“We interrogated her thoroughly, Your Highness. She swears that she's never heard of this illness prior to her departure.”

Silgvani quietly sighed, making sure she wasn’t heard through the speaker. She had already expected this answer. After all, Nadine had already spoken with the former ambassador back on the Unifier. But she couldn’t just sit around doing nothing, hoping that they would reach Hohmiy in time. The doctor was doing all she could, and if Silgvani could maybe find out some additional information, it might make things a bit easier.

“And how believable would you estimate what she said to be? She isn't exactly a stranger to lying.”

“She was both very frustrated and distressed, so she was difficult to talk to. I dug as deep as I could over the last few days, and while I can’t say it with certainty, I would tend to believe her,” the captain of the escort ship where Kykla was currently being held explained.

“And what about other Humans? Did she really never meet one other than Nadine?”

“She said if they had already contacted Humanity, she wouldn’t have bothered talking to you, Your Highness. Apologies for the rude tone, I am merely quoting her.”

“It’s fine. Thank you, Captain.”

She closed the communication channel and leaned back in her chair. Four more days until they would reach the hyperlane, and then an additional one to get to Hohmiy. Five more days during which she could do little more than hope.

----------------------------------------

The concept of a “morning” was fairly relative when in space. Since tasks usually had clearly structured rotations, most people would still follow a consistent day-night-cycle equivalent, but that didn’t apply to everyone. Githaiy was one of those it didn’t apply to, especially now. In her attempt to help Nadine as much as she could, the current phases of her being awake and asleep no longer followed the timetable of Hohmiy’s rotation. But in the purpose of her own schedule, one might call the current time “morning”, even if one only did that to say that morning came too soon.

Of course, if the doctor had wanted to keep sleeping, then nothing would have stopped her. But with Nadine’s status still critical, she couldn’t sleep more than necessary. She quickly left her bedroom and walked through the metal corridor, once more passing different people than the “morning” before. After all, their “morning” was now at a different time.

She carefully opened the door to see whether the small alien was still asleep. But to her surprise, not only was Nadine not asleep; she wasn’t in her bed at all.

“Nadine?!” Githaiy called out, shocked.

“I’m here, Doc.”

Quickly turning, she spotted her missing patient next to the door. She hung from the ceiling by one arm, holding to a metal beam at the ceiling that - thankfully - looked sturdy enough to support her weight. She continuously repeated the motion of pulling her body up and lowering herself again right afterward. Her other arm was behind her back, and her legs were crossed and angled. The way she held herself made her face the wall, so Githaiy could only see her from behind.

“What are you doing?! You need to rest!”

“I need to stimulate my muscles, you know that,” the alien girl said in an unusually neutral tone.

“Nadine, it’s great that you apparently feel better, but if you do this so soon, who knows what damage you will do to yourself!” the doctor pleaded. She didn’t get too close though since the alien girl wasn’t wearing her protective suit at the moment.

“If I don’t do this, I know exactly what damage it will do,” Nadine retorted. “I wasn’t able to do it for the last couple of days, I have to compensate! Besides, seems like it really was just a nasty cold anyway.”

Githaiy noticed that the hand behind her back, balled to a fist, was shaking.

“Just a… Nadine, you caught an illness that decimated a planet within a couple of days!”

“DO YOU THINK I DON’T KNOW THAT?!”

The sudden outcry made Githaiy flinch. It was very rare that Nadine got loud, but when she did, she got LOUD. Two passing crew members threw concerned looks through the open door, so she quickly collected herself and gestured to them that everything was fine.

If you come across this story on Amazon, it's taken without permission from the author. Report it.

Meanwhile, Nadine had dropped down from the ceiling and turned around, showing a distorted expression on her face. She raised her fist and slammed it onto the bed, making the mattress shake in the process.

“After… after two months, it finally looked like I had a lead. And what do I find out instead? That I’m not only having a world-of-cardboard situation and am a walking vat of acid, no, on top of that I’m apparently a full-blown biohazard!”

“Not to us,” Githaiy quickly corrected. “Humans and Tystrie being compatible enough is an unfortunate coincidence. It happened before with different species, though not to this extent, I admit."

And in none of these cases did the illness jump species that quickly.

"I meant it when I said nothing like that can happen between Vanaery and Human, I just didn’t consider-”

“Once again didn’t consider a crucial detail. How many times does that make now?”

The room went silent after Nadine's last line, and the small alien’s eyes immediately widened in regret.

“I… shit, I didn’t mean to… I didn’t want…” she began as she buried her face in her hands and leaned back against the wall. “Doc, I-I’m so sorry. You do so much, for me and everyone, and I… damn it!”

Nadine slid down to the floor and rested her head on her knees.

“Look, I… I know how shitty that sounds, but can we pretend the last minute didn’t happen and start this conversation over?”

Githaiy didn’t answer right away. Instead, she slowly walked over to the other side of the room and sat down on a wall-mounted chair. Quietly, she looked at Nadine, who after a while lifted her head with a desperate expression.

“Words coming from or directed at a noble are not easily forgotten. Luckily for you, I am only a noble in the first generation and wasn’t raised as one.”

“I’m really sorry, Doc, I-”

“No offense taken." That wasn't completely true. The words had stung, especially since Githaiy had told herself something similar before. But that wasn't helpful at the moment and despite being younger, Githaiy was still the adult one of the two.

"I know this is a difficult situation for you. But you should mind your words more, especially when outside the palace. Her Highness and the Lord General are NOT representative of your average nobles. Just to have it said. But more importantly, what makes you so sure you are fine? This isn’t like with the ethanol, you literally looked like you were on the verge of death over the last few days!”

Nadine shrugged.

“Not sure what I can tell you there, but this is fairly normal. I mean, I did get hit with a pretty nasty one and I felt like shit, but it was still somewhat normal for a cold - still assuming it was one. Flu's still a possibility. There are much worse illnesses, a few days with fever and a runny nose is kind of the bottom line.”

“So… that’s it? After a few days in a state like that, you just are suddenly fine again?”

“If you word it like that it sounds a bit dumb, but… yeah, pretty much. One more day and I’m probably back at a hundred percent. It’s nothing noteworthy, it’s common for a human to catch a cold once or twice a year. If you’re healthy it's not really something to fear. I never thought it would be like the Black Death to others.”

She once more buried her head in her arms.

“Just… how did…”

“We can figure that out later. The more pressing issue is how to stop it.”

Nadine looked up again, shifting her expression to one that included her eyes being more narrow.

“Yes, you’re right. Before we left the Star Treader, Sil and I went to my escape pod. I took the board pharmacy with me.”

The doctor cocked her head.

“You took the what now with you?”

Nadine seemed confused that she didn’t know the word.

“You know, the bandage box!”

“Bandage… do you mean a first aid kit?”

“Ah. Yeah first aid kit, I guess. Stupid translator.”

With a quick motion, she took the collar translating her words off her neck.

“Kould yew say it agein?”

Despite her heavy accent, it was impressive how much she had learned since she arrived on Hohmiy. She could likely even get rid of it in the near future considering she was able to hold her speech in the courtroom nearly without it after rehearsing often enough.

“First aid kit,” the doctor repeated

“Phirst aide kitt… okay.” She put the translator back on. “This thing gets pretty wonky when I use words you technically have but not use in a particular context. Does it sound normal to you when I say cold? Anyway, there should be cold medicine in that thing. Though all I can do is give you the stuff, I have no idea about medicine outside of the basics.”

Githaiy nodded.

“That is already much more than I expected. And to answer your question, the word “cold” does get translated, though it’s an… interesting name for an illness.”

“Well, we often catch it when our body gets too cold, maybe that’s why. Never really thought about it if I’m honest. I’m sure it also has a medical name, but I don’t know it.”

“I see. Well, either way, there is one more issue.”

Githaiy explained the water situation. While sick, Nadine had used up a large portion of her water supply, it likely would last for all of the remaining four days.

“Um, Doc? I think you misunderstood something there,” Nadine began once Githaiy had detailed everything. “Well, I guess we never talked about that again after you made that powder. You see, I need all of that stuff, sure, especially now that I was sweating a lot. But the most important thing is the water itself. It doesn’t need to be perfectly saturated or anything like that. I could even drink your hundred percent pure water in small doses, it only gets bad if I drink too much of that. While the nutrients are important, I can get them from somewhere else, too. Just making it drinkable can be achieved by mixing literally anything that’s not poisonous in there. Remember what I did on the… raider?”

It sounded like she purposefully left out the word “Kiroscha” and yet, she still shuddered slightly saying it. But now that she said it, Githaiy did indeed recall that she mixed blood from some unknown animal they found in the Kiroscha’s supplies into the water.

Githaiy felt a lot of tension leave her, now that the most pressing issues were resolved. But overall, things were far from over. A lot of questions were still left unanswered. If the other Humans were involved, where were they now? What exactly had happened on Eroas? Where was the Human ship? Had all of this really been a coincidence?