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Captain Reese took a liking to Harris quickly, said Harris was a “quick thinker” and “fast on his feet” as well as having “the cutest little hat that I’ve ever seen”. Bernard enjoyed the compliment, and sat contentedly on Harris’ head every day. They didn’t get to chat often, as Harris was rarely in the dorms without Reese, so conversations were short.
However, Bernard did give him important information on how imposters worked, allowing Harris to talk two captains through imposter attacks single handed. They weren’t very intense situations, the imposters seemed to be of poor intelligence. They forgot what color their suits were, and tried to claim that they were in a part of the ship that didn’t exist.
The second attack was on a crew who all knew each others names, the imposter was the one who couldn’t answer with what their real name was.
Admittedly not grand victories, but victories none the less. Bernard was satisfied with his work, and Harris could hear him chuckling whenever he ordered the wrong drink for Captain Reese. Captain Reese was an odd ball, completely serious one moment, silent, calculating, pointing and planning, then they’d turn to you and ask for some cheese from the cafeteria. Knowing full well there was no cheese on the ship. Just, asking for cheese constantly, when Harris tires to tell him there’s no cheese, they just make a pun and go back to being serious; truly an odd fellow
That was one perk of this ship over the Skeld, or one of the smaller ones, it actually had food in the cafeteria. They had a whole cabinet full of different things, and behind that cabinet was an emergency supply. New shipments of food came in every month, so it wasn’t too long of a wait usually. The only rooms that weren’t on the main floor where the dorms, which there was a slide open stairway to from the launchpad down into
A dormitory. There were 8 crew members, almost all were celebrated survivors of imposter attacks, only one hadn’t been in such a situation, an engineer who was the best in the business.
Reese and Harris were roomed together, Bernard stayed in Harris’ bed after Harris took off his suit. Thankfully, the dorms were built with long term living in mind, it was completely free of radiation. Just in case, a tester sat in the hallway rating the radiation levels.
When they had suits on, it was okay to refer to others not by name, but by color of suit. No one used actual names unless speaking with other ships, it made things easier. It also let you know which job someone was going to do. The guy in the black suit, Connor Shultz, was the famous engineer. He had a handle on the reactor, as well as the thickest suit on the ship.
Instead of everyone rotating jobs, everyone had very specific tasks. Harris was in charge of looking after Reese, helping them with tasks, and learning all he could about star systems, different planets, and different aliens. It was interesting stuff, and Harris loved the job. It had already come in handy once when Stella’s new captain called with need for information on planets, but broken scanners. Harris acted as a dictionary on all of the planets nearby, and they were able to find the planet they needed.
Speaking of jobs, Captain Reese rushed into the communications room, knocking on the siding of the wall. “Hey White! On your feet! New shipment of crystal from the red planet is here”. The gold suit of Reese ran back down the hallway toward the launchpad, their flowerpot bouncing on their head.
Harris got up, and put down his book on the different species of imposter (there was more than one apparently), and followed the captain down the hallway. A new planet had been reached without crew getting poisoned by the air, the suits finally equipped to deal with it, so they had been receiving things to study, mostly earth and crystal.
Everyone but Lime was there, moving small boxes into the launch pad area from the ship parked next to them. A small railed bridge attached the two ships, as they weren’t technically in space.
The Mira HQ ship floated in the purple cloudy atmosphere of Harris’s planet, it was strategically placed so that they could interact with those in space and those on planet quickly, acting as an in between for the messages and scans. It speed up the process a surprising amount, and with the way the ship was set up, it was pretty much imposter proof. Kinda.
The other ship unloaded, The captain gave them the go ahead to decent to the actual HQ. The new suits for the others weren’t colored the same way, the red planet that they were on, Combria, had a fine red dust swirling around it all the time. The dust was toxic in large amounts, and stuck to almost everything, so the new suits were resistant, and gray. The only colored part was the visor, which could stay clean in sandstorms.
They departed, and Montana, who was in the Peach suit with surprised eye brows drawn on, took some of the crystals back up to lab with her. She called out to Harris, “White, get your notebook you can record some of this for your entries on Combria’s geology”. Harris didn’t need to be told twice, he loved getting to write down this information, they were finding these things out for the first time!
He opened a cabinet drawer, then pulled out a new red notebook to write in. He met up with Black before the decontamination room, Black nodded toward the door, “Peach ran in before I could join her. She’s way too excited for this”.
Harris nodded, yea, she hadn’t gotten to do anything for the last week and a half. The last shipment of stuff for her to look at was sent to the wrong place, and they threw it all out. It was a giant loss for the HQ. And during that time, she had been accompanying Black in the reactor. He was going to be lonely. “Do you want to take Bernard to the reactor with you Black? I’m sure he’d like a change of scenery,” Harris asked as they stepped into decontamination.
Black laughed heartily, “Sure, yeah I’m sure he would, White”.
The crew was used to White talking about Bernard like a normal person, and since there was no pink suit on the ship, it was often joked that he was the ninth member of the crew.
The HQ directors that had heard the original version of the story of the Skeld were Squeamish at the sight of the little imposter copy, but none of them wanted to check the hat. After all, the suits had been searched throughly, there’s no way a crew would smuggle an imposter back to the HQ.
Bernard was taken off of White’s head and given to black, who held on close to the doll. Black adjusted his pirate hat, and said “alright all aboard the reactor express— wait I’m a pirate uh—“.
Harris laughed, Black’s a good sport. After the room cleared from the decontamination spray, the two walked into the top of the wing, Harris heading toward laboratory where Peach was to write notes, and Black took a quick left into reactor room.
Bernard was not pleased. He wanted to hear about the crystals. He wanted to hear Harris joke with Peach about how to write the information. He wanted to imagine how much funnier all of Peaches statements were because of her drawn on eyebrows. He did not want to be in Reactor with a shmuck who didn’t understand that he was alive.
What if he got put somewhere dangerous as a joke? Ok, maybe that wouldn’t happen, White would be upset. Still, not an ideal situation for the day.
Black set him down on the table next to a small laptop, and began typing in passcodes. He entered the systems and started running a routine maintenance on the machine. Laughter could be heard from across the hall before it died down again. Black looked out into the hallway and sighed.
“Man wish I could have a buddy again”. He looked toward Bernard, “of course you count, I guess. You can’t talk though, that’s no fun”.
The computer beeped, first maintenance check was clear, he started the next.
“You got arms now? That’s pretty cool. I notice he’s been working on you”. It was true, White had sewn him little arms with little mittens at the end. It wasn’t the best, but it was useable. Mostly for ‘just in case’ scenarios.
“Can I tell you a secret?”
Uh oh, he was bad at keeping secrets. He thinks, he only had one person to talk to.
Black looks back toward the hall to make sure that the coast is clear. The other two are still talking loudly, he’s good.
“I actually peeked in while he was sewing your arms on,” Black leaned back in his office chair, “and I want you to tell me why a perfectly sane, hardworking man like Harris Whyte would bring a vermin like you onto the ship”.
Bernard held himself as still as possible, maybe if he acted long enough Black would think he saw wrong and give up. “Now, now. I saw the wires little guy. You’re an imposter, type A. You chew through wires like it’s no body’s business isn’t that right?”
Bernard was screwed if this went on any longer.
“Buddy, I can see what you’re doing, so here’s the deal. You tell me why you’re here, and you better start talking quick, cause even if you’re just a doll, I’d rather melt a doll in a reactor than risk an imposter attack from my own crew mate”.
He was going to throw him into one of the Reactors. That mad man!
Black started reaching for him, and grabbed the prongs that are used to poke around in the reactor. Bernard raised up his hands in defeat, “wait! Wait, wait, please!” He whispered to Black.
Black chuckled darkly and sat back down. “Alright tell me everything. Why are you here”.
“I’m here because of White, he brought me”.
“Uh huh, and where did he get you?”.
“From the attack on the Skeld, he took one of my wires before they kicked me out of the ship”.
“Now why would he do that”.
“I think it’s because we became friends, no it’s definitely that. And I saved his life”.
“How”.
“How what?”.
“Both- Botha those. How did you manage either of those”.
“Well, I kicked over my imposter friend before they could snap his neck and outed him”.
“Why-“
“I don’t know”.
“... okay. The other one. How’d you become friends”.
“We stuck together the rest of the mission, got to know each other. He trusted me completely and it felt nice, so I never killed anyone”. Bernard looked toward the door, “and to be honest I don’t want to be in here with you, this was not my choice”.
“Yeah well, you’re stuck with me for uh, let’s say three hours”, and Black started the next check on the computer.
“Great”.
They sat in the room in silence, Black never actually threw Bernard in the reactor, or tell anyone, but he was always watching from a distance, the distrust was clear as day.