De Silva jolted awake in his bed, panting. His skin glistened with sweat. He looked around in confusion. What was it that had scared him? It had seemed so real a moment ago and now the memory wasn’t clear. He had dreamed that he had been back home. All he remembered was that half of his crew was dead and his family had been torn with grief. Something was still after them.
That had all been a dream, but he also remembered tight corridors visualized with simple, contrasting textures. And that memory was real. He couldn’t see the monster. But he knew that it had seen him – it taunted him. He couldn’t beat it.
He threw off his damp sheets and got up. “TURING, report on the status of the crew?” His dry throat struggled to get the words out.
“Patterson, Chandna, and KR134863R are working in Sci-Med. Ginting is in Aux One acting as safety watch for Garvey, who is currently conducting an EVA. The rest of the crew is in Propulsion Two.”
EVA? “What is Garvey doing outside?”
“Acting Captain Holly has directed the crew to place explosives to blow the accessway between Propulsion Two and Aux Two if the expanded quarantine fails. He is supporting this project.”
He wasn’t the only one afraid of the alien breaking out. He decided he should allow Holly to continue with her idea. Propulsion Two would be compromised either way, and the crew needed to feel like they were developing a solution. He began to get dressed. It seemed like a lot had changed and he wasn’t going to sleep well anyways.
“TURING, has Patterson determined new methods for killing or containing the Pazuzu alien?” He looked at his reflection while he put his shirt on. And he quickly sniffed under his arms to make sure he didn’t smell. The sweat would dry and there was, fortunately, no stink to linger. He brushed his unkept hair away from his face with his fingers and looked closer at his bloodshot eyes.
“Work is still proceeding. No developments yet.”
He slipped into his shoes and walked out into the hallway. He went to the Mess while looking all around, worried that someone or something may be watching. (He just couldn’t shake that feeling or memory of being stalked.) The silence in the Gate was unnerving.
He reached the Mess and though the coffee’s aroma was tempting, he was desperate for hydration. The central table was covered with hand tools and wiring for electrical work. Ghost was on the table, sniffing the new materials. The cat greeted him with a series of meows. He took a moment to pet him and he made a grateful purr. Then he opened the cupboard for his glass.
He was drinking his third glass of water when a team of his crew entered. He saw their tired faces, but there was also an expression of gladness. He quickly focused his gaze on Qureshi. She looked the worst, coughing, discolored, and sweating worse than himself. Her shirt clung to her breasts.
Distorted images of Patterson standing naked in the Sci-Med shower filled his mind. Water ran across her breasts. She held him in her arms; her breasts pressed against his skin. He couldn’t clearly picture it, but he was certain her hands had gone all over his body. She had scrubbed him. Stocky had helped too.
Guilt overcame him. He had let the monster’s taunts unnerve him. And how did it do that? He had disappointed the crew and he was stuck with the shower memory of Patterson. She was more beautiful that Isabella. He silently prayed. Lord, don’t let me be tempted with this.
“You should be sleeping,” Holly said. She took a seat while her crew served coffee.
He figured the drugs were now mostly out of his system. “I can’t stay asleep.” He didn’t remember ever being this wound up.
She nodded. “I have the crew making a boobytrap in the passageway between Propulsion Two and Aux Two in case if it gets out.”
“TURING’s told me a little about it.”
“I can show you what we’ve done. I’m just giving the crew a few minutes of rest and then we’ll finish it.”
He looked at her and then shifted his eyes toward Qureshi to draw her attention to her condition. “Yeah, I’ll take a look at it.” He caught Qureshi’s attention and asked, “Are you feeling okay?”
“I’m fine,” she said after sipping water. She struggled to get her words out between a hacking cough.
He watched her wipe her nose with a handkerchief. She certainly wasn’t fine. Patterson and Chandna were busy, but Nieves had considerable health knowledge. It probably became an interest for her after health complications in childhood. He turned towards her. “Nieves, will you grab our medical kit and we’ll set Qureshi up for examination in the rec room?”
Nieves acknowledged him and went to get set up. She seemed like she wanted to do it.
“I’ll go with you,” Holly said. She looked at Moussa. “You have the guys rest for fifteen minutes and then finish up. I’ll join you once we’re done.”
“Yes ma’am,” he said.
He looked at Qureshi. “I just want to be safe.” He finished his glass and then looked Holly. “Meet me there after your break.”
He went straight for the rec room and cleared out a space, leaving a solitary table that they could use for examination. Doing something for the crew seemed to ease some of his inner guilt.
Qureshi, Holly, and Nieves arrived some fifteen minutes after he had. They looked more worried now then they had been before. Nieves had Qureshi sit on the table for the examination while she put on a mask, apron, goggles, and gloves. The first check was temperature – 39.9 degrees C. De Silva wandered over the room, creating space between them and giving Qureshi privacy. He heard some of their conversation though – talk about muscle aches, extreme fatigue, difficulty concentrating, and such. He also occasionally glanced back toward Holly and Nieves and noticed that they appeared more concerned as the examination progressed.
He stepped out in the hallway with them once Nieves had finished. “Is it just stress or do you think she caught a cold?”
“It’s not a cold,” Nieves said. Her eyes showed no doubt about that. “The symptoms don’t match.”
“What symptoms?”
“Blood in stool,” she said. “You left the Mess before us. She had a case of diarrhea on the way here.”
“You think she has an infection in her bowels?”
“I don’t know,” she said. “We all got a clean bill of health a week after wakeup. She could have caught something later. I don’t think it’s an alien disease from Aux Two. Diseases don’t manifest themselves with symptoms that fast, even if Patterson had been wrong about the possibility of catching something from breathing the air. She’s fighting it, whatever it is. The portalab showed an expectedly high white blood cell count.”
“That’s a relief,” Holly said.
“What do you think we should do?”
“She needs Patterson or Chandna to examine her,” she said.
“Every time they enter or leave Sci-Med, they risk contaminating the ship further.”
“I know that.”
“Can we manage this for a while?” Holly asked.
“The two immediate dangers are her temperature and dehydration,” she said. “I’d like to set her up for rest in one of the storage rooms and put her on an intravenous drip. That way we can keep her hydrated and give her vitamins and minerals. And we want her to pee a lot to flush out her system. She’s got a lot of dead cell fragments in her blood.”
The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.
“Her cells?” Holly asked.
“Could be the cells causing the infection too,” she said. “The human body creates a fever because most infectious pathogens struggle to survive in the body at those elevated temperatures.”
“Okay, and why a storage room?” Holly asked.
“Keep her out of Berthing just in case she does have something infectious. We’ll check her temperature and urine periodically to make sure she’s stable.”
He looked at Holly. “You’re still in command. You have to decide. I think it’s a good plan, but I’ve still got meds in my system.” He yawned. “And I’m actually feeling tired again.” He made a frustrated laugh. “But I don’t think I can sleep.”
Holly pulled out her tablet and started the app for messaging Chandna and Patterson. “You log her symptoms and what you want to do and then I’ll attach my command approval.” She handed the tablet to Nieves. And she sent the message after Nieves added the results of the examination and proposed solution.
De Silva’s tablet vibrated in his pocket and he brought it up. Chandna had given a very prompt reply.
Understand and agree. Notify us immediately if:
* Body temperature increases further
* IV does not provide adequate hydration
* Other crewmembers experience symptoms
Three very reasonable conditions, he thought to himself. But the last bullet bothered him. He looked at the skin of his arms and felt his forehead in a moment of panic. The sweat had evaporated and he didn’t feel unusually warm, to his relief.
They went back to the recroom. “Am I alright?” Qureshi asked.
“You’re fine,” Nieves said. “We’re just going to put you up in storage down the hall so that you can rest. We’ll give you an IV for hydration.”
De Silva saw her disapproval. “Don’t feel bad about resting right now. I’m off duty too. With me, it’s until the sedative clears from my system. With you, it will be until your fever comes back down. It will probably take a couple days, but we’ve got a four-month outbound before FTL. We’re all going to put in our fair share of work in that time, even with a few days off.”
“Yes, Captain,” Qureshi said.
“The important thing is to get you well,” Nieves said.
De Silva grabbed eyedrops from the medical stash to soothe his eyes, and then he cleared out a space in the storage room while the women talked. Moving the shelves around got his heart going and he began to perspire again. He left things in Holly’s hands and then he went back to the now empty Mess and enjoyed another couple glasses of water.
And then he took a dump in the male head. No diarrhea or blood. He flushed without thinking more of it since he seemed perfectly healthy. He headed toward the access to Propulsion Two to see what his crew was doing with explosives.
----------------------------------------
“Why don’t we send Stocky in there and tell him to kill it?” Ginting asked.
“Nope,” Moussa said.
De Silva stood in Propulsion Two not far from the accessway to Habitation. He had intended to see the crew’s preparations. He now paused and listened to the conversation happening on the other side of the Gate. He didn’t want to spy; he had to. It was the truth – how his crew really thought about his leadership during the crisis.
“That wouldn’t be right,” Nieves said.
“It would be right,” Ginting said, “he doesn’t have a family like we do.”
“That doesn’t matter,” Holly said. “And it’s not just because we need to treat him just as much as our brother as anyone else. We don’t yet know anything about this Creature. We don’t know if Stocky can find it. And we don’t know if he can kill it.”
“We can find it,” Ginting said. “We make twenty new drones and send them in there to help him. We’ll send Robbie in there too. He’s not very fast but he’s strong. He’s a camera that won’t be easily disabled.”
Nobody answered him.
“Let’s do it, NAV,” Ginting said.
“You’re just desperate,” she replied.
“You have Garvey out there gung-ho about placing explosives to blow away a section of the ship,” Ginting said. “That’s desperate.”
“Maybe,” Moussa said. “But it will starve in Aux Two in time. Or we’ll blow it up here. And then we won’t need to be desperate.”
De Silva approached them. “How are things going, NAV?”
They all turned towards him looking guilty and Holly said, “We’re just finishing with securing that accessway to Aux Two. We’ve got some new cameras set up in this Gate to record the effects of our trap. Garvey should be finished with the exterior hull work in an hour. Maybe just a bit more. Samoylova is his safety watch now.”
“We have the accessway rigged with explosives from the Auz Two gate access to two meters past midpoint, and set to detonate simultaneously,” Moussa said. “No way it can run fast enough to get through. I don’t want to have to use the bombs though. It’s only if we can’t keep it contained in Aux Two.”
His first impression was that it was good work. He could see some wires snaking underneath the deckplates. But other than that, everything looked normal. It took several moments to notice the mirrors. Those too were quite inconspicuous. “That will do if it breaks containment. We can now work toward better tracking it in Aux Two without worrying about it escaping.”
He looked them over. They were exhausted but hopeful. And he liked that they were standing up for one another, not willing to sacrifice anyone. Holly was doing an outstanding job in his absence.
“Are you feeling okay, Captain?” Moussa asked.
“I’m fine. Patterson simply wants me to rest and allow the medication to clear my system. I’ll be up, NAV, so reach me on comms if you need to. You’re doing good.”
“Will do,” she said. “Thanks.”
“Sci-Med will give us a solution soon. They’ve already made a virus that works against this thing and they just need to build upon that. We just need to hold this barrier for a few days or weeks. Don’t get stressed out.” He wanted to believe that. And he wanted them to believe that.
Holly and Moussa affirmatively acknowledged him.
“Captain?” Nieves said. He looked at her.
“We listened to the recordings,” she said. “You weren’t hearing things. What do you think that was?”
The memory of being in the access ducts again flooded into his mind, making him feel so inadequate. “I don’t know. I don’t know how it can talk and sound like our crewmen. Have Samoylova try to figure out ways to bypass this boobytrap once you’re done. We still may be able to make some improvements. Once we’re certain about its effectiveness, brainstorm options for improving our recon. But take your time. We need to dial back the stress. I’ll be in my stateroom burning off the sedative.”
He went to his stateroom, shut the door behind him, sat down at his desk, and poured a glass of cognac. Who cares if you shouldn’t mix alcohol with medication?
“TURING, I request information.”
“I’m ready for inquiry.”
He looked at his glass after taking a sip. Just a little drink to steady his hands and settle the nerves. And he was plenty hydrated now and so could indulge. He told himself that he needed it for rest. “Request your advice for eliminating the alien creature in Aux Two.”
“There is insufficient information to make a definitive recommendation.”
“Can you give me options based on what Sci-Med has learned?”
“Option One: lead an expedition into Aux Two and blow the airlock, evacuating the space. Mechanical systems not designed for the pressure transient will fail. Electronics not designed for the resulting vacuum condition will fail. The alien organism will either be killed or forced into hibernation. Air reserves are sufficient to restore pressurization.
Option Two: lead an expedition into Aux Two and install portable furnaces to raise the ambient temperature beyond what human beings, and presumably the alien creature, can survive. Electronics not designed for the elevated temperatures will fail. The alien organism will either be killed or forced into hibernation.
Option Three: lead an expedition into Aux Two and constrict containment. Sweep subsections of the Gate and seal them off. Seal off clear sections of Systems Access. Engage the alien with lethal force once you have it cornered. The crew may incur casualties and nearby systems damage.”
“Can you provide an estimate on how many casualties?”
“I cannot.”
He gulped the rest of his glass. Three options but none of them were good. Could he even face the demon? He remembered the pounding of his heart in the tunnels and his hands shaking so fiercely that he couldn’t aim. The memory of that textured computer rendering gave him chills. Being in the ducts was a terror he had never before known. He had survived but he suspected it was only because the alien had already got its piece of meat.
And his whole crew was desperate. It could certainly find another easy meal amongst them. They couldn’t beat the demon without better tools.
But there was another danger too. He knew how the crew looked up to him. They believed in him because they knew that he could do, and have done, almost anything. He had an almost superheroesque aura. It was the same with Patterson and Stocky. But he had to retreat from the creature. He couldn’t allow that to happen again.
“Can Stocky kill the alien?” It had to be asked.
“There is insufficient information for me to make that determination.”
Let’s stack the odds. “Can Stocky, Robbie, and Patterson kill it?”
“There is insufficient information for me to make that determination.”
Lack of information again. How was it that the same lack of information didn’t hinder the creature? He picked up the bottle and refilled his glass. “Am I a coward?” He didn’t get a response and so he repeated, “TURING, am I a coward?”
“No, you’re a distinguished starship captain.”
“Dispense with the civility programming. Am I a coward?”
“The question is subjective in nature. I’m unable to provide a definitive answer.”
He put the bottle back in the cupboard and held his glass up to his chest. “Using known information, am I likely to be a coward?”
“Based on your service record, it isn’t likely that you could be described as a coward.”
He tilted his glass up and rapidly downed the rest of his cognac. The computer didn’t lie, but it could be wrong. He hoped it wasn’t. But how could he reconcile being scared out of his mind to the point the NAV had to assume command with courage?
He picked up the picture of his family that he kept on his desk. That happy memory now seemed so distant; the barrier of separation so great. He needed to keep thinking through their problem. It was the only way he would find the way back to them. He remembered a passage from the Bible: There is a way that seems right to a man, but in the end it leads to death. That passage held new meaning.