Home in the Stars Box Set

by Mason, Jolie

  Confused, he'd thought back. “I don't know. I don't think so, but she hasn't been sick long.”

  “How long has she had symptoms?”

  “Two days?”

  “How long has she had the fever?”

  “I don't know. She doesn't talk...to people like that.” He felt helpless, useless, worse than useless.

  The doctor pulled out a scan and took her vitals. “We need to get her to isolation.” He spoke to a large male nurse, then spoke to Emery. “Are you family?”

  Emery looked at the pale blonde being wheeled toward the lift. “Yes,”he said softly.

  “You're going to need to come too. Whatever she has could be contagious. It's just a precaution.”

  He sounded lost when he said, “Will I be near her?”

  The doctor smiled sympathetically and nodded. “I can make that happen.”

  He breathed out quickly. “Thank you.” The doctor patted him on the shoulder twice. The intergalactic, male symbol of camaraderie and understanding.

  “I'll walk you down.”

  ***#***

  Two days. He'd been in this tiny cubicle room with glass walls and myriad medical equipment and doctors poking and prying at him. He'd finally gotten one of them to let him see her.

  She was right next door behind her own transparent wall and machines. The nurse had just pulled the privacy curtain open, and he could see her. He stood there now with one hand on the smooth surface staring in at her.

  In two days, she'd wasted. Her skin, clearly feverish, was splotched and sallow. Her arms hung listlessly by her side. His other hand came up to his mouth as he stared at the scene, finally admitting to himself she might be dying. A thought that thoroughly terrified him.

  “She's improved since yesterday.” A voice said behind him. He turned to see Dr. Sohl, the doctor who had admitted them both. “She has PTC. Pneumatic Takeiosis Complex, but it's not like any strain we've seen before.”

  “What do you mean?” He asked the question as he turned to the young doctor in his dark blue coat and white scrubs. He looked very official to be so young. “What's different? Why don't I have it?”

  “Both very good questions. The difference in this one is that it's incubation is efficient and deadly. The virus reproduces quickly. It's much more contagious than it was.”

  “I don't have it.”

  Dr. Sohl looked up momentarily from his datapad.”No, you don't”, he said and then looked away.

  A bell rang in Emery's head. Why would he have immunity to a new mutation? “Do you know why I don't?”

  The doctor sighed.”We know how. We don't know why.”

  Emery spread his hands face up and hit the doctor with his I'm waiting face. Sohl didn't want to have this conversation. Couldn't be good, he thought.

  “You appear to be immune. Your body possesses the anti-bodies to fight off the disease. Let me guess, you had a sore throat recently.”

  He thought back. Barely, he remembered. Why would he be immune?

  “It's not possible I just have a super immune system?”

  “Anything is possible.”

  “But.”

  “Your crew was quarantined too late. It's already spreading through the population of Sensor Prime. It's hit two continents in small concentrations. You had a crew member who shuttled in to Tamaria. She infected at least twenty we've located before she succumbed to it. At the rate it's spreading, well… I'm her doctor. I'm not an epidemiologist. It's going to be bad. Our government has everything and everyone locked down. How can you be immune to that if it's never existed before anywhere that we know of? Or you haven't traveled to a planet where it already exists? We checked your ships logs. You haven't.”

  He shared the doctor's skepticism about his immunity, but he couldn't say that, of course. He turned to look back in the room beyond. “If I'm immune, can I see her, be in there?”

  The doctor appeared to think that was a bad idea, but he nodded.

  “Do I need to stay in this room?”

  “No, we're releasing you, but I would like to ask you a favor. We need your help. Permission to use your antibodies to develop a possible treatment.”

  He glanced over his shoulder. “Of course, you take what you need. Just put me in there.”

  It drove him nuts being over here away from her. What if someone targeted her? He could watch helplessly. That's about it. Then again, it was pretty apparent that someone had already targeted her. He didn't know much about diseases, but the fact that he was suspiciously immune was a dead give away. If you engineered a disease and gave it to someone, would you send an operative who could get the disease?

  She'd been taken to a hospital where things were done to her. He'd been sent after her with an unexplained immunity to PTC, a disease that was not deadly before today. He needed a secure codex connection.

  “Can I get a comp pac delivered to the room? And I need to comm her family.”

  “That can all be arranged. Let me get a bed moved in for you.”

  Emery stared into the room beyond his own, mesmerized by the blue flash of the decon unit as it pelted the room with whatever they used to kill contagion.

  He fisted his hands by his sides. They'd gotten to her. There was no other explanation. He'd failed. She wasn't dead yet, and, damn it, he'd see to it that she stayed right here driving him nuts every single day just by being there.

  His thoughts turned to the crew, scattered everywhere across this planet on leave, thinking they were off to have a good time. They were all in rooms just like this one by now. This had to be his biggest screw up to date. Not only did he let down his ship mates, but tens of thousands, maybe millions, could die because he let them get to her.

  ***#***

  Caden sat in his library staring straight at Emery with a furious expression. “Let me understand you correctly, Luca is basically at death's door because someone infected her with the equivalent of the plague, and more than half our crew are dead.”

  “The part you need to understand is she was sick when she left Taarken.”

  There was a heavy pause as Caden's lips pinched together.

  “How do you not have it?”

  “I've been released as immune. I've insisted that I stay with Luca.”

  “I can see the decon. How did they get to her?”

  “I have no idea. She was with me most of the time.”

  He simply shook his head like that wasn't really good enough. Emery said nothing because he was right. It hadn't been remotely good enough because she lay in a hospital bed now fighting for her life.

  “Let me fill you in on what we learned through Carnes contacts in the region.” Emery nodded and let Caden continue. His insides felt like lead as he sat there listening. “We couldn't find her medfiles either, however, Sensor Prime has a hospital right there in the center complex that does experimental research with special permission from the Imperial government. That permission came from none other than the Imperial Intelligence Committee chair and Valek Morgan's boss.”

  Emery grabbed his scrib and opened the writer on his pad. “Name.”

  “Zenome Medical Research Corporation.”

  “Zenome?” Emery felt the hair stand up on his arms. “I know them.”

  “Yeah?”

  “They were tapped in an investigation by the United Planetary Rights Council. The UPRC maintains that the company delivered or caused to be delivered a biological weapon to Absidium Prime ten years back.”

  “Bio weapon? Like plagues?” Emery looked up at him sharply and swore.

  “Yeah, of course. So walking through this, Luca was taken to the research facility and experimented on. She's not killed which means she had another purpose. Shit. Shit. Caden, she was the delivery system. They turned her into the weapon. It has to be.”

  “So, they pulled the trigger on Taarken?” Caden asked quietly, his jaw locked.

  “For your mines and your influence. Caden, deploy your fleet. It's over. They aren't waiting any
more.” Caden nodded, tapping his console.

  “Agreed. I'll do what I can for you from here, but you may need to get her out of there on your own.”

  “She won't be moved as long as she can spread the virus. I can hack the quarantine on the Bell if I can make it inside.”

  A message popped up on the console. Caden met his eyes with a message in his eyes as well. “You can make it inside. Open that mail.”

  He did. It was an override code for the Bell. “A master code”, he said

  “All you have to do is get there. That will get you in. Most of the functions on the ship can be automated for a short time. You can handle any others.”

  “I'll get her home, if I can.”

  “No, don't bring her here. It won't be safe here.”

  It was true. Taarken Prime was about to be the center of a rebellion. It likely wasn't safe, but nowhere would be if planets started pulling away from the Imperium, not with an insane child of a woman on the throne. He met Caden's eyes sadly and nodded. “I understand”, he said softly. And he did. Luca was about to lose everyone all over again.

  ***#***

  Emery made his way drunkenly swaying down the dark corridor leading to the Zenome clinic in the west quadrant of the massive hospital. The Prime medical center was as large as some small cities rising high into the skyline with ambulances swooping in and leaving from the rooftops. A network of lifts and stairs occupied the very center of the complex to ease movement within the busy hospital. Four adjoining buildings came together around the center structure.

  He'd located the clinic and decided to go in, find the evidence they needed to expose or blackmail whoever they needed to, and get answers for Luca. She still lay in isolation unconscious and listless, barely moving. It was driving him more than a little mad waiting to see if she'd make it, so he'd come up with this plan. She was safe enough in quarantine.

  Caden extended him a generous line of credit which he'd used this morning to buy a nondescript maintenance outfit complete with tools and belt. In a place this size, no one ever really knew who was a contractor or a physical plant employee. One could go nearly anywhere with a confident walk and a smile, normally.

  Right now, a smile would stand out as strange. The hospital was swamped with PTC patients. Isolation had long since filled up to capacity and the hospital's giant staff called in, including the doctor's still practicing in this government approved facility. He'd cased it for a few hours. Deliveries were not halted so it appeared to be active and occupied. He'd swiped a low level key card earlier and copied it at one of the local codex bars where he'd had way too much coffee, but it had been synth coffee, not the real thing. Real coffee would have been too memorable, too much of a luxury for his cover. He bemoaned it now as he yawned standing casually in the sprawling common room painted buttercup yellow and tan. The double doors he watched from here never opened, and no one came to check them. Beyond those doors, visible in the glass, everything was pitch.

  The last security check of the evening should clear the building one more time in exactly fifteen standard minutes. Like clockwork, the small, pudgy man appeared and marched with drone-like precision around the commons and checked each door. Emery feigned sleep in an overstuffed chair which was a common occurrence since the hospital had gone on lock down.

  He'd gone over the schematics of the complex earlier because no place he'd ever seen yet was perfectly secured. Sure enough, he'd found a winding tunnel through the physical plant offices that led out to a hospital use shuttle bay where he'd had a rented shuttle delivered to one of his aliases, a doctor, so the manifest wouldn't even raise an eyebrow, if it were run. It wouldn't be. Everyone was too scared to do their jobs properly. Life on Sensor had come to a screeching halt. That was one of his few advantages.

  He waited for the guard to meander away and sat up quickly opening his gear bag. The decryptor, a compact model, would read and disable any security system in the galaxy. He palmed it and walked to the high security doors. He calibrated the settings and let the scan do its work. A low hum started in the door, then it popped and opened. He pushed it the rest of the way and shouldering his black bag stepped inside, closing it behind him quickly.

  The room was darkness and the faint outline of an army of chairs. He adjusted his unassuming glasses to night vision rather than the clear lenses that looked just like any old-fashioned vision correction. There were still a few conditions that couldn't be surgically altered, so that no one would blink at his wearing the glasses. The offices glowed green and black in his lenses.

  Avoiding the obstacles, he sought out a console and hooked in. It took three tries to break security and isolate the patient files past and present. He looked at his watch. Thirty-two standard. He had some time.

  The files downloaded quickly, despite their size, and he began to look them over, skimming through one then another, whispering “shit” under his breath. He found project: Lazarus within ten standards and wanted to be sick on the carpet. Kids.

  They were fucking using kids as time bombs, genetically engineered time bombs. As he read, he realized this was the clinic for the new intakes. They were brought here as a last resort, by parents and kin too desperate to look closely at the miracle they were being presented. They were babies, toddlers and teens, usually terminal. There were no limits for these bastards. Nothing sacred. No line they wouldn't cross.

  Emery pulled up the floor plan, just as he saw the rotund security guard peer through the glass. He melted back into the dark and moved slowly toward a plain, alarmed door that seemed on the schematic to lead to a ward. But, his simplest exit was blocked if the guard was suspicious. He appeared to be suspicious, shining his light in the open office window.

  He pulled the decryptor again. Cycling through the door combo in seconds, till it opened. He slipped in quickly to avoid the hallway light catching the guard's attention. He looked around.

  It was a ward, and there were kids sleeping in each of the rooms off the main hallway. Two nurses, one female and one male, chatted about the quarantine anxiously. His maintenance cover wouldn't work here.

  Emery opened his gear bag one more time and slipped into a vacant patient room nearby. Pulling out the medical blue of the center's upper staff, he donned the coat and pinned the false ID to his pocket like any other doctor. Slipping a finger up to the minuscule activator on his glasses, he switched them back to clear. Shouldering the generic black bag that could belong to anyone, he straightened and pushed his way through the hallway brusquely commanding a nurse's attention.

  “What exactly is the emergency down here? He demanded imperiously.

  The blonde nurse blinked both of her eyes. “I'm sorry, Doctor...”

  “Dr. Cordin, and why exactly was I summoned here in the middle of the night.”

  “But doctor, you weren't”, said the male. “The patients are resting comfortably and their monitors indicate no problems.”

  Emery smiled tightly. “That's not what's happening at the monitor hub.” He sighed. “I'll have to check them all.”

  He began in the first room with a child in it. A young girl with mocha skin and braids on each side of her head. She had to be less than twelve. He checked her chart at the end of the bed, pulling out a scrib to thumb through her condition. “Explain to me why Doctor...” He looked in the corner of the form. “Sarcosky believed this child was better off on pain inhibitors combined with Martopin. No wonder we're getting readings.”

  It was all bullshit, but the nurses immediately began sputtering and apologizing. The art of a good con was believability. He sighed. Opening his pack, he pulled out and palmed one of his special sedation tags. Careful not to let it touch his skin. Patting the woman on the hand, he smoothly let it adhere to her hand. Virtually invisible, she wouldn't know, even after it knocked her out for the next day and a half. The two nurses left the room to check on the other patients, while Emery prepared one of the sedation tabs for the man. A clattering metal tray hit the floor outside
the room. He took one more look at the sickly looking girl and walked outside with an imperious expression plastered to his face.

  “What is the racket?”

  The male nurse leaned over the female patting her face. “She's fainted, doctor.”

  He rushed to the woman on the floor. “Fainted? Let me take a look.” Carefully, he tapped the big man's bare forearm leaving behind an untraceable adhesive with enough sedative to take out two men. It was safe for the most part. He pretended to be examining the nurse on the floor, until the large male pitched forward beside her.

  Emery went to a console and pulled charts on all four rooms. He got an idea of what was going on, and who the kids were. Not one had any kind of fatal disease. They were all cured. One had come in with a tumor that now had shrunk to a tenth of its former size. They each had transfer papers to another facility citing “augmentation” with unspecific parameters. He could just guess what that meant. Emery ran for the oldest child's room.

  He woke the boy, a tall youth with kind eyes and a weary smile.

  “Do you know where you are?” He asked.

  4

  “I'm in the clinic, right?”

  Emery nodded. “Do you know what the clinic is doing with you tomorrow, Ian?”

  The seventeen year old sat up straighter, a little worried at Emery's urgent tone.

  “The second phase of treatment, they tell me.”

  He shook his head. “No, you're fine. They removed all the cancer and intend to implement you as some type of agent for the Imperium.”

  The kid laughed. “That's crazy.”

  Emery just met his eyes sternly. “Do I look crazy, Kid?”

  The kid shook his head. “Now, I'm going to hand you your chart, and you're going to read it. Really read it, and I'm going to get the other three kids while you do that. We'll get them to safety, if you can help. Can you do that?”

  The kid swallowed hard, but nodded. His cheeks were sunken thanks to his ordeal, but he seemed open minded and willing to listen. The chart would be all he'd need to convince him. It was all in there.

  Emery handed him the chart, and went to wake the other children two girls and one tiny boy of six. He sat the kids on a bench chair in the hall and peeked his head in at the boy. “You finished, kid?”