like to tell them?"

"Someone has sabotaged the security mainframe," the ship AI explained. "I can no longer access cameras."

"What?" Brooke lurched up from her seat upon hearing that. "What do you mean sabotaged?"

"It is as I said," she insisted. "Someone has manually gone into the security mainframe and sabotaged the system."

Owen nodded. "Chris and I confirmed it ourselves. They went into the security room and fried the box with a plasma torch. We're blind on all decks."

"That motherfucker!" Rebecca declared in disbelief. "It wasn't enough just to gripe and bitch about his pay; now he's going on a one-man mutiny?"

"Mira, did you happen to see who it was who sabotaged the cameras?" Brooke asked.

"I'm sorry, Nurse Holloway, but no," she admitted regretfully. "Unfortunately, my processing capabilities are limited in regard to what I can see at any given moment. I cannot be in multiple rooms at once."

"It would have to be someone who had access to the security room."

"That could be any one of us, Rebecca," Owen insisted. "This is a commercial mining barge with an eight-man skeleton crew. When was the last time anyone needed to check the security feed for any reason?"

"Come on, guys, the obvious suspect is Kevin here," Jess insisted.

Samantha nodded in agreement. "He's the only one carrying a grudge right now. It had to be him."

Chris sighed in frustration. "Well, regardless of who's at fault, right now, Kevin is either hurt, stuck, or doing something he shouldn't be." He looked up at the ceiling again. "Mira, can you at least tell us if our mining technician is still alive?"

"I can confirm there are eight lifeforms present onboard this ship," she declared.

He nodded approvingly. "Well, that's a start, at least. Alright, we'll split into three teams. Jess, I want you with Owen. Samantha, you're with Rebecca. Brooke, you're with me."

Jess rolled her eyes and hopped off the cadaver slab. "The Captain pairing up with his girlfriend."

"Will wonders never cease?" Samantha muttered sarcastically.

"We're gonna go deck by deck," Chris instructed. "Starting with the living quarters, then heading to engineering. From there, we'll go to storage, then mining. Anywhere he could have conceivably gained access to, we need to search. Any questions?"

They all shook their heads.

"Best of luck, everyone," Jacob offered lightheartedly. "I'll be here holding down the fort."

--

They'd searched just about everywhere on the ship, but Kevin was nowhere to be found. At this point, Rebecca was convinced the man had just vanished out of an airlock or something. Splitting off into groups, they checked the only place they hadn't fully looked yet, the mining deck.

"Kevin!" Rebecca called out while walking alongside a very bored-looking Samantha. "Are you there? Kevin!"

Samantha sighed wearily. "You know, if he could really hear you, I feel like he would have responded by now."

She gave her a weird look. "What has been with you today? You're acting...odd."

"Odd, how?"

She shrugged. "Well, for one, I don't recall you ever wearing your hair down while you're working."

Samantha grinned pridefully. "Like it?"

Rebecca cleared her throat awkwardly. "Well...sure. But it's kind of a safety hazard. Especially down here. Also, I can't help but imagine the wedgie you must have with how tight that jumpsuit is."

She giggled devilishly and ran her hand across her rump. "Oh, come on. You can't tell me my ass does not look good in this."

Rebecca turned away, her cheeks burning slightly red. Something Samantha was very quick to pick up on.

"I don't know...it just feels like you don't even seem to care Kevin could be hurt. And since when are you and Jess bff?"

"I'll have you know she was the inspiration behind this new look."

She chose not to comment. Rebecca still looked discontent about something. Samantha sighed in frustration.

"Look, I get where you're coming from, Rebecca. I really do. But the fact is, my relationship with Kevin was never healthy. I need to move on, and so does he."

The communication officer stopped. "Hold on. Is that why he's missing? Did you break it off with him?"

"I mean, not officially," Samantha admitted. "But I made it pretty clear I didn't want him touching me anymore."

Rebecca seemed to consider something for a moment. "So you're...not gonna see him anymore? Is that what you're saying?"

"Pretty much." A thought occurred to her, and Samantha grinned at the communication officer wickedly. "Why do you ask?"

"N...no reason," she assured, sounding noticeably flustered. "Maybe we should just keep moving."

They walked on in silence for a bit. During which time, Samantha decided to test a little theory. She began walking in front of Rebecca, purposefully swaying her hips a little, making that curvy backside of hers bounce with every step. Sure enough, she caught the communication officer staring at her ass no less than three times.

"It's a curious thing," Samantha observed, a wicked grin forming on her face. "Every other woman on this ship seems to have a man except you. Ever considered putting the moves on Owen? You two seem close enough to at least be friends with benefits."

She frowned in thought. "Owen's got no interest in something like that. And even if he did, he's...not my type."

"What, black?"

Rebecca shook her head. When it finally dawned on Samantha what she was alluding to, the navigation officer snickered playfully.

"Ohhhh, I see."

She blushed furiously. Samantha whistled and shook her head.

"That's really gotta suck. Being the only dyke on the ship."

Rebecca wheeled around and glared at her furiously. "Excuse the fuck out of me?!"

Samantha laughed at her reaction. "You should see how red your face is right now. It's adorable."

Her heart did a somersault, and she turned sharply away. Samantha gently turned her gaze back toward her eyes.

"Oh, come on. Lighten up. You know I use that word only as a term of endearment." She closed the distance between them, getting a hair's breadth away from her. "Besides, I have to admit. I've been...curious what it's like."

Rebecca backed up into the bulkhead, her heart thudding against her ears. "What what is like?"

"Being with another chick," she admitted. "Maybe not anything long-term, at least not to start. But it might be kind of nice to...experiment."

"Experiment?"

Samantha nodded, pursing her full lips in sultry heat at her. "Assuming I find the right partner, of course."

A tense silence formed between them.

"Don't think I haven't seen the way you stare at me while others aren't looking, Rebecca."

"I..." She opened and closed her mouth multiple times to speak, but no words came out "...I don't...I'm not sure..."

"Let me ask," Samantha continued with that same devious hint in her voice. "When you're alone in your bunk at night rubbing yourself off, do you ever think of me? Of what Kevin and I used to do together?"

She got a hair's breadth away from Rebecca's lips.

"Would you like to find out?"

"Chris, they're over here! Samantha! Rebecca!"

The two women pulled away from each other. Brooke was over a couple of yards away, waving for them to follow.

"Both of you come this way. We found something."

Samantha and Rebecca looked at each other then back at Brooke before jogging over toward her. They followed the nurse down a long corridor toward the control room of the mining equipment. The others had all congregated around the door to a seemingly innocuous toolshed. Owen was inspecting the control panel for the door, which had been destroyed by some sort of plasma tool.

"Can you get it open?" Chris asked insistently.

He shook his head. "Not from this side. No. The circuitry isn't just fried, it's completely melted. Whoever did this knew exactly what they were doing."

Samantha quirked her head curiously at the broken panel before shifting her gaze squirrely towards Jess, who simply looked away and shrugged her shoulders nonchalantly.

"You can't just remove the panel and run a bypass?" Rebecca offered.

"The panel completely fused with the door's primary opening mechanism," he explained in layman's terms. "It would be quicker to just rip the whole door off than try and do that."

Chris nodded in understanding. "Then that's what we'll have to do. Someone get me a portable mining laser."

"How, Captain? They're all in the toolshed," Jess observed.

He shook his head. "Not all of them. We have spares up in storage."

Her smile slowly faded into a look of quiet perturbed ness. "Well, isn't that...fortunate."

"This door is pretty thick, Boss," Owen insisted. "It may take us a little while to cut through."

He nodded in understanding. "In that case, everyone except Owen and myself is dismissed for now. Mira will call you back if there's an update."

"We're not gonna keep looking for Kevin?" Rebecca asked worriedly.

The Captain sighed, a lot clearly weighing on his mind. "We've searched the whole ship and haven't found a trace of him. If he's not in here, then there's no telling where he might be. All of you are dismissed for now."

Brooke frowned at him in concern. Jess, meanwhile, stretched her arm over her head.

"Just as well. I could use a nap after all this excitement."

"I'll get that laser, Boss," Owen assured.

As everyone left, Brooke pulled the Captain aside to speak one on one. "Hey, are you alright?"

"I'm fine," he assured.

"You don't sound fine," she admitted.

"Something very wrong is happening on this ship, Brooke. First, someone cuts the cameras, and now this?" Chris turned towards the locked door. "It's the only room we haven't checked for him. And someone clearly doesn't want us going in." Slowly, he turned his gaze back to her. "You connecting the dots here? Or is it just me?"

Brooke's eyes grew wide with realization. "You think someone might have murdered him?"

He didn't respond.

"Why?" she asked in bewilderment. "Why would anyone on this ship have a reason to do that? Sure, Kevin is kind of a jackass, but none of us have any true animosity against the guy. It doesn't make sense for anyone to kill him."

"That's just it, Brooke. I have no idea why anyone would do that. But ever since we found those ruins, nothing that has been going on on this ship has made a lick of sense," he insisted, clear stress and fatigue in his voice. "We should have never landed on that damn planet. Maybe Jacob's not sick, but we clearly brought something back with us."

She chuckled at that in disbelief. "What, like a curse?"

Again, he chose not to comment. Brooke sighed before taking his hand again.

"Chris, let's just take a quick break. You need a moment to decompress."

He pulled away from her. "I can take a break as soon as this door is open."

She frowned at him woefully. Brooke turned to leave before stopping and glancing back over her shoulder.

"Chris?"

He looked back at her.

"You're not...hiding anything from me...are you?"

Chris furrowed his brow at her in confusion and shook his head. "No? Why?"

After a moment of silence, she sighed and left. "No reason."

Brooke headed back to the medbay, doubt beginning to fester in her heart.

~~

Everyone was going about their business as if nothing was wrong. Like they weren't all glaringly aware one of their crew was missing. But Rebecca couldn't get her mind off of it. What's more, that whole incident with Samantha down in the mining deck had her frazzled. Why was it she suddenly couldn't get her out of her head? Sure, she'd always sort of thought the navigator was hot, but something about what happened down there didn't feel natural. It was like all the filters in her head were being stripped away, like something was compelling her to just lock lips with that woman right then and there. Damn the consequences.

These thoughts in her brain...they felt alien.

She just needed to hose off and clear her head a little. Which was why Rebecca decided to head to the showers. There she stripped out of her jumpsuit and underwear before entering one of the stalls and setting the dial to cold. Rebecca let the icy water run down her slender frame, calming her mind and sobering her thoughts.

"Much better..." she quietly muttered to herself.

The sound of the automatic door opening and shutting, followed by a set of feet pattering across the tile floor, caused her heart to leap up into her throat. Someone was getting undressed and stuffing their jumpsuit in the lockers. Rebecca focused on rinsing herself off before reaching for the dial. Shortly before she could, the curtain to her stall flew open. Rebecca jumped and spun around.

"Need some company?"

It was just like before, only now far more potent. The moment Rebecca caught site of Samantha's naked body, her cheeks flushed, and her skin heated up in spite of the cold water dripping off of it.

"I...I umm..."

"Brrr, a bit brisk for my taste," Samantha commented while helping herself to a spot next to her, turning the dial up to hot. "Ahhh, much better. Let's get it nice and steamy in here."

She watched as Samantha washed herself, running her hands along her gorgeous tan body. Water rippled off her curvy backside down the swell of her ample ass and hips, almost sparkling in such a way as to draw in the eye and keep it locked there.

"So, now that I know you're gay, I've got a question," the navigator insisted before turning around and pressing her breasts together with her forearms. "What do you think about my boobs? Like...I get I'm nowhere as chesty as Jess is, but how do I compare to the average woman?"

Rebecca finally managed to will her neck to turn away. "They're...they're alright, I guess."

"Really?" she pouted a little while staring down at her chest. "I've always been worried I'm one of those horrible Latina stereotypes, you know? All ass and no tits?" With a wicked grin, she then spun around and ran a hand up her shapely rear. "Although, I think we both can agree that there isn't a single woman on this ship who can compare to me in that department."