by P H Campbell
"Please tell me you told Mom not to tell Bleath about this place," Looie begged her sister.
"I told her," Ash confirmed, standing, and adding, "But I think I'll call again and make sure she understood the point."
CHAPTER 3
If anyone thought they'd get any sleep that night, that belief was quickly put to rest. Ash and Looie had a well-deserved reputation within their usual circles as irrepressible, razzle-dazzle artists, able to con most anyone into doing what they wanted, be it through fast talk, deliberate deception or a nipple slip at the right moment for the right person. But Seren had dumped a reservoir of water on their usual bullshit parade, forcing them to do something they rarely did in their lives.
Grow up and be honest.
It wasn't something they were incapable of. But between Seren's steely resolve, laconic nature and unswerving devotion to her cause, and her even-handed, honest approach to dealing with it, the two realized that they'd have to honestly adult their way through this to get anything done if they were to help themselves, let alone their alliance, at all.
That night, on their ship, the two talked rapidly and came to a unified conclusion – be good. It sucked for the fun-loving duo, but having to be good was necessary. They realized that given the enormity of the struggles the people of this one planet had undergone, and the potential impact having that access to the wealth of minerals and metals the system would have on the Shade Alliance, their usual antics would be massively counterproductive.
So after talking, the two approached Seren with a free offer.
It was a first for both of them. The Shade rarely did "free" for anyone.
Seren regarded the two openly but without hostility.
"I know we gave you a bad impression," Ash started off.
"It could have been better, as mine could have been, too, but you're not diplomats, so there's no harm, no foul there," Seren replied pragmatically.
"We decided we want to make it up to you, and we think we came up with something that will help," Ash told her. "Our ship has medical gear that can probably cure whatever this epidemic is that you have. Start bringing your people here, starting with your friend. If what we read about how the ancients handled their epidemics is happening here, you probably need her healthy to do her job. And if she can do her job, that'll make things easier on you."
Seren's heart leaped at the news, she but knew that Sasha wouldn't do anything unless the more ill were treated first.
Still, if coached in the right way, Seren was reasonably sure she could convince Sasha to do that. In the long run, it was better to have Sasha back at her job than to have Seren doing it for her.
"I'll have to talk to her to get her to agree to it," Seren told the twins. "But that offer, if it works, will to a very long way to mending any bad impressions you may have given people here. We have a racist problem, as I'm sure you know, Ash. Believe me, it's nothing personal. Borderlandians won't give two shits what you look like.
"Electrians and Magentians are a lot slower in dealing with that. It's cultural, and they're learning tolerance, because their kids look, sort of, like all the Human colonists. It's just a matter of them getting used to a new kind of face."
"If it helps, I can stay out of sight," Ash volunteered.
"You are an extremely attractive person, Ash," Seren told her. "Don't let the prejudice of some of my world's people make you go into hiding."
"I think I'm blushing," Ash admitted. "Thank you for that."
"It's my genuine pleasure, Ash," Seren replied. "I'll call Sasha and tell her what you've offered. I expect her to insist that the sickest are treated first. But she has to know that it works before she lets anyone else get treated. Her medical knowledge is almost fourteen thousand standard years old. Even so, she's going to want to make sure her patients aren't going to hurt, and will be cured."
"I get that," Ash agreed.
Seren made the call on her pad.
"Seren?" Sasha asked. "What's wrong?"
"You're still sick, is what's wrong," Seren told her.
"I know that," Sasha agreed testily. "So why did you call me at two? I have another deci to sleep."
Seren flipped the pad around, pointing it at the women with her.
"The very cute Human on the left is Looie," Seren told Sasha. "The equally cute non-human on the right is Ash. They aren't from around here. They have a faster than light-speed spaceship, parked on the airfield where anyone who's more blind than a newborn piglet can't help but notice, which contains medical gear fourteen thousand standard Earth years more advanced than anything we have here which needs to be used against the virus, and since I know how you think, you'll want to make sure their medical techniques are effective before you allow their use on anyone else."
"Hi Sasha, or is that Doctor Sasha?" Looie waved.
"Greetings, Sasha," Ash smiled.
"Call me Sasha," Sasha replied evenly, "and greetings back. Seren, have I gone crazy?"
"The reality is much more interesting than crazy," Seren told her. "These two are basically like me, but twins."
"They have exactly the same hair color, and I assume body hair color, eyes, build and height," Sasha noted. "They may well share significant amounts of genetic similarities."
"Hey, our nipples and skin tones are even the same color," Looie offered. "We were made to be what we wanted to be. We're not exactly clones, but we aren't natural outcomes of breeding. Our hosts died about five thousand standard years or so ago. Mine was a male. Ash's was a female. Mine was Human. Ash's was Methonian. And both of us share genetic traits from each of them, with Ash having more from the Methonian, and me from the Human."
"Our donor was created as a translation device for the Methonians to talk to the Humans, who verbally communicated, since Methonians can only communicate through mind-speech – a kind of telepathy, only it isn't," Looie continued. "We used to be one entity, with two minds, able to talk to and understand both species. But things went to shit, and we were stuffed by our genetic female progenitor into a stasis tube and found by our "mother", Cinder."
"The body we once shared was constructed as much as it was grown. It was a device, not a fully biological entity, and not exactly well integrated," Ash jumped in to explain. "We had, at most, a fifteen standard year life span. We were a machine, with living parts. Cinder wanted to help us, and figured out a way to make genetic bodies for each of us, and put our separate minds into the right body."
"She moved heaven and Earth to get what we needed to stay alive, and when we woke up, we were in different bodies, designed to be what we imagined ourselves as being," Looie concluded for her.
"You two need to talk to Seren about how she came to be," Sasha remarked.
"She told us," Ash mentioned. "Considering all things, we think her back-story is better than ours."
"How does this cure work?" Sasha asked.
Ash and Looie looked at one another.
"No idea," they said in unison.
"We're sort of prospectors, not med-techs," Ash explained. "The ship takes care of local diseases and stuff automatically. The med gear is usually only for injuries or diagnosis of things going wrong in the body."
"What do I have to do?" Sasha asked.
The twins once again looked at each other. They weren't up on the details of how their technology worked. No one had told them there'd be a quiz on the ways and means modern technology kept plagues from hopping between planets. After some back-and-forth guesses in mind-speech, they offered their best conclusion.
"Come aboard?" Ash asked Looie. Looie shrugged and nodded. Neither had taken any precautions or other such things when visiting planets. Whatever the process was that kept exotic diseases at bay, it was done automatically, and likely by the ship itself.
"Am I allowed to leave quarantine?" Sasha asked.
"I'll grant a medical exception provided you wear the usual protective gear," Seren told her.
Sasha donned her mask and asked, "The ship
is at the airfield?"
"You can't possibly miss it," Seren assured her.
Several units later, Sasha tentatively boarded the large spaceship parked in the middle of the airfield. She paused as she crossed the threshold at the outer lock door.
"That felt… weird," she blinked as the airlock sensors detected a pathogen and engaged a resonance field that instantly destroyed all traces of it. She felt a tickle in her nose at the same time. The tickle came from a mist that she wouldn't have noticed had she not been paying close attention to what was going on. She didn't know that the mist would offset the toxic effects of having billions of viruses annihilated at once.
By the time she entered the inner doors of the airlock, the process completely cured Sasha of the virus, along with several other pathogens she had no clue she had. It only remained to verify that the illness-causing virus had been destroyed.
Several blood tests later confirmed Sasha was virus free.
After a very passionate and lasting, long over-due kiss with Seren, and Looie and even Ash, the four got to work on making sure the airlock treatment could cure the rest of the planet.
Seren called everyone within range of their network, giving them the same message:
"We have a cure! Bring the most critical immediately to the Topside Village!"
Within half a unit, the planet had mobilized. Airships left, heading for direct routes overland to pick up the ill where they could. Underground, they pressed every transport that could move into service. A hundred thousand critically ill kids arrived by various means of transportation to the Topside Village. It didn't matter if it infected if the adults with them. They'd walk through the airlocks, too, with their sick kids and be cured just the same.
Most of the Borderlandians who made up the bulk of the ill had never seen the real sky. It didn't matter if it was bright with the sun, or dazzling with stars, the newly cured, feeling better than they had in many cycles, paused and looked up, realizing that their salvation had come from there.
Whether carried on board by others, helped by someone through, or could walk through on their own, one by one, they arrived, passed through the airlock, and emerged again cured. Looie and Ash monitored the levels of the things to keep track of what might need to replaced considering how much of a resource load their ship was being required to deal with. Fortunately, however much it might have been, the ship seemed to not need to replenish it.
Each "treatment" took mere centis – as long as it took to enter the ship. On their way out through a second airlock, another came through the first, and emerged cured by the time the earlier person had cleared the ramp. They kept apart the treated and untreated groups to avoid reinfection.
Though they didn't know it, the ship could deal with multiple individuals at once. It was never in danger of being overwhelmed, even if they crowded aboard by the dozens, and left in the same number. As it was, the process was individual for the sickest people, treating one person at a time, in an orderly manner. Sasha wanted to be sure that each person received the full dose of the treatment for optimal results. Once the most ill received their treatment, the less ill would receive theirs in greater numbers per session.
But a hundred thousand centis was still several days, and the process was underway for at least that long, with each successive ill person treated being less and less likely to die from their illness. With a million people infected, it would take cycles to get everyone through, and by then the help would arrive. The epidemic wasn't over, but the immediate crisis was.
They lost a hundred kids on the first day, all because they died en route to the airfield. No more died thereafter.
Seren and Sasha were busy that entire time, coordinating transports and making sure the efforts were being appropriately applied. The still-sick wanted to be cured. That was understandable because the symptoms were horrible. But unless they were on the cusp of death, they didn't have priority.
At first, the efforts focused on getting the most ill to the airfield for treatment. Once word went around, the efforts focused on keeping the less critically ill in isolation to be sure they didn't infect anyone else while they waited their turn. Even if the line moved with nearly unbelievable speed, given that it offered a cure for an intractable illness, it was an exceptionally long line.
Over a few days, the message finally got out that the less sick were to be last and the most sick were to be first. Personal survival wasn't as critical to those suffering less severe symptoms, so most people stoically accepted their place in line, knowing that although they were miserable, they'd avoid any chance of death tapped them on the shoulder. Once Sasha made that truth clear, the lines became more patient, the cooperation more willing.
Within the first quad of the landing of Ash and Looie, they had cured half of the ill population.
By that time, Seren and Sasha had little to do. The arrangements for the transportation of the sick were in place and running smoothly. The population was cooperating. The walk through the airlock was effective, and spot tests confirmed that. The bleak atmosphere and mood which had hung over the entire planet had vastly improved and was still improving. At that point, for the first time in nearly half a year, both Seren and Sasha could sit back and let their staff handle things with no more direction.
Ash and Looie had little to do during this time, mostly because the ship handled the problem without intervention. They kept the Shade Alliance apprised of the situation and assumed the United Galactic Worlds were also being kept apprised. The Shade Alliance was meticulously obeying the treaty which both sides understood was for their best interests.
With their immediate problems being solved, and Ash and Looie still trying to figure out how to make a credit on their efforts, the four of them – Sasha, Seren, Ash and Looie – were spending more and more time together.
Contrary to their usual behavior, it was Ash who brought up the realities, and the possibilities.
The four were lounging in the ship's galley, which made eating a delight instead of an industrial necessity. It was a large, cheerfully appointed hall that could accommodate six, or even sixty, people at once. Instead of tables and chairs, they had stands and lounges. Space travel was often boring, and occasionally lengthy. Ash and Looie weren't much into sterile, industrialized decor if something more delightful to the senses was available when they went space traveling.
It wasn't as if they couldn't afford "the best" for the style in which they traveled. Both their "mom" and them could buy entire planetary systems with what they had made on moving the Shade from their various locations to the UGC 1182 system where they all lived when the twins weren't out creating havoc elsewhere.
"I think Mom will be here in a day or so," Ash remarked, sipping her alcoholic beverage of choice.
They were celebrating the turning point where half of the sick had received treatment, and it would be at least a cycle before the other half became critically ill, even if the treatments stopped, by which time the rest of the promised help would arrive. The celebration had started hours earlier, and a large variety of intoxicating beverages well lubricated the participants, most of them entirely new to Seren and Sasha. The latter two gauged their rates of consumption on how much and how fast the other two drank.
This meant all four of them got relatively plastered relatively quickly and all were well into the part of being intoxicated that made them become silly by then.
"Their mom looks like me, sounds like me, and acts like me, only she's older," Seren mock whispered to Sasha. Both of them were just as lubricated as Ash. Looie wasn't far behind them.
"But does she cum only from sucking on her nipples?" Sasha asked, then looked around with a certain amount of consternation and asked, "Should I have mentioned that?"
"Mom might like it," Ash mentioned staring at her glass, trying to decide if she should drink more now or wait a few more seconds. "I know I do, but we're not genetically related, so it's hard to say."
A moderately inebriated
cat-like person was rather amusing to watch.
"I have the modesty of a rock, so I don't care who knows," Seren admitted. She lifted her glass to the other two visitors from a distant world, "It's you guys we need to thank."
The twins both pulled out their collars, looked down their shirts, and said simultaneously, "Guys?"
"If I said what I think when I said guys, Sasha would get jealous," Seren admitted.
"Nope," Sasha insisted, her head weaving a bit as she peered at the two. "They're both very attractive. So I understand why you think what you think."
"If you're thinking what I think you're thinking, can I watch?" Seren asked with a wink at the two others.
Sasha took a moment to think about that, then nodded.
"Yes," she agreed, her head weaving a bit. "But only if they want to. I know you. You're as turned on by them as I am."
"You know me better than most do," Seren agreed.
Looie looked at Ash.
"Was that a proposition?" she asked.
"I think so," Ash replied, taking another swallow.
"I'll remove the confusion," Sasha offered. "If Seren's okay with it, yes, it's a proposition. I owe you two my life. I can't repay that debt, but I'm very good at making a woman cum like crazy."
"She is," Seren agreed. "And I'm fine with it."
Ash turned to Looie and asked, "Have you ever wanted to do Mom?"
"Can I lie about that?" Looie asked back.
Ash had to think about it.
"No," she told her sister.
"You know I did," Looie replied. "And I know you wanted to, too. But we didn't have sex parts."
Looie pulled out the waistband of her garment and looked down.
"I have them now," she mentioned.
"So do I," Ash agreed. "But I don't have to look to know that."
"Well, I was just a tiny part of brain in your head, so I didn't have a body, only a mouth, and, well, the less I mention what I'd like to do with my mouth now the better," Looie needlessly reminded her.
She was looking at her "sister" with naked lust through inebriated eyes.
