Holly carefully listened to Sci-Med’s conversation. The fear of what she heard had temporarily solved both her need for sleep and the burning pain. Their true nature was coming out. They were starting to see her and other natural born humans as liabilities. She should have expected it with all the times she had been judged to be inadequate or a hindrance in the past.
She had been skimming through Patterson’s log entries, to the best of her ability. Her eyelids were terribly heavy and with her sleep deprivation it was impossible to keep a focus for any length of time. Her mind kept drifting off every few seconds, trying to start a dream, and she had to reawake. Nevertheless, several comments caught her attention.
“…adaptation is almost immediate…”
“…few similarities to OSIRIS…”
“…UN contingency planning is certainly inadequate…”
Did the special research groups already have plans for a development such as this? It seemed so. And she was clearly warning that they needed prompt rework.
She overheard them talking about disabling FTL and knew they were about to leave. She lowered the speaker volume and quietly walked towards the airlock to Propulsion Three. She reached the access room and tapped her finger on the manual operator to shut and lock the door behind her. She didn’t want anyone to notice that the airlock was being used and forcing them to enter the pass code should slow them down just enough. It was an added precaution just in case they didn’t all proceed to the damage control locker together for tools, although it sounded like they would.
She entered the airlock and sealed the door behind her. “TURING, patch me through to Moussa on a private channel,” she ordered. “Follow me as I make my way through the ship.”
“Connection established,” came the reply from TURING.
“I’m here,” Moussa said.
“I’m making my way to you. Are you all together?” She had to yell to be heard over the noise of decontamination.
“Yeah, besides you guys. Why?”
“Stay that way.”
“Will do, NAV,” he assured her. “The others coming up too?”
She closed the outer door of the airlock. “No,” she said while sealing it, “I’m coming up alone. But that doesn’t give any of you permission to go anywhere without an escort.”
“Well, we can meet you. We’re in the Workshops right now, and we still need to get food from Farm.”
“No, go to Command. I’ll meet you there.”
“What about the others?” His voice had changed to something less suggestive and more confrontational.
“They have a new plan now. I’ll brief you about that once I’m there. Out.”
She rapidly walked through the central catwalk of Propulsion Three, and then through the access to Green Gate. She sealed the door behind her with some trepidation. She turned and carefully looked around through the trees and shrubs. The chickens foraged about seemingly unaware of the threat aboard. But were they? Had they been corrupted like Qureshi? Were each an alien monster beneath their feathers? This all had once been so beautiful, and now it was hideously threatening. The whole ship was threatening.
She thought that Qureshi had not been down in Green Gate since returning from the boarding party. The Captain had placed Command Gate on lockdown as soon as the boarding team had returned, and she shouldn’t have been able to get around that. Qureshi could only do her official work and someone was always with her. But she herself didn’t have Qureshi in eyesight the whole time, and seeing what Pazuzu could do…
She firmly held her laser pulserifle with the business end pointing outward at anything that came too near. She slowly trekked forward, frequently looking behind her and keeping everything – even the trees – well away from her. Her eyes burned and teared but she wouldn’t pause to rub them. She was thankfully feeling better, even though it was just a lesser shade of misery.
She could feel her heart pounding within her as her shaky hands began to sweat. Holding the rifle quickly became torturous, but her fear was greater than the pain. She remembered that Chandna had been down here. Maybe this was where he was turned? He was the most filled with evil desire. He had suggested their plot.
Nothing came forward to threaten her. And, as she shut the door for the accessway to Farm Gate behind her, she realized that the atmosphere wasn’t so much threatening as it was unnerving. Normally, she could find people lounging around to relax in the closest thing to nature. Patterson and Fuller were frequently tending the plants and animals.
There should be voices and life. But now it was empty space, and it felt bad. It sounded bad. She heard the low hum of the ventilation system but no more. The ship was operating but dead. Half of her crew was dead. The other half was barely hanging on. And the responsibility for their survival was one her alone.
The threat was still, like always, hidden from view. It plotted against them out of sight to exploit another flaw it found. And it was uncanny how it could find so many whereas they couldn’t find one flaw in it. If what she had heard in Sci-Med was true, it could even make flaws of its own. She couldn’t fully trust anyone. And all the while it was watching her. She knew it inside. It was constantly watching them all – waiting for the right moment.
And now she had to contend with Sci-Med. That might be more terrifying than fighting Pazuzu. She vividly remembered Patterson fighting the Fuller-creature and it had seemed impossible. Her speed was like how she imagined Muad’Dib’s Fedaykin. And Stocky was far more dangerous. The whole crew was rightfully scared of him.
She tried to put it all out of her mind and just keep going. It wasn’t easy. Nevertheless, she carefully looked around and then walked through Green Gate and the others beyond.
----------------------------------------
Holly entered Command Gate, took the lift, and joined her crewmates on the Bridge. She breathed in relief. Though she couldn’t be sure that they were fully human, rejoining them still felt safer than being alone. And safer than being in Sci-Med. The friction of her clothes against her skin was now almost unbearable and she prayed the cream would kick in again.
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“We’ve cleaned the passage we used with disinfectant,” Moussa said. “Sorry about the smell. What’s going on?”
She froze in thought. She hadn’t even noticed the smell. She still couldn’t breathe through her nose.
She started to set her pulserifle down on the bench but changed her mind and kept it. She remembered Patterson and Chandna’s private conversation in Sci-Med about Pazuzu absorbing people. Since she couldn’t be sure that all of them were human, she had to be constantly ready for a scuffle. She now knew that she couldn’t trust Sci-Med, but it was just as foolish to fully trust her team. From now on, none of them could leave her sight.
“We’ve got a new problem,” she began, “a big one.”
“Something wrong with the ship?” Moussa asked with evident concern.
“There are no new alarms on the Bridge,” Samoylova said. They all looked puzzled. Not afraid – and that was a good thing.
She wanted to simply tell them what Sci-Med was doing. But there was a problem: she wasn’t the Captain. De Silva had earned the trust and respect that he was always shown. He had started as a lowly crew hand long ago and earned his way up to being possibly the most distinguished Captain in the fleet.
She didn’t have his talent, experience, or commanding respect. Always, she had been the last among the officers. But with no apparent way to lead into it, she gave it bluntly. “The team down in Sci-Med is discussing putting together a new quarantine – for us!”
“How so?” Samoylova asked. She shifted her gaze among all of them as if suspecting the answer already.
“Put us in a prison,” Holly replied. “Supposedly for our own good, but I’m sure it will leave us completely helpless against this Creature. And I’m just as concerned that it would leave us helpless against them.”
“This doesn’t seem like them,” Nieves stressed in disbelief. “Why would they want to do that? Couldn’t you have misheard their intentions?”
They all seemed confused, stunned even.
“They’ve been studying this thing,” Holly continued. “And, considering the way it had processed our crewmembers, they believe some of us might be infected and in the process of being transformed. It alters the mind when it absorbs a person. So, an infected person might not know that they are acting against us. We have been out of their sight and they don’t trust us.”
A mental light seemed to flare within each of them. Instinctively, they all began to pay more attention to the others. And they increased their spacing from one another. Their emotions were varied – distrust, fear, shock, unbelief, realization, etc. It was all there to varying degrees in each of them.
Nieves got up, coughing, and walked across the room in frustration. “Could they be right?” she timidly asked. Her voice indicated that she couldn’t believe it but she watched them all carefully.
Samoylova backed away so that she had a good field of fire on everyone with her pulserifle. “This doesn’t make sense,” she said. She looked carefully at all of them as if studying them. “Qureshi and Garvey were clearly sick. None of us are. Nobody has a fever or looks like they will upchuck. They agreed before that we wouldn’t turn on one another in paranoia.”
Moussa appeared mostly angry. “Yeah, we aren’t going to let them do this? Let’s get them on comms and clear this up!”
Holly shook her head. “That’s the thing,” she said, and then she coughed. “Because of the gas…I’m not sure we can tell if anyone is sick or if we’re just recovering from the nettle agent. I know what they said before. But they said that for us. Think about what’s really going through their minds. What’s the sample size they have to work with? It’s not hundreds or thousands like what they normally use when studying diseases. They can’t be sure that everyone who gets infected will develop a fever.” She hunched over with a fit of coughing.
“But they told us…” Samoylova said.
“What we wanted to hear,” Holly interrupted in a raspy voice. She struggled to get the words out. “Also, another item that we previously correlated with Pazuzu infection is loss of mental focus and paranoia. We’ll all show those traits in the coming hours, just because of lack of sleep. I heard their private conversation and they aren’t really confident about knowing who’s infected and who isn’t.”
“Okay, I’m not sick,” Samoylova said.
“The only way we get through this is by respecting the chain of command. We’ve got to work together.” She desperately hoped they agreed with her. She needed support. Even working together it would be hard to oppose Sci-Med.
“Maybe we should talk to them,” Nieves suggested. “They must have some reason to discuss this.”
“Let’s do that,” Moussa said, “tell them to find another way to get a handle on this. Our job is to run the ship; their job is to make a better test. We can’t afford to Judas one another. Call them and tell them how it’s going to be! You’re the Captain now.”
She shook her head. “We’re not calling them.”
Moussa shook his head back and pointed at her. “We take care of this now! I mean, you all agree, right? Things are getting worse, so we got to do this now!”
“No! We need to organize. We must gain the advantage.”
He looked like he was about to speak but then paused.
“But they wouldn’t suggest such a thing unless if they had some sort of test or treatment,” Nieves said. “They want to beat this thing too.” She seemed baffled by this news and wished to believe it was all misunderstanding.
“Keep in mind that we don’t know all of the reasons why Chandna came out with us on this mission,” Samoylova reminded them. “He’s only here because our secret contractor wanted him aboard. He doesn’t work for us.”
“Right,” Moussa said, “he’s not one of us and he’s never seemed too concerned about what’s been going on. None of us ever met him before we finished the Polo job. Patterson doesn’t really know him either.
We don’t know his real agenda, or if he’s breaking under pressure. And that might be – because he’s never served on a starship. Heck, he’s always acted kind of funny.”
“But could they be right?” Nieves asked.
“Not about me,” Moussa yelled.
“No.” She looked sternly at Nieves, letting her eyes do the bulk of the talking.
Nieves sighed. “Have any of you ever seen Patterson sick?” she asked. She looked straight at all of them. “Have you ever seen her exhausted? She can do practically anything. And Stocky is even stronger. He’s probably the only thing the Creature fears.”
“They’re not in great shape anymore,” Samoylova said. “They could very easily have symptoms of infection masked by their injuries.”
“We’re wasting time,” Moussa said. “We tell them to find another way. Nothing more to discuss.”
“Patterson has been with us for three years,” Nieves said. “Nearly as long as you, Holly. We know her. We’ve lived together and made this ship a home. She won’t betray us. And Stocky proved himself dependable when we were dealing with that space scum on the Polo. They must have good reasons, or we misunderstand them. We should talk with them and to understand why they need this.”
She looked them over in apparent disbelief toward their response, and then she focused on Holly. “And you’re the captain now. Stocky will follow any order you give him.”
“Unless if he’s got orders from higher up,” Samoylova added. “Sci-Med can take authority.”
Tired of the banter, Holly shouted at them, “Alright, knock it off! You’re all missing the point! We’ve been together for most of the time since Zhu died. But how often have any of you seen them? How do we know they’re still the same people they were before that expedition went over to the derelict? They’ve been in proximity to this Contagion from the very start. Zhu’s body was there from the beginning. Fuller was sick down there with them. And we know that they were spread out doing different tasks!
I do trust Patterson. I do trust Stocky. And I even think that Chandna is generally a good person. But I can’t be sure that the ones down there are still those people. And neither can you. And it must be said that none of them have been acting normal as of late. Patterson and Stocky were doing who knows what in Berthing. Chandna is indifferent about everything, and he’s been wandering alone like he’s not concerned with danger. Was he of any help on Crew’s Mess?”
“No,” Samoylova answered. “You’re right, I don’t think any of us can tell whether someone who has been exposed to the gas is contaminated by Pazuzu. I mean, I guess at some point they look like Fuller did and you know. But Qureshi and Garvey looked and sounded human an hour or so before we fought them. I’m the only one I can trust.”
“We’re all in that position,” Holly said.
“Yeah, but the rest of you look terrible. I never got any appreciable exposure. And you wouldn’t have either, Moussa, if you hadn’t chosen to wrestle those things.”
“It’s just on my arms and hands,” he said. “The LORD will pull me through.”
“Small injuries might be all that’s needed for Pazuzu to hide its work,” Samoylova said.
“We will carefully watch each other,” Holly said, trying to placate them all. “But we have to watch them even more. And we’re not going to let them take control.” She was relieved to see agreeable nods.