2950-10-11 – Tales from the Service: A Devourer of Scars
As Ruby Nichols cut away another section of tainted paneling and tossed it toward the collection point at the middle of the space, she kept her suit cameras swiveling. Every time her or Chief Logan’s lights swept across one of the twisting traceries that loose phased matter particles had taken out of the ship, she half-imagined the glittering patina on the metal was a mass of tiny eyes.
Ever since she’d spotted the yellowish, skittering thing, she’d been on edge, and couldn’t quite explain why. Less than fifteen centimeters long, it almost certainly couldn’t chew through her heavy hazard suit. It had been unpleasant to look at, but it didn’t even place in the top five in terms of ugliness among shipboard pest species.
It was, Ruby eventually decided, the simple mystery of the critter that had her on edge. She didn’t know what it was, and the lack of response to Chief Logan’s queries suggested nobody else did either. Unknowns, especially unknown organisms picked up from who-knows-where, simply could not be fit into a comfortable, safe model of her environment. With such a mystery being apparently contentedly skittering about in the diffuse argon atmosphere pumped into the damaged section, her overworked, under-rested brain wanted to assume that everything was up for grabs, and anything was possible.
Whether her mind was right or wrong to jump to panicky conclusions, though, Ruby had a job to do, and the better part of a shift left to do it. Chief Logan, a far better shot than she was, had taken up her station closer to where the bug was hiding, no doubt training cameras in that direction. Ruby almost wished she hadn’t traded places with him; being closer to the unknown, and thus being more likely to notice its movements, promised to make it seem less unknown, and thus more manageable.
“Still no movement.” Logan, as if sensing Ruby’s unease, spoke on their shared comms channel. “It probably went off somewhere quieter.”
“Maybe it’ll come out again to bother Yuan next shift.” Ruby twisted another piece of metal free, and growled in frustration as the brittle material shattered, scattering a fountain of tiny flakes that settled slowly in the weak atmosphere. Tossing the largest pieces aside, she extended her suit’s particle collector and scooped up the glittering pieces.
Movement in one of her camera displays caught Ruby’s attention as she collected the debris. The yellowish critter – or perhaps another one of identical appearance – was slinking across the shattered remains of a compartment’s deck plating to her left, its many-faced eyes glinting.
“Ugh, it got past you.” Ruby retracted her collector and reached for the coil-pistol clipped to her hip. The pistol’s plasma charge would not be as effective in the thin atmosphere as it would in human-friendly conditions, but it would still cook any bug. The creature, as if sensing that it had been spotted, froze in place as if hoping to be forgotten, not realizing how starkly its odd coloration stood out against the textured grey of shipboard decking.
“Nothing for it but to fry the little bastard.” Logan, not wanting to make any sudden moves and thus spoil Ruby’s shot, stood perfectly still. “We’ve got too much work to do to keep an eye on it.”
“Yeah.” Ruby slowly raised her gun, watching its reticle move across her heads-up display. “Gives me the creeps anyway.”
As the reticle drifted across the critter’s body, an idea occurred to Ruby. Each time it had appeared, she had been doing the same thing; when they’d stopped chipping away at the irradiated metal for long enough to study it, the bug had scuttled away. Perhaps something they were doing was attracting it? If so, she knew there could be only one cause.
“Chief, I think this thing likes phase-contamination. It’s showing up when we’re chipping away.”
“That stuff kills everything alive.” Logan’s disdain for the idea was obvious.
“Then why is it not dead? What’s it even breathing or eating down here anyway?” Ruby kept her gun on the bug, but eased her finger away from the trigger. “Before I blast it, I’m going to try something.”
Logan sighed. “Make it quick, Nichols.”
Still moving slowly, Ruby re-extended her suit’s particulate sweeper and opened the collection tray. From it, she eased out a small shard of glittering phased-particle-contaminated metal, holding it up next to her gun. She imagined she saw those three faceted eyes following the movement.
Gingerly, Ruby dropped the fragment to land between her boots, then took two steps backward. For good measure, she turned her suit lights until they only indirectly lit that spot, hoping to leave the impression her attention was elsewhere.
After a few moments of uncanny stillness, the yellowish creature crept forward once more, now headed for the spot Ruby had just vacated. As she watched, gun still leveled, the many-legged thing crept up to the discarded shard of compromised metal. It explored the fragment with its forelimbs, then, as Ruby watched in amazement, its head seemed to fold back over itself and a beak-like arrangement of stubby mouthparts protruded.
“Well I’ll be damned.” Logan chuckled as the creature began to scrape the many-colored crystalline patina off the metal shard. “I’m calling this in. Ugly or not, that thing’s gotta be useful.”
This week we continue the account of Ruby Nichols, a hazardous environment tech working on one of the Navy space docks here in the Maribel system.
Apparently the creature they discovered (and a few others also discovered aboard Marseille) were hurried off to a xenobiology research facility somewhere in the Core Worlds. No doubt the scientists there are tending a happy little colony of these rather unpleasant looking creatures, trying to figure out how they extract biological energy from materials contaminated by phased-matter radiation.
It might be years before we hear about them again, but as Miss Nichols’s boss suggested, these things could have uses – for example, they might be coaxed into doing Miss Nichols’s own job, at less risk to human life and health than sending people in to do the same.