Oh, and a good two-thirds of her engineers were busy excavating tunnels on DK-1116 in an effort to obtain some of the Edrehmaia substance because Commander Liam O’Donnell was constitutionally incapable of leaving well enough alone.
All of this, while her tactical and security teams were running hourly drills covering every conceivable scenario they could imagine for the rescue of Galen and the Edrehmaia’s potential responses. Farkas could see how much her XO, Commander Malcolm Roach, was enjoying these activities, so she kept to herself her certainty that nothing could possibly prepare them for this encounter. It was all so much whistling in the dark until the two interested parties were capable of having the most basic conversation and, on that front, progress was dubious at best.
It was nights like this when she allowed herself five minutes to wonder why she hadn’t taken Admiral Bivout up on his offer a few years back to retire from active duty and begin an illustrious teaching career at the Academy. She knew the reasons, and all of them had sounded so good at the time. Foremost among them was her general apprehension of young men and women of the age of most cadets. Sure, they were smart, but they were also emotional messes because their brains were not yet fully formed. Patience with nonsense had never been one of her many virtues, and if and when she did finally retire, she doubted seriously it would ever include adding a small group of lunatics hoping to learn the basics of command to her list of daily contacts.
She belonged here. This, she rarely doubted. She just wished that here would cut her a goddamned break once in a while instead of constantly testing her willingness to absorb shock, pain, and the great unknown.
She thought her ears were playing tricks on her when the chime at the door to her quarters sounded. Rising from the chair at her desk and tugging the end of her uniform undershirt down at the waist, she said, “Come.”
Of course it was El’nor. Who else would it be at this time of night unless the ship was under attack?
“Are you up late, or early?” Farkas asked.
“Oh, I haven’t slept since yesterday,” Sal said, punctuating her response with a hearty yawn.
“Can I interest you in a bedtime story?”
Sal didn’t respond immediately. Instead she crossed to the chair that sat opposite Farkas’s desk and dropped into it, lifting her sock-clad feet to rest them on the front of said desk and placing her hands behind her head.
“Do make yourself comfortable,” Farkas said. “I didn’t realize it was ‘optional footwear day’ again already.”
“You don’t really mind,” Sal insisted.
Farkas didn’t. She was padding around her quarters barefoot, but in fairness, she did live here.
“I have good news,” Sal said.
Farkas returned to her chair, placed her elbows on the desk, and rested her chin in both hands. “Hit me,” she said. “I could use some of that about now.”
“Doctor Sharak and I have figured out how to cure Nancy Conlon.”
Farkas’s spine stiffened. “I returned you to duty, El’nor. I didn’t say you would ever come within arm’s reach of the lieutenant again.”
“Fine,” Sal said. “It’s not going to be a difficult procedure. Sharak can take all the credit. I don’t give a damn.”
“May I ask how you did that without access to the patient?”
“I think that might have been the key to his success,” Sal replied pointedly.
“How so?”
“Turns out not being under the stress of watching a human being die right in front of you frees up all kinds of processing space in the brain. Together, we quite fearlessly abandoned all previous lines of inquiry and went looking for a snipe.”
“Those don’t exist.”
“Neither should the cause of Conlon’s illness, but here we are. Long story very short, when a Seriareen consciousness invades a new host body, the first thing it does is rewrite the DNA of a handful of neurological cells with a particularly annoying set of instructions. Those cells, which appear normal unless you know what you’re looking for, inhibit the host’s ability to reject the invading neural patterns. They destroy the ability of normal DNA to repair itself, causing a great deal of damage to the host over time, but in the short term, making sure that the Seriareen can take absolute control of its chosen body.”
“That doesn’t sound like a recipe for long-term survival,” Farkas noted.
“An assumption with which both Sharak and I agreed until we remembered that a compliant host was more important than one that could fight back. Once its current body began to degenerate severely, the Seriareen could just find a new host.”
“Cheeky bastards,” Farkas noted.
“Right?” Sal agreed, nodding. “It was sitting there in our damned databases all along. The bodies of the other three Seriareen were scanned before we put them in our brig and their genetic results allowed us to find the pattern.”
“I’ve honestly never been a fan of irony,” Farkas said.
“Me neither, but now that we know which cells are perpetuating the problem, removing them is as simple as a relatively minor surgery. Add to that some stem-cell therapy and the lieutenant will be good as new.”
Farkas sat back in her chair. “You did it,” she said. “Congratulations.”
“Sharak did it,” Sal reminded her with a wink.
“No, I’m going to cut you more slack than you deserve here. It’s nice to have you back, my friend. I am damned proud of you right now.”
“That’s fine. You go ahead and enjoy the moment. I’m going to continue kicking myself for my stupidity until we find Conlon alive and are able to perform the necessary procedure. That’s just me, though.”
“I really like to live and let live, El’nor, but that doesn’t sound like a great long-term plan.”
“Peace of mind is for people who don’t almost kill two patients out of arrogance and a desire for retribution,” Sal said. “You were right about that. Nancy Conlon deserves to live, but I won’t feel good about this,
