A/N: "Before long" ended up becoming almost a year, but we're back with the next chapter! I suppose many of you had to re-read the previous chapters to get back on track with this story; I did too. At the rate I'm going, we might be done by the time this fic hits its 20th birthday in 6 years (but hopefully we finish before that though)! Some details are similar to the original, but I wanted to put my own spin on this part of the story, so here's a little (or a lot of) self-indulgence. Enjoy!

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CHAPTER 22

Pandemic

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"We have no intention of leaving this place, so please do not bother yourselves further for us," an old and balding but sinewy woman called Maron, who was considered the head of the village, intoned gravelly.

Magno frowned. She, Meia, and Gascogne were having a face-to-face meeting with the leader. Barnette, Ezra, Duero, Bart, and a few others were visiting the main hospital. Vandread Dita-Base was currently scouting around; Parfet was trying to modulate the planet's atmosphere utilizing Vandread Crab. B.C. and the rest of the crew remained in the Nirvana which was docked nearby.

When Jai, from aboard the Dita-Base, initially informed the crew earlier that there was only one settlement on the entire planet and Gascogne determined that everyone might be accommodated on the Nirvana without too much trouble, the pirate boss expected an easy task of getting the people to evacuate before the Earth harvesters could arrive. She hesitated, however, when Jai also mentioned there was something "seriously forked up" about the planet's ecology; the atmospheric pollutant wasn't like anything in their databases. The surface crew underwent a quick but powerful broad-spectrum immunization protocol before disembarking, so they were at least safe for a while yet.

"Are you fully aware of what is about to happen to your people?" Magno replied as gravely. From the corner of her eye, she could see Gascogne ball her fists while remaining silent – the officer was showing admirable constraint.

The other leader shook her head before speaking. "Parthus is a poor and desolate planet, and since even long before I could remember, one of Earth's ecological experimentation sites. It might have been a thriving planet long ago, but nobody knows. The Earth provides. Our ancestors were from Earth. Different villages once existed here, but each time one become too weak, the Earth culls. They cannot be stopped. Many have tried, and all have failed. We are the last remaining community, and the crops this season have yielded worse than the last. It is not surprising."

Maron went on. "Disease and death are not uncommon here. There have been about as many lost to illness as to the harvest. Your heavy protective inoculations are incomplete; you cannot stay long. Everyone born here is afflicted because of the polluted atmosphere. Our young are mostly malnourished or sickly. Even the corpses are sent directly to Earth using specialized pods. All we have left to remember everyone by are these dolls."

She gestured to a side room, which was lined from floor to ceiling with dolls of different make and design, each was handcrafted to resemble a person who once lived on the planet.

Gascogne reached her limit and raised her voice. "Then isn't that all the more reason to leave this terrible place?"

"With what? We have no ships of our own, and will endanger any who extend help. You probably don't have enough to support us all. Besides, a prolonged journey would only sap our strength; we'd be no more than dead weight. Where would we run? The Earth would track and hunt us down. You know as well as we do what the harvest is. Best for the burden to be shouldered only by us alone."

"We have won against them before," Meia said almost nonchalantly, making it sound as if the feat was simply an ordinary one. She was just stating a fact.

A flash of hope glinted in Maron's eyes, but only for a moment. "Oh? Oh, but It must have been a smaller force. Even then, winning a battle now would only prolong our time here before another larger fleet is sent."

Magno nodded. It was true that the Earth fleet on its way is twice as strong as before. If the people themselves refuse to cooperate, then it looked like there would be no other recourse but to leave.

That faint sliver of hopefulness in Maron's tone showed that there was still a chance for a different outcome.

But for right now, things would have to play out a while longer.

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The hospital was as depressing as he expected. It was the largest building in the colony, and for good reason. Man or woman, each one of the inhabitants Duero met was sick to some extent. To make matters worse, there were various manifestations – some showed signs of respiratory disease, others exhibited sores and skin lesions, some had brittle bones and fractures, and even others presented with advanced multiple organ failure.

'If the atmosphere is the cause, then the vector is airborne? The water seems to be contaminated as well. Are there other modes of transmission? Could we also get infected if they get onboard the Nirvana? This pathogen is unknown, exclusive to this planet. Damn those Earth monsters!' As a physician, the situation was beyond vexing.

There was no MDS here; everything was rudimentary, almost primitive. He had a feeling Jai would feel quite comfortable.

Duero vowed to do what he could, though almost all of it was temporary and palliative. Even the medicines they were administering seemed only to worsen the patient's condition.

There must be a way to cure, to break the cycle of death. He had to think.

Their group ventured into an isolation room at the far end of one of the hospital wards. There was a solitary girl, about five or six years old, who stared longingly out the window.

'A particularly serious case?' Duero could only wonder why this child needed to be quarantined when everybody else was sick as well.

Ezra was the first to greet the girl, who brightened instantly and answered, "My name is Shirley. I hope we get along well." Her thin physique was heartbreaking to look at, her blond hair was dull, and her skin ashen. Yet despite it all, her eyes were bright and she offered a smile that was as warm as the midday sun.

"I heard a big ship arrived this morning; was that yours?" Shirley asked.

To everyone's surprise, Bart approached her and spoke up, "But of course, my lady Shirley. I am Bart, the helmsman of the majestic Nirvana. I make the ship move to its fullest capability. Let me tell you about the time we faced off against the insurmountable odds..." He was doing his usual dramatic, exaggerated and half-true storytelling, but his one-child audience seemed so enraptured to listen to it all that nobody had the heart to stop him. Even when the other crew members moved away, the two were happily engrossed in their own exchange.

"The poor dear has probably never been outside the hospital before, much less out of the planet," Ezra reflected, "it wouldn't be fair to deprive her of hearing a tale or two."

Barnette nodded, while Duero looked on. Shirley didn't seem to be in the worst shape out of everyone infected; perhaps her symptoms came in bursts? He had to consult Jai on this to get a better idea. Perhaps the other physician could shed more light on the situation.

From there, it was decided that Barnette and Ezra were to return to the Nirvana after visiting a few other patients. Duero helped out at the hospital emergency room, and Bart stayed with Shirley.

Everyone hoped that the harvesters wouldn't get here just yet.

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"All clear," Jai reported to all the other crewmembers. The Dita-Base was cruising a little ways away from the planet, its radar set to maximum range. "At this rate, we'll be safe for the whole night."

After turning off communications, his thoughts drifted back to the "pollutant" in Parthus. There were a few variants of it scattered about, but there was one that was especially abundant in the air and water environments. The Dita-Base could render its structure, but could not determine the components – it was entirely new, whatever it was, or at least its outer shell was impenetrable even to the Vandread's powerful scanners. He magnified a real-time image of it on the spherical display. It was a micrometer-long thin rectangle with countless projections on its surface he could only describe as jagged spikes.

Dita noted, "Is that a virus?"

"I wish I knew," Jai replied. For all he did know, it could be a synthetic life form made by the Earth machines, or an alien pathogen being studied by them. One thing he was almost certain of was that this was the main culprit for the diseased individuals on the planet. He would be able to visit the hospital later, but unfortunately not for very long.

"Then we just have to figure out how to stop this thing, then everybody will be better, right?" Dita asked again.

She made it sound so easy. Jai smiled in response and said, "That's right. Well, aside from the harvesters, anyway. We'll also need some time to understand it."

"Well, I'll leave that to you since you're so smart," Dita said with what Jai thought was a hint of envy. He hoped she wasn't being sarcastic. It certainly didn't seem that way.

After a short while of thinking in silence, Jai opted to let the disease matter simmer at the back of his mind. He once again called up the map of surrounding space and set the view to the maximum. Again, no enemies.

Dita was looking towards Parthus. "Mr. Alien and Jura are hard at work," she said wistfully. Vandread Crab was intermittently sending energy pulses towards the planet, closely monitored by Parfet.

"Parfet said they're trying to create a sterile environment. I really don't understand it, so let's just hope it'll be successful," Jai stated. He couldn't comprehend most of what the Mejale mechanic instructed to her subordinates while trying to explain her plans, so he decided to leave it to the experts.

"We can just do what we can, but we'll do our best every time," he added. Dita agreed enthusiastically as the Dita-Base started towards the Nirvana.

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Parfet was scratching her head with both hands in frustration. Temporal distortions shouldn't be this difficult, but trying to influence the surrounding airspace up until where the Vandread Crab hovered above in the planet's atmosphere was proving to be a challenge. The sun was setting, and everyone was getting hungry.

"Maybe if we time the energy pulses a little faster, perhaps?" She queried to nobody in particular, rather, she was thinking out loud.

Jura appeared on a com-link. "This is the fifty-thir-, um, second? Aah I lost count!" She looked tired and annoyed. Beside her, Hibiki wasn't in much better shape. "We've been up here since morning, and now the day is almost over! It's a good thing no enemies have shown up."

"You're right," Parfet assented. Pushing it too much wasn't going to yield any better results. "Let's adjourn for today." The solution was close; she promised to take a closer look at the computations after a bit of rest. Overhead, Vandread Crab finally separated, and Jura and Hibiki returned to the Nirvana.

Listening to Jai's comments on the "pollutant", Parfet was quite sure it was more biological than mechanical in origin, though part of it looked metallic. Duero's account of the different disease manifestations was indeed alarming, and this gave her the drive to try to rid Parthus of this dangerous entity. Though a number of her colleagues were working on developing a miniature prototype device capable of purifying the air, she was simultaneously attempting to modify the planetary atmosphere itself. The issue was that there was very little time to work with; enemies could arrive at any time, and they would all have to be ready to battle, or to run.

One of the Parthus scientists approached. "Excuse me," he started meekly, "could we perhaps offer some assistance?"

Parfet readily agreed. It appeared that there was a small group of people on the planet who were secretly working on a way to kill the offending agent while not harming other living tissue. The faction was composed almost entirely of people from another planet who unfortunately crash-landed several years ago and became sick as well. While chiefly unsuccessful in their main objective, they were able to find out a few things. "We believe that somehow creating a strong enough magnetic field could act as a repellant for the organism, but we haven't been able to generate enough energy," he explained. Small-scale experimentation has yet to prove this hypothesis, but initial results looked promising.

Parfet brightened instantly. "Show me the data," she urged, calling a few other Mejale technicians to follow. Dinner could wait – this could be the breakthrough she was looking for!

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It was late at night and the hospital was quiet, save for one quarantine room where two excited voices were still happily chatting despite having gone on for hours. Shirley was surprisingly showing no signs of fatigue even then.

Jai chuckled, adjusting his glasses. He and Duero were comparing notes on the pandemic at a nearby nurse's station, and were going through the charts of the confined patients as well as other hospital records. "It's kinda refreshing to listen to them talk."

"Quite," Duero replied succinctly. "I'm a bit concerned about patient Nadya; her pregnancy is at term and just about due anytime soon, and she has been particularly weak lately." He handed Jai the chart with the aforementioned person's files. "It says that the infection doesn't take hold before birth, before the newborn is exposed to the environment. How is that possible if mother and child share the same circulation?"

Jai looked through the information. "Fetal and maternal blood don't mix directly; the placental barrier acts as protection. Granted, there aren't that many of the pathogen present in the blood in the first place, but it still is remarkable that none ever reach the fetus. I didn't think to check if the Dita-Base could scan babies still in the womb, though saying that out loud sounds kind of unethical. This is very interesting! If this holds true, then we can conclude three things: that both male and female gametes don't have the pathogen; that the zygote and blastocyst remain uninfected; and that the inside of the amniotic sac is entirely clean!"

The other doctor only nodded as Jai half-rambled while poring over the records of different pregnancies and births on the planet. Duero guessed that the "amniotic sac" was the environment of the growing fetus; he wasn't very knowledgeable about the biology of female pregnancy, or male and female reproduction – all inhabitants of Tarak were born in laboratories after all. But this was indeed a remarkable discovery: if the child could avoid exposure to the external environment, it would avoid being infected altogether.

Jai interrupted his thinking. "Parfet is trying to make a sterile field, right? If we are able to at least provide a safe place for delivery..."

Duero smiled in spite of himself. It would be the first baby born in Parthus to remain uninfected. "I'll see if she's still awake," he said before rising to make the short trek to the research facility in an underground floor of the hospital.

Going back to patient Nadya's file, Jai started on finding a way to improve her condition. If possible, he wanted to save both lives.

"Please don't you alien fudgeknuckles arrive just yet."

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A/N: I swear FFdotnet's document editing and formatting changes each time I try to upload a file. Anyway, there's a lot of perspective and time changes in this chapter; I tried to make it longer but I feel the pacing might be getting a bit messed up. I think it is fine overall. Continuation in the next chapter, which I hope to be able to write sooner rather than later.