Playing God(111)

He'd seen it often enough. He'd seen rows of patients in isolation beds, paralyzed, breathing on respirators, dignity gone, hope gone, eyes wide-open and staring, and mouths pulled open in eerie, unchanging grimaces.

The noise had faded outside. Silence pressed heavily against his ears. David subvocalized to his implant for directions down to the recyclers. There was a hatch not too far away. He could crack one egg into the water and one into the air vents, and keep hold of the last one to open when they came to get him.

The healthy would isolate the sick, if they didn't push them out the airlock. They'd look for the seat of contagion, and they wouldn't find it because by then it would be all around them, just like down below on All-Cradle.

He heard running footsteps outside the lab. His head jerked around. The footsteps ran past, and the door didn't open.

He looked at the eggs again. Freed from the cold, the WKV influenza was coming to life in there. It was a wonderfully compact and adaptable little organism. It was hardy and could bide its time. It could jump from host to host in the air or in the water. As a WKV strain, it could kill in a few days, if nothing was done.

His hands shook at his sides. They took Lynn, he reminded himself. They took Lynn, and nobody knows where she is, or if she is still alive.

In his mind's eye, he saw the rows and rows of dying patients in their isolation beds, unable to touch their sisters and their daughters, who hovered outside their beds, pressing hands and faces against the polymer sheds that trapped their dying mothers or sisters or daughters.

But they had Lynn. They had the ship.

He heard the door open. He heard a gasp.

“Don't move!” shouted someone in Getesaph. She switched to tortured English. “Don't move, or you will be shot!”

David kept his hands at his sides.

“Thank you,” he whispered.


Captain Elisabeth Esmaraude sat at her station, amazed at how calm she felt. She was not a military commander. Dealing with organized attacks was not in her job description. There hadn't been any real pirates in centuries. As Humans made contact with various alien species, it turned out they were interested in trading goods, not violence. The few aliens they hadn't managed to establish communications with had just left them alone, which was fine with everybody.

In short, this was not supposed to be happening. Maybe that was what kept her calm. Part of her was treating it as a weird sim exercise.

An info-dump had gone out to Keale. He was probably about halfway to the Ur from Base by now. He and his people would do whatever they could.

She'd sent the officers down to the hangars with their orders. Get everybody into the shuttles and off the ship. They had a thousand people on this ship, and none of them had signed up for this kind of hazard duty. They had to be gotten out of the way.

She'd hooked her spectacles into the ship's video and saw engineering stand around too long, staring at the Dedelphi and their makeshift tunnel.

She'd looked down into the hangars and seen that engineering wasn't the only bunch who had been too slow. Who could blame them? This wasn't real. This shouldn't be happening. The Dedelphi had the hangars and all the people in there. People were being sealed into rescue balls and left in heaps on the decks.

There was a short running battle through the maintenance decks between the invaders and Keale's security people, but they were too heavily outnumbered, and it didn't last. Rudu had made a good try down on the gravity deck, but now… She didn't want to think about what she'd seen.

People had slammed bulkheads shut, cut the power, waded into battle with all kinds of improvised weapons. They pulled off the Dedelphi's helmets and left them choking and coughing on the deck. They blinded invaders with fire extinguishers, tripped them with wires, shocked, scalded, and beat them to death.

In response, the Dedelphi had cried out, “Medical emergency!” and the overrides had opened the bulkheads to gain free passage. They had found maintenance jobbers in the corridors and ordered them to repair the wiring and cut apart the booby traps. Keale had sealed off most of the voice commands to everyone but the crew, but jobbers answered anyone. That was the point of jobbers.

The Dedelphi had lain in wait for their attackers, lurking in side tunnels, clinging to bracing. They had tangled them in nets, tripped them, clubbed them with the guns, tied them up with tape and fishing line, stuffed them into rescue balls, and piled them up.

Dedelphi had died. Lots of them. But each death made the rest tighter, more alert.

They were coming to the bridge now. She could see them. They were down in the maintenance deck heading carefully toward her.

So, time to get moving. She was slow, she was stupid and unprepared, and she'd only half listened to Kaye, but she was all this ship had as a captain. Some orders the ship would not accept from anybody else.