Challenge #02988-H065: It's Friendly Out There

They'd stowed away aboard a galactic ship. They were very sick, feverish, shaking, and all alone. They had no family, and the few friends they'd had died of the coughing sickness that was common among those that lived in the slums that smelled of acrid soot. They spotted the owner of the ship, but dizzy from illness, had collapsed. They expected to be spaced, now, and was surprised to wake up alive. -- Anon Guest

Bubba had one goal. I am not going to die on this stink planet. As circumstance would have it, amidst sickness, fees, fines, and the general grindstone of Planet Fiskal... there were few chances to actually do that.

The number of chances was just one. A Galactic trading ship in a poorly-guarded port. An open door in the dead of night. Exhausted and sick, Bubba took that one chance. They couldn't even stifle the cough that meant that they were doomed to a slow, expensive, and painful death. They were sure to get caught. Yet they were not caught.

Nobody stopped Bubba as they crossed the expanse of the landing/takeoff zone. Nobody was alerted by their wracking bark of a cough. Nobody yelled for Bubba to stop. No alarms went off. Not as Bubba crept through the fences, nor as they lurked and tried to stifle their battle with a plegm uprising. Not even as Bubba raced as fast as they could into the alien ship to find a space to hide themselves. Somewhere far away from the trader's habitation. Somewhere, they hoped, that they would not be found. Without food. Without water. Without any kind of protection but the clothes they came with. No alarms sounded even as the Galactic who ran the ship set everything up for launch. Not even when the engines started and the pressures of launch almost made Bubba pass out.

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