Chapter Four
Amelia sipped some coffee to keep her going as she read through Jenkin's blood toxicology report. She wanted to see better what she was dealing with before she proceeded any further. She wasn't too surprised when the mass spectrometer said he had an unknown compound that did not correspond to any known element in his blood. She should have, considering whatever it was didn't even show up on the Periodic Table. However, Amelia was far from a hack. She cross referenced the symptoms and effects, and the answer the computer gave was "tetrodotoxin" of Earth pufferfish. Researching, it gave her at least a vague idea how to approach things. Even in the modern day, they had no antidote to tetrodotoxin, and had to treat the symptoms while the patient's system worked the poison out. She could only hope that approach would hold for this. She looked up as the door of Medical swished open, and Sammers came in. She swore he looked ten years older.
"How is he?" he asked, looking at the ICU pod where Jenkins lay unconscious with that thing on his face. Amelia sighed.
"He's stable. I'm assembling a report as I can," she said as she grabbed up her holopad. Sammers wandered over and stared through the glass at the pulsing thing.
"I can hardly believe it. We actually found real alien life," he said. She noted he didn't sound excited. More tired and weary.
"Yes, and a fine way to meet it," Amelia mused without humor. He glanced at her, then back to Jenkins.
"Did you find out anything about it?" he asked. Amelia sighed as she looked through the scans.
"Well, for starters, whatever element it's based on, it's nothing found on Earth, or we've seen before. A few proteins that are familiar are present, but not in forms I've ever seen before." Sammers faced the glass, but was looking at Amelia out of the corner of his eye. "It also seems to be shedding its outer cells and replacing them with what looks like polarized silicon." His gaze narrowed on the creature.
"So, is it silicon-based?" he asked. She shook her head.
"No. If that was the case, it would have turned to glass in oxygen. Whatever it's made of, I have no idea." She flipped through her scans and notes. "But, I have isolated whatever compound it's using to keep him in a coma. Seems kind of like pufferfish toxin. If treatment is similar, we should be able to treat his symptoms while his body processes the toxins out." Sammers looked hopeful, however slight.
"Do you think you can get the thing off him?" he asked. Amelia frowned deeply.
"We tried. As soon as he touched it, it tightened its hold. When we pulled too hard, Jenkins started to bleed." Sammer's eyebrows shot up at this. She looked at Jenkins through the glass. "It's not coming off without literally tearing his face off with it," she said as she watched the pulsing organism. Sammers sighed heavily, looking at Jenkins, then at the glass stasis crate that contained the pod the creature seemed to have come from.
"The Captain and Brinks have heard about it," Sammers stated flatly. Amelia wasn't surprised.
"I figured they would have." Sammers shook his head.
"I heard rumors they want Jenkins and the creature brought to the Castle for study." This shocked Amelia.
"Are they out of their minds?! We have no idea what this thing is or what it's capable of!" Amelia exclaimed. Sammers nodded his agreement.
"Just a rumor for now, but-" he was cut off when the alarm sounded and the yellow light flashed and spun. Amelia was startled. She looked at Jenkins, who was still unconscious in the ICU pod. A RIGLINK video window popped up in front of her, Dr. Camp was there in his RIG once more.
"Amelia, we got another one!" he panted. Her and Sammers both let their jaws drop.
"Are you kidding me?!" she yelled.
"Found her in the tunnels, opposite side of the colony. We're en route. Get another pod prepped," he said, and closed the feed. Amelia looked at Sammers, who wore the same look as she did.
XXX
Sure enough, a few minutes later, they wheeled in another stricken miner. This one was a woman, but she was almost exactly like Jenkins. A creature identical to the first had melted through the faceplate of her RIG and attached itself to her face.
"Fuck me," Russel groused as he opened ICU pod Three.
"Not it," said Judy.
"Not it," said Jessica. He ignored the jokes and helped the EMTs lock the stretcher into the pod before sealing it. They repeated with this woman what they had done for Jenkins, taking off her RIG and cutting open her helmet. Again, the creature was tightly affixed to the woman's head, fingers tight around her skull, tail coiled around her neck. Amelia could hardly believe it. It was stunning enough when the first one had happened, but now this? Amelia shook her head as they put an IV into the woman's arm.
XXX
Evening set in as Amelia groaned from where she sat in the lab. It had been easily the longest day in so many years of her career, and was not yet done. He didn't look up as the door swished open, Sammers coming in with some tea.
"Here," he said, offering a steaming cup. She sighed gently and took it.
"Thanks," she said softly, throat dry as she drank.
"You look terrible," he said. Amelia groaned and rubbed her eyes.
"I know." He smiled as best he could and patted her shoulder.
"You need some sleep." She looked up at him.
"Love to, but I can't." Sammers looked at her.
"You make mistakes when you're tired, and we can't afford that," he pointed out. She inhaled and sighed. She knew he was right. "Trust your staff. They've got this covered." She looked at him, then the screen. She saved the document and then stood, her back popping. He nodded and patted her arm.
"Thanks," she said as she headed for her apartment. She staggered back to her apartment and collapsed into bed, still in clothes. She fell asleep almost as soon as she hit the bed.
XXX
Amelia's sleep was restless, filled with horrible images of those tailed spider-hands running around everywhere. Dozens of them. She woke with a groan. She briefly went to the bathroom and washed her face before she headed right for Medical. As soon as she was in the door, she got a new shock, but not at all the kind she was expecting. Jenkins, Sherry, the other miner, the creatures, and the pods were gone. She stopped and looked around. She saw Russel coming in, turned to him.
"Where are they? What happened?" Russel looked upset as he told Amelia.
"The Captain and Brinks pulled rank and had them transferred to the Castle." Amelia gritted her teeth as she turned on her heel and stormed to Sammers' office. She would have slammed the door open if it wasn't a sliding automatic one.
"What the fuck, Sammers?!" she yelled, startling Sammers and West. The colony manager stood and walked over to her.
"Amelia-" he began, only for her to cut him off.
"Don't patronize me, Michael!" she spat at him. West tried to defuse the situation as he stepped in between them.
"Calm down, Amelia," said West, and she glared daggers at him as she pointed her finger at him.
"And don't you start! If anything happens and an outbreak occurs because you helped break quarantine, under Maritime Law Article 45-33, you would be held personally responsible for any and all loss of life, including jail time." West balked at that. Sammers waved his hands and desperately tried to restore calm.
"Amelia, they brought their own security. And believe me, West and I were as pissed as you are! There's video proof, too." Amelia took deep breaths to calm herself. West nodded his agreement.
"If I had been able to, I would have loved to punch the Captain's smug face. I didn't, and don't like it any better than you." She looked at West from under furrowed brows. Sammers wiped his forehead as he came forward to face her.
"Besides, Amelia, they have better tech on the Castle. Now with new Wey-Yu gear, it's even better. They have diagnostics we don't have, larger and stronger imaging, zero-g therapy, never mind the stasis units." She began to relax at that. "They'll get good care. Besides, now it's the Captain and Brinks' mess. If anything happens up there, it's on them, not you." Amelia closed her eyes and heaved a heavy sigh. "Besides, you've done so much in the last few days, you deserve a rest." West nodded his agreement.
"I'll happily go on record to back Sammers up on that. Testify, if I have to." Amelia looked at him.
She was a good judge of body language, it came with the territory, but also was something she had a knack for. She could see they were being truthful.
"I guess you two are right. It just doesn't sit well with me. I know Giles and Brinks are drooling up there and seeing Credits about being the first to find alien life, no matter how dangerous it may be," she said slowly and softly. Sammers nodded his understanding.
"Well, at any rate, we have more than enough proof from down here that we discovered them first and not the Captain, if credit for that is ever an issue," said Sammers with a grin. West nodded.
"Backed up, secured and dated. No doubts or arguments," said West. Amelia looked up at the ceiling, then back at them.
"Well, I may as well have a better look at those samples, see if I can find anything I might have missed. Sammers nodded and West gave a thumbs-up.
"Good idea, but get some proper breakfast first," said Sammers, to which she nodded, and headed to the mess hall to do just that.
XXX
Amelia spent the rest of the day catching up on the things that had been pushed aside after the first parasite had appeared, but she also checked the samples she had taken for any clues or things that might help find a way to get them off. Life had just about seemingly returned to normal, when the alarm sounded again. Amelia jumped and almost dropped her holopad.
"Oh, no," she breathed as the same yellow light flashed and spun, her gut feeling like it had been hit by a hammer.
"So much for 'crisis averted'," Judy groused as she got into her RIG suit and the others did as well.
Sure enough, a few minutes later, not one, but two covered stretchers where wheeled in.
"Where did they find these two?" Amelia asked as the EMTs brought them in.
"Engineering and Cargo," replied the EMT, shocking Amelia.
"What?" she said as she stopped in her tracks. She looked at the covered stretchers. The victims inside were not wearing mining RIGs, but normal ones and clothes. Amelia felt her blood run cold as she hurried to contact Sammers. "Michael! We have a major situation here!" she almost yelled.
"Don't tell me more of them!" Sammers said through the video.
"Worse, they were from inside the colony." Sammers froze at that.
"Are you fucking kidding?" She shook her head.
"Engineering and Cargo. I don't know how, but they somehow got inside the colony!" Sammers' face went white.
"Let me know as soon as you find out anything more. I'm getting West and P-Sec in on this, Maybe they can at least find out how and where they got in," said Sammers, not waiting for her reply before shutting off the link. Amelia agreed. Her nightmare was fast becoming a reality.
XXX
A while later, the two colonists were in ICU pods, just like Jenkins and Sherry, and hooked up to IVs. Everything tested the same as before. The only different thing was where they had been found. More troubling, though, was they had found more of the pods. This discovery not only changed things, but freaked them out, including Amelia. They had originally thought the pods were laying dormant in the rock where they had been tunneling, but this seemed to throw that idea out the window. Amelia considered that the pods might start in the form of microscopic spores that grew into the large pods. If this was the case, then the whole colony was likely already infected, and had been since they set it up. However, that didn't make sense, since someone would have noticed something as big as those pods if they were growing anywhere in the colony. She really had no idea, as they were dealing with a completely unknown organism.
Amelia, Sammers, West and the top P-Sec Detectives met in the Medical lab, looking at the pods they had found.
"This is the photos we took when the EMTs called us," said the Detective as he showed the RIG photos. Amelia looked at the position of the pods and location. The one in Cargo had been found more or less in the middle of the floor, but the one from Engineering was found tucked away in a corner, and a good distance away from the victim. "The Engineer clearly struggled with his attacker, and has bruises consistent with stumbling into things during an attack," said the Detective, showing pictures of the bruises on the Engineer's body. Amelia nodded.
"Maybe he was able to avoid being surprised," she mused. She brought up her own pictures of the Engineer, his neck was clearly bruised where the tail had wrapped around his neck. "That would make sense, and if this creature didn't have the element of surprise, it could have used its tail to choke him," said the Senior Science Officer.
"Like a Sleeper Hold," put in another P-Sec officer. She nodded.
"Yes, it would have been able to squeeze the arteries in the neck and knock him unconscious in a matter of seconds. And with the strength I have seen from these things, I have little doubt he would have been easily overpowered." West stood with his arms crossed, glanced at the unconscious colonists, then back to the empty pods. Sammers frowned deeply.
"West, I want you and your best men to sweep the colony. Try not to panic people, but look around. Above all, be careful, and if they find anything, quarantine the area and tell us ASAP." Sammers looked at Amelia. "Anything new? Anything that might help us?" he asked. She frowned softly.
"Not much. The only things I could note is my surface swabs from the creatures were oddly absent of any bacteria, but that could just be from the disinfectants. The other, was I noticed that thermal imaging didn't show the creature." They looked at her with some surprise.
"So, what? They're cold-blooded?" one of the Detectives asked. Amelia frowned.
"What doesn't make sense, is when I touched it with a thin glove, it was warm, but the thermal readings were like it wasn't there. Never seen anything like it."
"Nobody has," mused West as he looked at the stricken people and their unwelcome guests. He looked back at Amelia. "What we don't know about so far is just what these things are doing to the people they attack. Would be a huge help to us if you can make even a guess. Meanwhile, we'll sweep the colony and see what we can find." Amelia nodded.
"Yes, I'm running more tests as we speak, and will see what else I can do. You'll be among the first to know if I find out anything new," said Amelia, and the Detectives murmured approvingly. With this, West and his men filed out. Sammers stayed. He walked over to look at once of the two colonists, watched the creature on his face pulse.
"Amelia, you have my permission to try to remove the creatures," he said after a long moment.
"I'm not sure we can. At least, without killing the victim in the process." Sammers looked pained.
"We need to better know what we're dealing with. Try if you can, but if you deem it too risky, stop." This made her smile softly. "I'll take full responsibility for anything that happens." She took a deep breath and nodded.
"We'll try," she replied as she went to assemble the team.
XXX
A short time later, Amelia, Russel, Jessica, Judy, Ethan and Dr. David Camp were all in Isolation Pod Three. Instead of the previous Emergency-Trauma RIGs Amelia and Camp had worn, they now donned Surgical RIGs. These encased parts of the arms in armatures to increase strength and reduce shaking, but preserve as much dexterity as possible. Their faces were shielded by a curved plexiglass splatter shield which also displayed holographic information. The rest wore smocks and face shields.
"All right, where do you want to start?" Camp asked. Amelia looked and picked up a simple reflex hammer. She carefully tapped the back of the creature. There was no reaction. She did so again, and no reaction. Harder taps had no effect. She tried on the legs, and while she thought she may have seen a tiny hint of movement, she couldn't be sure. She put the hammer back into the tray, then brought up a rib spreader. She tried the regular cranked one first. She put the spreaders between the fingers and began to crank. She grunted with the effort, but she felt the metal would give before the creature's hold would. She put the manual spreader back, and tried the hydraulic one. This was not intended to use in a human body per se, but was meant to be used to crack open a damaged RIG, should the need arise. They were called "The Jaws of Life" in earlier times. The machine whined as it operated.
"Wait a minute! I see blood," said Russel. Amelia stopped, and a small trickle of blood ran down the man's cheek, under one of the fingers of the "facehugger" as Russel had dubbed the creature. Amelia retracted the spreader and wiped the blood. Camp huffed softly, hands on his hips.
"Tenacious little devil, isn't it?" he mused. Jessica and Judy nodded. Amelia wheeled a cart with a defibrillator over. She checked it, and took a special paddle used in open heart surgery, and applied it to the creature. She wanted to start with the lowest of shocks, just to see. She just hoped even this would not cause harm to the patient.
"Everyone clear," she said, and when sure, she pressed the button. For once, the creature reacted, but instead of releasing its grip, it tightened, fingers and tail, all at once.
"Stop!" Camp almost shouted. She did. He looked and sighed. "Damn thing. Wouldn't put it past it to crush his head," said Camp. Amelia put the machine away. "Do you want to keep trying?" he asked. Amelia hesitated, then nodded.
"Let's try cutting it off," she said. Camp nodded. She was about to reach for the tools, when he stopped her.
"If you don't mind, I'll try. I know Sammers said he would take responsibility, but I wouldn't put it past Giles or Brinks to think otherwise," he said as he picked up a plasma scalpel. Amelia watched him. Dr. Camp was a good man and a great doctor. Camp looked for a moment, and decided where to cut first.
"Why don't we try that first knuckle, there?" Amelia said, indicating one of the top knuckles closest to the body on the creatures left side. He nodded and checked the scalpel and his hold. He looked at her. She nodded, and he leaned down and activated the scalpel with a whine. He took a breath, placed the scalpel, and drew it across the knuckle.
They were startled when a yellowish-green fluid sprayed out from the creature and onto Camp's arm, where it began to hiss. The doctor screamed, loud and shrill as the fluid burned through his protective clothing and RIG almost instantly.
"Holy shit!" Russel yelled and Judy and Jessica threw themselves against the back of the pod.
"David!" Amelia yelled as she lunged to help. Dr. Camp screamed louder, his arm dropping as, to their horror, the acid had eaten clear through the muscles of his arm, which now hung by tendons. Fumes rose, and they began to cough, their eyes watering and stinging, as if they had been hit with tear gas. Amelia still heard hissing, and looked down to see, to her total shock and horror, the acid was burning right through the floor. An alarm sounded from the pod. An automated voice rang out.
"Warning! Hazardous chemicals detected. Initiating emergency ventilation protocol." Fans then kicked to life to vent the fumes into a contained unit. But, this was soon redundant, as the acid burned right through the floor and in to the next level down. Now, new sirens and flashing red lights added to the pandemonium. "Danger! Quarantine Pod Three breached," the synthetic voice announced. All of them were coughing as Amelia threw the door of the pod open, Camp stumbling, still screaming. "Ethan, get me something to neutralize the acid! Anything!" Amelia screamed as she tried to help Dr. Camp, who was starting to slump. As she caught him, his arm fell to the floor with a thunk. He groaned in pain as Ethan ran to them with a jar of white powder. Amelia threw it on the wound, but it hissed and bubbled, having almost no effect. They were frantic as alarms blared and confusion and panic reigned.
