Chapter Text
The infirmary staff formed the passengers into a clumpy line of varying heights, builds, species. All very confused, tired, frightened. All entirely mortal, Nasira couldn't help but to remind herself. She had to get this done quickly.
Remie came back to Nasira.
"Including the both of us, there are thirty people."
"Thank you," she said, bowing low. Remie mirrored her.
Nasira said, "Keep everyone here, keep an eye out for trouble. I need to go do something. Wait five minutes, then take everyone to the central bunker."
"Do you want us to close the bulkheads after us?" Remie asked. As Remie's enormous black eyes blinked up at her, Nasira found her gaze wandering away.
Behind her, the nimods' stilt-like legs set it above the rest of the crowd. Its body, shiny and bronze, was thin already, but then the rounded shells clinging to its midsection moved, extending outwards to reveal the small, angled forms of infants.
The nimod was a mother with young that were carried with her, too young to move on their own. Her offspring's tiny pinchers yawned wide, seeking reassurance.
Nasira looked back at Remie. "Yes. Close them."
Nasira ducked through a side door just as she had done hours ago, before a killer stalked the halls. Preparing to look upon the scene again did not take as long as it should have - she had no time to waste on herself.
She stepped over Prono's corpse and made her way further into the office until she got to a section labeled with Prono's name. It was not engraved, just stuck there with a small note, for he wasn't the regular head of security. This office belonged to someone else, someone who probably would have boarded on Thouopro, someone who had infinitely more luck than the thirty five souls who'd become hunting game for a monster in deep space.
She went into the office and immediately spotted the small safe on the desk. She circled around to look at it but stopped short.
Overturned in the corner was a sleek canister, the one that Marcus had been carrying under his arm. The one Nasira had insisted to Marcus that Prono search.
Inside, some sort of viscous fluid coated the walls. She tweezed some out on her fingertips and studied it. It was pale and tinged with green. It had started to get crusty and dry in places. She wiped it off of her glove as best she could, then rolled the canister back upright.
Behind it was a small creature, grey with the touch of hours-old death. It had eight long fingers, and two bulbous lobes above a tail sectioned like a brain stem. The underside was fleshy, layered like the petals of some rotten flower.
Nasira wrinkled her nose and turned it over. So this was what Marcus has been carrying onto the ship. She debated trying to find the work order he'd spoken of, but then decided that even though she couldn't recognize all the trillions of lesser species, this was likely a creature unauthorized for trafficking.
She spotted something that the body's placement had hidden - a pockmark in the floor, about the size of her thumbnail. The edges were blackened and uneven. Immediately, she recognized it as the work of the alien's acid blood.
Her fingers went up to her rank. She unfastened it and exposed the pin, then jabbed it into the folds of the thing's flesh. Pulling it out again, she inspected the point. Yellow blood dripped from it, but it did not eat at the metal. She tried again in various parts of its anatomy, concluding that some time after its death the blood had neutralized.
Grimacing, she shoved the thing back into its canister. Then she went to the safe on the desk. The three dials were already resting on specific symbols, but it did not open. She slid the last one up one more slot and the safe clicked to accommodate her.
Bemused, she reached in and pulled out a weapon. It was almost identical to a handgun in size and function. She dragged its holster out after and fastened it to her waist.
She replaced her rank on her shoulder before setting out again, more confident now that she had something long-range she could use to oppose the alien.
When Nasira had arrived at the bridge, they'd told her that they were eighty parsecs off course. A parsec was about three light years. That meant they had traveled 260 light years, 26 for every minute. In the six hours since, they had traveled 9,540 light years. And that was not including their rate of acceleration, which she did not know.
They'd probably been declared missing only an hour ago, for it had been was now the ninth hour of their intended eight hour flight. Unless someone had tried to contact them and found the connection severed, it was not likely that a rescue team had even been mobilized.
The fact remained that they couldn't count on outside help if they didn't ask for it.
She had to rip an emergency instructions manual off the wall, leaving a square patch of discoloration behind. No one had need for emergency protocol in what seemed like a long time.
The lifeboats were in their own separate bay on the port side of the ship. She marked the route on her map, then tucked the canister beneath her free arm. Walking the opposite direction as the one taken by the alien was no small relief.
She moved quickly, trusting that she'd put the alien out of commission for a good few hours. She had to go through a habitation level to get to her destination, and she peered down into an empty swimming lake lined with exotic plants. Shaking her head, she hurried on.
The bay was its own branch of hallways. Each octagonal door was like a bank vault, and led to its own lifeboat. The 'boats themselves were shuttles - smaller than the one they'd taken up to the spaceport - but there were only seven of them, and they weren't meant to transport passengers for long periods of time. Nasira had considered forsaking the ship, loading all the passengers into lifeboats instead. But the promise of security in the central bunker was much lower risk than trying to sort out an evacuation procedure. Right now, she was the only one on the entire ship in any danger at all.
She went to the first lifeboat's door and swiped Prono's access card.
Upon stepping in, she felt a telltale disturbance in the air. Apprehension pricked the flesh between her shoulder blades.
She set the canister down on a control console and put a hand on her newly acquired weapon, sweeping her analytical gaze over the room. The interior was two levels - one that housed the pilot's chair, and a loft that held passenger seating. The foamy insulation was ridged and grey, making the walls look darker than they should have been. The shuttle's blast shield was extended, so the only light in the room was that of the backup lights flickering on the consoles and near the seats.
Nasira sidestepped and reached into a depression in the wall. The lights flicked on. She tread carefully, looking up into the shadows of the loft.
Whatever was in the room had already heard the door open as she entered, so she called out, "I'm an officer of Adrara. Come out now."
The air buzzed. She could feel something listening.
"If you don't show yourself, I will arrest you for impeding my objective to secure this craft."
"I'm here," said a faint voice, in English.
"Are you alone?"
"No. He's up here with me."
"Come down."
Marcus' son crept backwards over the edge of the loft and then descended with the ladder. Marcus followed him, looking around suspiciously. He spotted the canister on the table and paled.
"It's dead, sir," Nasira said.
She saw him struggle to compose his expression. "Oh, good."
"I'm very sorry about its state. Weren't you worried about the canister's security earlier?" Nasira stepped closer to him, taking in his sweaty forehead and mottled jawline. His adams apple was bobbing up and down as he swallowed. "Was that only because you were aware that you brought a monster onto this ship, and you know what it's capable of? Is that why you fled to the lifeboats?"
He didn't say anything.
"That's not why you've hidden yourself inside, though. The only reason you haven't left yet is because," she held up Prono's access card, "you don't have the authorization. How long have you been arguing with the computer to let you go? Don't argue with me," she said as he opened his mouth to retort. "There's no other reason you could be in here except to wait out the disaster, and hope that you'd be able to recover your specimen when we arrived at Thouopro."
His mouth went from a sneer to a flat line as she accused him. He eyed her weapon, still holstered on her waist.
"We're not going to Thouopro, are we?" he asked. "We're an hour overdue."
"The only reason I haven't come with a posse of officers to arrest you." She beckoned him into one of the lifeboats' seats. His son made to sit on the opposite side, but Nasira said, "Stay where I can see you."
He move to sit next to Marcus.
Nasira leaned forward. "Your specimen. Is it a parasite?"
He looked defiant to answer her question.
"It must have infected Prono when he inspected it," she continued.
"I had every right to be transporting that organism. It was labeled as dangerous, but I was told to not let it out of my sight. If that guard wasn't careful about opening the canister, that isn't my fault." He looked around at the pair of them, daring them to oppose him. His son gazed at him, blank, then went back to staring at the floor.
"You must have known that it would get loose, hence why you took refuge here. Why not tell anyone?"
"Where is it now?" he said.
"You know it. Where do you think it'd be?"
He said, "Where is its prey?"
"Safe."
He raised an eyebrow, a bizarre thing to see in a situation so dire.
"Right," he said.
"You don't think they're safe?"
"It's an organism of extreme...opportunity."
"Then it's logical that you were trying to smuggle it over interplanetary borders," she said, raising her own brow. "And why you're hiding from it yourself."
He shook his head, looking away into the darkened corners of the lifeboat.
She stood.
"Get up."
"What?" he said. The son looked at him, then at Nasira, then stood without any of his father's hesitation.
"I said get up. Vacate the lifeboat."
"But the creature -"
"I killed it. Get up."
Marcus stood. Nasira shunted them both into the hallway and said, "Wait right here in front of this window where I can see you."
They did as she said and she returned to the lifeboat, sitting in the pilot's seat. She looked over her shoulder to make sure they hadn't moved, then booted up the computer.
She canceled Marcus' efforts to force the lifeboat into launch mode.
The lifeboat would go a mere fraction of the speed of the Cavalier - only about ten light years a minute (six hundred an hour) to the Cavalier's twenty-six. If the Cavalier was about six hours off course, it'd take the life boat twenty hours to get to their initial route, and an additional thirteen to reach Thouopro. It was slow, but it was better than nothing.
She quickly logged the events of their voyage, including the death of the four crew members. She described that they had no means of stopping or controlling the ship.
That there was a hostile organism onboard.
That it was the property of one - she checked the label on the canister - Marcus J. Rums.
And that she had no way of administering an evacuation for the remaining thirty two persons onboard.
Then she hovered over the end of the message, debating. She keyed in an estimation of their projected flight path, hoping that it was accurate enough for rescue to find them.
She signed it:
Nasira Lathan, Command Sergeant
And then she imagined her message reaching the desk of her commanding council at Adrara, and what they would expect her to do now.
Nasira stared at the canister. Smooth, unassuming. The seal was tight. It could have been carrying anything. She imagined Prono sitting at his desk, prying the lid back to inspect the contents.
In the end, she strapped the canister into a seat and added a post script to her message: Life form contents deceased. Handle with caution. Pathogen may be present.
She stepped out of the life boat and then used the wall mounted console to seal the doors and then jettison it. She watched as it drifted from the Cavalier, then streaked away to carry their plea through the stars.
"Now," Nasira said, ignoring Marcus' look of outrage, "what can you tell me about this creature you've so foolishly unleashed into our midst?"
He looked out the window, space now where there used to be the interior of the lifeboat. "Couldn't you have sent something with it? Why do we have to stay trapped here?"
"If there was anyone I could have saved by sending them along," Nasira said, "my very last choice would have been you. You've a responsibility to help me find your specimen."
"I thought you said you'd killed it."
"If you believed that, you wouldn't be so nervous right now." Her voice was flat and hard. "Are you alright, sir? The infirmary staff is in the central bunker. I could request they look you over."
His son's eyes darted up to meet Nasira's and focus on her for the first time. They were a pale, dishwater grey. Nasira noticed now that he was younger than he'd initially appeared - not older than her after all, perhaps in his mid-to-late-teens.
And then he spoke with all the force of a breaking dam.
"He did it on purpose!" His face shone with this withheld information. Marcus whipped around and drove a fist into his son's nose, knocking him back.
Nasira pulled him off of his son, seizing his arm and twisting, forcing him to submit with her elbow on his back. He struggled briefly before giving up, hurting himself worse in his attempts.
"What do you mean?" she asked the son. He pinched a bloody noise and slurred his words.
"He dib ib on purpose becub he dibn't wand anyone do be able do dell aboud ohtieslerb." Most of the meaning was lost on Nasira, but any fragments she'd been able to mentally construct were shattered as Marcus screamed, "SHUT UP EDMUND!"
"Stop it!" Nasira roared at him, putting pressure on his fingers, causing him to shout in pain. Her mind reeled. To Marcus, she said, very quietly, "You did this on purpose?"
She spun him back upright, advancing on him still so that they were chest to chest. She was tall, as tall as he was, and he flinched away. The wall at his back stopped him.
"You have no right to judge me," he said. Now without an escape and as she bore down on him, he took on a cutting tone.
"You smuggled a dangerous organism onto a passenger vessel!" she snarled, seizing a fistful of his lapels. She jerked him close enough to see the dirt in his pores. "You've jeopardized every life on this ship. Your son's. Your own." She laid the back of her hand on the meaty part of his neck, feeling her lips skin back from her teeth. She fully intended to press, to twist, to tear, to snap. To walk back to the central bunker with his blood on her hands and in Yutovian - her best chance of being understood as deathly remorseful - to confess there was nothing she could do to save them.
Instead, she pushed his face away, letting his head smack into the metal wall, not even hard enough to hurt.
"You will answer for this," she said, her voice ringing in her ears. "I swear you will. I'll walk you to judgment myself."
Something pricked her peripheral vision and, as if in response to her testament, an immense humanoid form materialized at the end of the hallway, some forty feet away. It had a gladiators' physique and wielded in both massive hands a sleek spear.
Nasira instantly forgot her ire and shoved the two men behind her and backed up, forcing them into the tiny depression of the window, shielding them with her body.
The humanoid spun its weapon, heavy booted feet walking towards them at a pace of near-leisure.
Nasira held her arms straight, splaying her fingers - commanding it to back off. Adrara never pulled any sort of weapon on an intelligent life form unless it was blatantly aggressive, but the proof that she was able to do so was still clear in her holster. This one was self-aware, by the way it handled its weapon. Even if it was a species she'd never seen nor heard of.
"Hey," she shouted in Yutovian. "Stop!"
The humanoid kept coming, its broad shoulders seeming to fill up the hallway. Metal encased its left arm up to the bicep.
She tried again in Aplindan. And again in Qwertho. She signed. She ran through a list of every language she knew, even her human languages, English, Arabic, Korean.
She did everything she could think of short of wielding her weapon. Her shoulder blades jut into the chests of those she protected as she pressed backwards, trying to gain even tiny centimeters of distance from the threat.
And still it advanced.