Stocky watched Zhu’s medical pod descend into the emergency access of Sci-Med Gate. The disturbing feeling that crept over him the whole journey back still lingered, and he couldn’t completely push the screaming from his mind. He had made commendable achievements at all his postings. But saving Zhu was something he couldn’t do, and nor could he ease his torment.
He was confused as to what had happened. The derelict ship was clearly dead. There was some lingering pressurization in emergency storage systems, but absolutely no power generation. And the temperature was deep cold. Yet Soliman swore that something had attacked him.
He wasn’t convinced of Soliman’s report. But he also didn’t know what on a dead ship would cause that kind of damage to a rigid pressure suit. He had been trying to figure it out ever since they had sealed Zhu in the ambulance pod in the loading bay and the machine removed one of his gloves to get an IV in his wrist.
He had first been leaning toward believing that they had opened some kind of highly pressurized system which struck Zhu with fast flying shrapnel. Even though he knew it was almost impossible that the velocity of the object could have been high enough to fully puncture the suit, it seemed more probable than “a creature.” Some organisms could live in the cold vacuum for months. (Funny how the absence of any heat transfer mechanisms besides radiation delayed freezing.) But the derelict had been floating lifelessly for years or even decades.
Once Zhu got fresh blood he woke up again screaming. Stocky had never heard anything that had conveyed such terror and torment. And then he doubted that it was shrapnel that caused the accident. Something horrible was happening to Zhu. It was a good thing they got a second Sci-Med Officer before departing Zeta Reticuli.
“That’s all you can do here,” Chandna said. “Good job leading us back.”
“We don’t have much of a hospital,” Qureshi said. “Is he going to make it?”
“We have the standard facilities,” Chandna said. “And a good team.” He sounded perfectly calm, but he always did.
“How was anything even alive on that ship?” Fuller asked. “It was two hundred below.” Each of the crew looked at one another dumbfounded. Chandna puckered his lip and seemed lost in contemplation.
Time to refocus his crew. “We don’t have time to talk about this. We’ll get those answers after Patterson finishes her examination.”
He needed to lead his panicked children back to the service airlock. It would be an easy job as long as everyone remained calm and clearheaded. The doors of the access closed behind Zhu and then he looked his team in their eyes. Half were still staring down. The others looked back at him wide eyed behind their fogged visors. They were breathing too fast.
He checked their status on his suit’s display. Most were rapidly consuming air, but they didn’t have to walk far.
“Listen up.” He spoke with a commanding voice and they all focused on him. “We’ve finished the first part of our assignment. Now we do the second part. Zhu needs immediate medical help and so we must get Chandna back. We have plenty of air.
I don’t need, and ENG doesn’t need, anyone getting disoriented or sick. I’ll walk in front and lead us. I want each of you to follow behind me and just look down at the feet of the person ahead of you. Chandna will link up behind me and then Fuller behind him, because they have to get through decontamination first. The rest of you will link up behind them single file. Samoylova will take up the rear.
Do you understand what to do?”
“Yes, senior,” they answered.
He liked their confidence. “Is anyone else fluent in decontamination procedures?”
Nobody at first spoke up. Soliman eventually mumbled, “A little.”
He reasoned that Soliman likely blamed himself. And maybe he should. It wasn’t good to dwell on it though. “Hook up behind Fuller. You and I will supervise decontamination. We can’t assume our suits are sterile.”
Soliman nodded silently.
Stocky hooked the personnel tether through his D-ring and handed it to Chandna. He turned and looked toward Aux Two. This was a simple job for him – if the humans behind him didn’t mess it up.
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Patterson was dressed in a full hazmat suit as she waited in the control center of the Isolation Lab, watching Zhu’s capsule shaped EMP (emergency medical pod) come through the small emergency hazard airlock. The decontamination protocol was proceeding normally. Anything dangerous about Zhu was contained within the pod.
She was safe for now. She had reviewed the video from Zhu and Soliman. It didn’t help much to gauge this creature’s danger. They were too panicked to obtain good video. She had to reluctantly accept that it was an alien organism – one which had survived untold years in the cold vacuum. It was unlike anything humans had ever found. And the only thing known about it was that it was fast.
She saw Zhu lying unconscious as he passed through decontamination, and she was grateful for that. He had been fading in and out of consciousness the whole time the away team EVA’d him back to the Nineveh, screaming in unbearable agony while awake. It had been horrific enough to induce a disorganized panic in the away team, and even she had found it unsettling to listen to. But the sedative that the medical pod administered rendered Zhu unconscious and she had disabled most communications from outside the Gate. It was the Captain’s job to calm the crew.
She thought about how to get him out of his suit. She went through the door to Hazard Analysis and opened the airlock once its cycle was complete. She rolled the pod up against an examination trolley and then opened it. She could see the breach in the spacesuit. There was no fraying in the cut fibers and there was little blood. The visor of his helmet was covered in condensation, however, and she knew she would find more blood inside the suit.
“TURING, begin incident report log. The patient is Zhu Honghui, our Engineering Officer. He’s 183 centimeters in height, weighs 74.7 kilos, he has a physiological age of 43, and a standard age of 68. Patient was in good health prior to the incident. His lifesigns are currently stable. I’ve heavily sedated him because he was suffering excruciating pain and delirium.
The only eyewitness to the incident was Soliman. He described Zhu being attacked by some alien organism which resembled a snake or an eel. Recovered video footage doesn’t reveal much about the nature of the creature. Nor can it provide any insight on how it had remained alive in the derelict ship.
Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.
I can corroborate that the creature tore through the lower chest area of a Mark VI-b pressure suit, which is built with ten layers of durable fibrous material and ceramic inserts. Visual examination of the damaged area shows the tips of the fibers to be melted, like it burned through them. The ceramic plates must have been pushed out of the way. I’m removing his spacesuit with caution. I’m aware that the creature can tear through my biohazard suit.”
She tried to peer through the visor. Beads of condensation sparkled like precious gems and obscured Zhu’s face. She cautiously extended her hand, keeping her focus on both the obscuring visor and the hole in the suit. She flipped the visor open and drew her hand back with the speed of a cobra. Zhu’s face was calm, but puffed up and sweaty. The parasite was causing a lot of inflammation.
She leaned in to remove the helmet and then drew back again. Puzzlement now mostly replaced her nervousness. Nothing made sense.
Her mind raced through the problem. The creature came from deep cold but didn’t seem to need it – because it would have killed him if so. She couldn’t freeze him to gain more time for research, and the creature could likely survive a greater upward swing in temperature than Zhu could, in his present state. Somehow, the creature possessed a metabolism (or multiple, redundant metabolisms) which could function across an extraordinary variance of thermal and atmospheric conditions.
It can’t be biological. Not fully.
“Helmet is off. There is considerable inflammation. I’m going to take a sample of blood to determine the cause as soon as I can get him out of the suit. I’m also going to get him in imaging. The degree of biological interaction is surprising. The organism’s tolerance for temperature swings is astounding. Nothing more to report until I can perform detailed analysis. Doctor Chandna should join me momentarily. I’ll obtain his assessment. End initial log.”
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De Silva waited for the team in dressout in Aux Two. He was angry. They should have been better than this. The rest of the crew sensed his displeasure. The ship team crowded behind him, just outside of the room, and the away team also crowded together away from him.
He wanted answers but let Chandna and Fuller go to Sci-Med without questioning. Zhu needed their skill now. Their expertise could now be a sort of atonement. Even still, he was disappointed with them – all of them.
Stocky, Soliman, and Samoylova exited the airlock, and everyone was back aboard the Nineveh. Samoylova and Soliman went to their lockers and began to undress, looking solemn. Soliman shook with nervous energy. Stocky just stood waiting.
He drew Stocky’s gaze and asked, “Are you planning on wearing that?”
“No, sir,” he said. “I assumed you would have something to say. But afterwards, I plan on going back out and retrieving our findings. The football is keeping it all nearby. It’s just a short EVA and I know which containers have our biological samples.
Patterson thinks they may be useful. And I can carry it all to Sci-Med in a few trips.”
De Silva nodded. And he could easily talk with Stocky later. Then again, Stocky had hardly entered the derelict – having first prepped the thing for rigging and then crating everything they gathered in loading bay. He thus wasn’t really angry or disappointed in him.
“Okay, do that. Work quickly but smart. We’re not assured that all of that is dead.”
Stocky nodded and turned after a simple “Aye, sir.” De Silva considered who would be a good teammate for him. Soliman deserved the collateral duty more than any of them, but he didn’t look to be in sound mind for it. In fact, none of them were clear headed, and one of the ones who had stayed on the ship should assist.
He looked around his shoulder at his options. Garvey could dress fast and he wasn’t shaken up. “Garvey, suit up. I want you to go out with him and assist. And both of you make sure your cameras are focused right so that the Bridge can see what you’re doing.”
“Aye, sir,” Garvey said. Stocky nodded and then waited for him.
He looked at those remaining, Soliman most of all, while Garvey hurried. They were clearly traumatized. Qureshi was on the verge of crying and Soliman was shaking uncontrollably. Samoylova was the best composed, but didn’t seem to want to look at him. He wouldn’t go too hard on them right now. But he had to enforce, for the whole crew, that lapses in judgment could not be tolerated.
“What happened? You were supposed to send the remotes in first. And you were told to monitor your comms signal and cease your investigation if it was on the verge of cutting out.”
“We did monitor our signals,” Samoylova said. “But that can sometimes cut out suddenly. And momentarily loosing comms did not cause this. They had no business going down that other corridor.”
“You think I’m not aware of that now!” Soliman shouted. “I didn’t mean…” He restrained his anger and buried his face in his hands.
“Why did you go? You and Zhu?”
Soliman shook his head and continued to look at the deck. “We could see into the first room because of the perforations in the bulkhead door. It was a scattered mess, but it looked safe. And it was safe.
And once we were in there and saw the other corridor, then that seemed pretty safe too. We didn’t go far. But I’m sorry, I should have stopped him from looking at the bodies.”
“Yes, you should have. Patterson gave you permission to survey. You were specifically directed to leave the bodies and any artifacts alone.”
He wished that she would have just told them to wait for the drones to do a sweep first. He also wished that he hadn’t pressed them so much on timeliness. They still had no sign that the Eliohuatjay or anybody else had entered the system. And in truth, the odds were always pretty good that they would jump back to FTL before anyone arrived. The more he thought about what happened the more he saw blame in everyone, including himself.
“I’m sorry,” Soliman whimpered, sounding like he was about to cry. Garvey silently walked into the airlock and Stocky quietly shut the door. They seemed like they didn’t want to be around a grilling.
“Look at me.” He waited. It took a while but they all made eye contact. “My officers and I made a carefully prepared plan. We have always worked this way because everything in space is dangerous. You don’t break orders – because you are throwing away a carefully prepared plan.” Even if we did prioritize speed more than we should have.
He had given them the stern lecture and now he tuned his mind for the supporting one. “Now I’m optimistic about Zhu. Let’s keep him in our prayers, but also be thankful that we came to Delta Hydri with a good plan. Patterson and Chandna are maybe the finest Sci-Med Officers I’ve ever known. We brought a lot of extra scientific equipment with them too. And I think they’re off to a good start with figuring out what to do about this alien.”
He glanced back behind them to make sure the other half of the crew were listening too. “I’m more concerned with ship’s status. We had to bring Zhu into the Isolab, and this alien too. That’s okay, that’s what it’s made for. We’ll be fine – assuming we don’t make any further mistakes.
But Sci-Med is going to be more strung out than what we had planned for because they’re worried about saving Zhu. And they can’t stay in the Isolab indefinitely. There will be travel through its barriers so they can get food and rest. And each risks spreading alien contamination further – either to the next deck down or the whole Gate.
That’s what a little mistake does. It reduces your chances for withstanding the next one.”
He glanced behind him again to make sure the other group was also listening. “I want all of us to operate with that in mind. Everyone will go through the basic Sci-Med training on contamination controls. Even if you’ve already been credited for those tasks. And nobody is going to cross Gate boundaries alone. We will always do that in groups of two or more, and check each other. We will make this habitual. Do you understand me?”
“Yes, Captain,” the crew answered from in front and behind.
He gained eye contact with Soliman again. “I need you to calm your mind and spirit. And then write up a report on what you saw of this alien thing. It may be useful for Sci-Med. They’ve said they couldn’t get a good picture from the suit cameras.”
Soliman nodded. “Yes, sir,” he mumbled.
He saw that Soliman didn’t look optimistic. The request was certainly a long shot, but it couldn’t hurt. He looked at Holly. “Come with me to the Bridge. Moussa, do the assigned training. Then make sure everyone else does theirs correctly.”
“Aye, sir,” Moussa said with some displeasure.
He walked off with Holly. He had stressed the need to avoid further mistakes. Now maybe it was best to leave the crew hands by themselves for a while to let them calm down.
He wouldn’t press Sci-Med so heavily for fast results. They needed to be of sound mind, especially since this parasite was entirely alien. Just like how the Nineveh couldn’t afford a second mistake, Sci-Med and Zhu couldn’t either. He was feeling really thankful they had Chandna. He was apparently a man with technical skill and the ability to handle pressure. And they had pressure now.