Blaedergil's Host

by C. M. Simpson

  “We don’t need to,” the scientist replied. “We’ve got two infected people right here.”

  I had just enough time to start turning to look at them, when Delight wrapped her arms around me.

  “You’d better be quick,” Delight said. “Cutter doesn’t cope well with needles.”

  Oh, for fuck’s sake!

  I still couldn’t stop my feet trying to put some distance between me and the technician, and didn’t quite register it when Delight moved her hold from restraint to choke. She was back to guarding the entry to the alcove when I came round again, but she glanced down as I pushed myself into a sitting position, and then struggled slowly to my feet.

  I glared, and she arched an eyebrow in a ‘whatcha gonna do about it’ kind of way, but I wasn’t ready to take her on. Later. There would be a later, I promised myself. She snickered, but I ignored her and turned to the scientists, instead.

  “You get what you need?” I asked, taking three careful paces away from Delight, and retrieving my Glazer from the bench where it had been put.

  The technician looked up from where she was observing what the scientist was doing with slides and a pipette. I noted the wary glance she cast at Delight, and then she opened the door on the nearest replicator, and pulled out a mug of, well, I don’t know what.

  “You’ll need to drink this,” she said, passing it to me, and that’s when I noticed the beaker of blood in front of the scientist. It was a fairly large beaker. My world wavered a little at the sight of it.

  “Is that mine?” I asked.

  At which point, Delight took the mug from the technician and wrapped her arm around my shoulders, turning me towards the other wall.

  “Drink,” she said.

  Fan-fucking-tastic.

  At least I knew why I was feeling lightheaded.

  “How long was I out?” I asked, taking a sip from the mug. It didn’t taste too bad, sort of like a beef broth, and I didn’t want to know exactly what it was replicating. The fluid in the mug was still warm, so I must have shown signs of coming round, in time for them to heat it.

  “Long enough.” Delight was unsympathetic.

  “Did it work?”

  “Almost,” said the scientist, at the same time as the technician said, “Yes.”

  “Well, which is it?”

  “We’ve made a vaccine, but we’re having trouble getting it into aerosol form.”

  “Can you spread it by nanites?” I shook my head. “Do you even have nanites for that?”

  “No nanites,” the technician said. “Not our department.”

  “Can we find—”

  “Forget the nanites,” Delight told me, and I had the feeling she might have already raised the idea.

  “Fine. Where’s the problem?”

  “We can get it into liquid form, but it stops working when you apply heat to vaporize it.”

  “Oh.” I wondered exactly how much serum we’d lost working that one out.

  “What about heating something else, then misting the serum into that vapor?”

  “A two-step process,” the technician said. “If we can get it... Nah. And spraying the stuff into the faces of the plagued would work, but not before they’d attacked.”

  “What about a way to stop them attacking? Can we knock them out, and then spray them?”

  “N... Wait a minute...”

  “We could gas the place,” the scientist said. “Pretty sure we’ve got what the replicators need to produce that.”

  “Knockout gas would be good,” and wouldn’t I just like to know why Mack sounded like he’d been drinking. Man should not be slurring like that.

  “Just hurry.”

  “Do we have masks?” Delight wanted to know.

  “We’ve got breathers and bio-suits,” which begged the question about why they’d been playing with this virus outside a proper lab.

  “Where is the containment lab?”

  They glanced at each other, and then back at Delight and me.

  “On Costral.”

  It was a good thing I was already leaning on the bench, because I felt a little weak at the knees.

  “You mean...”

  “Yes,” the lead scientist snapped. “Those madmen have been getting us to play with a highly contagious, goddamn virus outside of an appropriately equipped laboratory.”

  He paused, then added softly, “And I’ve been going along with it because they have my wife, my parents, and my children in what they call ‘company’ accommodation’, and I couldn’t get them out.”

  He looked so tired, and defeated, and disgusted with himself, that I almost sorry for him. Delight wasn’t so convinced.

  “Why didn’t you ask for help?”

  “They monitored our comms.” He gulped, and then swallowed hard several times, his face growing paler than it already was. “That, and we saw happened to the guy who did... him and his family.”

  The technician turned away from us, but not before we saw the tears start in her eyes, or the way she stuffed her fist into her mouth to keep from crying. Her partner stood and awkwardly patted her back. He looked over at Delight.

  “We didn’t know what we’d signed up for, and, by the time we did, it was too late. We could only hope a chance would come.”

  Neither Delight nor I asked what chance. We both knew it was a chance to get away—and, up until we’d arrived, that chance hadn’t arrived. Anxiety showed on his face, as he started at us.

  “That Mariner guy, do you think he’s got our families out, yet?”

  Oh, stars, I hoped so, but I didn’t know for sure. I looked to Delight.

  “I’ll ask for an update as soon as one’s available,” she said, and I saw her eyes take on a slightly distant look, as she did what I assumed was exactly that. I couldn’t be sure, because it wasn’t something I was privy to.

  The technician gave a sniff, and gently pushed her colleague away. She reached out to tear off a piece of paper towel, so she could blow her nose and wipe her eyes, and then she squared her shoulders, and returned to the bench where they’d been working.

  “Let’s do this,” she said. “We need to get the station clear if we’re to have half a chance of seeing our families, again.”

  I watched them turn back to their task.

  “What if you had an airborne counter-virus?” I asked, and they stopped, so I stumbled through the half-baked idea forming in my head. “I mean. What if you didn’t go for a cure, but for a virus that would attack the virus they’ve got?”

  “It might kill them... and we don’t have years to get it right.”

  “Damn,” I said.

  “Shut-up and drink your soup,” Delight ordered, so I shut up, and drank my soup, and kept a good eye on the vent while I did it, leaving Delight to guard the alcove entrance.

  27—Holding the Fort

  After what seemed like several hours, but what I knew in reality had been only one—because that’s all the implant said it had been—the technician and her senior colleague, looked up from their work.

  “We’ve got it,” they said.

  Delight and I gave them blank stares, and they went on. I’m sure what they were saying made perfect, scientific sense, but I didn’t understand any of it... except the part where they were ready to go back out into the lab proper, and we had to try a two-pronged attack.

  Firstly, they’d solved the aerosol problem, and could get stuff they needed into, and then out through, the vents, but they needed me to tweak the humidity, the air temperature, and the rate of flow. Fine. I hacked them a path from the desk top, so they could see the interface, and then used the implant to dive into the code and change what needed changing.

  While the scientist and I did that, the technician swapped out the equipment they’d been using to contaminate the air with virus, and placed the new set-up on a table beneath it. Delight helped her, but kept her Glazer to hand at all times. By the time we were done, the locking mechanism on the door to the lab had given
way to the pressure of the plagued outside. The table still held.

  I felt the difference in the air, almost as soon as I’d put the last adjustment in place.

  “How long before this goes station-wide?” Delight asked.

  “Forty minutes,” the scientist said, and I looked at the Odyssey agent.

  We were both thinking the same thing—it was too long.

  “What if one of the ships were to push the same stuff into the station from the concourse?” I asked.

  “It would help, but I don’t know how much it would reduce the time by. You’ll need the masks. We’re adding the gas.”

  I don’t get how they’d managed to combine the gas, and the anti-virus, but they had, and that was the mixture they pushed into the ventilation system. I contacted Tens over the comms.

  “You need to seal the ship,” I said, but he disagreed.

  “It’s a cure?”

  “Sure,” and I wondered why he sounded so fatigued.

  “Can you send the formulae to Doc?”

  “Sure,” I said, and grabbed the scientist.

  “They need to know the formulae,” I said, and he rattled off the settings for the replicator.

  “You catch that?”

  “Gotcha,” but Tens didn’t answer alone, and it puzzled me as to why Doc was in the command center.

  “Tell the Odyssey ship to stay buttoned tight,” Tens said, and I got half an idea of what had gone down.

  Oh. Well, fuck. Suddenly, I was really glad Tens had managed to lock the other ships into their moorings, and get the runaways to return. I was going to go Corovan-hunting, if I survived when this was done.

  “Staying sealed is standard procedure,” Delight said, “but give me the formulae and I’ll pass that on.”

  She pulled out a new charge for her Glazer, and handed another one over to me.

  “We don’t know when they’ll fall over. Best to start out fresh.”

  While I changed clips, the technician finished her set-up, and hurried over to a cabinet set beside the refrigeration units. She returned with four rebreathers, and masks.

  “Sam and I will keep this going for as long as we can,” she said. “Just try and keep us safe.”

  I wondered what else she thought we’d be doing, while they sent the cure... or, at least, a reprieve, to the rest of the station. It wasn’t exactly like Delight or I could leave the lab. We couldn’t even go into the vents. Firstly, because I’d reprogrammed the drones into a much more aggressive defensive pattern around the lab, and secondly, because the scientists who’d been infected by the spider mutation seemed to be at home up there, and we didn’t know how many of those there were.

  Nope, we were going out via the corridors—just as soon as the plagued were comatose... or once the Odyssey team got here, whichever came first.

  “Agents, hold your positions.” That voice was new. I wondered if she had a party line to my head, or if she’d just chosen that moment to get her ass into gear.

  Delight shot me a sideways look, as I thought it.

  “Coincidence,” she said, “but I’m sending them our location, anyway. I don’t want to be mistaken as hostile.”

  That almost made me laugh. Hostile pretty much summed her up—and that was on a good day.

  “Thanks a lot,” she muttered. “Make sure that thing’s set on stun.”

  I checked the Glazer, and reduced the setting. We’d been killing the plagued out of necessity. With both sedative and cure in the air system, that wasn’t justifiable, any more. I sure as shit hoped they stunned like any other person, because the table across the door was starting to shift.

  I looked at Delight, and she looked at me.

  “Good luck,” I said to the scientists, and Delight and I moved forward to place our boots on the legs of the upturned table.

  It wasn’t much of a brace, but all it had to do was slow them down long enough for us to plug the hole with their comatose bodies. And we only had to do that, until the sedative and cure had taken effect. Only. Now why did I get the impression that that was going to be a lot harder than it sounded?

  I shifted so I had an angle through the wedge of light the plagued had forced between the door and the door-frame.

  “Hold,” Delight said. “Don’t shoot, unless they’re going to make it through.”

  Delight counselling restraint? I’d never thought to see the day.

  Smart ass. Delight wasn’t impressed, but I could hear Mack and Tens laughing somewhere in the distance of my mind. Well, at least someone was entertained—even if they sounded on the edge of hysteria.

  I watched as the plagued massed and shifted in the corridor, outside, not quite able to fathom why they’d come to the opening, stare at me, and then shift away, yielding their place to one of those behind them. Across from me, Delight watched the shift of their shadows, and frowned.

  “What are you doing to them?” she asked, and I shrugged.

  “Nothing. Just looking.”

  “And you called me hostile,” she muttered. “You’re scaring them with just a look.”

  “Maybe it’s my perfume.”

  “I doubt it.”

  “Hey.”

  “We’ve got them.” Mariner Lead Scorvy said, his message crashing into my implant. “Tell your people their families are safe.”

  I wanted to tell him that they weren’t my people, but he was gone before I could form a response, turfed off the line by same voice that had ordered Delight and I to stay put.

  “We’re sending a team in via the maintenance hatch to the lab. Patch us into the feeds.”

  She could only mean one set of feeds, so I gave her access to the path I’d hacked into the station’s systems, and then sent her the blueprints and highlighted the nearest hatch. I also sent her brief clips of the spider mutants, and the plagued, and heard muffled curses in the back of her transmission.

  Couldn’t be helped. At least they wouldn’t be coming in blind.

  And then I remembered the werewolves.

  “Is there a wolf contingent?” I asked.

  “They’ll be docking shortly. Seems they received a signal for help. Something about a rogue comms signal a wolf ship was being blamed for sending.”

  I ignored that, and got straight down to business. The less anyone looked into that signal, the better.

  “They have one of their own, and some new additions, here,” I told her, highlighting the laboratory where I’d found the newly turned scientists. “They didn’t think they had a choice.”

  “That’s a story, I’ve been hearing a lot lately,” and didn’t she sound impressed. “If the ones in charge weren’t native to the world, we’d indict the lot of them. As it is, I can only appeal to the High Council of Clans, and hope they see things our way.”

  Privately, I thought that the clans might be convinced if she could show them an economic advantage, but given the Corovan’s place in the pecking order, that was unlikely. Of course, Mack hadn’t picked up Melari, yet.

  “Mack’s still on station,” I said, and Delight looked at me.

  I waited for her to catch on. When she didn’t, I nudged her along.

  “As in, he hasn’t retrieved Melari.”

  “Fuck.”

  Delight’s summary of the situation didn’t seem to faze the operations leader.

  “Give me the coordinates.”

  I didn’t know them, so I patched her through to Mack.

  “Got it, and done—and hang on, captain. We are coming.”

  They were coming.

  My relief was short-lived, because the latest plagued to look in through the door took a deep breath, and gave a sudden guttural roar, its face contorting, and its mouth growing out of all proportion with the rest of its features. I had the Glazer up and firing before I realized what I was doing.

  The first three shots didn’t stop it, but, by then, it was most of the way through the gap in the door, and Delight was firing, too. I watched as another set of arms ri
pped their way through the lab coat it had been wearing, and I kept shooting, hoping it was the only one, that there weren’t any more behind it.

  I caught a flash of fangs and ichor, and then its head exploded.

  “I thought you said non-lethal.”

  “That thing was beyond help,” Delight told me, but she was already thumbing the settings’ switch back to stun.

  “Can we hold them if I switch off the drones?”

  “Why would you do a stupid thing like that?”

  “Your people are going into the ducts.”

  “Well, fuck. We can try.”

  It was like hearing a mirror of myself, and I wondered if Pritchard might not be right.

  Delight gave another of her eloquent snorts, mocking the idea we could be in any way similar... or maybe the idea that Pritchard could ever be right about anything. It made me smile, even as I fired at the next attempted entry.

  “I’ve got this. You switch the drones,” Delight said, and I realized I’d lost focus.

  Actually, I realized I was having trouble focusing at all, and I couldn’t work out why.

  “Drones,” Delight said. “Tell me when you’re done. I’ll get them to tell us when they’re in the vents.”

  I nodded, not caring that she couldn’t hear me. The coding for the drones was easy to find. After all, I’d been there before. Even so, I was glad I didn’t have to do more than tell the drones to stop.

  “It won’t fix the other counter-measures,” I said.

  “So. Fix it!” and I wondered why Delight was being so short-tempered—and I mean more so than usual.

  That task was a little harder to do. There were so many, and I felt... unwell. Light-headed. Shivery.

  “How far away are they?” I asked, and the commander replied.

  “We’re in the ducts. Good job.”

  “You cover the door and the wall to the left,” Delight said. “I’ve got the alcove, and the duct the cure’s going through.”

  It sounded weird, but that pretty much matched the world I was in, right now. Weird... and definitely not quite all there.

  “What’s wrong with us?” I asked, and Delight gave a jerky laugh.