06/29/01
"It is possible to provide security against other ills, but as far as death is concerned, we men live in a city without walls."-- Epicurus
183-1121.
Trevor's grav-ball coverage keeps being interrupted by annoying emergency broadcast system breaks telling him about the quarantine, which isn't that bad really, just a warning. So why are they interrupting his game? This is repeated over and over again, with instructions from the medical services, etc. He times his trips to the restroom during the alerts. "Johnson's stumbling, he's down! The referees are going over...Oh! One of the referees is down!!" The tri-dee station goes out. Argh!!
Announcer: "We interrupt our regularly scheduled programming for Crisis on New Anglia. Government officials have confirmed that the station has been quarantined, and no ships can arrive or leave. There are confirmed casualties." Trevor gets to catch up on the news of the plague, and after a while the usual announcer is replaced by a man in uniform, who states that "Everything is under control. Please remain calm." Martial law has been declared on New Anglia. At least it's a real plague and not something drummed up by the Ephor. Trevor goes around and manually dogs all the hatches on the ship during the breaks, to make sure no one gets on board.
Mitchell is picking his way back to the ship, avoiding bodies and looters. He makes no attempt to stop or interfere with the looters - it's not his job. He makes it to the ship. At the nose of the ship, where the umbillicus is attached, he can see one of the little grav-cart things floating, with the driver slumped over. Mitchell attempts to get on board the ship, but the doors won't open. He punches up the commo. Trevor: "Hello?" Mitchell: "This is Mitchell." Trevor: "Yeah." Mitchell: "I can't get on the ship. There's something wrong with the hatch." Trevor: "No there isn't. I dogged the hatches. We're under quarantine. You can come on board, but you have to go through the decontamination cycle, or I'm not letting you in." Outside the ship, it gets dark as the lights flicker and go out. It's very dark. The emergency lights come up, but serve mostly to make it even more eerie.
Trevor watches carefully with gun in hand as Mitchell, who appears fine, goes through decon. After the cycle is done, Mitchell is allowed to enter and goes to engineering to check on his new hire. She's there. On her bed. Yellow-ish and not moving. Mitchell calls Malcolm back to engineering. Malcolm: <entering> "We really need to hire an engineer." Mitchell: "That is our engineer." Malcolm: "Well bleep." He checks the victim, who is just barely alive. He brings the med-bot back, which gives the result that the body is basically a sac of viri. Malcolm isn't a doctor, but he can tell this woman is at death's door. Her vital signs are so low he probably would have assumed that she was dead without the med-bot. Now if her body begins copiously leaking those viruses inside the ship, like the moment she does expire, that would be bad. Perhaps they should just get her outside before she expires.
Mitchell: "Well, what do we do with her?" Malcolm: "This area's contaminated." Mitchell: "This ship's contaminated." Malcolm: "Why do you say that?" Mitchell: "We either brought it with us, or the cannister we ejected into jump space caused it. Remember we all were sick?" Malcolm: "Oh yes." Mitchell: "Now, I'm willing to accept a coincidence. I'd like to accept a coincidence. I'm not banking on one though. We need to find out where it started. I went to a clinic, you and Gabrielle went to two separate hotels. Perhaps we should get the crew together." Malcolm: "Yeah." Mitchell calls for all crew to meet in the common area.
Everyone on board the ship, if not eagerly, goes to the appointed location. Mitchell: "Um, there was an engineer hired for the ship. Unfortunately, she has succumbed, or is about to succumb to the disaster that is ocurring outside our ship." There's a ping from the bridge, and the lights flicker slightly. Malcolm: "Uh-oh." Mitchell goes forward to the bridge. (The names he's been scrawling on the hatch disappear when it's opened.) The ship is now on it's own power, as the station is no longer providing it. Over the commo: "This is an automated message from the New Anglia UpPort. The starport's power station has sustained critical damage. You have three hours to achieve minimum safe distance." Mitchell sets one of the ship's chronometers to synch up with the countdown. This results in the message being broadcast loudly all over the ship. "Critical failure in an estimated 2 hours and 59 minutes to achieve minimum safe distance. Evacuate. Evacuate....Critical failure in -" Mitchell shuts it off, now that he doesn't have to pass this information on to the others.
Malcolm dons his vac suit to check on the engineer and finds that she's still clinging to life. She has a greyish pallor and is secreting enough serum to soak her bed. He struggles to fit her into an eeples ball, as the woman's muscles are almost rigid and her joints are swollen. This just keeps getting better and better.
Mitchell returns to the common area. It's kind of quiet. Trevor is reading the sports page. Mitchell: "It seems we have less than three hours to get out of the area before the station blows up." Gabrielle: "We heard."
In engineering, Malcolm is trying to figure out what the heck to do with the rigid, mostly deceased engineer. He wraps her in the sheets and goes to set her outside with the other bodies. Where the, uh, medical assistance can find her. There's really nothing they can do medically to help her anyway. He hasn't been out there since things got really bad. He also sees the dead (?) man in the floating cart, but can't figure out a reasonable way to tell if the man is dead, or just very nearly so like Grychin. He checks out the umbillicus attached to the nose of the ship, to see if there's a manual way to detach it. Doesn't look good - it's very secure. With the right tools, it would take a couple of hours to cut it.
Malcolm returns with this information. Mitchell decides to go check out the late engineer's equipment, to see if she brought any tools on board, which she did. Mitchell: <to Malcolm> "Just tell me she was dead before you tossed her out." Malcolm: "She was quite dead before I tossed her out." [Did he want the truth, or just someone to make him feel better?] Mitchell recalls the Solomani Navy procedure for ensuring quarantine, and yes it includes shooting anything that tries to leave. Trevor: "This is an incredibly fast acting plague, and if we just stay here, eventually they'll come on board to decontaminate the station and-" Malcolm: "It's going to blow up." Trevor: "Oh. Right. Well, how about if we just broadcast that we're not trying to land or jump, we're just trying to get out of the blast radius." Mitchell: "We can't leave, we can't get loose." Some discussion ensues about whether to try and get loose from the central control. Trevor suggests sending a request to undock, which is done, on the chance that it's an automated system that might still be running even if every human is dead. The computer does answer, but not very helpfully. Computer: "Standby, your request is being relayed to command and control." Oh goodie, it's relaying a request to the dead people. A few minutes later, a voice does answer. "Hey man, what's happenin'??!" The vid comes on to show a scary man with facial tattoos apparently looting the control area with a few like-drugged kind of people. Trevor: "We'd like to boogie out of here, man." Looter: "Hey, who are you man?" Trevor: "We're the poor suckers in bay 53." Looter: "Hang on a minute man." Much snorting. Looter: "What's happening, man?" Trevor: "Push the button." Looter: "What button, man?" Trevor: "All of them, man." Looter: "Oh, okay. Hang on, man." He pushes some buttons,. There's an alarm, and big bulkhead doors slam shut, closing the doors to the inner station. Trevor: "Close. Push the next button." Looter: "Sorry, man. We've gotta jet. Got other places to hit. Bye!" Trevor: "Damn!" Back to trying to get the connection severed the old fashioned way. Looking at the map, there is a Docking Control Facility. It's about 600 metres away, on the other side of the bulkhead doors. There are small "Bishop's doors" near the bulkhead pressure doors.
Malcolm goes to find a vehicle to make the trip faster. He decides to remove the dead body from the electric cart. What dead body? Malcolm: "Okay, I'm creeped out now." He looks for the engineer's body. What engineer? He goes back on the ship.
"2 hours 40 minutes to achieve minimum safe distance."
Trevor: "I'm not too keen on leaving our ship, and travelling through a plague-ridden starport to a control room that none of us is qualified to operate. Not to mention the occupants of the starport that might be really pissed if they thought that we were the cause of all this..." Malcolm: "Speaking of people..." Mitchell: "Yes?" Malcom: "They seem to have gotten tired of being dead, and left. Or maybe someone took them." Really efficient cleaning bots?
Even if the ship was able to detach from the starport, if the powerplant blew up there would be big chunks of starport rocketing out, 20-30 tonnes or more. Trevor: "As someone has pointed out, the planet has placed the UpPort on quarantine, and they will shoot down anything that tries to leave." They could just jump from here, and don't think Mitchell hasn't considered it. If the power plant has a critical meltdown, the corridors in the couple of kilometres between the ship and the explosion would vaporize. Technically speaking, though, the ship and crew could survive the explosion. (It is possible.) Probably not though. Trevor checks, and the medical supplies on board do include enough doses of anarad for everyone on board, with extra. And the power plant may not actually blow up, it may melt down [We know it won't fail safe with this GM]. Mitchell points out the worst case scenario, and best. Malcolm: "I just don't want to be connected when it happens." Mitchell: "Unless you can come up with a way to change that..." Malcolm looks out the viewport, in hopes of getting some idea of what happened to the bodies, but it's dark. He turns on the exterior ship's lights, and they see shadows skittering away. Maybe human-sized shadows, but bent over.
The ship does have enough fuel to survive several weeks. Or a jump one. Sequoyah, Polyphemus, and Vantage are all within range. It would be really close though. Mitchell resorts to sending the Marine (Imperial, one each) down with a stick to test the water level in the fuel tanks. Malcolm complies, but with a stick in one hand and a pistol in the other. The results are that including the volume of stored water in the toilet and shower recirculation, they have a margin of error of 1% for a jump. And about a week of pure battery power.
Gabrielle: "There's also the moral question of do we want to go any where and kill more people." Trevor: "I don't." Then there's the question of whether or not the plague has been caused by the party. Trevor: "The disease could have been incubating for several weeks before we got here." Yes, it could have been a coincidence. But what about the aerosol cannister? Mitchell isn't buying into the coincidence thing. Trevor: "Whether you believe it or not, doesn't make it true or not." Mitchell: " Gabrielle? Any particular place that you'd like to go?" Gabrielle: "That depends on whether or not we'll take it with us." Malcolm: "I have no desire to turn more people into yellow, skittering things." They could, if they didn't blow up with the station, survive in space for several weeks without jumping anywhere. Mitchell: "Assuming we survive, and can go somewhere, where do we go?" Gabrielle: "If we aren't contagious... <Mitchell shrugs> ...to Vantage." Mitchell programs in a jump to Vantage. The computer gives an automated warning that they are currently within 100 planetary diameters and that jumping is not advised. No, really? The station is only five PD's out from the planet. That pretty much guarantees a misjump, even if they press the Jump button just as the station blows up. Gabrielle goes back to her room, and gets out the rosary Dr. Neil left for her. She's rediscovering a serious interest in religion of late.
A check on the instruments reveals that there are several naval vessels out there that probably consitute a very effective blockade. Mitchell: "Perhaps if we released all the ships docked with the starport at the same time we leave, they might miss us in the crowd." Trevor: "If we release a hundred ships into orbit, a bunch of them are going to end up in decaying orbits and will hit the planet. And that means that the plague will wipe out everyone on the planet too." Malcolm agrees.
While they're waiting, Mitchell tracks down the remains of the file that was transmitted from the ship's computer. He confirms that it contained the message claiming responsibility for the "blow struck against Polyphemus". Oops. Hey, that's a lot of Polyphemans saved!
Malcolm watches outside. The beings outside are avoiding the lights. Mitchell: "The other option is to try and make contact with someone official on board the navy ships and convey our intentions to maneuver out to a safe distance without jumping. If we get their permission first, perhaps they won't blow us to pieces." This seems worth a try. There's a response to the ship's hail to the Navy "Get off this frequency. It is for official use only." Trevor: "Well, put on an official and we'll talk to him." They obviously don't know that the call is coming from a ship docked with the space port, or that the crew has been exposed to the plague, but are still in good shape. Trevor takes a deep breath and tries to explain this like he would to a fellow cop (probably a similar IQ here). Navy crewman; "Where are you?" Trevor: "On the exterior docking ring." Navy crewman: "All right, stand by." Other Navy guy [probably an officer]: "What's your situation there?" Trevor: "We're not dead." Navy officer: "Have you been exposed to the virus?" Trevor: "We'd like to point out that the power plant is going to blow up in a few hours." Navy officer: "We're aware of that situation." Trevor: "We believe that the plague victims...the disease may be effecting their brains." Malcolm: "They've gone feral." Navy officer: "Look, I realize that you're afraid, but you've been watching too much SF." Trevor: "I didn't say they'd gone feral, I said they may not be behaving rationally." Navy officer: "We'll relay that to our medical teams that we've sent down to the station. All right, we've cleared a lane for you. You need to manuever down this corridor, along these coordinates." Trevor: "That's nice, but there's no one to detach the ship's umbillicus." Navy officer: "Oh. <pause> Right, here's what you need to do." They will transmit instructions, but someone needs to go to the control room. OR they can wait. Navy officer: "There are rescue crews on board the station, even as we speak." Mitchell: "Yeah, right." Malcolm: "You doubt a Solomani government official?" Trevor: " how long since the teams went down to the starport station?" Navy officer: "About two hours ago. They haven't given us a situation report, but I'm sure they are tied up with the large number of affected persons." The party agrees not to wait for rescue from those teams. Everyone puts on whatever armour they have, gather guns and flashlights, and go out together.
Think Beneath the Planet of the Apes meets Omega Man.
Trevor: "I'll lead, I'm not the pilot." Mitchell: "Let Malcolm lead. He's got the military training." Trevor: "We're in a starport. I know how to move through a starport, okay?" They move out of the ship, and past some very dead bodies; definitely plague victims. They break the glass on the emergency handle for the bishp's door, and Trevor cranks it open while Mitchell beats the alarm into submission. They hear scraping noises in the darkness, then they step out onto the starport. Broken windows, crashed vehicles, scattered bodies, a dead robot in the middle of the street further down. They give it a wide berth, but see it's someone in a Level A suit. The suit's been ripped open in several places. Looks like he was attacked by animals or something.
The group continues further through the shops on walkways. Trevor turns around a corner and almost trips over a couple of men on the ground in olive drab level A suits, with rips. Malcolm takes a look and it appears the men where hacked and slashed, then bitten repeatedly when they went down. The weapons are located. One of the guns is still warm, and has a round bulge in the barrel. A single serviceable pistol is found. There are blood spatters and footprints. They can hear more skittering sounds while moving through the aisles of a huge department store.
Something leaps off the shelves behind the jewelry counters, and Trevor spins, fires his shotgun and backs up. There's a bang, and a hideous animal-like cry as the creature drops. Trevor: "Come on guys, let's move!" The clothing racks are rattling. Malcolm tries to set a piece of clothing on fire on the rack, but it only burns while he's applying high temperature to the cloth; once he removes the torch it goes out. Gabrielle: "Perfume counter." Trevor: "You feel a need for scent?" Gabrielle: "Alcohol." Malcolm: "Ah. You're right." The perfume counter is up ahead, but ten or twenty people burst out of the clothing racks and rush towards the group. First Malcolm, then everyone else turns on their external suit lights. Some of the beings peel off, but the others just shield their eyes and continue towards the group, smacking their lips. Heavy salivation must be a symptom of the plague, that's it...
Gabrielle fires and misses (no depth perception, diminished peripheral vision, and lack of skill - not to mention the stress of being attacked by zombies) the man wielding a femur (it's all springy and fresh, too). Malcolm just manages to hit with the unfamiliar Solomani rifle, taking one assailant down. Mitchell fires his gauss pistol, and hits one in the arm, then Trevor shotguns another one in the abdomen, hitting three others with spillover fire from the Benelli. Perhaps they'll stop to eat each other? Nope.
That leaves ten "zombies" surrounding the group. Gabrielle is charged by the man with the juicy femur, who hits her in the faceplate, leaving a greasy smear, but causing little damage. Malcolm is attacked by two people, one of whom has a large, green marble (or perhaps malachite) chess knight; the other one is swinging a military gauss carbine like a club. Malcolm is hit in the foot with the chess piece, in the least armoured area of the foot near the ankle, causing quite a bit of damage and pain. Mitchell is attacked by a snow-globe wielding zombie. The globe breaks, knicking Mitchell through his vac suit. Trevor is suddenly covered by a small swarm of zombies as Malcolm makes it to the perfume counter and starts breaking perfume bottles and trying to set fire to the zombies, or the environ. He discovers, as Gabrielle could have told him, that only the expensive perfume burns well. Trevor rears into view briefly, then falls under more zombies - he's moving further away from the group. It resembles an undead rugby scrum.
Gabrielle fires into the group attacking Trevor, but they disappear into the dark. But the other party members aren't going to let Trevor be taken without a fight! Mitchell leads the charge, and they chase after the group. Malcolm and Mitchell hesitate, Gabrielle trips and falls into Malcolm and Mitchell. There's a crack, then the feeling of freefalling. Eventually the ground rushes up and hits them. Malcolm and Mitchell fall, and it's painful when they land, but not too bad. Gabrielle hits the escalator badly, landing on her left side. Something doesn't feel right in that arm.
Several floors above, two floors exactly, are the sounds of zombies, and what could be the flailing of a dying gazelle. Or Trevor. The faceplate on Malcolm's vac suit shattered when he hit the ground, and Mitchell's is already compromised. Gabrielle's suit is dented, but intact. The escalator automatically moves Gabrielle down, rotating under her weight to the floor level where Mitchell and Malcolm are. Mitchell looks around, and sees they're in the home and garden and sporting goods section. Mitchell grabs the first putter at hand and uses it to jam the escalator after Gabrielle gets off, ensuring it won't free rotate if they take it up. Then he goes back and gets a driver, a putter, and a couple of boxes of golf balls. The camping food packages all look like they've been gnawed on by rats.
Malcolm and Mitchell pick up a handfull of flashlights about the size of bicycle reflectors, but very, very bright. They can be clipped on a belt, or carried in the hand. Up the escalator to where they lost Trevor. They find a ripped up vac suit, blood, and human bones - fresh, with muscular flesh on them. They continue to a group of zombies gathered around eating noisily. They see the silhouette of a human head being cracked open, amid the sounds of bones being cracked (sort of like crab shells).
The PA System announces : "You have one hour and 30 minutes to reach minimum safe distance."
They've gotten about half way to their destination. Not good. Mitchell wants to go back to the ship, and points out that some one will have to be at the ship to prevent it from drifting away once it's unclamped. Malcolm: "I don't suppose you could tie a line to the ship?" Mitchell: "It doesn't work that way. The ship isn't equipped for that." And once the ship is free (if this happens at all), he'll have to use power to maintain position. Gabrielle now has to decide if she wants to continue with Malcolm, the token Imperial, through the zombies to the control room; or she can go back to the ship with Mitchell, who she knows is a murderer, back through the zombies. Why is there no good choice here???
Gabrielle decides to go with Malcolm. Gabrielle: "Maybe we can still find Trevor." Mitchell: "Absolutely. I have to get back to the ship though." He leaves, passing by several people squatting in the shadows; they look up but don't bother him. Along the way there's a rush of air behind him, and a thud as some one who wasn't very well coordinated before the plague discovers that becoming a zombie doesn't make you athletic.
Malcolm and Gabrielle continue in the direction the Navy provided, and find a door labelled: "Operations: Authorized personnel only, no shops." A very high tech lock is on the door, but the door jam is of a generic polymer. Malcolm assaults the latter with the crow bar. It might look cheap and easy, but it feels like flint steel. The door is in fact locked, and requires a voice identity check to open. And this is the only direct route. Gabrielle knocks on the door. There's a loud, animalistic grunt from inside, then the door is opened and the zombie security guard lunges out to grab them. Malcolm takes him down with one shot. Malcolm: "So much for a zombie-free area." They go through to the authorized personnel area, after Malcolm takes the security guard's card (might help). Their desired destination should be close by. Malcolm checks the directions, to find out exactly where they need to go. The next doors require a card, and a retina check. Fortunately, Malcolm did not shoot the security guard through the eye. And speaking of the security guard, he's shuffling after them again, but a bit more unsteadily. Malcolm: <to Gabrielle> "I'll probably be coming off him fairly quickly. Be prepared to shoot." Malcolm tries to wrestle the guard into position for the retina check. Not too hard, he can fairly easily get the guard in place and run the card. The door opens, revealing no more security locks, and no plague zombies. Yippee.
Inside the control room, after leaving the guard locked outside, Malcolm and Gabrielle find a graphical representation of the docking rings. It's very simple to use, red and green lights, and designed by someone who didn't want the controls to be complicated in case of high stress. Malcolm rings the ship and gets the computer's messaging option. Malcolm: "Remember to decontaminate - well, it's probably too late now. Are you in position? Give us a call at the ops centre, at this number."
Mitchell gets to the ship shortly after the message is left, and calls the ops centre to advise Malcolm he's in position. Mitchell is thinking about giving the signal when the umbillicus detaches. The ship is still being held in place by magnetic clamps, which Mitchell hadn't noticed before. They won't hold the ship when it's under power; once the contact is broken, the magnets won't hold. The ship is free, but secure. Guess Mitchell didn't have to come back after all.
Looking out the port hole, Mitchell can see what appears to be ship transports approaching. Navy: "What's your status there? Remain calm, we've here to render you medical assistance." Mitchell: "The victims of the plague are extremely violent, and well, they're ....extremely violent." Navy; "Wait a minute, our information tells us that the victims succumb very quickly." Mitchell: "They do. And then they come back in very nasty ways." Navy; "You're saying that they don't die, they just become violent? How many of these violent patients are there? What's the casualty numbers?" Mitchell: "I don't know. I saw about 30 of them, but I was only on a small part of the starport." Navy: "Okay, we'll send more medical personnel."
From his position in ops, Malcolm can see several other ships approaching. This radio is absolutely unlike any radio Malcolm has ever seen. Where the fuck are the buttons? Where are the dials?? There are motion sensitive plates to use instead. He's eventually able to radio the ships and ID them as Navy transports. Malcolm: "Be advised we have extremely violent and irrational patients who are not responsive to tranq." Pilot: "Roger. We'll be docking at M1 and M2." Malcolm turns on the cameras to watch the troops arrive. They disembark and move onto the station. Malcolm and Gabrielle can hear the gunfire over the commo. Rifle fire, full auto, then belt-fed, then quiet. Malcolm sees a small group, firing behind them and running back toward their ships followed by several hundred "victims". The zombies lunge forward and pound on the ship. Malcolm clears the military ships for launch, which automatically swings the ships into launch position. Malcolm advises them of what he's doing, but he can't raise them on the radio. He switches to their point to point frequency and gets an image of a red-eyed wild man not in a Navy uniform, gnawing on human flesh. Malcolm bounces the signal back to the main ship. He does not release the docking clamps for launch.
Overheard on the radio from the Navy transports: Voice 1: "What the fuck is going on here!" Voice 2: "I say we take off and nuke the station!" Voice 1: "Fuckin' A!!" Naval officer: <from main vessel> "Belay that mutiny." Voice 1: "Yes sir!" Officer: "Team 2, you are to board the station and obtain a specimen for further study." Oh sure! Easy for him to say.
Meanwhile outside the Dead Reckoning (which maybe needs a re-re-christening). Trevor: "Open the goddamn door!!" Mitchell opens the door from the bridge. <whirrrrrrr-r-r-r> Something or someone seems to be trying to hold the doors open. Trevor: "Shut the goddamn door! Shut the goddamn door!!!" Slam. Trevor collapses in the common area. He looks like he's been playing the grav-ball game from a tri-d slasher flick. Mitchell: "I'm glad you made it." Mitchell helps him to the med-bot. It says Trevor is suffering from severe fatigue, dehydration, high blood pressure, high pulse rate, abrasions, and bruises. No prob.
Trevor: "What about Malcolm and Gabrielle?" Mitchell: "They made it to the control centre. They've unhooked the ship, but they haven't made it back yet." Trevor: "I just need to rest for a minute, then I'll go get them." Mitchell: "Okay." He helps Trevor to his bed, and goes back to the bridge. Trevor collapses, asleep. Mitchell charges the hull of the ship to prevent the zombies from pounding on it. After a few minutes they decide to try to find another way in.
Outside the ops centre, there's a whole chorus of moans, and much banging. There are a lot of zombies out there now. Perhaps an alternate route is in order. Malcolm looks around the centre, hunting for weapons or anything useful. Mitchell contacts the ops centre. Mitchell tells them that the ship is free and that Trevor has made it back. Mitchell: "I don't know if you want to come back here, it's full of zombies." Like where they are isn't? Malcolm can see pedestrian traffic on his control panels; they seem to travel in packs, very few singles or pairs. There's a small group outside of ops, a larger one in the docking bays, and a very large concentration around the medical centre. There is a military bay that's free, and Malcolm wants to direct Mitchell there, since it's much closer. Mitchell contacts the military vessel to advise them of his intention.
Starport PA system: "You have 20 minutes to reach minimum safe distance. This is not a drill."
Navy: "Stand by, the Commander's in a briefing on the planet. He should be available in 30 minutes." Mitchell: "We don't have 30 minutes. Look, if I don't break your quarantine, if I just move bays, will that be okay?" Mitchell isn't waiting for permission, but Malcolm can hear the response, and they can't fire on the ship without first getting permission either.
After exploring their area Malcom and Gabrielle find that there are no other exits from the control room. Perhaps they can formulate a plan to lure the zombies away. Besides coffe and snacks by the control area, this section has a highly automated employee cafeteria. Gabrielle, remembering that the zombies seem to be going after protein, gets a bunch of cold cuts dispensed and lays a trail from the door towards the cafeteria. Malcolm takes it one step further, dispensing pitchers of juice and setting the auto-café to keep putting out meat. The door is opened, Malcolm and Gabrielle staying to the side walls. The zombies enter with a sick smell, scraping and shambling. They follow the trail of meat to the dining room, eating like ravenous animals. They ignore Malcolm and Gabrielle as long as there's real food. They eat and drink like they're starving. Malcolm and Gabrielle slide past a long stream of zombies heading for the food.
They make it to the military bays, and there is a non-existent duty officer to whom to not show their non-existent badges. A few bodies, body parts strewn around. Mitchell, as he's moving the ship, takes a moment to erase, overwrite, erase, overwrite, and defrag the computer, specifically trying to erase the remains of the terrorist declaration. As Mitchell pulls into dock M3, he sees the remaining troop transport there.
Malcolm and Gabrielle get on board the ship, which leaves. Navy officer: "We just received clearance for you to relocate your ship to retrieve your crew on the station." Mitchell: "Thank you. Crew retrieved. We are now ready to depart." Officer: "Please keep to the corridor we have cleared for you." They do, getting not far enough away from the station as they would like before the clock runs down.
2
1
0
Nothing happens.
After a while, a ship with a big red cross approaches, and men in big, puffy suits come on board. They want to draw blood. Malcolm will help the men in the mittens and big puffy suits to wield the needles in a less lethal fashion. Mitchell is concerned about Gabrielle's blood being drawn, but there's no way to avoid that.
183 to 197-1121.
2 weeks in a large quarantine facility.
The party, along with a number other people developed an immunity to the virus, after being exposed to some kind of related disease. A doctor chats with them about where they've been, if any one has been ill, etc. No mention of terrorism is mentioned. The computer system on the starport was crashed rather badly, due to a deranged man with an axe.
Gabrielle is medicked, and the doctors check out her eye. Two doctors are working with her, and while they don't say anything, they exchange odd looks after inspecting her eye socket, before sedating her. But the replacement is a success. They keep her eye covered and just gradually remove layers in order for her to adapt to she having depth perception again, among other things.
The "plague" affected the thirst and hunger centres of the brain. The victims felt so starved, not matter how much they ate and drank, that they became absolutely deranged. Doctor: "It's odd that all of you on board your ship had the same random mutation in response to the virus." Serum from those immune to the plague is used to make a vaccine against the virus.
One of the Navy officers with whom the party interracted comes by to meet Mitchell (who he recognized, thereby blowing everyone's cover) Captain: "Excellent job, Captain Taylor, the way you took control of the situation." Mitchell gives credit to Trevor of course, but Mitch just has that Navy glow about him. The news service gets wind of this, and write about how Mitchell saved the station. Lots of interviews with single women about how they feel about Mitchell. He's a minor celebrity in system. He must meet local dignitaries and schmooze, including on planet.
The doctors mean time, have found Gabrielle even more interesting. Doctor: "Your bone has healed magnificently in fact. It must not have been a full break." Oh, yes it was. Doctor: "You have some interesting artifacts of the spine. You must have some interesting genetic variants in your makeup." Um. Next comes the pitch for Gabrielle to stay and allow them to run a few "tests" at the medical school. She expresses her need to be away from things medical after all of this. Doctor: "Of course. Perhaps now isn't the right moment. Here's my card. Of course the university would compensate you." Gabrielle is very polite, and non-committal.
Mitchell purchases a small chairdog. He has it shipped on board and put into his cabin without the others knowing about it. But the president of NeoTek won't hear of it. Pres: "For the hero who saved us from the plague? No no, you must have a more appropriate chair." Mitchell is given the all leather Admiral's chairdog with power swivel, the whole nine yards. And the keys to the UpPort once it's safe to go there again. Mitchell gets a visit from several, unnamed Navy people. Man: "Captain Taylor, yes. Your record is quite exemplary. We must talk later." Oh good grief - not another Naval conspiracy!
198-1121.
What with the stress and everything else, Gabrielle just wants to be left alone on the ship to rest. She awakens after lots of strange dreams about mutations and cannibals and all. She wakes up and her sheets are soaked. She gets up to splash water on her face and discovers that part of the dream wasn't a dream. She really does have little bumps going all the way down her back like she has ridges on her spine. And she's a bit less well-rounded on top, so to speak. Brief panic attack. Especially after this, Gabrielle is very willing to let Mitchell take the attention. Trevor is quite the hero as well. Mitchell is happy to keep Gabrielle out of the limelight, as she wants. Well, as much as possible. After almost being killed by plague-zombies, the press seems almost human.