Inside the aft cargo bays what remained of the Walkabout’s crew were huddled together in clusters. They’d fled there as the disease that had gripped the ship had spread, being the section that was the furthest from inhabited areas where all the bodies had piled up and the chance of being infected was at its highest. Of course, that precaution wasn’t foolproof as any of them could have it and not know, they’d only show symptoms after five days, during which time it was at its most infectious.
Cargo Master Kyle Lasseter had seen what had happened to all those who’d been infected, had seen the fear that it had caused. The first case had been five days ago, since then they’d lost so many people, it had spread faster than anything the doctors onboard had heard of and everything they’d tried had failed. As the infection had spread, he’d sat in on all the department head briefings as they slowly discovered just how bad things were. He’d been present when Captain Borch had made the decision to stop the ship on the edge of the system K-2177, refusing to take the ship to Ferrus Prime and put the thousands of colonists there at risk. Though the Captain had been admitted to sickbay just hours later and died the following day, his orders stood. As with all the others, Lasseter was left to wonder if First Mate Castle had been able to get a distress call out, or if anyone would respond to it.
From the far side of the bay, the heavy doors rumbled open. Everyone turned to look, some clutched their loved ones close to them, others reached for phasers they’d brought for protection. No one was left alive outside of those doors, so whoever was opening them was either a rescue team come to help them or raiders looking for an easy score.
Four figures came into view and the doors opened, all dressed in Starfleet issue yellow hazmat suits. The leader of the group, a Megarite with a domed, water-filled helmet, stepped through.
“Please do not be afraid, we’re from the hospital ship Hope. We’re here to help you.”
Lasseter, the last surviving department head, took a breath and approached their rescuers, followed by a few others. He was surprised that Starfleet had sent a fully-fledged medical ship to help them, he’d been unaware there were any in the sector, but if anyone could figure out just what the contagion was, it would be them.
He stopped a few meters from them. “Thank you for coming, I’m Cargo Master Kyle Lasseter.”
“Chief Medical Officer Monsoon. We have a team searching the ship for any other survivors—”
“You won’t find any,” he interrupted.
“If they’re not in here, they’re dead,” added one of the colonists beside him.
“Can you really help us?” asked another.
“Please, you’ve got to get us out of here!” came a desperate plea.
A few more of the colonists risked the proximity to others and began to gather around the four Starfleeters. Lasseter noticed two of their rescuers grip the handles of their sidearms as the beginnings of a mob formed—if they were overwhelmed then there was the chance their suits would be compromised, exposing them.
Monsoon raised his arms. “Please, try to remain calm. I know you’ve all been through a traumatic event, but you need to stay calm. We’ve set up a quarantine area on our ship and will be beaming you over shortly, we’ll then begin taking samples and testing you all for this disease. If you’re clear, then we can get you set up in temporary accommodation, but we will need your co-operation and help to get this done as quickly as possible.”
Lasseter turned back to the terrified and angry colonists. “You heard the Doctor, they’re going to get us out of here, so be patient.”
The growing swell of people eased and slowly started to disperse, though a few stayed close by, some casting suspicious glances at the rescue team.
“Thank you, Mr Lasseter. Can I ask, did any of your medical staff survive?”
He shook his head. “They were hit hard. We only have a few people trained as emergency medtechs, but they weren’t involved in any of the work going on in sickbay.”
“I see. We’re accessing your computer records and logs, so we can start to piece together just what we’re dealing with, but if you and your people could provide any details on a timeline of events that would be—”
“Frak! He’s got it!”
“Get him out of here!”
“He’ll kill us all!”
The chorus of shouts and screams started in the far corner, but the effect was instantaneous, rippling through the crowd like a stone tossed into a still pool. The tense anxiety that had been the prevailing feeling among the survivors turned to terror, they pushed and scrambled to get away from whoever was showing symptoms. They were all heading for the entrance, threatening to overwhelm those that stood there.
Without a word, the Megarite burst forward into the crowd, heading in the opposite direction they were heading.
“Doctor!” one of his team, a Meshinite woman, shouted after him as she gripped her phaser.
She and the other two followed after him. Luckily, the colonists and crew were so panicked that they paid them little attention, all wanting to get as far away from the newest infected as they possibly could. Lasseter managed to slip through the waves of people in pursuit, he wasn’t about to go and help but he needed to see who it was.
On the other side of the throng of bodies, he stopped and watched as the doctor reached one of the colonists, a sandy-haired human man in his mid-twenties whose nose was bleeding profusely. Beside him a woman of a similar age, her belly heavy with child, had her arms wrapped around his shoulders as she sobbed. Monsoon crouched down before him, scanner in hand. The others neared him seconds later, though whilst one of the humans went to help the doctor the other two members of the team kept their distance. Though they were too far to hear, the aquatic alien looked to the Meshinite and issued and order, gesturing to the colonists. She nodded and headed back towards them, the last member of the rescue team following her.
The golden skinned woman stopped a few meters from the cowering crowd. “Attention please,” she bellowed. The cries and shouts eased to whimpers and murmuring. “Thank you. We’re going to begin emergency evacuation. We’ll only be taking yourselves over, no possessions until we can fully decontaminate them. As Doctor Monsoon said, you’ll be beamed into quarantine until everyone can be tested for signs of this disease.
“I need you all to organise yourselves into groups of thirty, so we can begin beaming you out. Everyone clear?” she asked, her tone stern.
There was a muttering of acknowledgements and nodding of heads. Lasseter looked from the woman managing the masses to the doctor treating the latest victim of the contagion, he had to admit these people were good. If there was anyone that could figure this out, it would be the experts on a Starfleet medical ship.
* * * * *
Chief Medical Officer’s log, supplemental.
The survivors of the Walkabout are under maximum quarantine and testing is underway to see how many have been exposed. The man presenting symptoms in the cargo bay is deteriorating rapidly, whilst his wife is now displaying the early symptoms. We are treating both with broad spectrum antivirals, though they do not appear to be having any effect—given what we’ve learnt from the transports medical logs.
Doctor Nguyen and her staff are working through the data retrieved and samples collected to try and identify just what we’re dealing with, so far this virus doesn’t match anything in our records though there are similarities to several other haemorrhagic viruses. She has managed to piece together a timetable of events, with the first patient being admitted to sickbay five days ago with profuse nosebleeds, headaches and numbness in the extremities. Within six hours there were several dozen cases, and after a day there were over one hundred and fifty patients. The first patient died thirty hours after entering sickbay. Since that first day, there was a steady increase of cases, with the crew doing all they could to delay the spread, enforcing a lockdown of all non-essential personnel and colonists, though their measures appear to have been too little too late. Panic set in and those who were still healthy barricaded themselves in the aft cargo bay, as far away from the sick and the dead as they could get.
Whilst we may not know just what this virus is, we can determine that it is capable of jumping species easily and affects them all in an almost identical manner. After initial symptoms present themselves the patient dies between twenty and thirty-five hours later. Due to these factors, I theorise that this is an artificially created contagion.
* * * * *
“So how bad is it?” Lenx asked, her three hands clasped on the tabletop.
On the monitors Monsoon, who had opted to remain in the quarantine section to keep working, shook his head with a forlorn look on his. ”Testing shows that there are fifty-two people infected, though yet to present symptoms. Mr Daniels died at oh-four-twenty this morning from multiple organ failure and internal bleeding, his wife is now unconscious and deteriorating rapidly.”
“What about her baby?” enquired M’Benga.
”We performed an emergency c-section, but the child was stillborn. Initial tests show it was due to the virus.”
In the briefing room with Lenx and M’Benga were Rellon, Chief SAR-Ops Officer th’Khosh and Commander Emanuel, the ships Head of Nursing, whilst Monsoon and Nguyen were present on the screen. They were all quiet for a moment, taking stock of the situation they were facing. With only a day or two before those infected started to succumb to the virus and died, they didn’t have much time to work on the cure. What normally took weeks to months to formulate, refine, test, and dispense they had to try and do in fifty hours. The feat was near enough impossible, even with the resources they had at their disposal on the Hope, which meant that those fifty-two colonists would likely suffer the same fate as their friends and colleagues.
Lenx closed her eyes for a moment, giving a silent prayer to the Goddesses. She had served in Starfleet for eighty years, thirty as a captain with the last decade spent on the Hope, but even in all that time she’d never gotten used to losing people—if the day ever came that it got easier, she knew that was when it time to retire. When they’d received their orders those people in quarantine had already been infected, so going in the odds were stacked against them.
“Do all you can to make sure they’re comfortable, Doctor,” she instructed unnecessarily.
”I will, Captain.”
“Doctor Nguyen, have you got anything new to add?”
”Captain, I believe this virus is engineered. Even accounting for some major mutations, it isn’t like anything in our entire database. It looks as though someone has taken some of the most deadly viruses out there and spliced them together.”
“Who’d be able to do something like that?”
”I could,” the Head of Research admitted. ”I could also name three or four others in the Federation that could do it, but there’s no telling how many from other species would have the equipment and expertise to carry it out.”
“Understood.” Lenx supressed a shiver. “I don’t want to keep either of you, so if you have nothing more to add I’ll let you get back to your work.”
Neither did and both promptly signed out of the meeting. It was at times like this that she felt rudderless, as there was nothing she could do to help the experts, other than ensure they had all the resources they could possibly need. It was a feeling she’d never liked but one that was, at times, inescapable.
She turned back to those in the room. “Thoughts?”
“It has to be the Klingons!” announced th’Khosh. “They poisoned that shipment of quadrotriticale bound for Sherman’s Planet last year.”
“But they just targeted the grain, to keep it from growing and poison the ground to derail colony operations on Sherman’s,” M’Benga countered. “If they had something like this at their disposal, surely they would’ve used it instead.”
“They’re testing different chemical warfare methods.”
“If,” Lenx interjected before things got heated, “we were close to Klingon space, it would be a possibility, but we’re three hundred light-years from their border. There’s no advantage for the Empire to strike here. The Federation is not without its enemies, but something like this is paramount to a declaration of war.”
“I’ve gone through the ship’s logs,” Rellon began. “Since they left their last port of call, before the final push to Ferrus, they’ve had no contact from any other ship or stopped at any other station or planet. So this virus has been with them for a while, but only became active in the last week. That sounds like a planned attack to me.”
“Why just target a colony ship with less than nine hundred people, when the world they’re heading to has twelve thousand?” posed M’Benga.
“Some kind of failure with their delivery method? It was released too early.”
“We can go around in circles with the options, making theories and conspiracies with no real basis in fact. For now, we have to focus on what we know and take it from there.”
The officers all paused. Any of them could be right or they could all be way off the mark, there was no way to know, indeed they might never find out exactly what happened here—though if Lenx knew Monsoon and Nguyen, they’d give it all they had to unlock the mystery.
She turned to Emanuel. The Head Nurse had three decades of experience under her belt, over half of which she’d spent on the Hope, as such there wasn’t much she hadn’t had to deal with over that time. Due to her service and position aboard, she’d gained a moniker used centuries ago on Earth for senior nurses, one that everyone addressed her as.
“Matron, what arrangements need to be made for those who tested negative?”
“As this virus is something of an unknown, Doctor Monsoon is concerned about releasing them from quarantine—just in case our tests missed something. As such, we’re converting the isolation rooms into makeshift accommodation. They’ll be isolated from the positive cases, separated from the other survivors just in case there are any more carriers. We’ll carry out further tests and have them all under observation.”
“If you need any further help with that, we can get additional resources down to assist.”
“I’ll let you know if we do, Captain.”
“I’ve been in contact with Lambda Station, they’re the closest outpost with a dedicated biohazard care facility, so they’re ready to receive the survivors. They’re also getting a pair of tugs ready to retrieve the Walkabout for full decontamination at the station.” She looked from M’Benga to th’Khosh. “Before we get underway, I want a quarantine marker buoy attached to that ship.”
“I’ve already got a crew prepping one now, ma’am,” the XO confirmed.
“Good. Let us just hope that no one else has to deal with this contagion again.”
* * * * *
In the privacy of his isolation room and using the spike that had been hidden in the heel of his boot, the man using the name Kyle Lasseter was able to patch into the computer of the Hope without being detected. ‘Lasseter’ had seen that they’d attached a buoy to the Walkabout, which meant they’d be preparing to get underway.
He smiled to himself and subtly tapped a control on his wrist communicator.
The spike immediately overwrote the cameras watching him, replaying footage they’d filmed of him lying on his bed, whoever might’ve been watching him wouldn’t see or hear anything he was doing. ‘Lasseter’ took his wristcom off and affixed the last few components, likewise secreted on his person, that would allow him to send a scrambled signal.
“This is Mr Grey. Phase two complete. Eighty-three-point four percent of test subjects infected.”
”Understood. When can we expect your full report?” came the monotone response.
“We’re being taken to Lambda Station; I’ll submit my report upon arrival.”
”Recommendations?”
“Proceed to phase three.”
* * * * *
END
