“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
