A fragment, for your consideration

And here is the first of my posts about writing; a story fragment from long ago, inspired by a weird dream about an alien planet. This fragment doesn't contain any of the dream, but it would have led up to the details of the alien planet. If I get any feedback I might be inspired to write more. So please feel free to respond.

Malk's Tale (working title)

"I was not built for this," the ship said amiably.
Malk hissed, shook sweat from his forehead. "I know," he answered. "You'll have to do."
He was jammed in the ship's belly access corridor, feet against one wall, back against the other. The hatch was closed, most definitely closed despite his best attempts to make it open. He worked on feverishly, prying the lid from a third panel in the hatch and activating the sensor set in his eye socket with a blink. He had passed the point of no return about six minutes ago, after his daring ascent of one of the landing gear legs and dizzying traverse of the underbelly. Once into the access corridor he was hidden from view, and the traffic around the ship had increased so he'd certainly be seen if he left.
"Ship," muttered Malk, sighting into the panel with infrared.
"Yes?"
"Time until liftoff?"
"Five minutes, twenty-six seconds."
"Damn." His back slid fractionally against the smooth steel, and he froze for a moment, pressing his feet a little harder against the opposite side. He needed both hands free to manipulate the tiny electromagnetic sensors, to simulate the sending of a message to the miniscule computer that ruled the hatch.
Open, he thought. There was a sudden thrum that he felt first through his feet and back, and a moment later heard with his ears. He glanced down. The open space below--a ten meter dizzying drop to the floor--was lit in red and white. A floor-hugging mist crept across from the rear of the ship, painting the lights in pink luminescence.
Back to the sensor pad, no time to waste. "Time until liftoff?" Malk hissed.
"Four minutes, three seconds."
With a curse he abandoned the third panel and moved on to the fourth and final. He balanced the lid on his lap, carefully, and reached up into the realm of circuit boards and tiny, flickering laser lights. With one tool, a tiny ray splitter, he redirected one of the beams. Seconds passed. He had turned off the clock in his visual field display--it was too distracting when working with delicate circuits--and the ship was quite willing to supply the lack. "Time until liftoff?" Malk grunted, and shifted the beam to the third of several possible targets.
"Three minutes, twenty--" the voice cut off with a snap.
At the same time the hatch above Malk's head hummed and slid open, revealing a white, oddly shaped space. "And not a second too soon," he said, heaving up and into the airlock. The hatch shut itself behind him. The 'lock was unlit, but he could see the details in infrared and sonar; a spare, small room with hatches on floor and ceiling.
"Absolutely delightful," he muttered to himself. "Ship?"
Silence. Then a shuddering that felt like noise, and a huge hand pressing against his back. Malk sat, quickly, and slid over to the corner. The rumble continued, grinding like the feet of mountains. The pressure increased, then eased abruptly. Malk gasped a breath of air.
Light blazed suddenly from illumination strips set in each wall--it would have been blinding if his eyes had been adjusted to the visible spectrum--and a voice roared, "Intruder! You will be jettisoned in precisely five minutes. Any attempt to resist will result in immediate..." A pause. Malk thought he could hear a hurried conversation through the speaker hiss, but the words were entirely garbled. A louder exclamation, still garbled, and then a sudden squeak. The comm unit clicked off.
"Well," he murmured to himself. "Curiouser and curiouser." The gravity remained steady with slight fluctuations. After a moment he stood and walked along the walls, examining each carefully. The only other exit was the ceiling hatch. "If you'd care to let me out, I promise to be good," he said to the walls. To his surprise, there was an answer.
The ceiling hatch slid open with a faint his of displaced air. "Step through and follow the blinking light," said the voice over the speaker.
He stepped through, adjusted to the gravitational frame of reference, and looked around. A perfectly ordinary and rather ill-lit corridor curved in both directions. A small orange light bobbed at eye-level a few feet away in the left-hand corridor. It moved away and Malk followed it. A cursory scan revealed that the light was actually a small, inorganic device - he supposed it was a remote of some sort. Of less interest than the owner. It led him through several intersections, all equally plain and dark, and down a long hall. At the end was a door which slid open at their approach to reveal a room half in shadow, half filled with rose-colored light.
There was a man seated in the shadow.
His face was sharply angled and overwhelmingly pale. His hair, standing straight up in a three inch brush cut, was pale green. His eyes were mostly pupil, dark, and the arches of his small, rounded ears glittered with gold rings. His large-framed, athletic body was covered entirely by a black jumpsuit.
Malk stared.
"Welcome aboard the R'kela," murmured the man. "We won't be turning back, you know."
"That is all I could hope for," Malk answered, and executed a bow. "Malk Erin of Pirner Transglobal Multiware."
"Paul Southern, Captain of the Intership R'kela. To what do I own the dubious honor of this visit?"
Malk cocked his head, switched vision into infrared. "You're a Fridean?" he wondered. "If so, you're a mutant. Only one heart and body temperature too high. Why'd you jump the take-off? By the clock you were three minutes early."
The captain learned forward in his chair, seeming amused. "I'm merely half Fridean, my friend, and you're more than half-dead at this moment. What's your game?"
Malk opted for the truth. It seemed wisest. "Body alteration. Sense amplification, extra limbs... you want it, you got it. I'm one of the best in several fields. I could give you that second heart."
The captain smiled. "One is all I require, thanks. What quirk of nature made you decide to force your presence on me?"
Malk opted for falsehood. "I have some creditors who've been waiting just a little too long for their payback."
"No, really."
Malk blinked. "Erm... well, okay, let's have it all out, then."
"I'd prefer that."
"I was hired to do a job on Galley, and as it turned out it wasn't what they told me it would be. They didn't want to take no for an answer. I left." Malk closed his lips on all that remained to be said, schooling his features to an emotionless veneer. He wouldn't have accepted his story had he been in the Captain's place. There would be questions, he was certain, and he didn’t want to answer them. It was far too humiliating.
"And what did you expect would happen once this ship had lifted off? A job? A ride to somewhere in particular?"
The question was so unexpected that Malk stood unprepared for a moment, discarding thoughts. "What I expected… yes, I guess I did expect something. Perhaps to be thrown from the airlock. Once there was breathable atmosphere outside again. Are you certain you're not interested in my specialties? Even if you don't want mods yourself, it's a very marketable skill. If you could tell me where we're going, I could…"
"I don't think so.” A deep sigh from the figure in the shadow. “Trouble breeds trouble is what they say, I believe. You are a surgeon? A biotech? What else can you do?”
“Not just bio stuff. Tech in general. I can fly a small ship, break codes, mix a damn fine martini. Quite capable of shooting weapons. I made my living as an accountant in my youth.”
Paul Southern raised an eyebrow. “A veritable renaissance man. Well, with such a panoply of skills there’s bound to be more that you haven’t mentioned. Your potential usefulness increases. Still, it’s too soon to write a contract. Will you be content to be my guest for a few days?”
Malk blinked again, taken aback twice in as few minutes. “I really don’t have a better option. I’d love to be your guest. But the take-off? Am I out of the frying pan into the fire?”
“Time will tell, my friend.” The Captain leaned forward into the light, shadows defining saturnine features. “Time will tell.”