Chapter Thirteen: Taylor Henderson

My right hand had become almost numb from the half dozen electric shocks I received while repairing the damaged 3D printer under Victor's careful guidance. It took nearly an hour, but he double checked and approved of my work once I had finished with the repairs. Now, with the printer fixed, all three of the salvaged pieces of equipment were functional, using the chemical analysis scanner, Victor had discovered the dirt recovered by Freeman had high amounts of Tungsten and Chromium, which while useful, still wasn't on the list of materials we wanted to collect first, which included Iron, Aluminum and Copper.

Victor, Lorries and I were currently gearing up to leave in search of Lorries list of necessary metals when we heard panicked screaming coming from behind us. Every head in the camp snapped in surprise to look at a wildy thrashing Lisa, who had blood pouring from her open mouth. Damian was the first to react. Grabbing a cup of water and handing out to her. A desperate Lisa filled her mouth with water and spit out blood and pieces of raw flesh several times before she staggered back and fell backwards, holding her face and sobbing.

The rest of us surged forward to investigate, crowding around our fallen crewmate, who was now lying on her stomach, spitting up more blood, which had created a red puddle on the ground. Dr. Miles picked something up with a gloved hand and held it up to observe. It was one of the bright pink fruits the second party had brought back to camp just yesterday. A single bite was taken from the fruit, revealing a juicy white interior. Lorries snatched it from her hand, taking care only to make contact with the exterior.

"Just yesterday, Dr. Miles observed these 'acid apples' to have an extremely high concentration of Hydrochloric and Caro Acids, a mixture that does not naturally occur on Earth, but at this potency, has the strength to burn through pretty much anything," he paused to look at us,

"Had Miss Smith bothered to ask permission to eat this fruit, she would have been told of the extremely harmful and even deadly effects. Let this misfortune remind all of you what happens when you act in insubordination." he dropped the fruit back into the hands of Dr. Miles, who carefully set it into a shallow hole just made by Damian and his shovel. The rest of us sat in shocked silence, the only noise being Lisa's sobs.

…

Not even the near death of a crew member remotely phased Lorries, within minutes after the lecture he gave us, he took off in search of ores; ordering Victor and I to follow.

Victor armed with a magnetic metal scanner, myself carrying a spear made from the deadly harpoon that had nearly killed Jennifer and a steel structural rod.

Lorries himself carried a machete and his ever present handgun. He led us around the ship to the massive crater left behind from the crash, where the dirt as far down as nearly twenty yards was exposed. Our trio slipped down to the bottom of the crater, where Victor began scanning the ground immediately. We searched for hours to no avail, the only metal we found was small bits of debris from the ship. We made our way up out of the crater and back to the camp, Lorries far from happy and the two of us far from Lorries.

Everyone else was preoccupied moving the smaller pieces of debris into a large pile to the left of the mouth of the ship. The sight gave me an idea, which I stopped Lorries to propose,

"Sir, the ship is constructed of Steel, Titanium and Aluminum, with Copper wiring throughout, why not use what's left of it to make what we need?"

I bit my lip as Lorries froze. He turned slowly to me and I relaxed when he smiled and clapped his hand on my shoulder,

"What an idea! It's already got everything we need and we won't be using it anytime soon, tomorrow we get to work, good idea Private!"

My heart raced with excitement, I had impressed Lorries, with Jennifer wounded and Damian keeping guard outside, I could easily get the most done tomorrow, I don't know how long my luck was going to keep up, but I'll be damned if I don't make the most of it.

I looked back at Jennifer laying at the bed made from the stretcher. She was curled in a fetal position with her arms wrapped over her stomach. She had been impaled just as I had, and the pain I felt was still a dull throb. She may be hard to work with and a little odd with her sudden affection towards me, but she was part of the crew. As well as the person here I'd known for the longest. So even though she wasn't my favorite person to be around, she was still someone I didn't enjoy seeing hurt.

I started looking around the wreckage for anything interesting and found Victor working in the area now designated as 'the lab'.

"Anything new?" I asked him.

He turned around to me and his eyes sparkled with excitement. When he replied, he spoke almost too quickly to understand,

"The worm creatures are actually more like snakes, they have a skeletal structure and similar characteristics to terran reptiles, and the chemical analysis scanner was equipped with a protein simulation, which allowed me to discover the meat is safe for human consumption!"

It took me a second to process what he had said,

"So we can eat those things?"

"Yes!"

He nearly jumped when he replied.

"Congrats Vic, you discovered an alien food source."

"Thanks Taylor, that means a lot"

"You'd better tell Lorries, he'd be glad to hear this."

I left the lab after giving Victor the suggestion. The sun was setting, and for the first time since my graduation, I felt proud.