Zahara was adjusting the air intake valve on her isolation suit when she heard Waste clatter up behind her. "Not now Waste."
"It's important."
She dismissed the droid without thinking about what she was doing. This afternoon had been a blurry nightmare of blood and confusion. Her normally sedate infirmary was overflowing with prisoners and guards that had been struck down by this unknown contagion. Every bed was filled and there were even patients lying on the floor. The infirmary rang with their cries for aid and the soft beeping of the life support machines was beginning to drive her crazy.
Whatever it was that the boarding party had brought back with them from the Destroyer had spread so quickly through the Purge that both she and Waste had lost count of the new admissions.
Captain Sartoris had arrived under guard by his own men a short while ago and Waste had ushered him straight into the quarantine bubble.
Knowing that Sartoris was lurking in there, waiting for her, was an extra dose of stress that she really didn't need right now. It didn't help that the Warden had also been calling her constantly for updates on the situation.
The bloody bureaucrat just couldn't understand why she couldn't at least diagnose what it was, what was wrong; let alone come up with a cure for whatever was decimating the crew and prisoners of the Purge.
Up until the latest interruption by Waste, she'd had her hands full with simply triaging the latest admissions, cataloguing the various symptoms that seemed to range the full spectrum from fevers, to seizures, hallucinations, haemorrhaging, coma, and death.
Now the 2-1B unit was patiently standing beside her, waiting for Dr Cody to give him her full attention. "What is it now Waste?" She sighed, "Whatever it is it's going to have to wait."
"The Warden wants another update. He's waiting to talk to you." The droid somehow managed to sound regretful about the last part.
"How bad is it?"
The droid paused, "Twelve fatalities so far."
Zahara felt the beginnings of a headache and hoped it was just stress, and not the first stages of this mystery plague. If she got sick; there would be no one to help the others. "Including the entire boarding party?"
"With the exceptions of Captain Sartoris, ICO Vesek, and Miss Sera." Waste said.
"And they're all still in the bubble?"
"That is correct. Otherwise, the pathogen has already spread through the entirety of the Purge. I'm following several reports of outbreaks in General Population - inmates, guards, support staff. Rate of infection is nearly one hundred percent. If nothing changes, our current medical supplies should last for one further week." The medical droid's vocabulator synthesised a lower, more confiding tone, "I have been unable to isolate the molecular makeup of this particular strain of virus. Dr Cody?"
"Yes."
"As you know, my programming on infectious diseases is quite wide in scope, but this current contagion is like nothing I have ever seen." The droid's voice lowered further into a synthesised version of a whisper. "It seems as though the organisms are using quorum sensing to communicate within the host individual."
Dr Cody pursed her full lips thoughtfully, "Meaning what exactly?"
"Individual disease cells don't activate their full virulence until they have reproduced in such numbers that the host's immune system is unable to combat the contagion."
"In other words; when it's too late for us to do anything."
Waste made an affirmative noise, "That's correct Dr Cody. At this point I'm not even sure that the isolation suits are an effective barrier."
Dr Cody looked over at the bubble and saw Gat talking seriously to the waif from the Destroyer. She didn't know what it was - that rare and elusive element of goodness and decency that made Gat unique amongst her patients. No matter what it was; she was glad that he was in there with her. It was odd that many of those inside the bubble who had survived weren't showing any signs of infection.
-000-
Sera tried to make herself as small as possible, she didn't like the way Sartoris' eyes had flicked over the pair of them like they were less than dirt. He had a crazy look to him that she recognised from her time as a lab rat on the Vector. Guys who had that look were dangerous.
She shivered and pulled the thick mat of curly brown hair forward over her shoulder. Sera began to finger comb out the tangles and mutter to herself in Devish.
Gat looked down, surprised at the familiar phrases of a lullaby he had sung to his nieces and nephews before he'd decided to leave to seek his fortune offworld.
When he noticed Sartoris look over for the third time, he stood and sat on Sera's other side, shielding her from that damn monster's gaze.
Sera looked up in surprise as he ruffled the curls she had just untangled. "Why?"
The Devaronian smiled, "Because it looks like I owe you a few debts now already kiddo." He lowered his voice to a whisper, "Besides, the Doc told me to look after ya."
Sera narrowed her eyes and glared up at Gat, suspicious of any adult now. He didn't seem like one of the bad ones; but he had to have done something bad to have wound up on a prison transport on its way to the ass end of nowhere.
-000-
At Waste's words, Zahara looked down self-consciously at her own orange isolation suit. She had donned it as soon as she'd made the decision to implement quarantine procedures, but she didn't like it; nor the message it sent to the other inmates that had been exposed already.
The droid was right though, there were already guards coming in sick who had been in the isolation suits since the initial order. She wasn't feeling sick yet though.
'For now.' A grim voice murmured in her head.
From across the infirmary an alarm went off; a steady, high pitched whine that marked one of the patients going into full arrest. Zahara took a step toward the source; but then a second, and a third alarm went off. Part of her thought, hoped, it was an equipment malfunction but she could see from where she was that it wasn't.
Her patients were dying. Dying faster and dying all around her and there was nothing that she could do. The only action she could do that would make a difference would be to sign the requisite forms once the bodies had been taken away.
"I'll take care of this." Waste said, "You need to talk to the Warden."
Dr Cody shook her head and threw off the feeling of helplessness, before striding over to the first patient to trip the alarm. By the time the brunette reached the inmate, it was too late. He had collapsed, the monitors feeding back a constant shrill whine. That helpless noise seemed to be coming from everywhere now.
The patient to the right of Zahara started to have a seizure, and his alarm went off too.
For the hundredth time that day; Dr Cody wondered what the hell had happened up on that ship and what the boarding party had brought back either them. She also knew that there was only one person she could ask.
-000-
When the first alarm went off, Sera began to tremble. By the time the third alarm sounded; she was shaking and whimpering loudly enough for Gat to notice.
"Frack." The Devaronian scooped up the child and pulled her onto his lap. She was crying now and he wrapped his arms around her, covering her ears with his hands, and murmuring nonsense in Basic and Devish.
Sera vaguely registered someone picking her up, she didn't fight it. It was far too late for that now.
They were all dead.
The pretty doctor hadn't found the cure.
She was just a child.
How could she have known the doctor wouldn't be able to do what the Imps had done?
Even as the other alarms went off, muffled as they were through her impromptu earmuffs, Sera was trying to plan her next steps. She hadn't seen the results of the plague first hand before, and she wasn't sure which was more terrifying; this chaos, or the aftermath.
Whichever the 'winner' of that particular competition proves to be, she was not going to die. She was not going to let this happen again.