Perfect Mirror
"The ship is in perfect order." Harper said, confused. "But I keep hearing that noise. This rattling, shuffling."
"Sensors show nothing biological on board except for us." Rommie said. She frowned. "Nothing mechanical either."
"So I'm hearing things. Great." Harper threw his hands up.
"I don't know, I'm still suspicious. There's a great deal we don't have knowledge about. Try to find what you can." Captain Hunt said to Harper. "Tyr, try to do a manual search of the ship."
"I'll run another scan." Rommie said. "Whatever you heard, it might only appear at intervals."
"I want the channels open. If you see anything, then report immediately."
"I think we are making this into a larger matter than it should be." Tyr said.
"I don't think we can ever be sure if we really are." Dylan said. "Maybe it is nothing. But I want to be sure."
***
Rommie walked through the corridors of the ship, analyzing the walls carefully. As the Andromeda herself, she could do that from the bridge, without even touching a console, but Harper had emphasized that even though she was Andromeda, she should become familiar with the ship as a being, not just as a machine or a ship. After all, the Andromeda Ascendant was almost alive.
She turned a corner and her eyes widened.
Rommie was frowning as she entered command. "A resolution scan of the ship hull shows an odd texture on the surface, next to the bay doors."
"Put it on screen." Beka said before Dylan could respond.
The screen shimmered and the vast darkness of space transformed into an enlarged image of the Andromeda's outer hull.
"What the hell is that?" Beka asked in disgust.
"It looks like a fungus of some kind." Dylan said, frowning. His eyes focused closer.
"It appears to be a symbiotic organism. The organism itself appears to be biological but it lives off the core matter of a mechanical structure." Rommie said. "It could be feeding off the signature of the slipstream drive."
"When's the last time we used the drive?" Dylan asked Beka, his face darkening in suspicion.
"When we left Remus III." She said. "Something must have happened during repairs. There were malfunctions all over the place, we couldn't have known if something had attached itself to the ship."
"But I ran a full diagnostic a few hours after we left. Nothing internal or external was out of the ordinary." Rommie frowned.
"It is puzzling indeed." Dylan pressed a button.
"Harper, Tyr, get to the bridge." Dylan said.
***
"That is disgusting!" Harper exclaimed when the image showed up again.
"What is it?" Tyr asked. "And how do we kill it?"
"Figures you'd ask that." Harper said.
"For now we don't know enough about it to make any judgments on what to do." Dylan said. "But it is organic, and it is feeding off the energy of the ship."
"So we power down the ship." Beka said.
"No, we can't do that. We power down the ship, there'll still be life support running. And even if we do it enough that that-that-thing leaves, where's it gonna go? It's just gonna find some other ship to suck dry." Harper said, watching the grayish mass on the side of the ship.
"He's right. We need a way to eradicate it." Dylan said. "Rommie, is there sign that this happened during our departure on Remus III?"
"It would appear possible. Most of us were incredibly busy during that time. And the ship wasn't exactly in peak order."
Tyr scowled as he read the sensor information on the console.
"This is-odd." He said. "Trace? Rev, are you in sickbay?" He said into the comm.
Rev answered. "Yes, both Trace and I are in Sickbay. What's wrong?"
"Nothing." Tyr said absently. His eyes flitted across the console.
Beka, Dylan, and Harper looked at him expectantly. Harper looked at Rommie, waiting for an answer.
Tyr solved the confusion for them. "Intruder alert on Deck 6." He announced. Then he matched Harper's following scowl. "This is strange." He said.
'What?" Harper asked. He looked at Rommie, then at Tyr.
"It indicates the intruder on Deck 6 is…" He looked at Beka. "You."
***
"But I'm right here, this isn't possible." Beka said.
"I know, which means someone is on board and they're somehow masking their signal." Rommie said.
Tyr had already left the bridge with Dylan and Beka at this time, on their way to Deck 6.
Harper shook his head in confusion and then went to a station.
"What are you doing?" Rommie asked.
"Monitoring them. I want to know who's wandering around Deck 6." He said.
Rommie inclined her head and watched Harper work. His brown furrowed.
"What are you doing, Harper?" She asked.
"I told you. I'm monitoring them."
Suddenly, the bridge doors sealed.
"What the-" Harper said, looking up in surprise.
"Get away from the console." Andromeda ordered.
"Rommie, what are you doing?" He asked.
"Get away from the console." She ordered again.
Harper raised his hands and backed up. "All right. What's doing on?"
Rommie glared at him silently. Something beeped.
"Remus III, this is the Andromeda Ascendant." Rommie said. "The ship is acquired"