LENA

 

"But what does it feel like?" Kymera asked.

"It's warm," I laughed.

"But how warm, what does that mean?"

"Well." Memories of trekking through the California desert surfaced in my mind. "Where I work it's mostly burning. At high noon, it's so hot, you feel like you're boiling, or like someone's thrown you into the heart of an open fire."

It was her favorite topic of conversation. Earth weather. For someone cooped up in a spaceship, I imagined it served as a kind of escape.

"That sounds nice," said Kymera, tying off the bandage on her patient's arm.

"It's brutal, really."

"Not like the cold of space."

"No," I admitted. She had yet to ask me anything about human medicine.

"Next patient," Kymera called.

An Etrallian guard came ambling through the curtain, but instead of sitting in the examination chair, he remained standing.

Kymera scanned him quickly. "What do you need?"

The guard grumbled something I couldn't make out.

"He says he's sore all over," Kymera explained. "What have you been doing?" She asked him.

"Walking." The guard voice was deep and raspy. "Can barely do my duties."

"And why is that, Celway? Have you been drinking again?" Kymera sounded more like a chiding mother than a concerned doctor.

I studied her patient more closely. "Could be the flu," I said.

Kymera frowned. "He's not bleeding," she said blankly. "It must be the ale."

"Or the flu." I pointed to his forehead where tiny beads of sweat were gathering. "Fever, body aches.."

The guard heaved suddenly and a mucus-like substance went flying through the air.

"Congestion," I added, mildly.

The guard shuffled forward and for a moment I thought he was finally going to sit. Instead, he dropped to his knees and keeled over.

Kymera jumped to her feet. She shouted a phrase I'd heard before, one I'd come to recognize as an obscenity.

Christ. This Etrallian wasn't just fatigued, he was experiencing full-on exhaustion. I wondered how long he'd been ignoring his illness, fighting to continue his duties as a guard before giving in and seeking help. I wondered belatedly why Kymera looked like a grenade had just landed in her medical bay.

 

 

I knew it was our fault. I knew it even before Kymera explained to me there was no such thing as an Etrallian flu. They had other diseases, rare ones, but no one had ever experienced something like this before. This was unprecedented in their history.

By the end of the week, a quarter of the fleet was infected. And those are just my rough estimates as a doctor.

It didn't take long before Kymera's initial panic spread from the medical bay to the rest of the ship.

A week passed and still, we couldn't find a cure. I took my knowledge of the human flu vaccine and attempted to adapt it for Etrallian physiology, but our initial trials proved fruitless. The Etrallians we vaccinated didn't improve. Our new vaccine was as good as a placebo.

Feeling utterly useless, I walked around and made sure the patients were comfortable. Half of them didn't want me anywhere near them so Kymera would send me into the supply closets on any errand she deemed remotely necessary.

I felt guilty and unreasonably tired for someone who could do little to remedy the situation.

It was a day much like this when the President arrived in the overflowing infirmary.

"Lena." She made a beeline for me, careful not to look Kymera in the eye. "You need to come with me," she said quietly.

I stood slowly, unnerved by her tone.

She leaned closer. "We're leaving." Barely a whisper in my ear.

"Why? What's happened?"

She met my gaze pointedly. "This," she said simply. "Tensions are rising. We're being blamed for spreading contagion to the Etrallia. I won't put this team at risk a minute longer."

"I'm not leaving," I said resolutely.

The President stared. "Do you really want to have this discussion here?"

Several of the Etrallia were staring at us from their beds. Even if they couldn't understand us, body language was a powerful thing.

"Running isn't the answer," I said. "If we stay, I might be able to help with the quarantine. People could still recover, their immune systems just need to adjust."

"Lena, we're aborting. There's no need to--"

"I'm not staying for your stupid intelligence. I'm staying for them." I gestured to the Etrallia suffering in their beds. They may not be human, but they're living, breathing beings just like us. They deserve our help."

Either the President didn't want to make a scene or she saw in my eyes that there'd be no swaying me. "Very well."

I took a deep breath as she left me to my own devices.

"Lena." A cool hand on my wrist.

I whirled at the strange, clammy touch.

Henry peered down at me. "I'm sorry," he said. "I didn't mean to startle you."

I felt a sharp pain in my chest as I looked at him, our formidable guard. He hadn't fallen ill yet, thank god.

"It's alright."

"I think that was very brave." He indicated the door where the President had disappeared.

"Thank you." I met his eyes, tired and more than a little defeated. "Henry, can you do me a favor?"

He cocked his head.

"Can you get me out of this place for a little while?"

Silently, he nodded. "Of course, Dr. Cordell."

"Call me Lena," I sighed.

"Lena."

"You can manage right?" I asked Kymera.

"We'll be fine," she assured me.

Henry led me down several corridors and at first, I tried to pay attention to where we were going, but the layout of the ship was unfathomable. It was all I could do to keep putting one foot in front of the other, head low so I wouldn't have to look into any more Etrallian eyes.

"Henry."

He stopped mid-stride.

"I wanted to thank you." I reached for his hand without meaning to, clasped his strange, scaly skin in my mine before I realized that I'd never done such a thing before. It should have been strange, that skin to skin contact except touching him wasn't alien at all. The sensation wasn't unlike touching human flesh. That zing of awareness. Sentience.

Henry stared at my hand where it rested on his forearm. I squeezed gently. "Thank you for protecting us. And thank you for helping me."

"Of course." Cautiously, he returned the gesture. "Lena."

I took a deep breath. "So, where are we going?"

"The Common Space."

We stopped by the lab to gather Mars and Rhine. The utterly abandoned workspace made my gut twist.

"She tried to convince us to evacuate," said Mars. "But we figured we'd keep you company instead."

Rhine wore his usual stern expression.

"Is Gillis..."

Mars gave a short laugh. "No, he's holed up in there." I followed his gaze and realized the lab wasn't entirely abandoned. Secured behind the glass wall of his office was Gillis, back to us all, fiddling with something on his desk.

"Afraid he'll get sick," Rhine grumbled.

I swallowed. "I don't blame him."

The place Henry took us turned out to be the Etrallian version of a bar. Chairs and tables lined the walls with one corner set up for dispensing drinks. The other corner housed a stage where a female Etrallia gyrated slowly under the bright lights. In the shadows beneath the stage, a few of our human coworkers sat watching, their faces obscured. Clustered around a table to our left stood a group of Etrallian workers, throwing back their drinks.

"What are they doing?" I asked, indicating the strange objects in the center of the table.

"Playing pardai." From the way Henry said this, I gathered it was a fairly ordinary event. "You can't keep thousands of Etrallians cooped up in a fleet without providing some form of entertainment." He gestured to the counter across the room. "We should sit."

Mars began to follow him, but I made for the crowd around the table.

A hand grasped my shoulder. "Lena," Rhine said in my ear. "We don't know what this is--"

Irritated, I shrugged him off. "It's a game, Charles."

He followed me anyway, jostling past Etrallians nearly a foot taller than him as I pushed my way to the table. It was there that I made my discovery. Among the bounty on the table was a small cylindrical device not unlike the one I'd seen before.

"I'm in," I said.

The Etrallians stopped their bickering.

The ringleader met my gaze, surprise in his eyes. A second later it was gone, replaced with the calm, arrogant air of one who knows his own power. "In for what?" His hands hit the table as he leaned forward, his face a foot away from mine. "What are you doing here, Earth girl?" His growl was low and gravelly. "What have you come to play?"