Chapter Text
Red’s first tour was simple. A routine data collection mission to Polus that took only a month pf space travel before arriving at his destination, and placing all Short Term Crew back on another craft destined for Earth. For Red, it had been a first near miss – the ship (Rum Runner, because one of the last Captains had been in the unique possession of a sense of humour) that he’d just left was sabotaged shortly after leaving Polus, bound for Deep Space. Three survivors, according to what little reports were accessible to standard Med Techs like Red. The ship that had picked up the survivors had scanned each one, and found one of them to be ‘infected,’ whatever that meant in MIRA speak, and had then proceeded to incinerate them. After reading about that, Red had made it his personal mission to scan and monitor every passenger on every Crew he’d ever been on since. He refused to make the mistakes that got that Crewmate vaporised.
His next tour was an absolute horror show.
During their initial take off from Earth to Polus they had two blackouts and a week with the O2 on recycle only. It was only once they landed on Polus for repair that bodies started falling. But a quick tire iron to the back of an Imposter’s head gave the Captain of that tour time to fight back, and they’d been lucky it was only the one.
(It had also got him psychologically reassessed when back on planet, and that had sucked, majorly. It’s okay when General Crewman attack each other when getting an Imposter off ship. But Med Techs have oaths to consider. Boy, did that go over poorly with the UN Med Techs he’d been screened by.)
His third and fourth tours were uneventful outside of his constant arguments with MIRA’s resource division. No spare med kits. No spare repair stations. No, we won’t fix the nonessential scanners why do you need them. No, we won’t get you special rationing if morale is that bad fix it yourself.
By the time Red had reached his third year of contract, he was 26 and beginning to become a problem for upper MIRA management. This was to be his last routine tour - from now on he’d be assigned to the Deep Space missions, as far away from Communication Stations as they could get him.
MIRA was many things, but honest? Never. Red knows full well he will probably die for the cause of minimum wage space research.
Ugh.
But that, of course, brings him to now. This tour.
It’d been bound to end in trouble. The Captain was a bit of a maverick - the kind to ignore protocol if Crew felt their methods would work out better. The General Crew were… okay. It was a shuttle mission - a delivery of new settlers to the colony on Polus. Roughly thirteen children onboard, youngest being six. Of a Crew of almost a hundred, a dozen rookies on board. Not the best turnout as far as competence goes, but far from the worst he’s seen.
The first problem was the ship itself. The ‘Skeld’. Old, and barely kicking along, it had been due to smuggled repair supplies from Home Base that they were even functional. And for such a large Crew, the oxygen processors were barely up to task, and the less said about waste management the better. Red had forced everyone he could to go through the Med Bay for check-ups, but he’d still missed people due to the immense passenger count onboard.
They were only two days from Earth when a fight broke out over food - something had to give. And quickly. The Captain - a stern woman in green - dealt with it quickly, but it soon set the standard for the ship’s demeanour.
The next problem was quarters. Red was used to bunking with others in tight spaces. Most of the Crew wasn’t. And when news came that their communications off-ship were down, the mood took a nosedive.
Red was in the process of going through his medical inventory when the alarms went. It’d felt pretty routine as he’d packed away his gear and moved to attend the bridge. Until, of course, he arrived to see most of the Crew rather confused.
Except for Cyan.
Cyan, whose hands were bloodied, helmet off, face a shocking pale for her complexion. She seemed downright hysterical.
(It didn’t help that her young son was held tightly in her hands, head limp to the side. Something was odd about that. He was obviously hurt, or ill. But she hadn’t taken him to the Med Bay. She’d called a meeting. Why?)
“Alright,” Green sighs. “What’s the meaning of this?”
The Crew, both helmeted and bare faced, sent each other confused glances.
All Red feels is a certain chill, the feeling you have where you know you’re in danger, but you don’t know where or why.
“Someone…” Cyan’s breath rattles. She pulls her boy closer. “Someone on this ship attacked me. Attacked my baby. I wasn’t…” she falters again. “I wasn’t even there with him, I was changing the filters but he. He greeted someone. He said hello. And then he screamed. And whoever it was ran for it. I never. I never got to see.”
She raises her face then from the table, face grave.
“There is an Imposter on this ship.”
It’s only a whisper, but in the quiet of the room if feels like the bells of Armageddon.
Red has crewed many tours. But he has never been on one where the Imposter has acted so quickly.
The Captain sucks in a breath, and as the Crew descends into chaos, Red has only one thought ringing through his brain. In all his tours, and in all the reports he’s ever read, he had never, ever, heard of an Imposter attacking an unattended child before. (It feels strange to think it, but if Imposters are anything, it’s consistent. They arrive in numbers of one to five. They can imitate humans but not trick the medical scanners. They can contort themselves to fit through vents people physically can’t. And no matter the carnage. No matter the situation. If kids are onboard, the Imposters wait until touchdown to act. They don’t attack like this)
When Red offers to give little Cyan a check-up, Cyan refuses to leave her child. Red understands. He doesn’t understand the way Black hovers in the door, tense, as if ready for an attack. It’s only once Cyan takes her child and leaves that Red knows. Cyan’s steps were heavy, and consistent, the way footsteps are when carrying more weight than yourself. Black’s didn’t make a sound.
But if you’re the Imposter, Red thinks as he packs away his med kit, are you the attacker?
Red watches his Crew cautiously, and begins to understand something very important.
Imposters don’t attack children. But humans?
…they just might.
Having noticed Black’s inability to blend in properly, Red starts to watch him, and Cyan, religiously. It takes two weeks for a sense of calm to return to the ship, and in that time, little Cyan sticks to his mother like glue.
Red and the Captain have drilled them both with questions. Do you remember the attacker? Male or female? Did they speak? Did they hurt you in any way? How did they approach you?
By the time the Captain was satisfied by the information, or lack of it, to be gathered, Cyan and her son were in tears.
(Maybe it’s out of pity. Maybe it’s out of homesickness for the nephew he’d taken this accursed job to support, but Red can’t let them out of his sight without some fruit flavoured nutrient bars, cool water, and the promise to have his door open if they ever want to talk.
He’d been interested in psychology once. Thought about appealing to the UN to get an on-board therapist assigned to the longer tours. But then his brother couldn’t keep it in his god dammed pants, and the rest was history.)
It starts like this. During Red’s general lunch period, he makes sure to sit facing the entrances. Before the attack, Black would have sat with the Maintenance Crew and talked shop. But now, everyone has largely kept to themselves. For the human members used to more social contact, Red can see this being rather isolating and uncomfortable. But Black seems to suffer the same withdrawal.
(In a file labelled ‘personal,’ Red has set up a biographical notebook named IP-01. MIRA has never bothered properly researching the Imposters. Now is as good a time as any to try to make sense of them.)
Maybe it’s a mimicry of the others. Maybe the body language means something different in their species, but Red’s stupidly enlarged empathy simply sees a lonely, lost soul far from home, and so he slams his tray down beside the other, and eats his ration packs in mutual silence.
Black doesn’t spare him even a glance - and seriously, an albino? What, are these Imposters stupid? Infiltration means picking the path of least resistance, not this! - and Red doesn’t look at him much either, but the possible wolf-amongst sheep does relax, and Red considers it a win.
The less aggressive the Imposter Red knows about is, the better the Crew’s chance of survival. For all intents and purpose, Red can’t know for sure that an Imposter absolutely will not harm a child, but there is no precedent for it. There is, however, precedent that someone on this ship is not just capable, but willing, and has actively moved to do so, whether they were an Imposter or not.
And so it continues, until Orange and his daughter get caught outside the Communal Bathrooms.
According to White, who’d been on Cameras, no one had come from either direction when Orange’s daughter called shakily for her father, and Orange saw nothing of the would-be attacker, outside of the vanishing shadow down the hall, confirming that the attacker was at least smart enough to be wearing their full suit, Imposter or otherwise.
They did have confirmation of one thing, however, that the attacker was definitely going after the children.
Orange and Cyan would spend the night with their children in Red’s Med Bay, and Red would confirm his own suspicions using the tracking function in the Med Bay’s scanners - for the whole night, Black stayed right outside the door, almost as if on watch.
(Quietly, Red questions White to see if he noticed anything odd about any Crew Member’s behaviour after the attacks. White came back with a list, and his own personal reasoning for each. Together, Red and White created a map of the activities of every crew member for the last seven days. And just like all the reports stated in almost every Imposter event on record, no one had an alibi for the time of each attempted attack.)
Red does not think to tell the parents of the ship to stick to the suspected Imposter until Yellow’s child is almost crushed by falling machinery in the ship’s hull. It had only been Black and Purple’s frantic efforts that saved the poor kid, and afterwards, the child stuck doggedly to their parent, or Black’s side.
Red in turn takes to keeping the Med Bay prepared for an incident, and becomes increasingly suspicious of any requests for assistance when not relating to the children on board.
And what follows begins the hunt for their ‘Imposter’ in earnest.