Of Spiders and Pilots

Posted on Tue Jun 18th, 2013 @ 11:27am by Commander Oralia Zeferino & Lieutenant Commander Michael Darwin

Mission: Breaking New Ground
Location: Security Offices

"She lost him? What...? How?"

"She says he ran away from her," Oralia shrugged and spread her hands in a very human 'go figure' gesture.

Frowning, Darwin stared at the Security Chief. He couldn't blame the male for running from Iggy; if he had a female like Iggy after him, he'd run too. As fast and as hard as he could. Hell, he'd even change his hair color, his nose, anything necessary to disguise himself as he ran. Poor guy, he sympathized, then was bothered by his own thought labeling a spider as a ‘guy’. Bemused, he shook his head slightly and asked, "How is Iggy taking that?"

Oz's brow went up as she regarded Darwin. "She didn't even tell me until after it - he - was missing for a few days. Seems to me she doesn't really care, except that she was hoping to mate with him."

"Mate? And have a bunch of little Iggys running around?" He let out a low whistle and shook his head again, this time in disbelief. "Maybe it's best that the spider got away. Can't imagine the Admiral would be thrilled about that."

"No, I suppose he wouldn't. Iggy seems to think her offspring," she couldn't bring herself to think of little spiderlings as 'babies' - particularly since Iggy could, in theory, have more than fifty all at the same time, "would be like her: sentient."

"Uh-huh." The lieutenant tried not to think about dozens of mini-Iggys running around the Station. He couldn't decide whether dozens of sentient tarantulas would be better or worse than dozens of normal tarantulas. Both made him shudder with dread.

He was distracted as Oralia suddenly straightened up in her chair and attacked the computer console, quickly swiping through a few menus. Watching her, he asked, “What’s up?”

“Hmm? Oh, I just remembered that there was one more person I needed to ‘thank’ for Iggy’s rescue. Granted, he helped get her off the station, but he also came and told us what had happened.”

“Oh, that pilot? Little belated, isn’t it?”

She shrugged. “His ship has been in impound since we locked him up. Imagine the fees due on that.” Darwin winced. “Right. If this was Federation space, it wouldn’t be an issue,” she commented then paused to read the screen and finally smiled. “All taken care of.”

“So are we going on a spider-hunt again?” At Oralia’s blank look, he prompted, “For the male tarantula? Doesn’t Iggy want him back?”

“Oh. Well... she might,” Oz begrudgingly acknowledged, “But I think the engineers and Ops people have other things to worry about. And it isn’t a Security issue, unless someone on the Station panics and screams for help on seeing the thing. No, we’ll let the thing - um, spider, do what a spider does. Eventually the environmental systems will get him.”

“‘Get him’? Yeah, turn him into spider paste.” Darwin shuddered again.

_________________________

Commander Oralia Zeferino
Lieutenant Michael Darwin