Time gets weird when you’re camping out in the guts of a ship.

…actually, [i]everything[/i] gets weird when you’re camping out in the guts of a ship. 

Each vessel had her own symphony of sounds and smells. Some were more forgiving than others. The bigger the ship, the harder to scrub all the O2. Pockets of foul air would build up in certain bends under the hull, collect in far corners or behind pipes in places usually inaccessible by anything bigger than a womp rat, knocking out anything unlucky enough to venture through. Often, there would be little piles of insect bodies in these spaces, dropping on top of each other the moment they hit the toxic air, unconscious until death arrived. They’d become familiar warning signs for Eryn over the years, just one of the many strange road signs of stowaway life.

She was passing one just now, wriggling between interior hull and a web of thick ducts, keeping well away from the slight open space behind the main duct. It wasn’t just the bad air. The further away from the interior you got, the closer the frozen black of space chilled the atmosphere and surrounding metal. Quite a few frostbite burn scars on her arms from the few times she’d fallen asleep against the wrong side of the hull.

She was on her way to a particular loose panel in the framework big enough for her to squeeze through, right under the hollow ‘storage’ seats of the galley table. At least, she hoped she was. This wasn’t a route she’d taken before. It wasn’t smart to use the same way too many times in a row. Better to change it up a bit if possible to avoid detection. Besides, that droid was wheeling around suspiciously near her usual pathways, and Eryn wasn’t interested in an introduction just yet. 

The stowaway paused for a moment, ‘hmphing’ at the idea that she’d been here long enough to have a ‘usual route’. [i]How[/i] long exactly? Not a clue. But she was familiar with the shadowed nuts and bolts, knew which sections to avoid and how to sneak in and out of certain areas without an issue. To her, that meant a long time.

Eventually, Eryn came to the colored nest of wiring she’d been looking for, marking the turn towards the galley. The scent of whatever the crew had whipped up grew stronger the closer to the panel she shimmied, and her stomach growled enthusiastically in response. She’d finished her last packet of ration paste long ago, and the idea of having actual food from a cooking pot for the first time since Ukio had taken over, from idea to desperate need. Eryn lay behind the panel for a long, cautious few minutes, doing mental gymnastics to justify the risk she was about to take while scanning the area through the warped mesh paneling for any sign of movement.

Silent patience under starved, dehydrated, exhausted pressure was a skill you learned quickly in her situation. You learned it, or you died ignoring it. 

No sounds from the galley yet. 

With grimey fingers, Eryn pulled the empty hydra-bag from her pocket, making sure the mouth was open wide enough to receive whatever she could grab. In one smooth, practiced motion, she carefully pushed the paneling away, slid through the opening, paused under the table one last time, and then slunk towards the stove. Eyes on the galley doors, she dunked her bag in the pot, noting it had cooled down, dragged the opening through the mixture a few times to collect what she could, and swiped a small container of polystarch bread from the counter. 

She was slinking back towards the open panel before twenty seconds had passed, licking the stray food on her hand as it drizzled down the mouth of the bag, and she was back inside the crawl space with the panel replaced in record time. 

After laying motionless to listen once again, Eryn tucked herself under the seat, managing to sit up a bit by compressing her spine against the back of the space that was surely used for smuggling, and began very slowly eating from her bag. She’d seen what lots of food very fast did to a stomach used to being empty. Even careful as she was, it was gone in four minutes, and she spent the next three painstakingly squeezing every drop from every corner. 
Weird that it was so good. She didn’t expect a crew of this…caliber to have its own chef. Maybe this trip wouldn’t be so bad after all. 
…maybe they had more stuff like this in the chillbox? Chefs cooked a lot, right? She made a mental note to check out the cold storage next time.

Eryn allowed herself a few minutes to just sit and enjoy not feeling weak and dizzy, letting the thrum of the vessel vibrate through her with eyes closed. 

[i]Now[/i] maybe she could sleep.

She was moving again shortly after, aiming for her ‘nest’, the warm spot she’d found during her exploration. It was tucked up and behind one of the scrubber ducts, hidden from sight but allowing her a vantage point into the hallways, warm enough to be comfortable, and the angle allowed for decent airflow and ventilation. 
To GET to it, however, required a rather slow and precarious crawl up and across one of the main hallway ceilings through the ‘heart’ of the ship, and the only thing separating her from the metal ground below was a thin sheet of what felt like tin and a flimsy mesh paneling. But she’d figured out how to go slow and use her surroundings to distribute her weight, and as long as no one was below, she didn’t worry too much. 
She’d crawled atop more precarious things and lived to tell the tale.

There was never a time she didn’t check below before she started. The mesh offered a blurry look at the hallway, but it was enough to make out moving shapes. Top down view showed none of those, so after another moment of waiting, Eryn began her crawl. Emboldened by her stolen meal and wanting a bit of shut-eye, she took it a bit faster than usual, hands and knees still careful but coming down quicker than they should have. Halfway there, the droid rolled around the corner, and she tried to stop where she was to let it pass, but the panel wobbled alarmingly at her sudden halt. 

The stowaway knew it was coming milliseconds before she felt the mesh give way.

[color=00a99d]“..Oh SHI-”[/color] Eryn dropped like a rock, surfing the panel straight down as she landed right on top of the droid’s dome. She rolled on impact as the panel slid to the ground  with a tinny clatter, coming to a crouch a few feet away. 
She was exposed.
It sent her body into overdrive, eyes sharpened, adrenaline bright in her blood, but she didn’t draw a weapon. She didn’t run. 
She just stared. Stared at the droid in front of her, frozen, as if waiting for the other shoe to drop. 


Wrench would have flinched, if it had been capable. Would have screamed like a little girl, if it had been a biologically inferior organism. Would have immediately called for help, and the rest of the crew, had it not been the better part of six years since its last memory wipe. And Wrench, was a very special breed of stubborn, single-minded, and oddly prescient. Couple that with a loyalty and determination to rival Fel’s, and a slightly self-serving streak, and Wrench could be… unpredictable. In circumstances like this. 

Hell. In any circumstance.

They were in the central corridor outside twin (port and starboard) holds. There was no possibility at least part of the crew hadn’t heard the commotion. So before engaging, before moving or even speaking, Wrench swivelled his torso and engaged the fore and aft, port and starboard locks on the compartment. The only way out now was the twin gangways leading to the dorsal and ventral cannons. But that was no way ‘out.’ There was no way out, unless Wrench opened the airlock. 

[color=8dc73f]*do you comprehend Binary?*[/color] the little droid chirped…


Eryn didn’t need to look around to know she was karked, but she did it anyway, casting her gaze from clearly inaccessible escape routes to droid. She was careful not to look at the gaping hole above its chirping dome, in case she could use it for something in the next few minutes. Not escape, of course, she’d be flushed out quicker than a turd, but it would make a decent handhold for some leverage and a nice place to engage the spring-action blades in her boots. A handful of options flickered through her brain.
Sometimes the best exit is the botched entrance.
[color=00a99d]“Yeah…”[/color] Voice low, she cocked her head and set her jaw, picturing her knife in the droids ‘eye’. [color=00a99d]“I get you.”[/color]

The grimy stowaway had three modes. 
One, violence. Fight, attack, punch-first-ask-later.
Two, run.
And three, play games until you got what you wanted and then revert to One.

There was no way the rest of the crew hadn’t heard the commotion. She fought the primal urge to pull every weapon out and cut anything that came near her, bucket of bolts or bio-beings alike. She’d seen bits and pieces of the crew when she could, watched and listened while they interacted. They weren’t the worst. No one gave off ‘I Wanna Wear Your Skin’ vibes or seemed particularly cruel.
Maybe Mode Three was the way to go here. 

Quickly, before she talked herself out of the idea, Eryn drew a knife from her left boot and the one on her belt and threw them across the floor. They slid noisily, coming to rest before the droid’s ..uh.. rolly ’feet’. She stood, hands up in what appeared to be surrender. [color=00a99d]“Do you get me, Wheels?”[/color]


Wrench “looked” as she threw down the weapons. He saw everything (within reason.) There was no need to make a show of it. In fact, doing so made the little droid suspicious that in no way was that all of the female’s weapons. Thankfully, there was no outward show for Wrench to tip his hand. No raised eyebrow, no pursed lips. (Biologics were so problematic and smelly.) To Eryn, all she would see is Wrench’s radome turn two degrees, toward her. His computer interface arm was already coupled to the port on the Starboard bulkhead.

Truth be told, Wrench was a little surprised at this humanoid’s presence. He wondered how long she had been aboard. 

[color=8dc73f]*I am torn between offering to open the cargo elevator, thus solving the problem of You… and asking how you managed to get aboard …have you always been here?*[/color]

Wrench heard the banging on the hatch, heard Fel’s overbearing vox, knew the crew was going to be unaccepting of additional biologicals aboard. He re-checked for a microsecond that he had locked out the common area and engineering panels. Satisfied that he had bought himself a moment, he engaged the alarmed female – for so she was. Her heart-rate was elevated, and her body temperature had spiked. [color=8dc73f]*My response is prescribed by my allegiance to my people. You do pose a possible threat. Give me a good reason why I don’t end your biological functions with the cold vacuum of the Black?*[/color]



[color=00a99d]“I..uh..”[/color] A [i]good[/i] reason? She didn’t have one. But the fact that the droid was asking questions at all instead of just automatically blowing her out the airlock was a point in her favor. A small one, but one all the same. 

Eryn was quiet for a moment, almost physically struggling to get words out. Not because she couldn’t figure out what to say, but because it’d been such a long time since she’d had anything resembling a thoughtful conversation with anyone that she’d just kind of…forgotten how to? Words stuck in her throat like fishbones, and she took a deep breath, trying to get them out. After all, her life DID depend on it, and while the droid was clearly not bloodthirsty or beyond fairness, it was definitely serious, and she didn’t want to push her luck there.

The last time she’d fragged up and been caught aboard was back at the beginning of all of this, before she’d completely lost her soul. 
Before she’d seen nothing but the bad side of the ‘verse.
She’d only been allowed to stay after agreeing to work a job for them for ‘free’, thus paying off her ‘debt’. 
Maybe…?

She swallowed, actually annoyed at her own sloppy handling of the situation. Being caught off-guard was bad enough. Rendered mute and floundering around for any shred of old social skills was just too much.

[color=00a99d]“I just. –Needed a ride. Off that rock,”[/color] she finally choked out. [color=00a99d]“I was… stuck. Couldn’t pay for it. I just…needed a break.”[/color] It wasn’t a lie, at least. [color=00a99d]“But I don’t want trouble,”[/color] she added quickly, trying her best not to look threatening. [color=00a99d]“I’ll-.. I’ll work, if that helps. For your people, or whatever. Labor for a ride. Drop me at the next planet, I’ll never bother you again.”[/color]