Symbiosis: Chapter 30

“Natural Selection favors the more resistant bacteria that adapts to its environs the best and procreates the most,” Dr. Ferris explained.

“It certainly does. Are we ready to get this project off the ground?” Captain Jackson asked his team. Eta Cassiopeia began to peek above the mountains and dawn had just turned to day. Mr. Wagner and Dr. Ferris stood with two Cinconians near the Osprey. They would be the first team to deploy away from base, assigned to the first map point about 3000 kilometers west of their current location. They all exchanged glances and climbed into the shuttle to be delivered to Site One.

While Lieutenant Lee flew them off, Jackson took advantage of the downtime and headed back inside the New Hope building where the climate was considerably more comfortable. Thousands of freeze dried vaccines made on the Maria Mitchell in boxes nearly reached the ceiling. Beside them millions of antibiotic pills in cubic meter containers also awaited deployment.

“Mr. Campbell, Mr. Bowen, I want you to team up with Pasi and be certain that all the necessary materials are available to start producing vaccines here at the New Hope factory. Once the supply list is confirmed, I’ll have the Painter join you to supervise the machining. And, you’re all going by ship, right? Okay, dismissed,” Jackson said and looked down at his planner and the two standing with Pasi, a dark brown Cinconian not much taller than humans.

“York, you and Adams are on Station Two with Akadar at the UMA building. The facilities there should be set up for drug manufacturer and you will have to shut down all other production in favor of the antibiotics. Adams, when that is set up and running, I’ll put you someplace else. They have enough medical staff there to do the job, no training needed, no oversee required. Put all your gear together so when Lee returns you can just jump in and go.”

“Aye, sir, we’ll get on it. Come on York,” Adams said and the two of them began their tasks.

“Okay, Painter, in the meantime, you and Odalis will travel to Station Three for factory repurpose. There are plenty of employees but that’s where retrofitting will be easiest to start production. Get the employees to do the work while you ensure all is on schedule. Then I’ll have you out to check on Station Two. Wagner, you’re here with us for now.”

“Mr. Lee is going to be awfully busy,” Dr. Gregory muttered to Jackson.

“We have to keep this going all day and night until there’s nothing left to do. I can fly a few in between so he can get some sleep.”

“What do you want me to do, exactly?”

“I need a mature team leader for these Cinconians. I feel they lack some discipline to stay on task. Stay here at New Hope and make sure they get these vaccines on transportation to the outer areas, the small towns and rural areas. Ships will be kind of slow, but again, there are places we can’t take the shuttle.”

“Aye, Captain.”

“And remember, Dr. Adams said we vaccinate three with one vial in areas where there are no reported cases. Our supplies will go a long way doing that while the manufacturing ramps up.”

“We’re going to be here more than a week, Tom,” Scott said.

“Maybe. The idea is to get them set up and get out.”

“What are you up to?” Scott asked.

“Besides keeping an eye on the mission I’m going to try and piece this thing together. How our half human mummy and the Kiians are related to both of these planets and a human bacteria.”

“Rianya’s smarts must be rubbing off on you,” Scott jibed.

“If only I could be that lucky. But I am picking up a lot of biology I never knew about before. Come on.” Tom and Scott wandered the corridor until they located their quarters to wait until the shuttle returned. “I brought something you might like to see,” the captain said, rifling through his travel case and pulled out a hard plastic bottle. Using two bowls from a stack he poured fifty-some mils of burgundy fluid into each, and handed his old friend one of them.

“This is?”

“Medicine for anything that ails you.”

“Since when do you drink before noon?”

“Is it still morning?” was his rhetorical comeback. He knocked his bowl against Scott’s bowl and took a sip of the Auchsonian brandy letting the flames trickle down the back of his throat until he felt the essence land hard in the pit of his stomach. Not used to celestial-proof alcohol, he wheezed out a cough, throttled by the unexpected effect and sat quickly in the nearest chair.

“Tom, what in hell is this?” Scott hadn’t touched the bowl to his lips or tasted the elixir and hesitated when he caught Tom’s reaction.

“Fortitude,” he croaked, carefully putting the bowl on a table.

“I think I’ll pass,” Scott said, putting the bowl next to Tom’s. “What’s wrong?” he asked, joining Tom at the table.

“Are you a mind reader like Rianya now?”

“Come on, it’s me you’re talking to.”

“Something doesn’t make sense here and I’m trying to loosen the cement in my head. These people barely have technology to talk to each other across the planet, much less across a dozen light years.”

“You have a point; they’re all about instant gratification. Infrastructure is a mess, health is in trouble, but they seem to enjoy passive entertainment.”

“Precisely my point,” Tom said, clearing his throat of the broiling brandy. “We’ve come all this way to help them, and they’re so docile about it. I don’t understand. They had Pegasi supplying them with antibiotics, so why didn’t they just ask them for help?”

“Profit?” Scott’s gray eyes flickered.

“Yes, there’s no profit in curing the plague. But Earth is twenty light years from here. Why us?”

Tom pushed some items to the back of the table and pulled out a large touch screen from his bag. He drew a circle in one corner and then another in the opposing corner, marking one with a 5 and one with a 4. He drew three squares along the bottom labeling one with an H, one with a P, one with a K. Scott watched on. Before Tom began, he took another swig of the vile brandy to reinforce his mettle.

“Help me sort this out. All right,” Tom began. “We have a couple scenarios as to how Yersinia got here and how Cinconians have been fighting it for decades and how it’s tied to that mummy. One way is if the body infected them, the other is if they infected the body.” The men huddled closer to the table, standing because the tall table and short legged chairs weren’t ergonomically designed for human comfort or function. “Let’s go with the ‘they infected the body’ theory first.” He entered some data on a portable reader and picked up another one.

“Who brought the disease from Earth if not the body?”

“It would have had to be Kiians or Pegasi or another space faring civilization. Earth wasn’t space faring four hundred years ago.” Scott nodded. “Stick with me on this one, we’ll tackle the other scenario when we’ve done this one to the end.

“So at some point Kiians, most likely, came to Earth, somehow contracted Yersinia, and brought it to Cuatro. It spread like crazy and wiped out the primates and higher mammals.”

“Okay, but how did it get to Cinco?” Scott asked.

“The Kiians again, must have taken it there. We saw those illustrations of Kiians killing Cinconians with laser pistols,” Tom reminded him.

“That might explain the research stations on Cuatro that Kiians are living in.”

“But why didn’t the Kiians help the Cinconians cure the plague? They don’t seem to have it anymore, if they ever did.”

“Why would Kiians take a human off Earth and bring him back with them?”

“He’s not all human,” Tom reminded him.

“They brought back a human, then it interbred, so our mummy couldn’t be the carrier. He must be a descendant.”

“Yes, that’s what I’m thinking too,” Tom said while he wrote the notes into a data pad and sat down in the odd chair. “So do you have another idea about the spread of this thing? It looks like Kiians are the culprit. They must have abducted a human for some reason.”

“What about the Pegasi?” Scott asked.

“They came later, obviously.”

“Why couldn’t they have been the vector?”

“You think a Pegasi landed on 14th Century Earth without being noticed? The Kiians could pass as humans if they had to.”

“You got me there.”

“Now your theory is that the mummy brought the Yersinia from Earth. But I can’t see how a mixed race human ended up on Cuatro without help from Kiians or Pegasi.

“So just for yuks we’ll say the Kiians brought a mixed race human with Yersinia to Cuatro four hundred years ago and that’s how they wiped out the Cuatrons. Then some of the Kiians took it to Cinco.”

“You’re right, Tom, that doesn’t make sense. How could there be a mixed race human anywhere 400 years ago, much less 800 years ago.”

“Yet…” Tom said, lightly biting the tip of his tongue. “The body dates to 800 years old. The extinction on Cuatro and the documentation on Cinco support the disease came 400 years ago.” Scott also sat down and the two officers’ faces mirrored each other with glossy eyes and impassive smiles.

“What is the missing piece here?” Tom asked rhetorically, almost under his breath.

“Does it really matter? We just need to get this pandemic under control and get out of here.”

“I need to know the responsible party. I think the Kiians were on Earth, brought the plague to Cuatro somehow, then infected the Cinconians, and asked the Pegasi to help with mountains of antibiotics, and now they have a resistance problem.”

“And so…” Scott hinted. “That still doesn’t explain Hero all dried up on Cuatro.”

“I need to get the Kiians on board here. A dozen humans and a few hundred puerile Cinconians aren’t going to be able to do this.”