Episode 709: Land of the Lotus-Eaters, Part 4
Go to: Part 1, 2, 3, 4, Special Features
Arden looks at Nika and keys his comms.
Arden: Do you think that was sufficient enough?
Joshua: Yeah. I can't prevent people from their own stupidity.
A short argument ensues, with Arden arguing against the double standard over venting and Joshua steadfastly following through with his Captain's orders. Arden argues he wished people would just be consistent over the matter of spacing. Nika ignores the argument.
Nika: Rina, let me know if they actually go.
Rina: Yes, Ma'am.
She's got a good view of the floor from above and can see the multiple doors leading off the bay. All but one are closed and that one is sliding shut more slowly, giving the Skulls time to evacuate. The Skulls see the handwriting on the wall and cut out of there. Down below, behind the safety of one of the doors, Arden is still arguing with Joshua. Nika tells them to pipe down and makes sure Arden can hear her when she says:
Nika: Rina, make sure you don't actually vent it if you can get away with it, cuz then we can actually go back in and refuel the damn thing.
Rina: Yes, Ma'am.
Rina cracks the docking bay space door just enough to make it seem like imminent death is coming, then slams it shut after the Skulls leave. When the Skulls evac and the crew is waiting impatiently for Rina to open the door on their side, Joshua calls up to her via comms:
Joshua: Don't slam the blasting doors to your heart.
Kiera: (joking) Open the blast doors! Open the blast doors!
Nika: How many people are we looking to evacuate, here?
Joshua: He didn't say. It's an Ordnance Room, I don't think it can be that many people.
Nika: Have you seen an Ordnance Room on a ship this size?
Joshua: No.
Arden: It's not a ship, it's a station.
Nika: Technically it's a ship. (on comms) Beggar. Are you refueling yet?
Beglan: Yes.
Rina's relayed the instructions to him already.
Joshua: Lock yourself in the bridge, Dude.
Beglan: (laughs off) Oh, c'mon now. You—
Nika: (serious) No. Seriously. Take yourself into the bridge and take an air mask from the med lab. That way you may not necessarily have to lock yourself immediately, but at least we'll be able to meet up with you to give you food stores and stuff before you lock in. I will get us on course and lock us into course, and you’re gonna have to sit most of the watch on this, I think. We'll give it about two days off the station and then if I'm showing no signs, I'll take the watch and lock myself in the bridge.
Joshua: If it makes you feel better it's lots of quiet time so you can analyze your data.
Beglan: That's true. I don't like it but … (Sighs)
Nika: I don't want to expose you to it if we've all been exposed.
Beglan: You're the Captain.
Joshua: Yes, she is.
While Nika and Beglan settle the arrangements, Kiera asks Rina about the warm-up procedures for the engines. The refueling goes apace and several times, Kiera has to shift the refueling lines to the separate tanks on our ship. She also has to manage the flushing of our sewer systems and she hopes she's got the right lines hooked up for those. No telling where the goodies are going to end up, otherwise. Be unanimous agreement, we do not take on water via the usual hook-ups—no telling if it's contaminated like the atmo or not.
Joshua: So Captain, what's our next step in all this? MedLab?
Nika: Let's pick up the people he knows for sure are there first.
Joshua: Okay. The Ordnance Bay?
Nika: Ordnance Bay. (heavy pause) I hate to put this ahead of human life but … I think the Admin section would be the next best bet.
Rina: We need the food.
Kiera: And there might be bottled water there.
Nika: And then we can hit the MedBay as the last stop before we leave here.
Joshua: And we really need the med supplies. Just FYI.
Arden: Yeah, we'll do that too.
Joshua: I mean, the—.
Nika: Joshua. The medical supplies will do us no good if we are starving to death.
Joshua: Yes, I'm not disagreeing that we need the food but I'm saying right now that the Administration section—
Nika: We're not even sure at this juncture if the hospital section is, number one, occupied and, number two, hasn't been raided. It just makes more sense to me to do it that way.
Joshua: That's fine, Captain. That's fine. Let's do it. Let's rock.
The position of the three sections we have to visit comes out to about the same in distance and difficulty. So it's six of one, half dozen of the other. We fear that most of the portable medical supplies have already been moved or taken. Still we might manage to find a few things others have missed. Beglan has a concern of his own.
Beglan: (from the bridge comms) So we're to dock with the fighter docks? With this ship? Um … it's awfully big.
Nika: Yes, sweetheart. And that's why I want to get you into an oxygen mask so that you are not affected by what's coming aboard. Get yourself and Dr. Lawrence and Adam into a mask.
Joshua: Oxygen masks isn't going to do it.
Nika: Why not?
Joshua: I'm pretty sure our survival is, looking at Rebreather Girl over there, that it doesn't—
Nika: But a rebreather doesn't have an oxygen tank attached.
Joshua: But if it's not just oxygen, if it's skin-based, then—
Nika: Did he suggest that?
Meaning Mason.
Joshua: This is the guy wearing the full NBC suit. No, I guarantee you that while he's not saying it's necessarily 100% skin-based, we're taking a risk.
In fact, we could contaminate any compartment we walk into aboard our girl by the stuff clinging to our clothes. We need NBC suits to avoid that and we don't have those. Even if we cleaned up as best as we could in the airlocks before boarding, we'll still be carrying some amount of the stuff with us.
Rina: We have vac suits, yes?
Joshua: Yes.
Rina: We could seal ourselves up in vac suits.
The suits normally keep the wearers sealed off from atmo as well as the vacuum of space and in this way they're like a walking decon container, keeping the pathogen already on us contained yet still allowing us to board and move around. So long as we can keep replenishing the air, we should be fine.
Right?
Arden: But the very fact of her putting on the vac suit will contaminate the vac suit.
Rina: Oh.
Damn. So it looks like Beglan will be on his own flying our ship, without relief from Nika. Joshua's confident that Beglan will come through just fine. Nika's not entirely convinced.
Joshua: Just trust in Beggar. He'll be fine.
Arden: And God is on his side.
Kiera: And he's got the luck of the Irish.
Beglan: And the ship is armored.
Nika: (unconvinced) Joshua. Beggar has not ever flown this vessel.
Kiera: Yeah, he did. He's flown and picked us up before. Beaumonde.
Nika: Ohhhh, Beaumonde. Yeah. That was bad.
Joshua: Beggar can do this. (No really!) Beggar can do this, Nika.
Rina: He can just push the big red button, yes?
Kiera: Yeah the big red button that says 'go'.
Beglan: I have some piloting skill. I'm just nervous about docking, is all.
Joshua: (quietly) Trust in him, Captain, and be the Captain.
Nika: We have no choice in this.
Joshua: We have a choice.
Nika: No, I'm not putting the rest of them at risk to what we've already been exposed to.
Joshua: Oh, we're gonna put Dr. Lawrence at risk, regardless.
Nika: No, he can isolate himself in his room, too.
Joshua: So he's not going to Medical? Not do all this scanning? Like we'd planned?
Nika: He can't do it.
The suits are bulky and would make doing anything as finicky as medical procedures impossible.
Joshua: Well, why don't you ask him before you say he can't do it?
Nika: How about why don't we just get off this friggin' boat first?
Joshua: Because the medical scanners are on this boat.
Nika: Why do we need a medical scanner again? To what end?
Arden: So I can find a way to control the cancerous growths in my brain.
D'uh. In fact, we've all been inflicted with the mutagen affecting Arden. As has most of the population in the Verse.
Nika: Yeah, that. And staying here to scan ourselves is going to give us exactly what information?
Arden: Look. You thought it was a good idea to join the Independents and I went along with it. I think it's a good idea to do these scans. You should go along with it.
Nika: If this is just about you and your brain and your plan, then no, I don't think it's a good idea to go along with it.
Joshua: No, but it's not.
Rina: It's about all of us.
Joshua: We just blew up a lab whose basic purpose was creating bioweapons involved in using this stuff that's creating—I mean, there's just so much crap going on and we need to know.
Nika: (sighing) All right. I'll buy the argument.
Joshua: Yay. All right.
Kiera: Is there a chance I can do the scan on Arden and get it down on a chip somehow and then get it to Lawrence? Or transmit the data?
Nika: I don't care. Lawrence can make his own choice on this matter. Honestly, I couldn't care less.
Arden: Oh, so she's moved into Whatever-You-Want-To-Do-It's-Not-My-Fault mode.
Nika: (Unruffled) Dr. Lawrence is a grown-up. If you guys want to—
Arden: Apparently, you aren't, though.
Joshua: Oooh ….
Nika: If the scans are necessary and both you doctors seem to think that they are, and that's fine. But Lawrence is also a doctor. If he chooses to take the risk with us, that's on him. I personally think that you two are perfectly capable of doing the scans on everyone without trouble. I have that faith in your ability.
That would depend on what we want for an outcome. If we're going to use the scans with the idea to look for a cure for all this …
Joshua: We need Lawrence. He's the expert on this sort of thing. We need Lawrence.
Nika: But not necessarily on this ship. He just needs the information, right?
Arden: If what he sees is odd, then he'll investigate. And what he sees is odd, it's not going to be what Kiera or I see as odd.
Nika: All right. Then let him know what you want to do and how you're going to do it.
Nika comms Lawrence and lays it out for him.
Lawrence: If your ship has a computer that has the simulation software on it so we can run these complex surgical—
Nika: We don't. So if that's what you need and you want to take the same risk then that's fine.
Lawrence: What is the risk?
Nika: The risk is you're going to contract whatever it is that everybody else has.
Lawrence: Well, what do you have?
Joshua: A Pax derivative, it looks like.
Rina: It's like Miranda Light.
Lawrence: There's a vaccine for that.
Joshua: Is there really?
Lawrence: It's still in the early stages. We're not exactly sure if—
Nika: That's my point. You don't know how effective the vaccine is. If you wish to take the chance, that's fine. You have the opportunity either way. I am not going to force you to come on the vessel and expose yourself.
Lawrence: If we can get there, I think I can run the scans.
Joshua: (quietly) We can get you there. I have faith in that.
Nika: We'll definitely get you there.
Lawrence: All right then. Try to limit our exposure as best you can.
Joshua: No worries.
Nika: The only person I’m really worried about is Adam because he can't make that choice on his own.
Joshua: Adam's not going anywhere. He's staying aboard the ship.
Nika: If Beggar doesn't care whether he gets exposed or not, then I'll just go on and pilot it.
Joshua: (slowly) And to be honest … Adam wasn't doing too well when we got here.
Nika: I would like to keep Beggar uninfected.
Because if everyone on the ship is infected and it goes bad on us, we'll lose control of our course and just drift into a slow death, marooned in space.
Joshua: So Beggar gets to be Astronomy Boy.
Arden: It would be good to have somebody aboard who can make decisions, yeah.
Nika: Will Adam be okay if he gets isolated?
Joshua: We're leaving Adam on the ship, right?
Arden: Adam has so many other things wrong with his system, one more is not going to make any difference.
Joshua: And I'm not sure how he's going to react to a Pax derivative. For all that I'm a Reader, I still don't know.
Besides, our ship wasn't designed to completely isolate all the compartments from each other. Even though we could seal off the engine room and the bridge against vacuum, our atmo recircs from one compartment to another. What's found in one will eventually find its way everywhere. The only real way to keep Adam from getting exposed is to stick him in an escape pod and activate its life suspension mode.
Nika suspends all further debate—we're not getting anywhere fast by hashing and rehashing what we already know.
Nika: Let's go ahead and visit the three sections we have to go to.
Arden: Is that what we're going to be doing tonight or are we going to be doing this over the next two or three days?
To stave off the inevitable as long as possible, we go with the initial plan to isolate Beglan on the bridge for the time being. Beglan gets us where we need to go, albeit with a few bumps and scrapes. The docking ring is made for smaller fighters rather than a ship as big as ours but somehow Beglan manages.
Joshua: (over the comms) Rock on, Beggar! Rock on!
Rina: Khorosho, little man.
We dock up, get that seal airtight, and open up the doors. There are about thirty people waiting on the other side and they are in fairly sorry shape. Taking them on requires helping them on. We get it done, getting them settled in the ten staterooms on the passenger deck. They have to double and triple up but everyone makes room. When everyone's secure, we undock and fly to the Admin section to load on food supplies.
The Admin section has been raided once or twice, but there are still supplies to be had. The previous raids seem to have been for supplies people could take with them when they left the station. Instead of ready-made meals and MREs, we find staples: flour, cooking oil, and the like. Joshua's ecstatic. He can cook again! Of course, he'll be cooking for upwards of 50 souls once we're away and our impression from Mason's description is that the rescues aren't big eaters but still—cook! We also find water in pre-filled carboys. Bottled would have been more convenient but we take them on, as many as we can find.
Once Mason sees the people settled in, he hands over one and a half bricks of nutrient bars that he'd been feeding his charges from. That's when we realize that he's not going to be coming with us. We walk him to the airlock and Arden makes one last try.
Arden: You're not going to come?
Mason: No. Got plenty of rats to kill.
Arden: And Skulls.
Nika: Then we'll send rescue vessels back. What do you know about the Alliance ship that's sitting out there? Are they affected as well?
Mason: There's an Alliance ship out there?
Nika: Yeah. About one AU of here.
Mason: No, I'm not familiar with it. When they retreated, they—
Nika: Had they been exposed?
Mason: Yes.
Nika: So it's possible they're sitting out there essentially in the same shape as the station.
Arden: With something a lot more valuable. A warship.
Mason: It was probably just their Marines and command personnel.
Arden: Oh, right. The Marines aren't dangerous.
Mason: But I don't know how contagious this is.
Nika: Yeah, that. None of us are sure how contagious this is. I'll just make sure to warn them when they come back in this direction that there's a warship sitting out there.
Mason: Okay. (pause) If you get to a Cortex box …
He hands over a message chip.
Mason: I would prefer you didn't read it before then, but I can't stop you.
Joshua: (taking it) No worries.
Arden: Is it to your …?
Mason: Yes.
Arden: Okay, then we won't even worry about reading it then.
Nika: Good luck.
Mason: I appreciate you taking them on. It's been a real hassle taking care of them. They're not trouble. They're just … a lot of mouths to feed and bottoms to wipe.
Joshua: I understand.
Arden: Have they been partying ever since this happened?
Mason: You mean the ones upstairs?
Arden: Yeah.
Mason: No. It took a few days for that effect to manifest itself.
Arden: So how long ago did that happen?
Mason: Eleven days.
Arden: Eleven days. Maybe it will wear off?
Mason: Maybe. That would be good.
Joshua: We'll see.
Nika: (solemn) You sure you don't want to come with?
Mason: Yeah. I've got things to do. (a beat) I've resigned my commission.
Arden: Were you in the Marines?
Mason: No.
Arden: Navy?
Mason: It's not important.
Arden: Okay.
Nika: (one soldier to another) Good luck to you.
Rina: Bohg s'taboi. God be with you.
There's nothing more to be said and Mason seals the hatch, shutting himself in on the station. We undock and head for the medical section, redock and get aboard. The smell hits us the second the doors crack open.
Nika: Oh my god. They're all dead.
They are. Several score of them. Some died in their beds. It's not entirely clear if they died from their injuries or from lack of care. Several, however, paint a clearer picture: they died trying to find that care, forcing themselves to move from their beds to the doors, to comms, futilely searching for help. Several IV drips dangle empty in thin air, having been yanked out of their patients before seeking help and oblivion. The corpses are still relatively fresh. Had we arrived a little sooner we might have saved them … Shaking off our horror, we roll up our sleeves and move the bodies into the morgue.
There isn't anything in the way of food but we do find some units of plasma and such. Ten or fifteen medical units worth of supplies. It's enough to get us to Highgate. Arden searches for any surviving medical personnel, including Dr. Rava, the woman who cared for him the last time he was here. No luck. He finds no one on duty, dead or alive. Either she wasn't aboard the station when the enemy infected it or she might very well be one of the victims partying on the decks above … or she may be already dead. There is no telling.
Moving the dead takes a couple of hours and we're sweating by the time we're through. Kiera wants to get started on the scans and fortunately for us, the equipment she needs is removed from the dead and death—the bodies were all in the trauma wards instead of the diagnostic section. As a result, the facility is still mostly intact and clean.
With three doctors—Arden, Kiera, and Lawrence—and Joshua taking on the role with his ten-minute pick-up, the scanning goes quickly. Studying the data from the scan, however, right down to the molecular level, will take a couple of days minimum.
After the scans are in and the numbers start crunching, Arden comes to a grim realization. The computing power needed to analyze and backward engineer from final effect to initial application, to say nothing of formulating a cure from the results, is huge. It's entirely possible that the processing capability doesn't actually exist on the station or maybe even anywhere in Blue Sun. We're going to need Core-level computing power for this task.
Arden thinks back on the equipment Dr. Gordon had on Highgate, back when he was ginning up stitches in that underground base the PDF later took over. It wasn't exactly top of the line but it was good enough for his work. Still, it had been cobbled together from who-knows-what-all. Where else can we go?
Rina: What about the Veterans Hospital on Hera? Didn't the Feds have that? Is it still Fed territory?
Well, yeah. As of last year, at least.
Rina: Things might have changed. Or we might have to sneak in.
Or we could try to use what we can here. But the longer we stay, the more infected we'll get. Is it worth going through with the analysis if it kills us?
Arden: How long does it take us to get to Highgate from here?
Joshua: Eight days. Something like that.
Nika: Eight to ten.
Joshua: We're already affected. We are all infected. So I think that the rule of thumb should be—
Nika: I don't want us to go to Highgate and be put into a quarantine situation again.
Joshua: We're all infected. We're all going to be in that situation eventually.
Nika: (grim) I know.
Joshua: So we put ourselves on watch. We each basically look at each other here and when we start act outside our norms, that's the point when we stop our work here. And get moving. We want to try to get as much time as possible here and really, we shouldn't all fall apart at the same time. When one of us starts to fall apart, that's when we're done. Does that make sense?
Nika: Sure.
Arden prioritizes the data and starts wading through it, tackling the toughest and most vital first, everything we can't get done anywhere else but here. We have our scans here and the tissue samples Arden's already taken from us before we arrived. There's a lot of data to wade through, a lot of samples to analyze. Kiera and Joshua divvy it up and work alongside him. Meanwhile Nika plots the course for Highgate and plugs it in for Beglan. All he'll need to do is keep the ship on course, with the barest minimum of flying required.
We work until we start showing symptoms. Two days later, Arden and Kiera notice a certain punch-drunken giddiness taking hold of Joshua and Nika. Of course, we've been cooped up in a creepy medical ward, locking down areas and standing watches, and doing it all on insufficient sleep. And our presence doesn't go unnoticed. We've had to keep the doors closed against people trying to get in. We've had to ignore their hails over the comm. None of which is conducive to getting rest. Nika and Joshua's behavior could simply be a natural result of all that.
Or not.
They aren't violent or lethargic. Just punch-drunk and giddy in a way that's a little out of character for both.
Arden: I say it's time to go.
Joshua: You need more time. You haven't gotten enough. Two days? That's not …
Nika: (giggles)
Arden: There's an old saying. "In a year, there's more than enough time to do one thing, but in a year, there's not enough time to do two things." So let's just keep doing one thing at a time and get it done.
Joshua: (happy) All right. One more day.
Kiera: I'm fine. I'm just tired.
Nika: (sing song) I'm just ti-iiirrrrrred.
We stay one more day. Toward the end of it, Arden has Rina remove the complicated crystalline memory banks so as to allow him to take the data with him. The units are compatible with what we've got aboard and rigging up a connection to our own computer systems should be possible, allowing Arden to spend the 17-day flight to Highgate processing the data.
Rina's busy with one of the units when the door opens behind her with a hiss. Turning around she sees Joshua dragging Nika in by her collar. She's unconscious. Off his fiancée's and Arden's looks, Joshua hastily explains. Nika had decided that she was sick and tired of people banging on our door and she'd been running after them, her guns a-blazing. And he, of course, had to take her in hand. Once she ran out of bullets, he knocked her out with a martial arts chop.
Joshua: (holding her up) So that's only a degree off from the norm.
Arden: Wow.
Joshua: But I gotta think we're still good. She's shot people before. How close are you to getting portable?
Arden: We're about good to go.
Arden helps Joshua make Nika comfortable in an empty bed and Arden checks her over carefully. And then sedates the hell out of her. Watching from the door, Joshua says:
Joshua: She's fine. She can be happy-go-lucky all she wants.
Arden: "Guns a-blazing"?
Joshua: Well, okay. We'll lock away the weapons.
Rina: (from the door) I'll do it.
She locks away the weapons, then gets the computer equipment she's liberated aboard. Joshua double checks the food, the water, all the supplies we've managed to cadge and store aboard, makes sure they're secured. He checks on our rescues too, sees they're secured as well. Arden looks for and doesn't find a portable med-scanner. It would have made his coming research job easier. Nika wakes up during our pre-flight and there's no putting it off any longer. It's time to go. Arden reluctantly leaves the medical section dead last and boards our ship. He throws a sour look at Joshua as he steps aboard.
Arden: I will hate you forever because I couldn't find a portable medical scanner.
Joshua: That's fine, "Joshua".
Kiera: (to Arden) If only you were Arden, you would have gotten a portable med-scanner.
Joshua: That's right.
Kiera: (to Joshua) Don't let Nika shoot my head off. I don't care what Nika says, I don't care what Nika promises, do not let her out.
Cuz she's still sedated and in her cabin. The bridge, however, is completely locked down with Beglan safe inside. And Beglan knows the score: he's not letting anyone through. If worst comes to worst, he'll at least be able to deliver a ship full of loopy and /or dangerous crew to Highgate in one piece. With nothing further left to do and no further reason to linger, we quit Pericles Station for Highgate.
Hopefully we'll find the answers we need on the way.
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