Gardlin Habbs, the Chief Medical Officer on board Katadromiko 37, was baffled and quite alarmed.
Never before had he seen so many of the crew get sick at one time. It was unheard of and the computer had run and rerun the tissue samples and found no match on the GDA database. He was concerned with almost all of the cases; his crew had developed a rash of red bumps on the skin and they were getting worse.
He had quickly informed the Captain of his worries.
She’d asked if he had any idea of when or where the virus came aboard. He didn’t, as they had stopped at fifty-seven planets or space stations on this voyage, and it could have been any one of them.
The two prisoners had been discounted as they had both been scanned before they left their vessel, so she had agreed to place all cases in isolation. Anyone showing symptoms was to alert their nearest medical station and stay in their quarters – which was fine four hours ago when there was only a handful of cases. Now, he had five hundred and sixty-four and this was rising by dozens per hour. All eight medical satellite stations and the main medical suite were all over capacity. Before long, he’d have to commandeer a hangar.
He opened the outer door to the research laboratory, entered and waited while he was scanned, something he had done a hundred times over the last couple of months and this time it was no different: he stood and waited for the inner door to open.
Only it didn’t.
He glanced down at the control screen, already knowing what he was going to read and he wasn’t disappointed.
‘Unlisted Virus Detected,’ was written in red and flashing. He walked back to his office and called his colleague inside the laboratory.
‘Anything new for me, Dric’is?’ Habbs asked.
‘Well, the re-adaptation is amazing,’ she replied. ‘I’ve thrown every anti-virus we have at it: it stalls it for about an hour and then it develops a workaround and comes back at you harder than ever. I really don’t know what to do. I mean, we’re the GDA; we’re supposed to guard the human-populated galaxy from just this sort of threat. It’s almost as if—’
‘If what?’ said Habbs.
‘As if the virus were deliberately manipulated, even weaponised to defeat everything we have,’ Dric’is said, staring straight at him through the glass.
‘That’s a big call, Dric’is.’
‘Have you ever known me to be wrong with a diagnosis before?’
‘No,’ said Habbs. ‘I hope you’re wrong, but from what I’ve seen so far, I don’t believe you are.’
‘What are you going to do?’
‘Are you showing any symptoms?’
‘I don’t think so,’ she replied.
‘Then you stay sealed in there and don’t contaminate yourself. You can sleep in the auto-nurse and make sure you scan any food and drinks the computer synthesises for you, just in case.’
‘What about you?’
‘Check the entry airlock panel,’ he said. He heard her walk across the room and then a faint, ‘Ah shit’ as she read the warning. The footsteps returned.
‘Now I’m really scared,’ she said, sounding on the verge of tears.
‘Get some sleep, call me when you wake and we’ll have another crack at it.’
‘I’m setting the computer to run while I rest. I don’t understand why we can’t solve this. We have the most powerful computers in the galaxy and we’re getting nowhere,’ she said and yawned widely.
‘Goodnight, Dric’is.’
‘Night, Habbs.’
Lake was getting irritated. He’d been up now for almost two hours and he hadn’t had his breakfast. He walked over to the entrance door and peered out to see no one at the security desk. He pushed his hand against the invisible door beam to find it was still operational and, snatching his tingling hand back, he swore under his breath.
‘Herez, are you awake?’ he called in the direction of the next room.
‘Yes, what’s happened to breakfast?’ came the abrupt reply.
‘I don’t know. It’s very quiet out there and there’s nobody at the desk.’
‘The door beams deactivated at 02:00FC yesterday,’ said Herez. ‘They might again today, as everything on this ship seems to be automated.’
‘Okay, that’s not long. We’ll wait and – what was that?’
‘What was what?’ said Herez.
‘Did you make a knocking noise?’
‘No.’
‘Carlon, is that you?’ said Lake.
There was a scraping noise, the location of which Lake couldn’t pinpoint, but it was definitely coming from somewhere near the security desk.
‘Carlon, stop messing about out there and get us some breakfast.’
A shaking hand appeared around the bottom left-hand side of the desk. It stopped moving for a few seconds and suddenly jumped back into motion again.
Lake stared at the struggling hand in complete puzzlement. It grabbed the side of the desk and seemed to be pulling. An arm appeared, shortly followed by a head. Lake could see that all the exposed skin on the hand, arm and head was covered in sores.
‘Are you seeing this, Herez?’ said Lake as the body stopped moving and lay still.
‘I am. What the hell?’
It wasn’t Carlon; it was the night guard. His eyes fluttered open again, he tried to reach out towards them and collapsed, his eyes remaining open this time, staring blankly across the room.
‘That doesn’t look good, boss,’ shouted Herez.
‘Is there anybody there?’ said Lake. ‘Man down – we need help here – anybody.’
The reply was silence, apart from the faint whirring of the life-support systems in the background.
‘Hello? Hello? Can anyone hear me?’ called Herez.
They both continued shouting for another few minutes, again with similar negative results.
‘Shit,’ muttered Lake as he searched around the lounge room for something he could use to make a noise that might attract attention. As he moved into the bedroom, he noticed the clock time projected on the wall tick over to 02:00FC.
Behind him, in the lounge, he heard the slightest noise: a faint click. He turned and stared at the door. Picking up one of his shoes from beside the bed, he threw it towards the entry door. It bounced once, skidded through the door and out into the security office.
Lake bounded over to the door, stopped and stuck out his hand, still not trusting that the beam was off. His hand went through unimpeded. He looked at the security officer’s body lying only a few metres away and suddenly wondered if the door beam had been protecting him from whatever that virus was. It was too late now if it was airborne.
He kept close to the wall and stepped around to Herez’s door, checked that it had also opened, and strolled in to find Herez tying a triangle of bed linen around his nose and mouth.
‘I don’t think that’ll do much, Mr Herez,’ said Lake. ‘We need full hazmat suits, but if it’s airborne, we’re already too late.’
‘Surely their medical advances have followed along with everything else, boss,’ said a muffled Herez, now looking like a bandit.
‘I’m sure it has, but whatever that is,’ he said, pointing at the body, ‘they’re not immunised against it. Let’s hope it’s an isolated case and let’s also hope that we’re not the source.’
‘Us?’ said Herez, looking at Lake with wide eyes. ‘They scanned us so many times. You’d think that if we had anything, it would have shown up.’
Lake fired up Herez’s holo projector and found a schematic, which showed a plan of the ship; their location was flashing. He requested the location of the medical centre and discovered there were eight medical satellite stations dotted around the ship and the main medical suite was on deck 307, adjacent to tube stop 23.
‘Come on,’ said Lake. ‘Let’s go get some help.’
They both filed out of Herez’s room and, keeping as far away from the body as possible, crossed to the entrance of the security suite. Outside, they retraced their steps to the nearest tube stop without meeting anyone and Lake touched the request tube icon which was set into the wall. Seconds later, the door opened, they entered and, as they had observed the security officers doing before, Herez tapped in 307-23 and hit the ‘go’ arrow. Neither of them spoke during the five-minute journey and, when the door finally whisked open, they were greeted by another body, again with the same sores covering all its exposed skin.
‘Oh, shit,’ said Lake and peered around the door towards the medical centre. The line of bodies stretched for at least a hundred metres and, again, the silence was complete.
Lake stepped out, closely followed by a shocked Herez, who was frantically holding his mask tight against his face. They tiptoed their way towards the medical suite, trying desperately not to touch any of the bodies, which was more difficult the nearer they got to the suite. They saw individuals, couples and families still lying in each other’s arms. Soldiers, civilians and senior officers all either sitting or lying, waiting in line for treatment that would never come.
‘It must have been so fast,’ mumbled Herez through his mask. ‘This is so sad. D’you think we’ll get blamed for this as well?’
‘How can we?’ said Lake. ‘The security logs will show that we were asleep the whole time and we’ve not released any aerosols or had any opportunity to tamper with either the air or water supply – because that’s what it would take to wipe out a whole starship on this scale, and this quickly.’
They entered the medical suite through the main doors, which were blocked open by bodies. The scene was worse here: hundreds lay, all with staring eyes and skin covered in open sores. The medical suite was the size of a general hospital on Earth. Department after department, with the same tragedy laid out on every seat and floor. Lake and Herez searched room after room with increasing depression setting in.
As Lake was about to suggest trying elsewhere, they both heard a knocking. It was faint at first, but got louder as they followed the sound to what seemed to be a research area. Right at the back, they heard someone banging on a wall and, as they approached, they could hear a girl talking to herself. She was sitting on the floor with her back to them in what looked like a sealed laboratory, banging a tray against the airlock door.
‘Hello,’ said Lake, softly, trying not to make her jump. It wasn’t successful; she nearly levitated off the floor.
She jumped up and stared at them, putting both hands on the glass window as she garbled away in an alien language.
‘We can’t understand your language,’ said Herez, pointing at his ears.
She seemed to get the idea and pointed at the computer pad over at the desk in the corner of their room. Lake sat at the pad terminal on their side of the wall and looked up to see her frantically typing at hers. She looked up at him a few seconds later and a chime announced something had come through to his pad.
He clicked the flashing icon and a message appeared on the screen, still in the alien language. He looked up at her, puzzled, and she indicated for him to watch the screen.
She again started typing on her pad.
Suddenly, Lake’s pointer started moving of its own accord and he realised she had remotely taken control of his unit.
The pointer moved up to the right-hand corner and clicked to bring a drop-down menu into view. She then selected one of the choices, which opened another larger menu. She stopped and looked at Lake, indicating for him to make the next selection.
‘How the hell do I know which is the one I want?’ moaned Lake, staring at the menu in complete bewilderment.
‘It’s got to be something to do with language,’ said Herez. ‘Scroll down and see if we see anything familiar.’
Lake scrolled slowly down the list of words, until suddenly Herez said, ‘There,’ pointing at a word they knew. Gaia. Clicking on the word brought down another sub-menu with a dozen choices. They both saw the one they wanted at the same time: the tenth name down was Anglika. As soon as Lake clicked on the icon, the text in the message changed to ‘Why you not affect.’
‘Ah, okay,’ said Lake and began typing his response. ‘We do not know. We woke up this morning and everyone is dead.’
He looked up at her again and she moved his pointer over to what must be the reply icon and clicked it.
The scream made them both jump and they looked up to see her holding her head in her hands, repeating the same word over and over. ‘Ochi – ochi – ochi…’
‘Oh shit,’ said Lake. ‘She didn’t know.’
‘I’m so sorry. We did not realise you did not know,’ he typed and hit the reply icon himself.
She read the message, looked up and nodded, then started typing again.
‘Are you two in the vessel from Gaia?’
‘Yes, we are.’
‘I don’t believe you are responsible for virus. It arrive from elsewhere.’
‘Thank you, we were frightened that we had caused this. My name is Lake and my partner is Herez. What is your name?’
‘Dric’is. I scanned you before came aboard, so I know you not the source of infection.’
‘That’s good. Is there anything you need?’
‘As you not seem to be affected, I need blood samples from both.’
‘I thought you might say that.’
‘There is blood siphon in drawer next by you.’
Lake opened all the drawers and kept holding things up so she could see. Finally she nodded.
‘You need press the green icon, wait for to flash, push unit against underside of arm and press green icon secondly.’
He did as he was told, up to the last bit. He had it pressed on his left arm but just stopped and stared at it.
‘I’m not very good with blood, Mr Herez. Would you do the honours and press the button when I’m not looking?’
‘Look away, boss,’ said Herez and touched the green flashing icon.
Lake felt a slight pressure for a few seconds, then a beep. When he looked down, the little glass container was full. He picked the unit off his arm to find only the smallest of marks and no dripping blood.
‘Well, that’s an improvement,’ he said. ‘Now your turn.’
He replaced the blood container with a fresh one from the drawer.
When they had both provided samples, Herez put both in the airlock chamber. The air was purged and Dric’is retrieved them from her side.
‘Do you need anything else?’ Lake typed.
‘No. Search ship. If you find alive, make sure stay sealed up until can manufacture a cure.’
‘Yes, good idea. We will see you tomorrow, Dric’is.’
Both Lake and Herez waved as they left the laboratory to continue their search.