Tnnxz was happy. Why wouldn’t he be? He had his old ship, it wasn’t being destroyed by an alien they had picked up off of a Corti zoological science vessel, he had lots of money, and his life was simple once again. Then someone woke him up. After he learned why Xkkrk had done such a cruel thing, he revised his last thought and assumed he’d entered a nightmare.
“We need to set course for the nearest category 10 medical station and push the engines to their limits or else everyone on this ship is doomed,” she clicked. Excellent. Great way to start the day. Why couldn’t they all be like this? Several [days] ago, Tnnxz would have asked hundreds of questions before he even considered a detour so far out their way, but now he leapt out of bed without a word and sent a com-message to the bridge to find the nearest category 10 medical station. Category 10’s were few and far between, and none were currently under construction as far as Tnnxz knew. They had been built during the Robalix war [20 years] ago, and had been built under the assumption that the Robalins had managed to create the [apocalyptic] bio-weapon they had been attempting to perfect before they lost the war, an inevitability unless they had actually succeeded in creating it. They had been defeated before they managed to finish, but the category 10’s still stood as a monument to the terror the Robalix weapon had instilled.
Medical facilities given the designation of a category 10 were specifically made to treat and study subjects infected with a disease or diseases or plague proportions. Not only were they possessed of some of the most advanced microbiological laboratories, provided by the Corti, and an arsenal of their most potent injections, the facility could also detach any room from its main hull if containment of a disease was breached. Each floor was also able to detach from the main station, fly a few hundred kilometers, then self-destruct. It was a station that assumed that if you were a patient you were essentially already dead, and the only thing you had left to do in your life was offer scientists a chance to study your disease and prevent others from sharing your fate. This was why category 10’s had another name. Death Hospitals.
Only after he received word from the helm that the new course was set did Tnnxz turn to Xkkrk. “Don’t tell me. I think I can guess at this point. A plague has suddenly descended upon our ship and infected nearly all of our remaining crew. This plague is unlike any we’ve seen before and exceeds our worst microbiological nightmares, or at least yours – I don’t have any of that nature – and we have none other to thank than our illustrious guest who can’t seem to decide if he wants to destroy our ship, splatter it with gore, splatter it with gore while saving our lives, or kill us with a disease even the Robalins would have envied.”
“Correct on nearly all accounts. Only half the able-bodied crew have demonstrated symptoms, and we aren’t suffering from just one plague. Those infected so far have shown symptoms of five different epidemics, but the computer has identified more than 794 dangerous micro-organisms on our plague ship of a guest. The only reason we weren’t infected to this point is due to a joint effort of our old ship’s biofilters and what appears to be the remnants of the Corti front-line inoculation. The diagnostic reports we still have which inspired us to cut it loose and take this one show that the biofilters were on the verge of failing when we left. It seems they’d been absorbing so many foreign microbes they were unable to kill that they were becoming bacterial nurseries as the pathogens had started colonies on them. The only reason we didn’t notice it is the early alert system had broken a while ago, like most of that ship, and we didn’t notice it among all the other major systems failures Ztrkx’s attack caused. I doubt this ship’s bio-filters will last longer than a few days, and they’re only able to stop airborne contraction of the diseases. Too many crew members have come into contact with Cqcq’trtr for that to even be an issue. The inoculation the Corti gave Cqcq’trtr when they abducted him seems to have worn off sometime last night, which is why we’re just now experiencing these problems.”
The Corti front-line inoculation – usually just called “the inoculation” – given to all life-forms upon their unwilling admittance into a Corti science vessel was an ingenious biological invention. Rather than kill all microbial life forms within a subject, which would affect any experiment’s results and more often than not hurt or even kill the subject, the inoculation blocked the pathogenic and viral contagion factors. In viruses the inoculation would bind to its glycoproteins, stopping its ability to affect a cell. For bacteria it used a bio-engineered virus of its own to insert a kill switch into the reproduction process of the bacteria. Every time the pathogen would undergo mitosis, the parent cell would be killed the moment it split, ensuring the bacteria colony wouldn’t be able to expand beyond its current population size.
The inoculation even included a phage which temporarily edited the genetic instructions of a subject’s immune system so it would not take advantage of the sudden pathogenic and viral neutralities and completely clear them from its system. The only problem was that the inoculation had to be re-administered every [other day] or else it would begin to fail, completely vanishing after [three or four days]. It seemed Cqcq’trtr had reached that point. Tnnxz let out a long sigh.
Dear Journal,
I have become Death, the destroyer of worlds.
At least, for worlds composed entirely of blue-giraffes.
Which sucks, by the way.
The Death thing, not the blue-giraffes.
Not that I wouldn’t mind being back on Earth, you know.
Mama’s console was still beeping rapidly when she hurriedly pressed a button that was apparently the machine’s power button. The console turned off mid beep. Her actions and the near panicked way in which she completed them did nothing to abate my growing unease at the situation; especially her hitting of the power button. You don’t do that to your computer unless it’s done something horrendous, such as freeze up or murder your family. As it hadn’t frozen up, I assumed it had delivered news of imminent death, the assumption of which seemed to be confirmed by Mama’s actions. I looked about the room.
Several more blue-giraffes had entered during my examination, and they seemed in similar if not worse condition than Drippy, still unconscious, and Jiggles, who also appeared to have fainted, although I couldn’t tell if he’d intentionally stopped breathing so those passing wouldn’t add to the puddle at his bedside or dehydration had gotten to him. The newest admittances appeared ready to faint as well. Several of them, children, appeared to have what Jiggles had gotten, which hadn’t improved the smell by the slightest. Several other adults, including the unwilling assistant I had used when Drippy had left, seemed to be following in his footsteps and expressing their adoration for heavy metal even as they were shown to their beds.
One was being his own independent blue-giraffe, exhibiting traits from neither of the two fads gripping the crew – DeathBreath and Death Metal Enthusiasts – but rather was starting his own trend: Acne from Hell. At least I hoped it was Acne. I was pretty sure I was the reason for this current hullabaloo, and was infecting the crew with diseases and conditions that I was immune to. As such, I sure as hell hoped I hadn’t given this hipster-blue-giraffe smallpox. If Drippy had fallen into a coma – he looked like he had – from a common cold, I didn’t want to think about what a real disease would do to these poor souls.
Newly named Pimples seemed to be screaming, and, upon seeing him, I think I might have joined him. His face and arms were the stuff of nightmares, completely covered in the kind of zits that you go to the hospital to get speared by a professional. He looked like he’d been on the receiving end of an attack from Satan’s personal bee collection; I’m sure they’re one of that jerk’s favorite pets right after wasps and other nopes.
Drippy’s entorage, which seemed to have been recruited by Mama as traffic control, tried to show Pimples to a bed of his own away from the DeathBreaths and Death Metal Enthusiasts, but he cried out in pain the moment he tried to sit down on the bed. I felt sorry for the bloke, but was simultaneously impressed that he’d completely given himself over to this new trend. I’d never known anyone to give up their sitting-parts to the normal variation of Acne, let alone the Acne from Hell. Eventually Pimples just stood by his bed, propping himself against it with his hand, although even that had suffered his newfound infatuation.
Mama, by way of hand gestures, motioned me to a bed farthest away from the trenders. I walked over to it and hopped on, looking at her for more instructions. She grabbed a syringe the same shape as the Corti, and I immediately began to feel trepidation. My unease waned somewhat when she put a small amount of clear red liquid in the syringe, but I still backed up when she approached me with it. She started clicking at me in a no-nonsenese “I’m-your-mom-and-you’re-going-to-do-what-I-say-just-because-now-don’t-talk-back-to-me-mister” kind of way. It wasn’t the mom-tone she used which persuaded me to allow her to approach me with the syringe, however. It was the fact that she hadn’t said it to me in a condescending way, as though she were talking to an animal. She knew!
She stuck the needle into my arm. As I watched the red fluid enter my bloodstream, I began to feel a little drowsy. That was it. “Was that supposed to put me to sleep?” I asked. She seemed about as confused as I was, and got another dose of the red stuff, this time filling the needle half-way, which I estimated to be about 20cc. She injected that into me, and the drowsiness increased, but I was still awake. Exasperated, She filled the syringe to my estimated 40cc and stuck that into my arm as well, which was starting to protest. That knocked me out, albeit slowly. Before my vision faded completely to black I saw Mama hit a button near my bed which erected a shining blue wall of energy around my bed.
As Xkkrk left Tnnxz’s room, which he had exited a moment before her, heading for the bridge, she thought back to the amount of sedative Cqcq’trtr had required before he’d finally fallen into unconsciousness. She had made the assumption he would require more than a Vzk’tk, and had readied twice the dose she normally would have. He’d sloughed the double dose as though it were nothing. The quadruple dose had had similarly minimal effects. She’d finally gotten him down after applying eight times the recommended dose, for a total of fourteen times the usual amount. That much sedative was enough to easily kill four Vzk’tk, and probably a few more if you were careful with your administrations.
At least he was behind a dedicated security field. It wasn’t a true quarantine field – those were hugely expensive and were only on the more advanced mercy ships – but Ztrkx’s engineer seemed to have done a good job, and the security-field-turned-quarantine-field would hopefully stop some of the larger pathogens and all of the multicellular parasites the bio-scanner had detected. Remembering the scanner’s findings after it had scanned Cqcq’trtr sent another shiver down Xkkrk’s spine. How could anything live with so many plagues living inside them.
It seemed her crew were only infected by the weakest and most versatile of diseases Cqcq’trtr carried. She had refrained from telling Tnnxz of the extent that those on this ship were screwed, but now, with a moment to herself, she decided to be honest. The diseases Cqcq’trtr carried, if discovered by a species of ill-intent, could be used to create bio-weapons capable of scouring nearly all life from the galaxy. When Cqcq’trtr’s species discovered FTL propulsion, the galaxy would need quarantine suits just to interact with them, unless a species like the Corti came up with an injection which could kill off all of the microbes carried by Cqcq’trtr’s people.
Maybe that was why the Corti had been studying him. After all, they knew more about up and coming sapient beings than any other space-faring species, and she doubted the Corti, with their expanded intelligence and advanced biological technology, would have thought Cqcq’trtr another dumb animal like she and the rest of the crew had oh so foolishly assumed.
Or perhaps they had been trying to develop a new technology. As worrying as Cqcq’trtr’s microbial abundance had been, it was nothing compared to his immune system. Xkkrk, barely able to believe it herself, had restarted the bio-scanner to ensure it wasn’t making stuff up for the fun of it. It hadn’t been. An immune system consisting of Eucaryotic cells which literally ate offending cells!? What the fuck!!? Vzk’tk admittedly had one of the weaker immune systems of the galaxy, but it was still of the standard bacteriophage plus viral adaptation model seen almost exclusively in the [Milky way]. Bacteria which infected Xkkrk’s body would soon find their genetic code under a viral assault. The only difference was that the bacteriophage would inject the offending pathogen with RNA which would not only reproduce more of the phage but also neutralize its dangerous characteristics. Offending viruses, on the other hand, would have their way for several days, until her cells modified their genetic markers to which the virus’s glycoproteins would bind, making her immune to it. She doubted that would work for Cqcq’trtr’s virus, as it seemed to mutate too quickly.
Compared to Cqcq’trtr’s immune system, though, the Vzk’tk and indeed nearly all known sophant’s immune systems seemed childish, if such a word could be applied to immune systems. Xkkrk shuddered at the thought of what would happen if one of Cqcq’trtr’s t-cells found its way into another being and then decided that being was a disease in need of destruction. Squaring her shoulders, Xkkrk walked back into the medical bay, looking about the mayhem which greeted her. It had gotten worse.