Exodus: Book 3 of the New Frontiers Series (A Dark Space Tie-In)

by Jasper T. Scott

  It didn’t take long to figure out. All they had to do was pick the type of coffee, put a cup under the dispenser, and press a button; then, like magic, a fragrant, steaming brew poured out.

  “Mmmmm. It smells good,” Benjamin said. “Can I have some?”

  “Sure—but only if it’s decaf,” Catalina added as she carried Alexander’s mug over to the couch where he lay sleeping. He looked so peaceful that she hesitated to wake him. She set her coffee down on the table in front of the couch and placed his under his nose, thinking the smell would wake him, but he didn’t stir. “Alex...” she whispered. “Wake up, Alex.”

  Still nothing.

  Catalina set aside his coffee, too, and tried waking him with a kiss, but his lips remained cold and lifeless against hers. She withdrew to regard him with a frown. “Alex,” she said sharply. “Alex, wake up!”

  “What’s wrong?” Benjamin asked, walking over with a steaming mug of his own.

  “He won’t wake up,” she explained.

  “I know how.” Setting his mug down beside the other two, Benjamin knelt beside her. He reached out and pinched Alexander’s nose shut with one hand. After a moment, Alexander’s mouth popped open, but he still didn’t wake, so Benjamin used his other hand to hold Alexander’s jaw shut.

  Long seconds passed, and Catalina heard her heart beating furiously in her chest. Nothing was happening. “Stop,” she said. “Let him breathe.”

  Benjamin withdrew with a puzzled look, and Alexander’s nostrils flared as he sucked in a deep breath.

  “I don’t get it, that always works,” Benjamin said.

  Catalina shook her head. “It should have. Something’s wrong. It’s almost like he’s in a coma. I’m going to call for a medic.” She used her neural link to browse through the ship’s directory on her ARCs and place an emergency call to med bay. Catalina waited anxiously while the comms rang.

  And rang...

  “There’s no answer,” she said.

  “What if they’re in a coma, too?” Benjamin asked with big eyes. “What are we going to do?”

  Catalina gave him a blank look. “I...” She trailed off as her gaze slid back to Alexander—statuesque but for the steady rise and fall of his chest. His hands lay folded there in a funereal pose. He no longer looked peaceful to her. “I don’t know,” she finished.

  Chapter 11

  When he heard the order to return to his quarters due to a containment breach, Remo had decided to rather stay in the med bay with Deedee. After all, where better to be with some unknown pathogen on the loose? Well, maybe not the best place if sick people came streaming in, but he could easily come into contact with whatever it was just by rushing down to the dormitory level with everyone else. Besides, he had to safeguard his investment. A no-strings girl like Deedee was hard to come by.

  Remo sat up, watching her sleep from the chair in the corner of her room. Does this count as a string? He wondered. If it were any other girl, he’d be out flirting with the nurses, not sleepless at her bedside, waiting for her to wake up. Maybe he’d got too close. Started to care. Remo shuddered.

  A more likely explanation for his insomnia came to mind: I can’t sleep because I’ve been taken hostage by aliens. Worse yet, there’d been no action during the night—at least none that he’d heard about. Why weren’t they fighting their alien captors?

  Remo shook his head to clear away those concerns. It was a quiet night in the med bay, nothing but the rhythmic beeping of life signs monitors to disrupt the silence. His eyelids grew heavy, and the sound lulled him to sleep...

  Thumps, thuds, and crashes rumbled through the walls, followed by an urgent voice that shattered his sleep. Remo stood up quickly, blinking the sleep from his eyes, his whole body tense and ready for a fight. But there were no detectable threats in the room.

  He crept quietly up to the door, his imagination alive with alien horrors.

  As he drew near, he heard that urgent voice again; it was a man calling a woman’s name repeatedly. Remo cracked open the door. At the end of the hall, in the admitting room, nurses lay slumped over their stations. The comms buzzed insistently in their ears, somehow not waking them. What the hell?

  Remo heard that man’s voice again, echoing down the hall toward him—

  “Dalia, wake up, damn it!”

  “Hello?” Remo called out as he edged down the hall toward the voice.

  Footsteps approached, and a man in a white jumpsuit with blue piping and a luminous blue cross in the center of his chest appeared. His long, pale, angular face, black hair, and piercing red eyes made him look sinister. “You’re awake,” he said in a thick, rasping Martian accent.

  Remo’s ARCs identified the man as Doctor Ross Laskin. “What’s going on?” he asked.

  Doctor Laskin shook his head. “I don’t know. Everyone has collapsed, and they won’t wake up.”

  “Everyone?” Remo repeated with a sudden frown. He cast a quick look behind him to Deedee’s room, hoping whatever contagion they were dealing with hadn’t found a way to reach her yet. “I need to check on someone,” he said, and hurried back the way he came.

  As soon as he reached Deedee’s side, he grabbed her roughly by the shoulders and shook her. Her head bounced lifelessly on her pillow, but she didn’t stir.

  “Desiree!”

  “It got her, too,” Doctor Laskin rasped out behind him.

  Remo turned to see the doctor standing in the open doorway.

  “Why are we still fine?” Remo wondered aloud.

  “There could be a million reasons. We might be immune, the contagion might affect us differently, or more likely, we were among the last to come into contact with it, and it’s just a matter of time before we end up like them.”

  “How long have they been like this?” Remo asked.

  “I don’t know. I only just found out. I’ve been in my office for a while.”

  “There must be some way to wake them,” Remo said, looking back to Deedee. Absurdly, he wondered if a kiss might work.

  “We could try dopamine stimulants or sedatives. If that doesn’t work, then directly stimulating brain activity is an option, but in cases like this, we need to find out what’s causing the coma first.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Brain damage is the primary cause of a coma, but when an infectious agent is responsible, it’s usually because of encephalitis.”

  “Ensefa-what?”

  “Encephalitis. Inflammation of the brain—usually caused by a virus.”

  “So the bio-weapons scare was real.”

  Doctor Laskin cocked his head to one side. “Why wouldn’t it be?”

  Remo shook his head to dismiss the question. “If it’s a virus, what do we do about it?”

  “We create a nano virus to target and destroy it. I’ll show you, but first we need a blood sample. We’ll start with her,” he said, nodding to Deedee. “I’ll be right back.”

  Remo looked back to Deedee, resisting the urge to reach for her hand.

  Doctor Laskin returned pushing a food service cart with a tray full of hypodermic needles and empty vials rather than food. He stopped beside Deedee’s bed and tied a blue tourniquet around her upper arm. He spent a moment tapping her arm to find a vein. Remo watched as the doctor filled one vial after another with dark red blood.

  When he was done, he took a rectangular scanner from his belt and slotted one of the vials into it. Remo waited while status lights blinked and beeped on the device—first red, then yellow, then green. A solid tone sounded, and different colored patterns flickered over Doctor Laskin’s eyes, changing them from red to blue as he studied the results on his ARCs.

  A frown crept across his brow and slid down his cheeks in deep lines before settling on his lips. “Her blood counts are normal. Pathogen and toxicology scans are both clean.”

  Remo shook his head. “What’s that mean?”

  “It means her immune system isn’t reacting and there’s no known bacterial, viral
, fungal, or parasitic infection. We’ve also ruled out all known toxins, which would have been my next guess.”

  “It must be a false positive.”

  Doctor Laskin’s brow lifted. “You mean a false negative.”

  Remo waved his hand dismissively. “You know what I mean.”

  “Lieutenant, these scans are 99.9% accurate. If the scanner says her blood is clean, then it’s clean.”

  “Then why is she like this? You said the scanner ruled out known infections and toxins. What about unknown ones?”

  “The scanner also looks for new strains.”

  “What if it doesn’t know what to look for? This could be something entirely foreign to our experience. Something alien.”

  “Alien?”

  Remo nodded. “Yes.”

  “Where would an alien pathogen come from?”

  He was just about to explain what he knew when a third voice joined the conversation. “Remo?” The voice was soft, feminine, and familiar. Both of them turned to look at Deedee.

  “I’m scared...” she said, her eyes darting and wide.

  “Deedee,” he said, grinning. “You’re back!”

  Doctor Laskin flicked on a small penlight and shone it into her eyes, checking for something. “What do you feel?” he asked.

  Desiree shook her head, her eyes still darting. A murmur of voices drifted to their ears from the corridor beyond her room. Remo glanced at the open door. “It sounds like the others are waking up,” he said.

  “Yes,” Doctor Laskin replied. Speaking to Deedee, he added, “It’s okay, I’m a doctor. Tell me your symptoms.”

  “Why is everyone so worried? What happened?”

  “You were in a coma,” Laskin explained.

  “A coma? For how long?” Deedee asked, her voice spiking with concern.

  “Not long. I need you to tell me what you’re feeling so I can help you.”

  “I’m feeling... anxious, scared, confused... that’s it.”

  “No physical symptoms? How’s your head? Any headache?”

  “No.”

  “Interesting. We’re going to have to run some more tests to understand what happened. I’ll be back in a moment. I’m going to check on the others.”

  “The others?” Deedee asked.

  “You weren’t the only one in a coma,” Remo explained.

  “Who else?”

  He shook his head. “Almost everyone.” He leaned over her to kiss her, but hesitated, remembering she could be infected with something. He aimed for her forehead instead.

  “I love you, too,” she said.

  He withdrew abruptly. “I didn’t say anything.”

  “No, but you thought it.”

  Remo shook his head. “If you say so.” So much for no strings. He glanced at the door, but felt no compulsion to run for it. Her declaration of love should have scared him off. I must be getting soft, he thought. He nodded to her arms, both still elevated in casts. “Bet you could score us some morphine if you play your cards right.” She’d come out of surgery less than 24 hours ago.

  “What are you going to do? Suck it out of my IV?”

  Remo gave her a sly look. “Maybe.”

  Deedee snorted. “Too bad for you. I feel fine. What’s going on, Remo? Does this have something to do with...”

  She trailed off, but he understood she was talking about the alien ship that had snared the Liberty.

  He grimaced. “I think they infected us with something, but we can’t find it with a blood scan.”

  Deedee nodded slowly. “They don’t mean us any harm. We’re going to Proxima, Remo. We’ll be there soon!” Deedee’s eyes were bright with joy. She sat up suddenly and withdrew her arms from their harnesses.

  “Easy there,” he said, reaching out to support her. She was obviously experiencing some type of delusion. He cast an urgent look over his shoulder, wondering where Doctor Laskin was.

  Deedee grabbed his hand and gave it a squeeze. “Don’t be afraid. I’m not crazy.”

  “I didn’t say you were,” Remo replied, offering an uncertain smile. “But I don’t think we’re going anywhere.”

  “We’re already on our way,” she said with a dreamy look on her face.

  “Des, we’re still on the ring decks. If we were accelerating, we’d feel it. Everything, including us, would be pinned to the aft-facing bulkheads.”

  Deedee’s rapt expression faded to confusion. “But...”

  “It’s okay. You were just in a coma. You’re allowed to be confused, but whatever you think you know about what’s going on, it was just a dream. We’re still in orbit around Mars.”

  “You’re wrong.”

  “We can argue about it later. Right now we need to worry about what’s going on with you.”

  “Nothing is going on with me,” Deedee said.

  Remo nodded agreeably while casting another glance over his shoulder to look for Doctor Laskin. When he looked back, Deedee was gone. Or rather, her face was. For a moment he thought she was playing a trick on him, having somehow tucked her head into the collar of her jumpsuit, but there were no unusual bulges to suggest that. He glanced down and saw that the hand he was holding was also invisible. He flinched away from her. Confusion swirled, making his head swim.

  “What the hell! Des?”

  She reappeared, looking puzzled. “What’s wrong?”

  * * *

  Audrey slapped Councilor Markov hard enough to leave a red, hand-shaped mark on his cheek, but he didn’t so much as flinch. The sound echoed in her ears, and her hands trembled. She couldn’t reach Med Bay on the comms, and no one was answering from the bridge in Section One or the CIC in Section Seven. Maybe the comms were down?

  Audrey warred with herself over whether or not she should leave her quarters and check the CIC for herself. Markov stirred in bed beside her.

  “Ow,” he said, reaching up to touch his cheek.

  Audrey breathed a sigh and glared at him. “Did you take a tranquilizer or something?”

  Markov’s eyes darted to her. “No, why?”

  “I couldn’t wake you. I thought you were dead!”

  A grin touched his lips. “You were worried about me? How sweet.”

  “Don’t get all sentimental on me.” She tried the CIC again. This time she got through, but instead of telling her about a comms malfunction, the comms officer explained that they’d all somehow blacked out and collapsed at their stations.

  “All of you blacked out at the same time?” Audrey demanded.

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “I need to speak with the admiral,” she said.

  “I’ll transfer you. One moment.”

  Audrey waited while the call went through. After a few seconds, the admiral answered. He appeared on her ARCs, looking harried. His usually clear indigo eyes were striated with angry red veins, and his black beard looked scruffy rather than groomed. “Commander Johnson,” he said. “I don’t know what’s going on, if that’s what you want to know.”

  Audrey paused with her jaw hanging open, halfway to forming exactly that question. “It happened there, too,” she realized.

  The admiral nodded. “Yes. Everyone passed out except for a handful of civilians and crew. It hasn’t reached Sections Two through Five yet. Only the ones that were breached, and yours—no doubt because of that missing sample and the containment breach.”

  “Then we are dealing with something contagious.”

  “It would appear so. We’re looking into it, but whatever it is, I don’t believe it poses us a threat.”

  Audrey frowned. “With respect, sir, it’s too early for us to know that. We don’t even know what we’re dealing with yet.”

  “We’ll keep up the quarantine for a while longer just to be sure, but so far it would appear that Captain White was telling the truth. If that’s the case, and we’re on our way to Proxima, then we need to get ready. We thought we were going to have years to train everyone for colonizing a new world, but now we’re d
own to just a few days. It’s good news, of course, but we have a lot of work to do before we arrive.”

  Audrey gaped at him and shook her head. “Admiral, are you feeling okay?”

  “I’m fine, Commander...” he said.

  She blinked and he was gone, leaving his crimson jumpsuit behind and floating in mid-air. Audrey blinked a few times more, and he was back.

  “Are you okay?” the admiral asked, returning the question. “You look terrified.”

  Audrey’s jaw hung open, at a loss for words “You... you just disappeared, sir.”

  “I’ve been standing here the entire time, Commander.”

  “No, I mean you... became invisible. Like the ship that captured us.”

  Admiral Urikov looked skeptical. “You must be imagining things, Commander.”

  “Ask your crew, or check the surveillance tapes,” Audrey insisted.

  Admiral Urikov barked an order at his chief of security, asking her to check if he became invisible at some point in the past five minutes. They waited while she ran back through the tapes.

  Audrey overheard the woman’s incredulous reaction— “What the hell?!”—and she knew she hadn’t imagined it.

  The admiral looked shocked. “How...?”

  “You still think this contagion doesn’t pose a threat to us?” she demanded.

  This time the admiral was the one at a loss for words, but he recovered with a curiously rapturous expression. “They don’t mean us any harm,” he said slowly.

  “They? They who?! That’s what they want you to think!” Audrey blurted out. “Your judgment is compromised Admiral. Whatever your gut is telling you, it’s wrong. Don’t fall for it.”

  “You’re out of line, Commander, but you’ll understand soon enough. Admiral Urikov out.” He vanished for a second time, but this time it was because he’d signed off. Audrey shook her head, incredulous.

  “He’s right, Commander,” Markov said. “I can feel it, too.”

  Audrey turned to find him sitting up in bed beside her. She stared sideways at him, and leaned away as if he might leap up and attack her at any moment. Markov couldn’t have overheard more than her side of the conversation with the admiral, but he’d obviously pieced together the gist of it.