Farenough: Strangers Book 2

by Melissa McCann

  The Special Commander Marduk nodded. "I'll get my people to coordinate with your people, and we'll move in three or four at a time."

  Tora nodded. "Thank you for helping to protect humans."

  With the black-uniforms to help control the Marines soldiers, Tora thought maybe everybody would get through the night without humans getting hurt.

  #

  Annia had let Mother Katha talk her into taking a nap. The stimulants had pushed her past her body's diminished endurance, and she slept so hard she wasn't sure she had even breathed. She woke disoriented and exhausted. Her head ached. She thought she must have slept for hours, but when she looked from her cot to the compiler on the other side of the lab, the yellow light had not yet switched to the blue that would indicate a completed batch of the virophage.

  When she laid down, she had arranged Honeybear in the crook of her elbow. The animal had regained most of its hydraulic tension and seemed more alert, but it was slow to recover from the shock of Solante's sonic assault. Now it rippled itself up her arm and rubbed its trunk over her mouth and nose.

  She pushed it away and sat up. The nap had helped. She still felt logy, but her headache had receded, and her bones didn't ache so much. She went to the door of the lab. The daylight had faded outside the vitrine doors across the waiting room. It wasn't sneakdilly time, but the predators would swarm in a few hours, and they would be drawn to the smell of so many people. It looked like someone was putting up tents and temporary shelters and distributing food the way the militia had done outside the clinic on that first day. She spotted someone she knew from Tora's militia, saw some blue sashes and caps among them, so Tora must still have control of Solante's bulls. She saw bits and pieces of the black uniforms of the Cyrion planetary police, and some white uniforms she didn't recognize.

  Someone had imported more of Maycee's family, too. Black-haired, pale-skinned Maycee clones strode around the room and up and down the stairs looking busy and efficient, and they were efficient. They pointed and conferred, and directed patients to be shifted one direction or another—usually with the actual carrying to be done by someone else—and it all seemed to work smoothly.

  Annia thought she saw Cho'en coming toward her, but as the hybrid gaean come closer, she realized it was a stranger. She had similar coloring, but her shape and stance were subtly different. Annia raised a hand to attract the gaean's attention. "Is there any word about the cure? Has Maycee come back?"

  The gaean cocked her head. Her jaws opened, and a sweet little-girl voice piped, "I don't know about Magdalen-Carroll. The cure is still hours from now. We are busy keeping humans alive and doing very well." Her bells jingled diligence/determination.

  Annia wondered if this particular gaean was always this perky, or if she had been into the stimulants. "What about Cho'en/Ka? Is she here?"

  "Not here. Her clinic. I don't know where that is."

  "That's all right. Is there anything I can do to help?"

  Negative, the gaean jingled. "Unless you mind-touch or heal, we don't need you. Go back to sleep."

  She trotted away with her bells saying busy/diligence.

  Annia couldn't very well go back to sleep. She found her scanner and started scanning the patients lying nearest to her lab. Someone had organized the pallets into rows, leaving an aisle between each row wide enough for an average-sized full gaean to pass. She had to give up when she realized the Charmmes family had sorted the patients into groups in similar stages of infection. They already had triage systematized. As more patients came through the doors, the arrivals were scanned, categorized and directed either to a pallet or back outside with the lower-priority patients.

  Annia returned her scanner to her belt and took the hand of the young woman who had opened her eyes while Annia examined her. "You'll be all right," Annia assured her. "The cure is on its way; you'll be fine until it gets here."

  She got to her feet, teetering a little and thinking she might have overestimated her strength. She was thinking of going back to her cot in the lab when the front doors slammed open, almost striking a flitting hybrid gaean. A mixed group of militia and Solante's police came in, supporting between them a man in the trousers and stun jacket of the Cyrion police. A big man came behind them carrying a diminutive female body. Annia's face and hands went cold. She recognized Mr. Bracxs, and the woman was Dess. Annia stumbled toward them, but a halfbreed gaean had already cocked her head at Dess and jingled violently. A pair of full gaeans...Taha and Heth?...took Dess from Mr. Bracxs' arms and laid her down. All three, the full-gaeans and the hybrid, crouched on their bellies around her.

  Annia snagged the arm of a red-headed woman passing her with a scanner. "That woman, is she alive? What happened to her?"

  "The gaeans have her. She'll be fine." Annia took a second look at the woman. Apart from the color of her hair and a hint of olive in her complexion, she was the image of Maycee without the flutter sign.

  Annia said, "What about the other one? I'm a doctor. I can do trauma surgery."

  The woman finally looked directly at Annia. "The most serious injury is a projectile wound in the abdomen. The rest is a broken leg, broken ribs and a concussion. Can you deal with all that?"

  Annia nodded.

  The woman extended her hand. "I'm Chloe-Belle. I'm sending the bullet wound and concussion upstairs to one of the surgeries. Thank the flaming stars we don't have many of these kinds of wounds to deal with."

  Annia hung back long enough to put her hand on Mr. Bracxs big arm and assure him that with the gaeans to help her, Dess would be fine. He stood and flexed his hands open and shut as if he didn't know what to think or do without his little partner in the lead.

  Chloe-Belle installed Annia in a surgery. The Charmmeses and the gaeans had brought medical supplies and equipment. Annia had a fully-equipped surgery for the first time since she had left Guardian. The concussion didn't threaten permanent injury, so she affixed patches and went to work on the belly wound with surgical probes and adhesive. She had finished and turned to the broken bones in the left leg when Cho'en appeared in the door of the surgery, flicking her bells with satisfaction. "I was afraid I might not see you again."

  Annia extended her hand palm up. "Grade three manipulator. I thought you were at your clinic."

  "More wounded coming here. Gaeans going there to send worst injuries here. Less serious problems to our camp."

  "What's happening out there?"

  "Marines are here. They are not good with civilians. People are fighting."

  Annia hissed a curse. "Where is that cure? Did you check my compiler when you went by? Does anyone know I have a batch coming?"

  "Not finished," Cho'en said.

  They worked as a team over the stream of injuries. Annia's headache receded into the background. She fell into the hypnotic precision of surgery. It was rough, raw work, leaving no time for delicacy. Med-techs in white prepped patients with artificial blood and anesthetics. Annia lost track of how many faces crossed her surgical table until an increased commotion in the hallway and the sound of distress expressed in thousands of gaean bells caught her attention. She raised her head. "What is going on out there?" She couldn't leave her patient to investigate.

  Chloe-Belle stopped in the doorway. "The Big Bang just broke loose in the lobby. It looks like hundreds of procreationists are mobbing us at once."

  Annia blinked sweat out of her eyes. "Who's leading them?"

  "I don't know, but we can't handle them. They're bringing families of five and six children. They all need help right now, and it's going to be harder than we expected to get enough of the cure. I just got word of plague outbreaks on Firstep and Gowonalong."

  "How bad?"

  "A handful of cases each so far. Charmmes labs on Firstep are propagating the phage to every world in range of a hard beam."

  Annia said, "Have you been in touch with planetary health on Yetfurther? They've had the data the longest."

  "They're not ready. Have you even test
ed the cure on human subjects yet?"

  "I had fifty perfect tests in the lab, but the data was stolen before I had time for human trials, or even tribbles."

  "So by the time we know if it doesn't work, it will be too late."

  Annia was so tired, she had to brace her knee against the pedestal of the table to stay upright. She blinked to focus her eyes. "It's going to work."

  Chloe-Belle said, "It's going to be too late for some of these new arrivals anyway. You and Cho'en/Ka are off surgery for the time being. The gaeans are bringing in more med-techs who can do most of what you are doing now, and we're routing it all to some kind of makeshift infirmary on the waterfront. I need someone on triage who knows this disease."

  Annia was stunned by the number of plague victims crowding the halls. She noted the telltale rash and the flush of fever on the faces of some of the adults as well. Cho'en stooped over the nearest family, lightly touching each child in turn. Annia drew her scanner and approached another group.

  A young father with a small child cradled against his shoulder clutched Annia's wrist. "Are you a doctor?"

  "I am." She had to concentrate to make sense of the scanner's reading. She raised her voice. "I've got an emergency here." The child was limp, barely breathing. The father's chin trembled, and his mouth twisted out of shape.

  Cho'en leaned over Annia's shoulder and touched the child. Her bells twitched. Distress, despair. "I will take."

  The father released his daughter to Cho'en and pulled the young woman beside him closer to his chest. Annia said, "The gaeans will do what they can for the little girl. You're both well enough to wait."

  The young mother saw Cho'en about to leave with her older child. She struggled free of her husband's arm and tried to thrust the small bundle in her arms at Cho'en. "What about my baby? He's the sickest. Aren't you going to help him?"

  Annia raised her scanner, knowing what she would find. The baby cradled in the woman's arms was already dead. Helpless, she laid her hand on the still body wrapped in blankets. "I'm sorry. It's too late."

  The woman clenched her bared teeth and keened, an eerie sound that raised the hair on Annia's arms. Her husband wrapped her, still keening, in his arms with the baby's body pressed between them.

  "I'm sorry," Annia repeated. She backed away, unable to help the stunned couple through their grief, unable even to take charge of the corpse. They would have to stand there in the hallway, holding the dead body of their child.

  Annia willed Cho'en to keep the other child alive, but that was all she could do.

  Numb, she turned her scanner to the next group of children clustered around their mother's feet. The woman carried the two smallest, though she seemed hardly able to keep her feet herself. In this group, the youngest children were the least affected by the disease. They had been relatively well-fed. The youngest was probably still nursing, and the next to older child had not yet completely lost the immunity conferred by his mother's milk. The oldest child leaned miserably against the wall, rubbing his running nose on his sleeve. His face was pale and rimmed with red around the eyes. He had been run down and malnourished for some time.

  As Annia ran her scanner over the three middle children, the mother said nervously, "You can help them, can't you? They're saying doctors have a cure."

  "We're waiting for it. I thought you weren't allowed to talk to doctors. Did Mr. Ambrose change his mind?"

  "He's gone. There's nobody at his house. We tried to ask him about the children. They just kept getting sicker. A lot of the little ones died already, and some of the older ones, too. I didn't know what else to do, so I brought them here."

  Annia spotted a med-tech. She waved him over. To the mother, she said, "We're going to do everything we can. I want a gaean to help your oldest boy, and maybe the younger two if they have time."

  The tech, someone unrelated to the Charmmes family for a change, nodded. "I've got that, Doctor. Don't worry, ma'am, we'll take care of you."

  While Annia leaned against the wall, trying to get her balance, she heard Mr. Hollin call her name. She spotted him several meters away down the tightly-crowded hallway. Soot and sweat streaked his face, and a long cut ran down one cheek. Someone had treated it with a rough coat of gel. He dodged through the mass of moving bodies, human and gaean. Annia managed to take a few steps in his direction. Just as she was almost close enough to touch him, her vision blurred, and her knees buckled. She vaguely heard Mr. Hollin shouting for a doctor.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  The first fights started at sneakdilly time. The Marines soldiers had not been very good for delivering supplies or for calming frightened humans. Even with partial armor and only stun weapons, they wanted to treat humans like enemies. Tora's soldiers—militia and blue-sashes—and the black-uniforms had tried to calm the humans and keep the Marines soldiers under control, but finally, some Marines went out without Tora's soldiers to watch them, and they started a fight with a human, and some of Tora's and Special Commander Marduk's soldiers tried to protect the humans without fighting the Marines soldiers, and one of the black-uniforms was damaged, and all the humans who saw the fight stopped being frightened and became angry.

  Now all Tora could do was try to break up riots, get humans to safe places, and think about killing the Admiral Hirshorn and stamping on his bones.

  #

  "There's fires on the waterfront, Chief." Fist, the lieutenant of the runners bent over with his hands on his knees, puffing to get his breath.

  Fires were bad. Fires meant humans could not stay inside. They had to move, and anywhere they moved, other humans would be angry and frightened. Liam ran patterns in his head, moving people from one place to another, finding where they could go that would be safe.

  Runners said Maycee's camp was being used for fixing damaged soldiers and humans, so humans could not go there to get away from fires. Not the market square, too open. Not the district, too crowded. East or north? East was better. Further from water to fight fires, but closer to mountains and open space with no other people to spread the disease or to be afraid and angry.

  Liam had a clip now that he could use to talk to Tora or Ms. Stamos at the Communication center. He squeezed the clip. "Ms. Stamos, there are fires at the waterfront."

  "I got the message, Chief. I'm routing some of our people there to deal with it."

  "Tell them move humans east to open space."

  Tora's voice came now. "Tell Special Commander Marduk don't shoot them. Tell General Baldwin to make Marines soldiers carry blankets and shelters."

  "The marines, Colonel? Aren't they what started this mess?"

  "Keep them busy carrying heavy things. Use militia and blue-shirts to control them."

  "I'll get that going, Colonel."

  #

  Annia was hot, she ached, and her head felt like steel bands were closing around her temples. Mr. Hollin said, "It's as well you're no bigger than you are, Ms. Annia." He was carrying her in his arms. Her head rested on his shoulder.

  Maycee's voice said, "Take her to the lab. Downstairs. There's a batch of the cure in the compiler. We should be able to get at least one dose out of it."

  Annia thought she ought to resist. She could live a while longer. There must be people who needed treatment much more than she did. She tried to tell Ferus so, but she could only exhale and move her lips a little.

  The gel bed felt cool to her fever-hot body. She opened her eyes to see Ferus kneeling beside the cot. The cut on his face would heal badly. There would be a scar unless someone closed it properly with adhesive. Annia tried to touch it. He intercepted her hand, closed it between his and kissed the back of her fingers. "Be still now, Annia. You did everything you could. You can't do any more."

  She tried to squeeze his hand. It was easier to close her eyes and drift away.

  She could still hear people speaking. Mr. Hollin was telling someone to hurry.

  Maycee's cool, scaled palm brushed Annia's face. "Guess what, Annia?"
<
br />   Annia opened her eyes to Maycee's crooked grin and felt the pinch of the injector under her chin.

  Maycee said, "We're starting human trials."

  #

  Liam's runners could not stay near the fires on the waterfront. He had sent them to Ms. Stamos. She would relay information to Liam when he needed to know it. The Marines soldiers had made humans afraid and angry, then made them more afraid and angry by fighting them. The Admiral Hirshorn had not stopped the Marines soldiers from fighting. He had told them to fight humans.

  The black-uniforms used stun weapons on civilians to stop the fighting, but the Marines soldiers had stun-resistant armor, and they thought they should fight humans. Liam did not want his runners to be stunned. Stun was bad when there were fires and fighting and a stunned runner could not get up and run away.

  Without runners to bring him information, Liam had gone to help fight the fires. It was past sneakdilly time. The fires were mostly dead now, and Liam had gone to the hospital to make sure Maycee was all right.

  The hospital had more gaeans now, all around the big room on the ground floor. Humans went back and forth between the gaeans, humans who all looked like Maycee only without the cool, slick scales that made her different from everyone.

  He wandered for a little while, then Maycee appeared in front of him the way she had come and gone in the communications room in the Solante's house. "Lee." She put her arms around his neck and hugged him and pressed her face into his neck. Then she pulled back, and touched his face with her palm. "You're exhausted, and you smell. Go home and sleep. I'll come soon."

  She went away. He did not want to leave the hospital where Maycee was. He looked for Annia and found her in her lab with Mr. Hollin and Cho'en. Annia lay on a cot, and her face was pale. Liam was alarmed. "Sick?" Annia should not be sick.

  Cho'en said, calm/reassurance. "She is testing the cure. It is working very well."