Fun With Zookeeping

They never did find the orangutan. Post-disaster analysis indicated that a sizable section of the mammal house got spaced at the moment of impact, and it was deemed likely that Mr. Bubbles ended up incandescing in the nearest star.

Of course by then that was the least of the U.F.S.S. Carnivale’s problems.

* * *

“Get this goddamn raptor out of my face!" Keeper Lieutenant Keller punched the snapping, feathered lizard straight in the snout, her powered environment suit lending her limbs the proportionate strength of a hacked off Tyrannosaurus Rex.

The velociraptor let out a high-pitched screech, then ExTee grabbed it by a haunch and slammed it into one of the remaining stasis cells. The blue-white field within flickered to life, locking the velociraptor in space and time.

"We are now down to two functional stasis cells," ExTee said. The android's shiny exterior was burnt and dented, and his voice was hissing static in the hard radiation.

"Save them for high-value lethals only," Keller said. "Do we know what the hell happened yet?"

"A navigational error ran us into a meteor," said Baila'rukh. The Hypersaurian veterinarian was affixing emergency oxygen supplies to a cache of smaller mammals that had survived decompression. An orange, hard light shield was plugging the hole, though Keller wouldn't rate it for long.

She did a quick head count. "Bai, where's the third lemur?"

"Didn't survive the impact." A long tongue flicked out and wiped a spot of blood from Baila'rukh's jaw.

Keller rolled her eyes, then staggered as she felt herself pulled toward the now-flickering light shield. The luminators set in the displays were dimming as well, some going out completely.

Keller's eyes widened. "Ah, shit. Did anyone check the Vore's pen?"

Her question was answered when a steel-gray insectile burst out of the opposite wall and burrowed into ExTee's chestplate. The android squealed as the two foot long bug buried itself in his innards and feasted on the delicious current within.

"Shit! Bai, get his mem-chips!" Keller pulled her laspistol and fired two quick shots that caught the Vore on its carapace. The insectile shrieked and launched itself away, digging quickly into the deck plates and out of sight.

ExTee toppled over, his power drained. Bai quickly moved to his side and pulled his mind free. "We've got to call a level five quarantine-"

"Won't work. The damn thing eats through adamantium. We need to kill it or we'll lose the entire ship."

Of course it was that moment the Captain chose to chime in. "Lieutenant, why am I receiving reports of a ravenous bug creature eating my ship?"

Keller gritted her teeth. "The Vore's loose, sir," she commed back. "We need fire teams patrolling all decks."

"Negative, Lieutenant. We need the specimen taken alive."

"Alive? Captain, the Vore will kill the entire ship in ten minutes."

"Alive, Lieutenant. Get it done." Keller swore as the Captain broke the connection.

"If we can get the Vore into a stasis cell..." Bai began.

"It won't stay still long enough," said Keller. "We'd need to bait it in and keep it eating long enough to..."

Keller glanced at the mem-chips in Bai's claws. "How many spare bodies does ExTee have again?"

Bai made to answer, but then he got distracted pulling a Siberian tiger off Keller's leg.

* * *

The ship was at 40% power by the time Keller and Bai got the last few dangerous animals contained and put their trap together. Bai had lined up all twenty of ExTee's spare bodies in the stasis cell. The inert android bodies looked like a squad of shiny aluminum soldiers at parade rest.

Keller was tracking shipboard faults on her HUD. As soon as she saw the trail of glitches heading toward their position again, she shouted "Now!"

Bai powered on the twenty androids. The Vore tunneled out of the ceiling seconds later, skittering at high speed for the largest power cluster in the room.

The ExTee bodies, following their default programming, bolted out of the stasis cell in all directions. The Vore leapt at one of them just as the artificial gravity plating failed, launching itself and the android through the hard light shielding and into vacuum.

Keller blinked. "Fuck," she said. "Captain, the Vore just spaced itself."

"Recover it."

"Re- we've got no way to do that, sir!"

There was a brief pause. "Understood. All evidence pertaining to this voyage will be destroyed immediately."

Keller's stomach knotted. "Captain, are you blowing up the ship?"

"Of course. My backup self is up to date and has no interest in serving out a millennial prison sentence for trafficking in bioweapons." The entity sounded amused. "By the way, your service has been terminated retroactively. We'll be billing any clones or next of kin you have to recover your pay. Good day cycle!"

"You bastard!" Keller slammed her fist against the deck. Bai was staring at her, his scales a deep terrified blue.

"I don't want to die," Bai hissed. "I have a creche of eggs due to hatch in twenty standard cycles."

"We're not going to die," Keller snapped. "Well, yet. Throw one of ExTee's bodies into the stasis cell and help me get it through the breach."

"What about the specimens?" Bai said, gripping a panicked ExTee body under its armpits.

"Just pick a few snacks and hurry up!"

* * *

The U.F.S.S. Carnivale was lost with all hands halfway through its transit, which subsequently ceased to exist on any galactic records. An industrial accident on Hydra Pacificus was fabricated to explain the ship's loss. The damage to the Carnivale's backing company's bottom line was papered over with the quick sale of a few toxic assets.

The stasis cell was eventually recovered by scavengers five decades later. Ironically the crew was made up of Bai's creche children, fully grown, and after a week of celebrations the Carnivale's survivors changed their names and enjoyed the benefits of compound interest.

No records of the Vore were ever created, which got really annoying when its parent species invaded the galaxy.

Scrap

"Hur hur hur," said the Scrapman. He walked through valleys of broken machines, his beady eyes seeking and peeking, skittering over rusted-out hulks as they sought any signs of movement. The Tallyman had said there were artificials wandering the scrapyard, and that meant money.

The Scrapman's ears perked up. A skitter, a clatter! Around a pile of industrial piping he ran, and found a sleek black artificial lifting a pipe and putting it back down, over and over again. The artificial looked at him with one good glowing red lense.

“Disassemble/recycle?” it said. Its voice was a static-laced blurt. The Scrapman chuckled, and slipped the slaver cube out of his satchel. It was the work of a moment to affix the cube to the artificial’s chassis. Nanofilaments extruded from the cube’s surface and wormed their way into the artificial’s logic centers, imparting new directives, new loyalties. The artificial set down its pipe for the last time and followed the Scrapman as he continued his hunt.

Man and machine walked twisting pathways through the scrap, around mountains of twisted metal, cracked gears and sparking circuitry. Here and there, the Scrapman spotted a bit of yttrium or lanthanum, and slipped them into his satchel; it never did to turn down easy money, after all. But for hours more artificials eluded him.

The Scrapman saw the sky lightening in the east and cursed, knowing that he would have to leave the scrapyard soon or risk running afoul of the Reclamation Authority. He was just about to turn back when a bit of light caught the corner of his eye. A pair of green glowing lenses was peeking at him around the side of a cracked maker engine.

“Here, little one, don’t be afraid,” said the Scrapman, smiling with an easy charm despite his missing teeth and growths of patchy stubble. “Come to your old uncle Scrapper.”
The Scrapman bent low and made welcoming gestures. The artificial, a small silvery unit, inched out from its hiding place. It was missing a manipulator unit, and sparks flew from the broken stump, but otherwise it seemed in fine condition.

“That’s right, you beauty,” the Scrapman said as the artificial crept closer. “Come to poppa.”

The black artificial perked up then, its red-lensed gaze locking on to the smaller unit. “Disassemble/recycle?” it said, raising its long, pointed manipulators and clacking them together quickly with a sound like chattering mandibles.

The smaller artificial started, then turned and ran. The Scrapman cursed his luck and went running after it, his inconvenient companion following along behind him with a smooth, unhurried stride.

The silver artificial ran like a kangaroo, springing from point to point in a way that would have been comical if it hadn’t allowed the machine to cover so much ground so quickly. The Scrapman was hard-pressed to keep up, puffing and wheezing from his exertions.

The Scrapman’s foot caught on an outstretched artificial limb, and he went down heavily, the air whooshing out of his lungs. He cursed again and looked up, expecting to see the silver artificial fleeing out of sight and out of reach.

To his surprise and pleasure, he saw instead that the artificial was bounding into a narrow gap between two large mounds of scrap, one even the Scrapman could see was a dead-end. The thing’s pathfinding algorithms must have been damaged. The Scrapman scrambled to his feet and got running again.

He caught up with the artificial at the end of the gap. It was bouncing up and down in place, it’s green lenses sweeping back and forth as it tried to decide where to go.

“You led a good chase, little one,” said the Scrapman, moving forward carefully. He kept both arms outstretched, in case the artificial made another break for it. “But Scrapper’s here now. Scrapper will take care of you.”

The silver artificial turned around at last and fell over in surprise. It scurried backward on ball-jointed arms and legs, clambering up the wall of scrap metal behind it in its desperation to get away. The scrap shifted and collapsed, keeping the artificial from making any progress.

“All be over soon, don’t worry,” said the Scrapman, pulling another slaver cube from his satchel.

The artificial’s frantic scrambling increased as the Scrapman drew close. The sparking stump of one of its arms clanged against a large square piece of blackened metal revealed by its struggling.

The spark travelled through the metal, down into circuitry and synapse structure that had been left cold and depowered years ago. The flare of electricity interacted with redundant power systems, jump-starting batteries that had been believed long dead.

The blackened metal shivered, then shook, then started to rise. The Scrapman and the artificial leapt away as the mound of scrap shifted and collapsed from the efforts of the immense form that had been hidden under it. The slaver cube dropped from the Scrapman’s hand and bounced under the collapsing heaps of metal.

The immense artificial was canine in appearance, a military-class artificial judging by the spikes and broken turrets that bedecked its emerging form. It regarded the Scrapman with eyes that burned like furnace doors as control systems tapped into the local network and tried to determine its current assignment.

UNAUTHORIZED PERSONNEL DETECTED, it growled in deep bass tones. YOU HAVE FIVE SECONDS TO VACATE THE PREMISES.

The Scrapman shivered and whimpered, his motor functions gone the way of his bladder control. One hand desperately reached into his satchel, but shook too badly to grip the cubes inside.

TIME’S UP, the guard dog said, and leapt.

A short time later, the guard dog had curled up in a rest state. The silver artificial was sitting on top of its head, gently polishing the dog’s head with its undamaged manipulator, when the sleek black artificial arrived. The guard dog ignored it – it was authorized, after all.

The black artificial looked down at the remains of the Scrapman. “Diassemble/recycle!” it said happily, and did just that.

I wrote this for a flash fiction challenge on Chuck Wendig's blog, TERRIBLEMINDS. It's a great blog, go check it out!