Chapter Two: Quarantine
Her knuckles shone briefly, white light embedded in the bone, then the split skin began to knit. Her nurse twittered an inquiry at her.
"No," Nasira said, flexing in and out of a fist. "No pain. Thank you."
Her nurse bowed her head in acknowledgement then moved away.
The infirmary was an entire wing of the spiralling outpost. Adrara shuttled people up from the surface of the planet beneath for more advanced medical care, so she was not alone in the examination room. One patient had its long appendages propped up in several slings while a technician in a grey Adrara smock slowly mended each joint. The care here was communal - her own nurse turned to start helping the next in-progress treatment as soon as Nasira was deemed healed. There was almost no need for privacy; most lifeforms felt no shame or embarrassment in settings like this because Adrara was so accommodating. When the survivors of the Cavalier arrived, it was here that they would be received as well.
The thought unnerved her. Giddy from their rescue, the survivors would have too much to say about the xenomorph outbreak and the predators. Nasira didn't think she wanted those things spilling out in this place for all to hear.
Markel's boots squeaked to a stop, prompting Nasira to look at her. Her nose was repaired from where Nasira had mistakenly broken it.
Markel said, "Some trouble?" and gestured at Nasira's newly healed hand.
"No. Must've happened when we were training."
Markel didn't acknowledge the lie but surely she logged it away to deconstruct during her psych eval.
"I've just been talking with your supervising council," she said. "We decided it might be beneficial to your recovery for you to know."
"Know what?"
"We've picked up a signal from a rogue lifeboat. No contact yet, but it could be from the Cavalier."
Nasira bolted to standing. "Are you sure?"
"It seems fairly certain."
"When can we make contact?"
"Their trajectory suggests it will arrive in our airspace tomorrow morning. We're taking precautions against this contagion you mentioned, so we'll have it towed to a quarantine bay. We'd like you to make first contact. They'll be low on air, rations. Emotions will be running high. We think you could be a friendly face, provided you don't do anything to remind them of the incident."
Nasira didn't say that her face was the only reminder that they needed. Her face, even to her own eyes in the mirror, was etched deep by memories of the incident.
"I'll do it," she said.
Back in her quarters, she again sat at the viewport and stared out. The bright curvature of the planet beneath was just visible at the edge of the glass, the fringe between world and space. No longer did the view feel so empty, so much like an embodiment of her mistakes. They had made it. They would be home soon.
Part of her had worried that after Tresses had abandoned ship that she may have pursued the lifeboat and destroyed it like the first Nasira had sent. That all considerations but containment came secondary, even at the expense of innocents. But Runite had scanned all the survivors when they'd rescued them from the hive. There was no need for Tresses to prevent the lifeboat from reaching civilization. Still, could she be out there tailing it, watching and waiting to determine if there was a threat? Did she know Nasira had escaped, and would she come seeking vengeance for Runite, lost; and Siwili, maimed and abandoned?
Nasira's skin crawled as if she was being watched. Her quarters were only large enough to fit her cot with a pace of aisle leftover before the opposite wall began. Still, she checked all the corners before going back to sit at the bottom of the port with the dark all around her.
Flanking her on all sides were a hundred souls, all uniformed agents of Adrara. Their message was clear if wordless - you are safe, you are home, we are here to protect you now. Their unified stance almost seemed like a condemnation of Nasira's efforts. As if she hadn't done enough, as if they could have done better.
Still and all, she wore a new uniform as well, the navy coat weighing her down like she'd been tasked with holding up the sky. She was a pretender here, among them. Instead of feeling shame - shame at failing in her duties, at her lapse in conduct, shame at not being good enough - she felt only annoyance. This was only a charade, giving her a clean, pressed uniform and asking her to be the person she'd been before everything that had happened. Maybe they'd forget to ask for it back and she'd attack the sleeves with cutting shears, rip and tear until it was in a state in which she was worthy to wear it.
Her fists clenched at her side. That didn't matter now. They did. They were the only thing.
The quarantine bay was a sealed inner chamber of the regular vehicle drydock hanger. It was ejected from the rest of the station on a long mechanical track and connected only by a spacebridge with reinforced airlocks on each side. To prevent breaking quarantine, it could be severed then jettisoned with a moment's notice.
From this hanger, they could see clear across into the quarantine bay despite the stretch of space between through the huge cubic pane of clearglass on each structure. It was empty for now while it was moving into position.
"How much longer?" Nasira asked.
"Not long. We've towed the boat into a holding pattern around the station. No radio contact has made it harder."
After what seemed like an eternity, the sawtoothed doors of the Q-bay split open. The Cavalier's sole surviving lifeboat drifted in on the far side, silent as a tomb from this distance.
Markel nodded and Nasira and she started down the spacebridge. Accordion-shaped clearglass on all sides so she could look back and see the ranks of Adrara lined up in the station hanger and forward at the lifeboat in the Q-bay.
Markel stopped at the first airlock.
"I'll be right here," she said. "You lead them through. Remember, nothing to upset them. I'll send a team if things get complicated."
Nasira stepped into the airlock.
"Nasira?" Markel held out her hand. A moment passed before Nasira took it. A firm squeeze. "You got them back. You did this."
The airlock sealed between them and for a moment she was instead across from Runite, his strange face new to her and his gaze upon her. And then the loss.
Nasira swallowed down grief, pushed it aside, as she started the long walk across the Q-bay. Everyone was watching her from the other hangar but she kept her eyes ahead.
There was no movement from within, but she understood their caution. Remie knew that the predators had not wanted the lifeboat to leave. She hoped that Markel was right that seeing Nasira first might give them some ease.
A panel on the underside permitted her to drop the ramp. Inside, it was quiet except for a light, echoing bump just past where she stood in the entrance. They must be huddled up in the lofted sleeping quarters, hidden behind the bunks, hushing each other until Remie could report no danger.
Nasira rounded the corner and collided with a hard carapace. It was so sleek and midnight black that she could not immediately distinguish it from the lifeboat machinery until it snapped at her.
Nasira leapt back, reaching over her shoulder for a weapon that was worlds away. There was nothing between her and this new Queen, nothing to stop the gnashing crystal jaws as they came at her -
- a terrible screeching rang out as the new Queen's crown sheared off the metal ceiling of the lifeboat. The spines jutting out from her head were bent awkwardly, curled and grown in on themselves. She was frozen in a sort of crouch like the roof had fallen down on her and pinned her. Her tail bumped around uselessly, unable to find a way to snake through her immobile tangle of limbs. Her body crowded the entire lifeboat, caged her in so she was stuck tight.
And all around her, littering the floor, were the bodies. One with a hole through the pelvis, the work of the new Queen's barbed tail when it had not been quite full-size. Another in two pieces. A few she did not recognize, laying in chunks, scattered chunks, like her captivity had been a bore and the new Queen had turned to worrying away at the ones she could reach to pass the time. And Remie. Remie with her lower jaw halfway off and a whole quadrant of her skull collapsed and dark.
Nasira leaned back against the wall while she hunted for the rest. There. The nimod infants, one with a void in its chest. Because that's the only way this could have happened, the only way it was possible. Runite had checked all the others, but the nimod infants...she'd taken them right into her arms.
The newborn had likely cut right through them, evolving and growing with each kill until it could no longer move about in the cramped cabin. The lifeboat had carried on quietly, no signs of duress, until it arrived here with the only passenger left.
Nasira let her fingers wander until they grasped something she could use as a weapon. A metal pipe, its purpose unknown. Blunt, but it went straight through the new Queen's armored undercarriage. She shrieked as yellow acid fountained and the floor began to give way. Nasira watched, impassive. She did not have long before it seeped through to begin eating the Q-bay away and Adrara interceded, so she planted her feet and twisted, pulverizing the new Queen's organs, stirring them up inside her while she wailed and could do nothing to stop it from happening. Helpless, just as helpless as Nasira had been to stop the bloodshed aboard the Cavalier.
When the new Queen's hissing innards landed in a wet pile and then dropped down through the melted bottom of the lifeboat, Nasira let go of the pipe and stepped back.
She disembarked the lifeboat to a light breeze. The Q-bay's floor, thought reinforced against decompression risks, was weakening. Nasira ducked low and shimmied under the lifeboat, stabbing at the molten floor with what remained of the pipe so it might dissolve faster and sweep her and it and all its massacred contents out into the abyss.
Something grabbed the end of the pipe and stopped her short - Markel. She did not react to the acid even as it started eating away at the artificial skin covering her hand. Nasira strained but could not resist.
Markel dragged her out from under the lifeboat and for the first time, Nasira was forced to pay attention to what was happening elsewhere. Across the quarantine stretch, the ranks of Adrara were loosening in confusion at what was happening on her side. Someone rushed to the controls for the Q-bay.
"They're following quarantine protocol," Markel said. The hangar they stood in shuddered and then smoothed and very slowly the gap between the two widened. "Severed."
She looked at Nasira.
"We're dead in the water."
Nasira didn't respond, just yanked the pipe away from Markel and sat down right there with it across her knees, waiting as the Adrara station shrank away and their air vented out through the widening hole in the floor and the void could bring with it the end she deserved.