He wondered if destiny was now upon him. Was this thing the threat to his people that had been foretold? And what should he do about it if it was?
∞
Epone couldn’t sleep so she got up and mixed some herbs. She needed to talk to Zorica. And if she could not do so in the physical plane, she would meet her in the astral plane. She quickly set fire to her mixture, inhaling the white smoke that rose from it. Her eyes rolled to the back of her head and she was flying.
“Z!” she called, searching for her friend.
She called louder and louder, trying to use scent and taste to determine which direction she needed to go.
“Epone?” the voice was faint, weak, but Epone recognized it.
“I am here,” she said, reaching out, trying to grasp. There was no answering touch to her spirit and she moved closer, trying to See through the veil, to find where Zorica might be waiting.
“Help me, I can’t see,” Zorica said.
“Open your eyes,” Epone said, feeling fearful. There was no way to be blind on the astral plane.
“My eyes are open so wide. It’s dark and cold, Epone. Help me.” Zorica sounded almost tearful. Epone wanted to cry right along with her.
“I’m going to help you. I will,” Epone said, doing a scrying spell from memory in an effort to find Zorica. There was a faint spark to her right, so faint. Epone headed toward it.
“Z?” she whispered, coming closer and feeling her friend’s energy. But it was not the same as it had always been.
“Ep,” Zorica replied, and suddenly she was there, looking pale and ill but present.
“Do you see me now?” Epone asked.
Zorica smiled weakly. “I see you.” Then her smile dropped from her face. “What did they do to me?”
Epone shook her head. “I am not sure. But they infected you.”
“With the blood. It put the blood in me.” Zorica sounded young and scared.
“Yes but you’re fighting it, Z! You can fight it.”
“Why did my own people want to kill me Ep?” Zorica asked, like Epone might have all the answers.
“I don’t think that’s what they were doing,” Epone said.
“Then what? What were they doing?”
“They wanted to see what would happen I think. They were looking for a cure.”
Zorica snorted. “You are so full of shit, Ep.”
Epone shrugged. “That’s true. Doesn’t mean I am wrong.”
That brought a smile to Zorica’s face.
“Well, at the very least, I made you smile,” Epone said with a sigh.
Chapter Seventeen: Moon Landing
They landed a few hours later. Most of the crew was still asleep. Jaime was reluctant to wake them. There was no real need and they needed the rest. Ash was awake and so was Zorica. The latter girl was hardly lucid but she was conscious which was a plus in Jaime’s book. He and Ash decided to move her to Five so that Ash could start with tests while Jaime transferred what supplies they would need and not find in the sub sector.
He was in the middle of his second load when Jordan joined him, picking supplies silently and following Jaime. It occurred to Jaime that Jordan didn’t know about Five. None of the other team members did. Yet he followed Jaime without question.
Had he earned it? Had he earned this trust?
He didn’t know. But he was grateful for it.
If indeed it was trust and not just extreme tiredness. Jaime snorted, putting down the packages he was holding and turning back to swerve around Jordan and go back to the ship, taking care not to touch him or breathe on him. He didn’t know how this contagion worked. Nobody did; that was the problem.
He wondered if he should wear a hazmat suit or if his containment gel was enough of a barrier to prevent his team from getting sick. He remembered that Zorica had been directly injected with the blood. If the disease was airborne, then surely all the Stits would have had it since they were in the presence of an infected for quite a while. They must have known that it was a blood borne pathogen.
Did that mean he was safe?
He decided to keep the gel on, a barrier between his skin and anyone or anything, until Ash could get some answers.
He found that Epone and Uzochi were standing near the ship entrance, opposite the pile of luggage to be transferred.
“What’s happening?” Epone asked.
Jaime spared a glance before kneeling down to pick up another bag. “Follow me,” he said.
Epone reached out, causing the rest of the luggage to hover at waist height and then follow obediently as they walked along beside Jaime.
“Hmm, yeah that works,” Jaime said.
“So why are we at the ruins of our training camp?” Uzochi asked.
Jaime cleared his throat. “Well, apparently there’s a medical lab under our subsector. Ash is going to do some tests on Zorica, see what’s up.”
Epone nodded approvingly. “Yes that is a good plan.”
∞
Jaime walked into the medlab, eyebrows already raised in inquiry as he looked for and found Ash. She was busily uploading notes into a databank, words flashing across the screen above her faster than the human eye could read.
“Anything?” he asked.
“She is definitely infected,” Ash declared, and Jaime’s heart sank.
“But, her body is fighting it. Right now, she is infected but not diseased.”
Jaime’s eyes went to Zorica’s prone figure, her lips slightly blue as if she had been deprived of oxygen at some point. Her fingernails too were blue and there were dark shadows under her eyes. Her skin had a grayish cast to it. She certainly looked ill to Jaime.
Ash glanced up. “Like I said, she’s fighting hard, doesn’t mean the battle is won. Her energy is depleted. I am trying to formulate electrolytes that will work for her mixed blood.”
Jaime took a deep breath, mentally pushing the fear away. “What happens if you can’t get it right?”
Ash shrugged. “I’m pretty sure she dies.”
Jaime felt his heart judder and drop to his stomach. “Is there nothing we can do? Will pure human electrolytes harm her? What about a blood transfusion?”
Ash shook her head absently, most of her mind obviously on her work. “No. Human electrolytes will not work. I suspect that her strength lies in the delicate balance between Stits and human that is coursing through her veins. Any attempt to tilt that balance one way or the other will cause the virus to overwhelm her.”
“Oh,” Jaime said, unable to help the panicked breathiness of his voice. “What if you get it wrong?”
Ash spared a moment to narrow her eyes at him. “This is what I do. Now will you please leave and let me do it?”
Jaime nodded jerkily, staggering out of the room and shutting the door behind him. He leaned against it, eyes closed, just breathing. A footfall to his right had him opening his eyes to see AX staring at him, arms crossed, bright blue eyes glowing.
“What?” Jaime said.
AX merely shook his head and leaned against the wall next to Jaime, just breathing as well.
Jaime didn’t want to talk to anyone, but he didn’t want to relinquish his self-imposed sentry post.
“You are in love with her, aren’t you?” AX said.
Jaime rolled his eyes. “It’s possible to be concerned about a colleague without being in love AX-8721. As a machine I know that concept might be hard to grasp.” Jaime winced internally even as he said the words; he knew he was being unnecessarily mean. He was just…Stressed. Everything was a mess and he was in charge, this was his team. It was his job to fix it; whatever was wrong. He felt so helpless that he could do nothing for Zorica; that he didn’t know why this had happened to her. He just wanted everyone to be alright.
“I’m sorry,” he said.
AX looked at him in surprise. At least, Jaime assumed it was surprise that made him straighten up and look alert like an a
nimal sniffing out the environment for danger.
“Why are you sorry?” he asked.
Jaime shook his head. “I was rude,” he said.
AX seemed to ponder this for a while before saying, “It is alright. You are worried; you took out your stress on me. It’s fine. However, sir, we need to debrief.”
Jaime thought ruefully that, for a robot, AX sure seemed to know a lot more about human emotion at the moment than Jaime did.
“Note to self, no more thinking of him as a robot,” he thought with an inner grimace. AX was a one of a kind; a human-AI hybrid created due to Dr. Teke’s out of the box experiments with enhancing neural capabilities using AI to jumpstart the 80% of the brain said to be unused. Instead, the AI had fused with his mind, adding its AI capabilities to Dr. Teke’s genius brain. The results were interesting to say the least and much debate had been held and many papers written about whether Dr. Teke retained his status as a human or should be regarded as a machine. While the question was still being worked out to nobody’s satisfaction, the Federation had approached AX, letting him know that the only way to guarantee that they would let him live was to join the Squad M15-F175. AX had computed the probable outcomes of all his choices and agreed to join the squad.
It was often disconcerting working with him because of the constant tug of war between Dr. Teke’s mind versus AX’s reactive synapses. Now that they were essentially sharing space and allowing each other to exist without overwhelming the other, AX seemed calmer, more…human in Jaime’s opinion.
They walked to the lounge area where the rest of the team was waiting, not exchanging any words. They hadn’t really had a chance to debrief since the mission had gone awry so this was actually a very good idea. Jaime worried about the fact that he hadn’t thought of it himself.
Epone, Jordan, and Uzochi were seated in a semi-circle around a table, a cup of steaming something in front of each of them. The systems that ran Five had been switched off for millennia and, even though Ash had powered them up as soon as she’d walked in, the temperature was still just a little above freezing. It would take at least one cycle to stabilize into normal temperature. So, for the moment, they had to rely on warm clothing and hot beverages. Priority had been to ready the medlab for use; the rest of the facility was at barely functioning level.
“This is like camping,” Uzochi complained. “On one of those unnamed planets past Alpha Centauri.”
Epone shot him a quelling glance. “It’s not that bad.”
“What is camping?” Jordan asked.
Epone waved her hands in the air. “Ah, it’s just something people do; go into nature and sleep there overnight with nothing but a trillian tarp and some airbeds.”
Jordan frowned. “Why?”
“It’s supposed to be entertainment,” Epone confided, staring at Jordan like she couldn’t see why either. “You’re a human, you should know this.”
Jordan shook his head. “I grew up in the Brotherhood. Fun was weapons training and stealth missions.”
Epone nodded like she could understand. “Maybe being cold and risking death by Frica Beetles is fun,” she said with a grin.
It was Jordan’s turn to shake his head, but he didn’t answer. Instead he turned to Jaime to ask him if they should set up a watch. The captain was looking off into the distance, clearly not paying attention to their conversation. He had circles under his eyes and he looked like he hadn’t slept since they left Federation HQ.
“Hey Captain,” Jordan said instead. “Why don’t you get some sleep, we’ll set things up here.”
Jaime turned to him slowly as if he was resisting forces pulling him in another direction. “We need to debrief,” he said, exhaustion painted on every word.
“And we will. When you’re more alert. Right now, you’re dead on your feet.”
There were advantages to being unable to lie. Nobody could take offence at anything Jordan said. They all knew he couldn’t help it. Jaime gave him a look anyway, but then nodded and turned, making his slow way to the freezing quarters. “I’ll lie down for an hour and then we debrief. If there’s any change with Zorica, please come and get me at once.”
“Of course,” Epone said, since she knew Jordan could not lie.
They watched him go and then sat for a little while, considering each other.
“So,” AX said from the corner of the room, startling everyone. They’d forgotten he was there. “Why are we here?”
Jordan frowned. “What do you mean?”
“We have an infected among us but we’re not going to the Federation. We’re on an abandoned sector using out of date technology to try to heal a contagion we know nothing about. Are none of you curious as to why we did not just head directly for the Federation medical unit? They clearly have the experience of dealing with this thing. So…why are we here?”
The other three stared at him in surprise. AX rarely provided such a long winded analysis of anything.
“Dr. Teke?” Jordan said.
AX inclined his head from one side to the other. “It’s kind of both of us awake in here now.”
“Well…” Epone said slowly. “Clearly we have reason to avoid the Federation. Zorica has been infected with the blood, sure, but she is not acting like a typical case-”
“Do you know what a typical case is?” AX interrupted.
“No. But I know what it’s not. Her veins are neither bulging nor black. She hasn’t developed any extra or extra-large appendages. She’s simply burning up with a strange fever. She’s resisting.”
“I was in the database at the hospital. I could probably get back in and access the medical records of the others, for comparison purposes,” AX offered.
“From here?” Jordan asked.
AX’s eyes glowed bluer as he turned them on Jordan. “With the right equipment, I could. Nothing in this base, but maybe on the ship.”
Jordan nodded, standing up. “Let’s go do that then.”
Epone held up a quelling hand. “The discussion is not done,” she said.
Jordan looked like he wanted to protest but he simply flopped back down on the seat. “We have enemies whose identities we yet ignore,” Epone said. “By our presence here, we have to conclude that we cannot exclude the Federation from that possible list.”
“And? What? We’re gonna start a revolution?” Jordan scoffed.
Epone shook her head. “No. We are going to proceed with caution and assume that we can trust no-one.”
There was a pregnant pause as everyone regarded each other assessing.
“We have to be able to trust each other,” Jordan said at last.
AX took a step toward Jordan. “I trust you,” he said.
Jordan glanced at him, feeling his face flush slightly. “Thank you,” he said.
Uzochi rolled his eyes.
Epone turned to him. “How did you know?” she asked.
“What?” Uzochi jumped.
“On the ship, when we were captured. How did you know…what you knew?”
“You mean because I knew it was Zorica they wanted?”
“For starters.”
Uzochi looked away. “I am a seer. It is my job to know.”
Epone stared at him.
“He’s hiding something,” Jordan blurted.
Uzochi turned his head sharply to glare at Jordan. “I hide nothing.”
Jordan narrowed his eyes at him and then shook his head. “Pretty sure you are. I can sense it.”
Uzochi stood up, agitated, trying to slip out of the booth. But Epone was in his way. She raised her hand and placed it on his arm, very lightly. “We will not speak on it now if you don’t want to. But if we are in danger, we need to know.”
Uzochi slowly sat back down and sighed with defeat. “We are all in danger. But we knew that.”
“Is it the creature? The one under the hood?”
Uzochi nodded.
“What was it?” Jord
an asked.
“I…I think that I have Seen it before. Long ago, before I came to be among you.”
Everyone was silent, just staring at Uzochi, willing him to continue. He just stared at the wall, eyes bleak.
“What is it?” AX asked finally.
“The End,” Uzochi said.
The others looked at each other in surprise, each waiting for someone else to ask the question.
AX stepped closer. “The end of what?”
Uzochi turned his head slowly to look up at the AI-human hybrid. “Everything as you know it.”
AX laughed even as everyone else froze in shock. “That’s just an old human world myth. There is no such thing as the end of days. It is mathematically improbable.”
Uzochi just continued to stare at him until the smile dropped from AX’s face. He staggered and the blue faded from his eyes to be replaced by Dr. Teke’s brown.
“Tell me everything,” the doctor said.
Uzochi laughed bitterly. “If I knew everything, do you think I would be here?”
Teke frowned in confusion. “Where would you be?” he asked.
Uzochi shot to his feet in agitation, pushing aggressively past Epone to get out of the booth. “I would be home with my people,” he snapped before storming out.
Jordan took a deep audible breath. “Well…that could have gone better,” he said.
Teke looked down at him, still puzzled. “What did I say?”
“You asked a Seer to explain something he didn’t understand himself. They’re sensitive about that. After all, the expectation is that Seers see all and therefore they know all.”
Teke shook his head. “That is not the expectation at all. Seers don’t see everything. In fact, their range of knowledge is very limited. Other factors also apply: terrain, magic involved, destiny, and the Seer themselves. It’s a very inexact science.”
Mage Marine Misfits: Book 01 Page 14
