“Oh, no. He’s wearing that plaid shirt that doesn’t quite meet in front,” Millie whispered, feeling a giggle welling up.
“Don’t you even dare look at me, Mahealani. Now shush,” Aurelia warned. “Mr. Conlin, what a pleasant surprise.”
Waving a fat, dimpled hand, Renner Conlin frowned and asked in a booming voice, “Why aren’t you finished here? We must adhere to schedules.” He pressed one nostril closed with his index finger and sniffed. Millie knew he took snuff but often suspected he used harsher and more illegal powders.
Folding her arms across her chest, Aurelia gave him a long look. “Ask my scheduler; we’re on time. A station this size takes some time to completely cover.”
Conlin sniffed again, ruffling his hand through his hair. “Work faster. We don’t want any of our guests upset.”
Millie cringed, expecting a sharp retort from Aurelia. Instead the doctor leaned a hip against the table and asked, “Who is Althan Tahk and why does he have a Priority A PEF card?”
Conlin’s florid face turned peachy green. “Hhhhh” came the only sound out of his mouth. He sniffed. “Well, carry on, carry on. Like I said don’t upset our guests too much.” He turned and fled.
Millie stared after him. “That was interesting.”
“Hmmmm,” was Aurelia’s only comment. She picked up her scanner fiddling with the controls.
“You’re not going to leave it at that?”
“I am for now. We have to adhere to schedules.”
Laughing, Millie returned to her own station. It didn’t take long to collect a line of customers.
Almost an hour later, Millie looked up to catch the eye of a handsome man coming through the door. He had dark, short-cropped hair with blue eyes and a square, clean-shaven jaw. He looked about 1.8 meters tall, had broad shoulders and a military bearing. Company security commander, Millie pegged him. He made a beeline for her table, cutting in front of the line.
“Are you in charge here?” he asked in a deep, resonant voice that gave Millie goose bumps.
“What is it you need?” Millie asked. After twelve years, she had gotten in the habit of protecting Dr. Aurelia from unnecessary interruptions. No, that wasn’t quite true. It was more like protecting other people from Dr. Aurelia.
“My name is Nicholas Zelan.”
Not company security then but captain of GEM Co’s exploration vehicle, the
Phoenix
. The
Phoenix
was a fast, heavily armed space-to-air ship, one of four such ships owned by GEM Co. They were designed for planet hopping, the small crews expected to get as many signed contracts as possible in the least amount of time. Their crews had to forego the comfort of gravity, GEM Co. having deemed the big generators a waste of space, fuel, and more importantly money. Jobs on ships like the
Phoenix
were for the young and hearty. Zelan looked no older than Millie’s 26 year old baby brother.
“Millie Konoho,” she introduced herself. “What can I do for you, Captain?”
“I need to speak to someone about the quarantine order.” Anger permeated his voice.
Watching that square jaw tighten, Millie decided she had better not run interference for Aurelia. “This way please,” she said, leading him to Aurelia’s table. “Dr. Aurelia, this is Captain Nicholas Zelan.
“My ship just docks and we get slapped with this ridiculous quarantine order,” Zelan burst out. “I expect you to lift it immediately so my people can take their shore leave.”
“No.”
Zelan looked perturbed at Aurelia’s short answer. “You don’t understand, Doctor. I’m not going to be stopped by a quarantine for box pox of all things. Where’s Governor Arnott? I’ll speak to him about this.”
Palms on the table, Aurelia leaned forward, “I put up a quarantine order on this or any GEM Co. station and the Director-General himself can’t break it. You’re in violation of the order right now, Captain.”
“Do you know who I am? I have a level 5 security clearance...”
“I don’t need any clearance to have you hauled to the brig. And I will if you don’t shut up right now.”
Zelan opened his mouth then clamped it shut again.
“Listen carefully because I’m only going to explain this once. You and your crew have to be tested before you’ll be allowed on the station. Someone on your ship could be a carrier and I don’t want you running around here introducing a new strain of raphrydia. I have enough headaches already.”
“But we’re talking about box pox...”
“And if the quarantine had been for phinotheria instead of box pox? Would you still have broken the order?”
“Well, of course not, I...”
“So you can pick and choose which order to obey?”
“Okay, fine. I’ll go back to the ship and wait but I’m lodging a protest with the governor.”
“No.” Aurelia rolled her eyes. “Go to the front and register for the test then wait in line with everybody else.”
Zelan’s jaw dropped and he stared at her for a moment then suddenly grinned. “I guess I deserved that. What about my crew?”
“They’ll be tested as soon as we can spare someone to go over there.”
“I’ll go,” Millie volunteered.
“I would appreciate that very much,” Zelan smiled at her.
Aurelia nodded. “All right.”
Millie headed for the side door where there was less congestion. She would be glad for fresher air. And she might be able to find out more about the strange Kaprinian Althan Tahk. Conlin’s reaction had been too odd to just let it pass.
After Millie had gone, Aurelia continued to stare at Zelan. “Was there something else, Captain?”
“Are you always this unpleasant?”
“Usually more so. You’re holding up my line.”
“Just one more question. Why such concern about box pox? It’s not a deadly disease.”
“The Jidalians hate it. Any skin blemish is against their religion. Since a number of them work here and they also control Davis’s orbit lease, we’re doing our best to stop the epidemic.”
Zelan nodded. “Politics.”
“Welcome to GEM Co.”
Zelan threw up a mock salute, “That’s what makes the galaxy spin round, Doctor. I’m off to get registered.”
Frowning, Aurelia watched him saunter over to Zimbin’s table. He got cheerful awful fast, she thought. Her woman’s intuition told her that something was not quite right on Space Station Davis.
The comm-link on her belt beeped. Now what. She pulled it off the belt and hit the open button. “Yes?”
“Dr. Aurelia, there’s a message waiting for you in the Communications Center. The sender requested privacy.”
“Thank you.” She returned the link to her belt. It had to be from the Admiral. Aurelia didn’t get very many private calls.
After informing Zimbin that she was leaving, Aurelia pushed her way through the crowd at the front door. An express elevator brought her to the entrance of the Communications Center.
Davis served as a relay station between Earth and GEM Co.’s other bases throughout the galaxy. For a fee, they also handled calls for other companies, planets and private individuals. The Communications Center fielded millions of calls a day.
At the center of the room, the main receivers, five massive computers shaped like white barrels that stretched to the ceiling, stood in a row, collecting the neutrino beam particles, processing them, then sending them to any of a number of translating computers each manned by an operator. Messages were finally transferred either to the individual’s belt receiver or a personal access monitor in one of the private cubicles that lined the walls.
On entering the C.C., Aurelia glanced up at the huge message board on the right hand side just above the courtesy desk. Her name and the number of the cubicle where her call had been transferred should have been near the top, but the only A names listed were Adams, Mark and Althan Tahk. Frowning, she looked around and caught the eye of the young man at the desk. He quickly straightened his green suit jacket with GEM Co.’s logo, the planet Earth superimposed over a medical caduceus, and the name Gerard sewn over the left breast pocket and smoothed his hair though it was cropped so short it hardly needed smoothing.
“Doctor Aurelia?” he asked and at her short nod motioned with his right hand, “This way please.”
Personal service, must be the Admiral, Aurelia thought as she followed her guide to a large, glass-enclosed room at the farthest end of the center. The monitor had to be at least twice the usual fourteen inches and the glass walls darkened for privacy as soon as she stepped over the threshold.
“If you need anything, just press this red button on the panel here,” the boy told her pointing at the appropriate control on the wide board below the monitor. He held the large, swivel chair for her as she slid into its smooth, comfortable depths. “Beverage controls are down here if you’d care for anything to drink.” He paused for a moment then stepped back, closing the door behind him.
Aurelia supposed he had expected a tip but she hardly ever carried cash. She would think of something later. For now she leaned back, enjoying the chance to rest and take the weight off her leg. Reaching out, she thumbed the lever next to the green, blinking light and waited.
After a slight delay, the screen clicked on with a soft hum, revealing a dark-skinned man in his mid-sixties with a lean, angular face, brown eyes and a completely shaven skull. Admiral Chanar Meng had retired from Earth’s Galactic Armada some years before but still retained the title. He now served as GEM Co.’s Director-General. Under his guidance, the Company had avoided bankruptcy to become the fastest growing corporation among the fifteen others that N.A-Mars licensed for transgalactic importing and exporting.
Meng looked up from something he was reading. “Heard you have a quarantine there. Anything serious?”
Aurelia shook her head, “Only in the employee department. It’s box pox and the Jidalians are screaming.”
“Can’t keep everybody locked up too long. Already had a couple complaints.”
Aurelia shrugged. “It won’t be too much longer.”
“Good. Not what I called you about anyway.” Meng tapped his teeth with a finger. “The board of directors decided to implement a student program. Recruited a few first and second year medical students to work in one of our hospitals for the summer. Calling it an internship.”
“Let me guess. We’re the lucky ones who get them.”
“Bright child. Sorry, kid, argued my lungs out but got overruled.”
Aurelia leaned her head back. “How many is a few?”
“Four. Three humans and a Raman.”
“Where am I supposed to put them? The
Pasteur
isn’t exactly a luxury hotel.”
“Find room. The
Phoenix
will be dropping them off at Davis.”
“The
Phoenix
? Then they’re already here!”
“Probably. Have to go. Good luck.”
“No. Wait just a minute, Admiral,” Aurelia protested but the screen went black. “Great.”
She didn’t have time to baby-sit. Sometimes she was sure the GEM Co. board of directors had nothing better to do than think up ways to make her life miserable. They certainly had no idea what went on in a hospital ship like the
Pasteur
.
Earth and her eight colonies were by far the most advanced, civilized planets in the known universe. Many of the places the
Pasteur
serviced couldn’t even invent a good Band-Aid. Oftentimes her crew found themselves doing jobs from sanitation pick-up to fire control with very little relation to the practice of medicine. And the hostility encountered from various species made it no place for youngsters who hadn’t the least idea what they were doing. Aurelia depended on every person from the surgeons down to the orderlies knowing their jobs inside out and having the ability to act quickly in any situation.
“Four other ships and they always pick mine,” Aurelia glared at the blank monitor. The Admiral had been no help at all. He was usually on her side but had seemed preoccupied. She discovered her fingers were making marks in the arms of the chair.
Getting up, she walked out and tried to slam the door but it resisted, sliding shut on its air track.
“Ma’am, you have another message,” called the desk clerk as Aurelia passed him. The doctor stopped, clenched her fists then walked back to the desk.
“Just give me a hard copy,” she said and watched as he hurried over to one of the translation operators. Beyond him, she noticed the Kaprinian with the twisted antennae just coming out of one of the cubicles. She remembered seeing his name on the message board when she came in.
She waited for him to draw even with her then stepped forward. “Althan Tahk.”
Surprise flooded his face, quickly stemmed by a flippant twitch of antennae.
Aurelia held out her hand. “Dr. Aurelia. I understand you’re working with Renner Conlin.”
His hand felt warm and mushy.
“Pleased to meet you, Doctor. Yes, I’m a liaison attached to Mr. Conlin’s team.”
“Mr. Conlin negotiates a number of contracts for the
Louis
Pasteur
.”
Something dark glinted in Tahk’s eyes. He smiled. “Yes, I believe the
Pasteur
may be involved. Nice to meet you, doctor.” He bowed his head and walked away.
Aurelia watched him leave. If Conlin was working some deal for the
Pasteur
she wanted to know what it was.
Gerard, the desk clerk, arrived with a half-sheet of yellow paper. It was the official notice from the chief clerk’s office of the arrival of the four medical students from the
Phoenix
to be transferred to the
Pasteur
. Crumpling the paper in her fist, Aurelia dropped it into the boy’s open palm then shoved past several people just entering the center.
Halfway back to the conference hall, Aurelia had to stop in the middle of the corridor to rest. Her leg and lower back felt like a hundred tiny men were sticking samurai swords into them. With one hand pressed against the wall, she leaned down to massage around the protective shield just above her left ankle.
It covered an open wound through which could be seen the white, rounded tip of a flailing tail. She felt the hundreds of barbed spikes along the body of the worm retract from her flesh. Relief from the pain lasted only a moment as the Gladurian Platarius began to thrash about again. For more than five years, she had endured this cohabitant of her body that fed itself through her kidney. Sometimes, it seemed as if GEM Co. was doing exactly the same thing. And somehow she had the feeling that things were slipping out of her control just as they had the day of her injury.
It had been a routine call to Gladur about five years ago, not even as interesting as a box pox epidemic. The Company’s contract with the planet was for yearly physicals in exchange for a few kilotons of construction grade kedellium. Aurelia, Jak, Millie and two other doctors had set up a pavilion in an open field to perform the tests. About one o’clock in the middle of a hot, sticky afternoon when patients had stopped coming, Jak suddenly pricked up his antennae. Those two appendages had become gauges to Aurelia and Millie. By them the two women could read the Kaprinian’s emotions, judge his physical well-being, and become aware when there might be some danger around them.
“What is it, Jak?” Aurelia asked.
“I thought I heard a scream,” he replied, cocking his antennae still farther, “from the village. There, did you hear that? Maybe rafter fire too!”
All five medics piled into the bullet-shaped air speeder, heading for the village about three miles away. Already, smoke was rising from burning buildings. Trying to avoid the thick clouds, Jak threw back on the joystick, bringing them down hard as the speeder bounced and kicked like a bucking horse. Gladurians were streaming past them in a panicked frenzy, many of them with burns of one kind or another, some carrying friends who were less fortunate.
“Millie, Doorn, Becker, triage now!” Aurelia snapped as they all scrambled out of the speeder. “Jak, contact the ship. I want people and supplies fast! Hey, you,” she grabbed the arm of a young man who looked uninjured and reasonably in control of his senses though a little dazed. “What’s going on?”
“Raiders from the mountains. They surrounded the school. They’ve got a neutron blaster. We couldn’t punch through it. I...couldn’t...” He started to cry.
Aurelia shook his arm gently despite her impatience, “What about the school? What do raiders want with that?”
“The kids! They take them...for slaves. I...they’ll kill everybody else...They’re using wormguns too...oh, gods!” He leaned over and threw up on Aurelia’s boots. Putting an arm around his heaving shoulders, she pressed her hand against his forehead until he was through.
“Okay?” she asked when he lifted his head. As he nodded, she called to Millie, “Mil, get him a sedative. I’m going in there.”
“What?!” Jak looked up from the patient he was working over. “We’ve got enough work here. Anybody in there is dead already.”
Aurelia’s jaw was clenched so tight she had to fight to get the words out, “They’ve got a bunch of kids. I’m going in.”
“You’ll get caught in the crossfire!”
Without another word, Aurelia turned and started for the other end of the village. She could hear Jak and Millie following but only picked up her pace. Perspiration was rolling off the two women by the time they neared the center of the action. Smoke and some other unidentified stench roiled around them in a palpable fog.
“Get back! Stay out of the way!” A voice shouted at them from a low brick hut that had thus far escaped destruction. Dashing toward it, Jak stumbled over something and yelled. All three looked down at a body with blood leaking from the neck like an open ketchup bottle. All that remained of the head was a scattered pile of yellow mush as if someone had stomped on a squash. Twisting and turning in the remains was a four-foot long, white, worm-like creature with spikes running along each side of its body. It flopped around blindly in the muck then lay still as though exhausted.
“Get in here!” came the voice again. They needed no second urging when something whined past them and struck a tree. Diving into the hut, they watched in horrified fascination as the tree split in half with a heavy cracking sound, opening outwards to reveal another white worm, still growing.
“That’s a platerius. It’s what they use in the wormguns. The eggs are put in a metal shell and when they break open, the worm starts to grow...through anything.” Their informant was a Gladurian male about forty-five years old with a thick beard and bald skull. He was dirty and disheveled, his left leg bent and bleeding. His blue eyes burned with hatred. “They’ve got my kids in there, but they’re not gonna get away this time.” He patted the massive Terran rafter, a laser guided projectile rifle named for its inventor. It was big but lightweight with little recoil making it a popular choice throughout the galaxy. Frowning he added, “Only we can’t get past that damn blaster.” Even as he spoke, they heard a loud thud and the ground shook beneath them. A neutron blaster was roughly the size of a twentieth-century tank but stationary and armed with neutron grenades.
Aurelia crawled closer to him to start binding up his wound.
Gunfire came from all directions now and the three from the
Pasteur
looked at each other.
“You two shouldn’t have come,” Aurelia muttered.
“A little late now,” Jak replied.
Millie crept over to the window, keeping her head low. “Somebody’s making a run for the blaster,” she said.
They all crowded around to watch the young man racing across the open ground.